Thunderstorm’s grip tightened on the broad saber in his hand. The veins stood out livid across his skin, and his heart swelled until it felt fit to burst. Terrifying footwork, terrifying attack power, a terrifying man… He understood at last that he seemed to have provoked someone he never should have touched.

Three Guardians charged Ye Tianxie with heavy shields raised, and at the same moment five pairs of slender arrows came flying in from different directions — Double Shot, from five Archers. But to his eye the Guardians moved far too sluggishly, and even the arrows flew far too slowly. Getting clear of them was as easy as turning over his hand.

A slight tilt of his body to the left and three of the Double Shots were avoided by the narrowest margin possible; he dropped low, angled his head, and the other two pairs sailed wide as well. Meeting the Guardian in front of him, the Hour of Fate lashed out — a Dragon Rend Slash crashed down onto the man’s shield with a bursting crack that had no business existing, and the Guardian was smashed flat to the ground… one-shot, with no suspense about it.

Ye Tianxie paid no attention to the Guardians and Warriors rushing him from behind. He drove straight forward, and the Hour of Fate swept toward two Archers just about to loose a second volley… Their reflexes were sharp enough — they scrambled backward with Gale Step — but how could their evasion speed compare with his attack speed? With Focus several times beyond an ordinary person’s, both the speed of the instant he struck and the speed with which he recovered the weapon far exceeded a normal player’s, while the recovery lag on his body after a swing was far shorter than a normal player’s. Given his talent stats, calling him a monster among players — a monster among human beings — would not have been an exaggeration at all.

The two Archers, who had managed exactly one attack between them, fell beneath Ye Tianxie’s Hour of Fate. The last thing they heard was his contemptuous murmur: “Next time, you can stand a little further back!”

As the words fell he narrowed his eyes and spun on his heel; Dragon Shadow Slash, just off cooldown, carried him through a shadow that flashed past and was gone, and along the line of that charge five players were run through at once, every one of them one-shot — three dropped where they stood, and two were flung far off, bursting into two blooms of white light as they hit the ground.

“Monster…” Somewhere in the crowd another man got the two short words out through his stupefaction. One against thirty, and it was like a hunting leopard loosed on a flock of sheep — the leopard’s body swift and agile, its attacks savage and terrible; and the sheep, however many of them there were, able to do nothing but bleat in despair through a helpless resistance.

Monster. That was right — a monster through and through, and a big-BOSS-class monster at that. Thirty-odd people, and set against one man’s attacks they looked utterly wretched and powerless. Not because they were weak, but because their opponent was simply too strong. Both sides were players, and yet the gap between them was heaven and earth.

His body threaded ceaselessly through the crisscrossing figures. It looked like aimless wandering, but in fact every single change of position took him clear of attacks arriving from every angle, and he answered each one instantly with something merciless. Even in situations that plainly offered no way out, he still slipped free at some impossible angle, easy and unhurried, as though strolling through his own courtyard. His expression stayed flat throughout, carrying the faintest trace of a mocking smile, as if ridiculing how small these people were and how badly they had misjudged themselves. The pitch-black instrument in his hand was Death’s own black scythe: every swing brought at least one dying scream with it, and every second at least one more body hit the ground…

Ten seconds. In ten seconds flat, seventeen of Battle Soul Hall’s thirty had been wiped out!

Thunderstorm’s teeth were chattering. He could feel threads of cold air whistling in through the gaps between them.

Watching that figure carve through lives on his own, unfeeling, as though the whole thing were a game… the huge pitch-black weapon of no known shape; the strange gauntlets set with one black dragon head and one white; the strange headguard that covered half his face and kept anyone from glimpsing his true features; the strange cloak that drifted with the motion of his body, scattering wisps of grey light… In that moment everything anyone had ever heard about this man went echoing through every head in the crowd… First on the Level Ranking, first on the Renown Ranking, the man who had passed the Abyss trial alone like something out of myth… and to this day the only player ever to pass the Abyss trial at all!

Today, at last, they were seeing the myth-maker himself with their own eyes.

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

-1341, -1352, -1348.

Three Dragon Rend Slashes, and three more fell beneath the Hour of Fate. Against Ye Tianxie’s ghost-shadow footwork they hadn’t even had time to run.

And when Ye Tianxie dragged the Hour of Fate toward the last two Priests, they had the sense to turn and run. He didn’t chase — wouldn’t stoop to chasing. He turned instead, that unchanging mocking smile still in place, and walked step by step toward Thunderstorm, whose face was cycling between red and white, and who was gritting his teeth and holding his ground rather than seizing the chance to flee. From what he had seen, he knew that ten of himself couldn’t beat this man… This was a freak, plainly. A freak who had no business existing.

