At one side of the ice peak.

Yangping, brimming with confidence, swung his right hand, and from the Crimson Flame ring on his middle finger conjured a gold-grade battle construct—not the silver construct he’d possessed before.

Could it be that this fellow, too, had received a gift from the evil god, had struck a bargain with it? Yue Yang felt a flicker of surprise, but one look and he laughed quietly to himself, feeling he’d gotten a bit jumpy about evil-god bargains—seeing enemy soldiers in every bush and tree. The truth wasn’t like that at all. Though the gold construct Yangping now piloted was likewise gold-grade, you could tell its true combat power fell some way short of the sort of gold construct won through a bargain with the evil god.

This was a gold construct made by one of Human Valley’s master puppet-construct crafters.

Much like Silver Maple City’s “Sword Dancer,” it was probably a gold construct belonging to Yangping’s backing power, Flame Sun City. Likely they’d hoped to make a good showing at this session’s assessment, and had sunk heavy capital into it.

Though Human Valley made no fine distinctions, if one were to grade gold constructs into three tiers—upper, middle, and lower—

—then this gold construct Yangping now possessed—

—unquestionably belonged to the lower-middle level of combat power.

Had Yangping truly bargained with the evil god, the gold construct he got could never be this shabby—the evil god simply couldn’t manufacture a gold construct this feeble!

“A gold construct? Huh? Since when did that Yangping fellow have a gold construct?” The students watching from outside the barrier were extraordinarily astonished.

“That’s ‘Thorn-Back.’ Among Flame Sun City’s four great sub-dragon-form gold constructs, Thorn-Back ranks at least third—and on special terrain like an ice peak, its combat power might even rank second. After Young Lord Yangquan’s ‘Flame Spitter,’ it’s next in line. No, wait—Young Lord Yangquan’s Flame Spitter is already badly damaged and can’t be repaired short-term, so the current Thorn-Back ought to be Flame Sun City’s strongest gold construct!” Someone recognized Yangping’s present mount at a glance.

“Little Titan’s in danger…” A few students sighed with no small worry—these were the ones who’d wagered their stakes on Yue Yang.

“He could invent a sacred-grade quill pen; maybe Silver Maple City will lend little Titan a gold construct too. Zhonghua can’t be that shortsighted!” Some students were fairly calm—after all, anyone who could beat every student to take the creativity and creation crown was surely no simple figure.

“Silver Maple City isn’t Zhonghua’s word alone to decide. Besides, who says inventing a sacred-grade quill pen makes you a combat master for certain? What if little Titan leans toward literary and artistic development? In the assessment before this, little Titan showed nothing outstanding at all!” There were also students who’d placed their stakes on Yangping, and they instantly opened their lips to rebut.

When Yue Yang conjured a silver wolf from his storage bracelet, the students supporting him were cast into gloom.

The students who’d bet on Yangping cheered and leapt for joy.

Silver against gold.

No need to watch—everyone knew it was a sure loss.

The only question was how long he could hold out—but even that no longer mattered, because so long as he lost, however long he held out, the students who’d wagered on him would lose their whole stake down to the last copper.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha…” Yangping had felt a bit uneasy at the start.

The shadow Yue Yang—that powerful opponent—cast over him was quite simply like a great mountain bearing down on his head.

These past days it had pressed on him almost to the point of breathlessness. Only with great effort had he wrangled from his clan a gold construct that should never have been his to get, and only then had his confidence recovered a little. But at the same time, the pressure doubled. Because if, even wielding a gold construct, he still couldn’t win, he’d likely be cast straight onto the clan patriarch’s and elders’ “never-to-be-employed blacklist.”

This session’s assessment had gone badly, with many students dying untimely deaths; most of the survivors had constructs in ruins.

To seize a good ranking, the clan had laid down heavy capital.

They’d even gritted their teeth and brought out a gold construct like the Thorn-Back dragon.

If he still couldn’t win with this, he’d likely truly become a sinner beyond all redemption within the clan.

Yangping—who’d spent two days sleepless from the tangled emotions of excitement and anxiety—now, at one look, finally set his heart wholly at ease, because his mortal enemy little Titan’s construct turned out to be nothing but a silver-grade puppet war-wolf!

