Chapter 292

Crack!

The protective aura shattered on impact.

The black-robed man grunted, his body involuntarily hurtling backward; his robe was torn open by searing claw winds, revealing pale, shriveled skin beneath.

Having landed the strike, Chen Mu gave his opponent no chance to counter or breathe—he vanished again like a ghost.

Star Token: Spatial Transit!

In truth, Chen Mu's earlier wild, seemingly random dashes across the thousand-meter radius had not been flight—he had quietly marked positions in all four cardinal directions using the Star Token's spatial power!

Within this thousand-meter domain he had pre-set with "coordinates," Chen Mu could instantly teleport at will between all marked points using the Star Token!

Bu Nantian and the black-robed man knew nothing of this; faced with Chen Mu's elusive, utterly unpredictable attacks, they were thrown into absolute passivity.

Bu Nantian was both shocked and furious, his mind sharply focused, his perception frantically sweeping the surroundings, trying to pinpoint Chen Mu's next appearance.

"There!"

He suddenly sensed a spatial fluctuation to his left and, without hesitation, slashed backward with his blade.

But Chen Mu's figure suddenly materialized to his right!

The Dragon-Subduing Sword descended with the blazing, radiant sword qi of the True Martial Cleansing Sword Art.

The Hidden Sword Art perfectly concealed the attack's signs; only when the searing sword qi nearly touched his body did Bu Nantian realize the danger—and barely managed a desperate, clumsy defense.

Boom!

Blood qi erupted, true qi shielded his body, blade qi surged—but weakened by haste, they could not withstand this long-prepared strike!

Bu Nantian spat blood again, slammed violently backward.

But what filled him with deeper despair was that his body was still mid-air, not yet flown thirty meters—

Shhh~

Chen Mu appeared instantly, like teleportation, directly ahead of his flight path—and struck again with a fierce sword qi!

Puff!

Bu Nantian, like a kicked ball, was blasted back along the same path, wounds piling upon wounds, blood spurting wildly.

The black-robed man on the other side fared no better.

Though he possessed the Earth Altar Realm's Three Flowers Converging peak cultivation, his ghostly claws were cruel and venomous—but against Chen Mu's utterly illogical spatial transit, his attacks couldn't even graze Chen Mu's sleeve.

Every time he gathered dark qi, Chen Mu appeared at his most vulnerable angle, struck once, and vanished—never lingering—leaving him with all his power but nowhere to use it, suffocating with rage almost to the point of vomiting blood.

…

Among experts, victory or defeat often hinges on an instant.

Bu Nantian and the black-robed man, driven into chaos by Chen Mu's uncanny spatial transit, roared in fury.

Fierce sword qi and claw winds struck from impossible angles; fresh wounds kept appearing on their bodies, blood staining their robes.

Bu Nantian's blood-sha qi had clearly weakened; the black-robed man's ghostly wails now carried a tone of desperate rage.

Far away, atop the Wulong Fucheng walls and on the ground below, a dense crowd had gathered, drawn by the commotion.

Zhenwu Corps guards, city defense soldiers, wandering cultivators who had heard the news, local aristocratic youths…

All stared upward, mouths agape, eyes wide with disbelief at the battle unfolding in the sky beyond their imagination.

"Is… is this Master Chen Mu's strength? He just broke into the Earth Altar Realm and is already holding his own against two Earth Altar cultivators—dominating both!" muttered a young Zhenwu Corps guard, his face filled with awe and reverence.

"Exactly! Look at Bu Nantian—he was once the sixth-ranked beast on the Qianlong List! And that black-robed guy? His aura must've reached Three Flowers Converging! Before Master Chen, they're like headless flies—can't even touch his sleeve!" sighed an experienced senior corps guard.

"Hmm, if Master Chen hadn't broken into the Earth Altar Realm, just with this uncanny skill, he'd surely rank in the top ten of the Qianlong List!" said a wandering martial artist, shaking his head.

"Why even mention the Qianlong List!"

His companion retorted excitedly, "Master Chen is now in the Earth Altar Realm! If he's to be listed, it's the Master List he should be on!"

"Yes! Yes! That's right!"

"I wonder what rank Master Chen will get on his first appearance on the Master List?"

"Definitely not bottom!"

"…"

Above and below the walls, voices buzzed endlessly.

All eyes were fixed on the leaping figure in the sky, hearts rising and falling with the battle's tide.

The mid-air combat had reached fever pitch.

Leveraging the Star Token's spatial leaps, Chen Mu's figure flickered in and out across the thousand-meter radius; each appearance brought a devastating strike from the Dragon-Subduing Sword.

The Hidden Sword Art perfectly concealed his killing intent—until the blade's edge was nearly upon them did Bu Nantian and the black-robed man sense the danger, forced to dodge or brace by instinct and experience alone, entirely trapped in a defensive nightmare.

"Chen Mu! Have the guts to fight me face to face!"

Another deep, bone-exposing sword wound appeared on Bu Nantian's body; he roared in rage, slashing wildly with his blood blade—but only cut through Chen Mu's afterimages.

At that moment, the usually silent black-robed man seemed to find an opening—or realized he'd die if he stayed—let out a piercing shriek, his dark yin qi surging violently; he ignored Chen Mu's harassment entirely, rocketing straight upward like a missile toward the distant heavens.

Clearly, he intended to flee at all costs!

Chen Mu sensed the black-robed man's movement and frowned slightly.

He was currently suppressing Bu Nantian—if he broke off to pursue, Bu Nantian might seize a chance to recover or escape.

In a flash, Chen Mu made his decision!

Dividing his mind, he maintained spatial pressure on Bu Nantian, then extended his left hand, fingers like a sword, and stabbed the air toward the black-robed man's escape path—

Shhh! Shhh! Shhh!

Ten invisible, intangible yet bone-chilling Yin Swords of the Two-Principle Sword Qi shot forth like deadly venomous snakes hidden in shadows, faster than the black-robed man's flight!

The sword qi pierced the air silently, carrying an icy chill that froze the soul.

The black-robed man was no fool—he remained hyper-alert the instant he shot upward.

Sensing the lethal threat behind him, he didn't look back, twisting and refracting his body in impossible ways mid-air.

The first dark sword grazed his shoulder blade, sending a trail of blood droplets flying.

The second was deflected by a backward claw strike.

The third, the fourth…

The black-robed man danced upon the blade's edge, narrowly evading nine treacherous, shadowy sword qi strikes in succession.

But just as he stirred his true energy again, his form betrayed a barely perceptible hesitation—

The tenth, the most concentrated and fastest of all, struck with perfect precision into the black-robed man's abdomen, as if it had long calculated his trajectory.

"Puch—"