The surroundings had gone completely silent. Before this, who would have imagined an ending like this one? Thirty against one — an overwhelming arrangement, and a faintly ridiculous, faintly shameful one. And the fact was that it had been overwhelming; it simply hadn’t fallen in Battle Soul Hall’s favor, but in favor of that one man — because he was Xietian! In twenty seconds, thirty-odd Battle Soul Hall players had been reduced to a heap of jokes, and Xietian had pulled off yet another feat that could fairly be called mythic. Watching Xietian walk toward Thunderstorm, their eyes were full of shock in varying degrees — and of trembling.

Xietian — what kind of person was he, and how had he reached a level this terrifying? Was there really some exploit in the World of Fate that could break the balance and lift a man this far above everyone else?

As Ye Tianxie closed in, Thunderstorm’s feet carried him back a step before he could stop them; then he caught himself, forced his nerve up and put that one pace forward again — but the cold sweat on his forehead was plain to see by now.

“Thunderstorm, of Battle Soul Hall. Am I right?” This time Ye Tianxie didn’t strike him down at once. He looked at the man with a cold smile and asked a question he already knew the answer to.

Thunderstorm swallowed surreptitiously. He badly wanted to deliver a few hard words with some real force behind them, but something seemed to be pressing down on his heart, and the hard words that had reached his lips refused to come out at all. Instead his head, entirely beyond his control… gave one very obedient nod.

In that instant Ye Tianxie’s expression turned utterly overcast. He shifted to one side, indicated Shattered Star-Heart with a glance, and said coldly, “Good… Thunderstorm, Third Hall Master of Battle Soul Hall. Get this fixed in your memory. If anyone from Battle Soul Hall ever comes here again and makes her unhappy, I won’t mind… destroying the whole of Battle Soul Hall!!”

Destroy the whole of Battle Soul Hall… Words like that were ones even the Son of Heaven of Wings That Shroud the Sky or the Son of God of Divine Domain wouldn’t say lightly. Battle Soul Hall was by no means a small power; it ranked among the ten largest gaming powers in Huaxia. In the virtual worlds of the last few years its strength at its peak hadn’t matched Divine Domain or Wings That Shroud the Sky, but it had still numbered close to a hundred thousand — a considerable figure. Everything in Fate was only just getting started, but with a foundation like that, and with the unprecedented player population of the World of Fate, reaching or even surpassing its old peak would be no difficult thing at all.

To destroy the whole of Battle Soul Hall — out of anyone else’s mouth, the claim would have had people laughing their teeth loose. Out of this man’s mouth, not one person could laugh. Nor did anyone dare doubt that he meant it… This was no simple threat. That voice and that gaze, which set nerves trembling and drawn tight, told everyone present that if anyone in Battle Soul Hall made that girl unhappy, he really would do every bit of what he had said.

It was equally a notice to everyone else: provoke that girl again and you provoke him — and what follows is the price of having done so.

In that moment every person there committed Shattered Star-Heart’s face to memory. Among the female players, most of the looks aimed her way were envy and jealousy.

But whatever stirred in them wasn’t a ten-thousandth of what was happening inside Shattered Star-Heart. When those words had come out of Ye Tianxie’s mouth as naturally as breathing, she had all but heard her own heartbeat. The gratitude of that instant nearly drowned her consciousness and the whole sea of her heart. She wasn’t stupid… She knew what it meant for a man like that to say a thing like that.

He was first on both rankings in all of Huaxia, a man spoken of in near-supernatural terms, and everything he had done for her today would make her own name known to far more people. Nobody would trouble her again; she could do as she pleased in this world. At the same time, the rise in her profile would mean more and more people bringing her equipment to identify.

The veins stood out on Thunderstorm’s forehead, though there was more cold sweat than veins. Facing that cold, expressionless face, he felt as though a mountain had settled on his heart. But being dressed down with such mockery in front of this many people was a first in his entire life, and how was he supposed to swallow it? If he swallowed it today and slunk away, Battle Soul Hall would be a laughingstock from here on! Because the other party was one man — just the one!

He burst out roaring: “Xietian! Don’t you get cocky with me!! You dare provoke my Battle Soul Hall — then wait for us to kill you all the way back to level zero!!”

Ye Tianxie narrowed his eyes, and the aura that turned abruptly cold froze Thunderstorm’s propped-up bluster stiff, holding his breath entirely. Ye Tianxie tilted his head back slightly and said flatly, “Not a bad showing. So — I’ll grant you a magnificent… death!!”

(End of Chapter 163)