Gold construct versus silver wolf?

Needless to say.

It would be a crushing, steamrolling victory!

Now it wasn’t a question of who’d win or lose, but of how he’d butcher this arrogant little Titan…

“Charge—charge!” What Yangping was thinking of now was how to butcher this enemy he hated to the marrow in the most gorgeous fashion possible. Perhaps prying the silver wolf apart piece by piece, turning it into a heap of scrap, and then making the sobbing, tear-drenched little Titan kneel before him and beg for mercy—that was a fine idea! And when the time came, what should he do to fully vent the hatred in his heart? Stand on his face and make him lick his toes with his tongue? Or make him kneel in his piss-mud, kowtowing while smearing the piss-mud on his face?

BOOM!

Just as Yangping thought a single charge from his Thorn-Back would smash the enemy’s whole wolf-head to bits—

—he was suddenly seized by an illusion: that after the collision, he was getting farther and farther from the enemy, his body flying higher and higher?

Shouldn’t the one flying higher and higher be that silver-grade puppet war-wolf across from him? Could it be that his gold-grade Thorn-Back sub-dragon had been sent flying by a silver war-wolf that shared neither its size nor its weight class?

Before Yangping could even work out what had happened, a shadow blotted out the sky above.

A silhouette closed in at high speed.

Light leaked down past it.

Yangping looked up to find the enemy war-wolf’s razor claws glinting in the sun’s rays.

An indescribable, ponderous force passed through the Thorn-Back construct’s armor and shuddered deep into Yangping’s body, giving him a nauseating sensation of being launched skyward and then, by a violent blow, sent into a headlong plunge. That load his body could barely bear left him—seated in the cockpit—with waves of blackness across his eyes, unable to endure the g-force that churned his innards and made them want to spew out his mouth.

BOOM!

The hard ice shattered the Thorn-Back construct to pieces.

The gold construct, having lost Yangping’s mental control, had no way to correct its plunging posture or cushion the fall; it crashed onto the ice sprawled flat on its back, all four limbs splayed.

The spines on its back that could serve as weapons drove deep into the ice layer, so that Yangping—regaining a sliver of clarity after the violent shaking—was for the moment unable to make the construct flip itself back over.

“Eject—fire!” Seeing yet another shadow streaking down from the sky, Yangping instantly triggered the Thorn-Back construct’s ultimate move.

In the blink of an eye, the gold construct—still lying crashed and immobile on the ice—loosed from its two arms, in furious volleys like arrows, ten flame-spines in succession.

Each flame-spine’s length rivaled a lance.

And its power—

—could shatter anything unbreakable.

Enough to pierce metal and bore through stone.

The war-wolf’s shadow in the sky, which Yangping had thought absolutely could not escape, went whoosh—and in an instant vanished without a trace.

Before Yangping could even search out the enemy’s whereabouts, another terrible, mighty impact struck the gold construct’s head. Yangping found the scenery before his eyes tumbling like a kaleidoscope, heaven and earth revolving, his whole body flung head over heels against his will—and it seemed a long, long while before he finally smacked hard against an ice wall and came to a stop.

When Yangping worked the gold construct free of the deeply embedded ice wall and slid, crashing, back to the ground—

—he discovered, to his horror, that across from him there was no silver war-wolf at all.

Only a humanoid silver construct.

If it bore any resemblance at all to the silver wolf, it was this: the shoulders of this silver figure were precisely the two wolf-claws of that silver wolf just now.

“Impossible, this is impossible, it must be a hallucination…” Yangping began to roar like a madman. He absolutely refused to believe that he, piloting a gold construct, could be beaten to a battered, bloody ruin by the enemy’s one silver wolf. What’s more, no one had ever heard of a silver wolf standing up and turning into a humanoid silver construct—this was a battle construct, not a war beast, so how could it possibly transform?

Therefore, everything just now—all of it—was a hallucination!

Yue Yang, for his part, let slip another yawn. “There’s nothing impossible about it, classmate Yangping. It’s not as though sitting in a gold construct’s cockpit means you can bring out a gold construct’s might. A man should know his own limits—if your head isn’t that big, don’t wear so big a hat, or in the end you’ll only overreach and make yourself a laughingstock.”

