“The draw results for the next round are out!” Mige, the Tall Tower War Wolf, quickest to get word, shouted at the top of his voice. “Qingmo—Qingmo versus Wanmo!”

“Two demons at war—now there’ll be a good show. Ha ha ha!”

“Fascinating.”

“One of the most anticipated bouts!”

“So in the end, is Wanmo, owner of a gold construct, the stronger—or is Qingmo, who can chain a hundred-and-eight-strike combo, the mightier?”

The students debated back and forth. By the time the bruised-and-swollen Chimu had scared off a ring of students and squeezed his way into a precious viewing spot, the showdown between Qingmo and Wanmo had already formally begun. Yue Yang, for his part, drew a bye this round, because the student drawn to fight him had forfeited. What a joke—Yangping, owner of the gold construct “Thorn-Back,” had been beaten by little Titan till his flowers scattered and his petals fell and he was scrabbling on the ground for his teeth. Knowing full well this sacred-grade-quill-pen fellow was a colossal monster, who’d still want to fight him? Only a fool plus an idiot!

Hauge cheerfully clapped Chimu on the shoulder and laughed. “Good thing you’re here—otherwise this spot really would’ve been hard to grab!”

Chimu was enraged. “What’s that supposed to mean? My face is a bit swollen right now, sure, but originally I was an undeniably handsome fellow—besides, among the swollen-faced tribe, who could be more handsome than me? You haven’t even taken a slap to the face and you look like your features got wrecked, yet you’ve still got the nerve to yell ‘a ghost!’ at me? You’re a bit lacking in self-awareness, aren’t you? Look here, bro—if you don’t clear this up publicly, you and I aren’t done!”

Hauge hurried to apologize. “Yes, yes, yes, my mistake, I shouldn’t have yelled ‘a ghost!’ at you. But you knocked on my door first thing in the morning—I truly had no mental preparation at all, got scared half to death alive, and cried out; that’s a natural reaction. You know it too—a ghost scaring people isn’t so bad, but a person scaring a person can scare you to death!”

The more Chimu listened, the angrier he got, fury boiling over from every direction. “What’s this—I’m not even as good as a ghost now? Besides, did I ask you to tell the truth?”

Hauge hurriedly waved his hands and gave a firm answer. “No—what I mean is, you’re absolutely a lot better-looking than a ghost!”

Chimu’s nose went crooked with rage. “You—you might as well not have said it at all!”

Hearing the two of them muttering and mumbling on and on without end, Young Lord Mingzhu turned his face over and shot them a glare.

The pitiable pair instantly shivered with fright, deeply afraid that the very next second the golden hammer would land on their heads. Apart from the undying little cockroach Yue Yang, no one could withstand that golden hammer. Chimu, for his part, was nothing like Yue Yang—the man stayed a handsome fellow no matter how he was beaten, and besides, Mingzhu never struck the face. Swap in anyone else—who’d get such generous treatment?

If you doubted it, one look at Chimu, beaten into a pig’s head, told you all you needed to know.

Earlier, the powerful Ranfeng had eliminated Hauge with his platinum construct.

He’d been provisionally rated by the students as the number-one figure in combat power, the strongest contender for the crown. Possessing a platinum construct, in any session, was sure to yield a fine result—even last session, when Ji Wuri swept the field, invincible before all, what had he relied upon if not a platinum-grade “Vengeful Prince”?

That Ranfeng could be rated the number-one in combat power was not without reason.

The number-two was Wanmo.

Never mind for now that he was a friend of Ranfeng and Ji Wuri, and never mind how many trump cards he still held—the Flesh-and-Blood Constructs he’d already revealed alone were astonishing enough!

Some students even dared say that if Wanmo also possessed a platinum-grade “Flesh-and-Blood Construct,” then he’d be stronger than Ranfeng.

The Flesh-and-Blood Construct was, among all current constructs, the only puppet-beast and battle construct that could self-heal and, through means like rune sigils, self-regulate to perform all manner of enhancements—and also the only puppet-beast and battle construct to possess skin, hair, and flesh. Compared to ordinary constructs, this Flesh-and-Blood Construct that Wanmo made was closer to life; in appearance it greatly resembled certain wild beasts, or beast-men!

A very few instructors even held the view that if this kind of Flesh-and-Blood Construct weren’t fated to be impossible to mass-produce—and if its manufacturing method didn’t require killing living creatures to flay and reshape them, a method too cruel by far—then it might well have made a run at the creativity and creation crown.

“Qingmo, Wanmo—who’s stronger, who’s weaker? And who’ll be the one to advance in the next round?” Young Lord Yangquan, too, quietly hurried over to watch from the outer ring.

“The duel formally begins!” the presiding instructor commanded.

At this moment, on the Western Peak wilderness battlefield—

—the two stood face to face, solemn and erect.

Behind Qingmo stood three silver wolves, one of which slowly transformed: the wolf-head flipped up and tilted back, the wolf-body split open into a cockpit, two claws retracted up into shoulders, two claws extended into legs, the wolf-tail coiled into a waist-belt, the outer body became armor—the whole frame rapidly transforming into a swordsman construct. This was the construct Qingmo meant to pilot himself, while the two silver wolves flanking it would serve as beast-form auxiliary puppet-beasts.

Wanmo sneered, and spat out a contemptuous line: “Transforming? A petty little trick!”

He rapidly spun the ink-black puppet wristwatch in his withered hand.

One after another, Flesh-and-Blood Constructs came leaping out.

Ten in all.

Every one a silver-grade battle construct.

These silver-grade Flesh-and-Blood Constructs were a bit odd in stature—all of them dwarfs, none exceeding a meter and a half, with oddly oversized heads that looked somewhat deformed.

Before the crowd watching from outside the battlefield could even react, yet another string of giant constructs was released one after another from the puppet wristwatch. Each construct stood at least five meters tall, its features savage as a demon’s, its fangs and razor claws glittering; these constructs’ bodies were clad in steel and covered all over with barbs, and honestly looked several degrees more terrifying than Yangping’s sub-dragon “Thorn-Back” from before!

No more, no fewer.

These giant constructs, hideous and frightful in the extreme, likewise numbered ten.

And, just like the Flesh-and-Blood Constructs released before, they too were silver-grade.

The fierce, ugly giant constructs opened cockpits in their bellies, and those dwarfish Flesh-and-Blood Constructs came leaping in, merging as one with the constructs, as nimble as real men piloting from within. They scattered, forming an encirclement, easily surrounding Qingmo and his two silver wolves.

“Just this? Clay chickens and pottery dogs, nothing more!” Qingmo, too, gave a scornful, cold sneer, and leapt into the construct his silver wolf had transformed into, man and machine merging as one.

“Tough-talking dead duck—wait till I beat the crap out of you, and let’s see what you’ve got left to strut about!”

Wanmo waved his hand once more.

He released a gleaming, golden-lit gold construct.

This gold construct was not one of the gold constructs displayed before, but another—a gold construct that possessed flesh and blood just as the Flesh-and-Blood Constructs did. Unlike that earlier gold construct of pure metal construction, resembling Ji Wuri’s Golden Knight, this man-eating-ogre-style Flesh-and-Blood Construct looked more like a war beast than a construct. Its exterior had skin and hair, no different from an ordinary man-eating ogre; only its eyes were wholly replaced by glittering energy crystals, revealing that it was in truth, internally, a puppet requiring energy to drive its movement.

Nearly every inch of the Flesh-and-Blood ogre’s skin bore the enhancement of rune patterns.

Countless rune energies, like a great sigil-array, intersected and flashed against one another.

Only Yue Yang could see it.

In the use of runes, Wanmo could be called a fairly high-level hand, but he hadn’t exceeded Yue Yang’s estimate. At the very least, of the dozen-odd rune arrays, Wanmo could effectively use only three of them; the rest sat entirely idle, only able to come into play one by one after switching. And to bring out the runes’ full power—had it been Yue Yang doing such enhancement—he could have simplified it at least tenfold, economized tenfold, and on that foundation still raised the power tenfold…

Wanmo’s own combat power was extremely strong, but in runes, Yue Yang felt he was merely at the level of Sea Fatty and Ye Kong.

And when it came to using runes, he might not even be quite as sleazily clever as Sea Fatty.

“Not bad!” Though Young Lord Mingzhu, too, thought little of the rune-array secret art Wanmo used, he still gave it its due. In fairness, it was impossible for everyone in the world to be a monster like Yue Yang; even those who could recognize all the Heaven-realm runes were few, let alone combine and use them. At the very least, among the many watching students, apart from the Silver-Eyed Great Sage, no one could measure up to this Wanmo!

“Qingmo’s in a bit of a bind this fight.” What sharp eyes the Silver-Eyed Great Sage had—naturally he saw at a glance that Wanmo’s “man-eating ogre” Flesh-and-Blood Construct was equally matched in attack and defense, with no weakness to speak of, and exceedingly hard to handle.

“Actually this man-eating-ogre puppet has one weakness. If Qingmo can find it, there’s still hope.” Yue Yang, for his part, didn’t quite agree.