Yangping was driven mad with rage, nearly spitting blood on the spot. Recklessly he charged at Yue Yang. “Kill—I’ll kill you! There’s no way I can lose—mine’s a gold construct!”

Yue Yang, piloting the silver construct that the silver wolf had transformed into, gave a light flicker and deftly dodged the attack.

Effortlessly, from behind—

—one kick sent Yangping’s Thorn-Back flying.

The Thorn-Back construct went “smack.”

Once again it crashed to the ice in the most wretched fashion; between the clever leverage of the kick and the slipperiness of the ice, the Thorn-Back construct skidded a full hundred meters before coming to a stop. Yangping by now was beyond tears… Beaten so wretchedly by the enemy—even if he won this fight in the end, he’d have utterly disgraced the clan.

Once he was back, there’d be no good fruit for him to eat this time.

But before that—

—he must first kill this damnable little Titan!

Flames of hatred blazed in Yangping’s eyes. Working the Thorn-Back construct, he sprang up and flung himself in a frenzy at the silver construct Yue Yang piloted.

“One, two, three… thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two… ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred… heavens—one hundred and seven, one hundred and eight! It really reached a hundred and eight—what am I seeing? I can’t believe it—little Titan actually uses a wholly different but equally gorgeous hundred-and-eight-strike combo too! I thought a combat genius like Qingmo was the only one in the world—who’d have guessed little Titan is that same kind of combat genius! I’m about to weep with emotion—it’s so beautiful, so dashing, crushing a gold construct with a silver one, beating his opponent till he can’t strike back, while he himself is so utterly at ease! This isn’t fighting—this is dancing! A dancing beauty in graceful motion couldn’t be half so dazzling!” A fervent Qingmo supporter, having by chance watched Yue Yang’s fight, was instantly moved to tears, muttering to himself, unable to choose his words.

“A monster—besides Qingmo, is there really another monster in the world who can use a hundred-and-eight-strike combo?” The other students were struck dumb with fright too, unable to believe their own eyes.

“Rumble, rumble…”

Yangping, having taken all one hundred and eight of Yue Yang’s strikes, had long since collapsed from spiritual exhaustion, fainted away inside the cockpit.

His mount, the gold construct “Thorn-Back,” also toppled thunderously to the ground once Yue Yang halted the combo.

Kicking up a spray of ice chips.

The silver wolf—transforming gracefully back from the humanoid form into beast shape in midair—looked incomparably heroic and valiant against the backdrop of the fallen gold construct.

When it stood upon the ice bearing its master, raising its head to the sky as though about to give a long howl, everyone felt an impulse in their hearts to bow down and worship. Though they knew perfectly well it was a cold metal body, a dead thing that could neither breathe nor howl—in this moment, everyone forgot it was a lifeless puppet war-beast, and felt it to be a living, breathing life.

Felt it to be a living, breathing wolf!

A peerless Wolf King who, having defeated a mighty foe, climbed to the summit to proclaim his territory to the world!

Even Yue Yang himself, through this battle, had gained a wholly new insight—no small harvest.

“This brat—so full of himself. The fight’s over, and he still has to strike a master’s pose and soak up everyone’s cheers?” Mingzhu didn’t know Yue Yang was in the midst of an epiphany, and assumed he was showing off, acting cool. Of course, on the surface Mingzhu was full of disdain for such behavior—but an unwitting trace of a smile crept to the corner of his lips, faintly betraying the pride and delight buried in his heart.

“I—I regret it so much…” Chimu, for his part, was now stamping his feet and beating his breast.

He found he’d never regretted anything so much in his whole life.

Why hadn’t he wagered every last bit of his fortune just now?

Had he done so, he’d have struck it rich—but now that chance was gone, never to return. Once this brat unleashed his hundred-and-eight-strike combo of a silver wolf breaking a gold construct, the betting odds from here on… would there be any hope left?

The more Chimu thought about it, the more heartbroken he became.

He was quite simply sobbing beyond words.

(End of Chapter)