“That’s easy for you to say, standing there with no ache in your back—you go try it!” Mingzhu laughed and scolded.

“If I went up, I’d definitely win—of course, not with a silver one; silver really can’t defy the heavens!” Yue Yang admitted, too, that a silver wolf couldn’t beat this attack-and-defense-balanced “man-eating ogre.” This gold Flesh-and-Blood Construct was unlike an ordinary gold construct: covered head to toe in rune power, it could attack, defend, and self-heal. A silver wolf could beat Yangping’s Thorn-Back, but it absolutely could not finish off this man-eating ogre.

There were three reasons. One: though both were gold constructs, “Thorn-Back” fell far, far short of the “man-eating ogre.”

Two: the pilots differed. How could Yangping compare to Wanmo?

Set Yangping to fight Wanmo, and he’d be goods to be one-shotted on the spot!

Piloting ability directly decided final combat power!

And there was a third point—the one that truly made Yue Yang feel the “man-eating ogre” couldn’t be finished off. It wasn’t the man-eating ogre’s strength, nor Wanmo’s formidable piloting, but the worry of an “evil-god projection-avatar.” Even if an evil-god projection possessed but a ten-thousandth of the former evil god’s strength, it was still not something any silver-grade construct could defy the heavens against!

Never mind a silver construct—even a gold one, even a platinum one, facing an evil-god projection, could only meet with the foreordained result of defeat!

Boom, boom, boom…

In the arena, the great battle had already erupted.

Qingmo, too, knew this fight would be very hard. But in order to force Wanmo to expose more of his abilities and weaknesses, he didn’t hesitate—springing up, seizing the initiative to attack.

Win or lose, set that aside for now; what he truly had to do was give it everything, beat the enemy into fear and trembling first, and worry about the rest later… Under the fixed gaze of the onlookers, that hundred-and-eight-strike combo, gorgeous enough to steal your breath, appeared once again.

Where Qingmo’s combo differed from Yue Yang’s was its extreme speed.

Like flint-spark and lightning-flash.

In an instant—

—he’d already chained several dozen, nearly a hundred, strikes.

By the time the slightly slower students had blinked their eyes, Qingmo’s hundred-strike combo was nearly finished, and the last dazzling image they could catch was the scene of him blasting Wanmo’s integrated man-eating ogre crashing to the ground!

The silver construct Qingmo piloted withdrew its move with peerless grace, lightly drawing its longsword across the horizon and retracting it into the arm.

The students supporting Qingmo cheered in unison.

Though the final result wasn’t out yet, they felt that the moment the hundred-and-eight strikes appeared, victory was already decided. On the other side, by contrast, the students who supported Wanmo and had wagered heavily on him were cast into gloom, astonished—how could Wanmo, so favored a target, and while piloting a gold-grade construct at that, possibly slip up?

“Don’t get pleased with yourself too early!”

The man-eating ogre, blasted to the ground and sunk deep into the mud and sand, suddenly sprang up out of it, turned a somersault, and that ponderous body landed on the ground with peerless lightness—not even a single tremor—the ten-meter-tall frame quite simply light as a wild goose’s feather. And the man-eating ogre that had taken all one hundred and eight strikes—head, face, and body alike—was just as it had been at the start, not a single scar on it anywhere. Were it not that you could still see a very little mud and sand clinging to its hair, you wouldn’t dare believe it had once been savaged through a full hundred-and-eight-strike combo by Qingmo’s silver warrior.

Wanmo’s voice came through from within the man-eating ogre’s belly, blustering with utter arrogance: “Come—I’ll spot you two more moves. Best put in even your suckling strength, or a fight that can’t so much as hurt a single hair is honestly too dull!”

Whoosh!

Seeing this scene, the students who supported Wanmo and had bet heavily on him instantly erupted in a frenzy of wild cheering.

Truly worthy of being the number-two favorite for the crown—the man really was formidable!

On the contrary, it was now the turn of the students on this side—wait, the ones supporting Qingmo—to be thrown into panic and confusion, not knowing what to do. This Wanmo’s man-eating ogre was simply too strong, wasn’t it? It took all one hundred and eight strikes and came out utterly unharmed? Mind you, having taken the same hundred-and-eight-strike combo, Yangping’s Thorn-Back had turned into scraps of broken bronze and rotten iron! This Flesh-and-Blood Construct, likewise gold-grade, this “man-eating ogre,” truly hadn’t taken so much as a hair’s worth of damage?

Reaching this point, even Young Lord Mingzhu knit his brows.

He turned, and with his starry eyes, looked toward Yue Yang.

(End of Chapter)