Chapter 141: The Winding Dragon

The true lethality of the Sunder-Blood Piercer has never been the initial thrust itself; the real fatal blow lies in the aftermath, where the user's psychic ability spreads like a spiderweb once the target is punctured, wreaking havoc from within. But now, completely unable to pierce Shangguan Qingcai's crystal battle armor, its destructive power was naturally severely diminished.

As the frost crept toward Shangguan Qingcai’s palm, Huoye found it increasingly strenuous to utilize his ice-attribute psychic ability.

The frost was melting, and the melted moisture instantly evaporated into white vapor, surging upward.

Huoye knew trouble was brewing. He was well aware that Shangguan Qingcai was a fire-attribute esper, and must be using his ability to elevate his body temperature to melt away the ice. The fact that he could pull this off meant Shangguan Qingcai’s application of psychic powers in combat had reached a state of absolute mastery. He was far more than mere craftsman!

Pouring ice-attribute energy forcefully into one blade, Huoye launched a revolving dance with the other.

With twin blades—one ice, one fire—surging waves of heat erupted from scorching black flames as they slashed toward Shangguan Qingcai’s neck. This move would most likely not inflict any real damage on Shangguan Qingcai, but anyone, when their vital points were threatened, would inevitably reveal flaws to a greater or lesser extent. Huoye was simply waiting to seize that split-second opening.

Yet Shangguan Qingcai merely stood his ground, motionless. Suddenly, a floating orb materialized beside him. The sphere looked feather-light, bobbing up and down in mid-air. Huoye’s blades were exceptionally fast, but the orb reacted at an even greater speed. A pale green light flashed from within the sphere, transforming into a compact barrier that precisely intercepted Huoye’s blade edge.

Huoye’s heart tightened. Abandoning any hope of binding Shangguan Qingcai, he leaped backward to create distance, crossing his dual blades in front of him in a defensive posture.

Barely two exchanges into the fight, Huoye was deeply struck by the terrifying nature of the Bronze-Armed Ghost. Having spent years hammering divine weaponry, the massive consumption of physical stamina had likewise tempered the grandmaster's body, forging him into a man seemingly cast from reinforced steel and concrete. Huoye knew very well that his opponent possessed no individual innate psychic ability; this was a human body forged through true, rigorous tempering, possessing a steel-like physique that theoretically should not even exist for a non-esper.

To avoid the distraction of cultivating combat techniques and devote himself entirely to smithing, Shangguan Qingcai had actually caused his psychic artifacts to manifest independent psychic abilities.

Neither Qi Shenqiao nor Master Artisan Huo had ever been heard of achieving such a feat. Ordinarily, psychic artifacts served as amplifiers or auxiliary tools for an esper's powers, resonating to help the user unleash more potent techniques. But what Shangguan Qingcai had just demonstrated could no longer be classified merely as a psychic artifact!

This was straight-up a magical treasure straight out of fantasy fiction! A Grand Master Artisan—so this was a Grand Master Artisan who mythologized an entire era, the Eddie Hols of the forging world.

Huoye no longer dared to charge in recklessly. That orb had appeared out of nowhere; Shangguan Qingcai wore no spatial storage equipment anywhere on his body, nor was he holding anything in his hands. Therefore, there was only one possibility: his crystal battle armor doubled as spatial storage.

An indestructible defensive armor that also functioned as spatial storage equipment, requiring no item to be held in hand, needing only the release of a specially circulated psychic energy to summon designated objects to a specific location—what a miraculous creation. If this were given to Relemy, just how terrifying of a combat capability could that walking armory unleash?

Huoye instinctively thought of the person most suited for this type of psychic equipment, but these were mere fantasies. After all, that belonged to the old man.

Reflecting on it now, what Shangguan Qingcai had just deployed was merely a defensive magical treasure. What if it had been an offensive one? He might have been caught completely off guard, which would have exposed even greater vulnerabilities.

"My body hasn't fully recovered yet, and sparring with the old man doesn't call for life-or-death measures anyway. It seems I have to win with speed. As long as I am fast enough, every part of you will be riddled with flaws!"

Thought must be followed by action—swift as lightning!

Huoye morphed into a streak of lightning, slashing past Shangguan Qingcai from various angles. With every pass, there came the ringing sound of blades clashing.

Though outsiders couldn't tell, Shangguan Qingcai could sense that every single slash of Huoye’s was targeting the exact same spot. Clever. Moreover, his attacking method possessed profound depth; clearly bearing a distinct focal point of assault, every strike managed to evade Xuanwu’s barrier—the orb releasing the pale green shield—at the very last fraction of a second before interception.

His blade paths were shifting. If one had to describe it, it resembled a venomous snake that, even when struck by a club, would simply coil itself around the stick, riding the weapon straight up.

Eddie frowned visibly as he watched Huoye’s blade trajectories. He hadn't taught him this; the only technique Huoye had ever learned to alter his blade path was the tenth form of the Thirteen Blood-Edge Styles, which Huoye called the Spirit Snake Turns.

That was a psychic technique meant for defending against sneak attacks from behind. Naturally, it could also be used in frontal combat, but that technique relied on aiming—instantly using psychic perception to locate the opponent's weaknesses, and then executing a calculated blade path to slash through all those vulnerabilities in a single motion.

Yet what Huoye was using right now was different. It felt more like impromptu improvisation, capturing split-second shifts to bypass Xuanwu’s barrier. For the current Huoye, there was no need to push "Lightning Fast" to the level of bullet-time; he merely needed to slightly enhance his dynamic vision to allow his consciousness to keep pace with his physical movements.

And his hand movements felt strangely familiar to Eddie.

"Tell me, hubby, do you feel like the technique Xiao Ye is using right now looks familiar, as if we've seen it somewhere before?" Vivian suddenly asked.

Eddie nodded in agreement. They had definitely seen this technique before. It was not something Huoye had invented on his own—absolutely not.

Huoye’s breathing was gradually beginning to disorder. "Lightning Fast" not only consumed psychic energy but also demanded a massive expenditure of physical stamina. The faster his limbs moved, the greater the need for glucose replenishment, alongside an enormous amount of oxygen to sustain aerobic cellular respiration.

Had it not been for this physical constraint, when Huoye faced Kachi previously, he wouldn't have been left unable to recover his body simply from being punched into a wall once.

An intense battle was the ultimate opportunity for learning. This fight was exceptional; Shangguan Qingcai was immensely powerful, far surpassing most focused practitioners in the academy. A flawless training partner.

Battling this opponent was merely about determining the outcome and feeling the experience of that moment, meaning victory or defeat brought no actual loss. A flawless combat environment.

A genuine combat environment, devoid of the persistent awkwardness of virtual reality—a flawless combat setting.

Although much was at stake, he needed this battle to grow. Huoye now clearly understood what he ought to learn through combat.

Learning skin-respiration and integrating the movements of the Chaotic Flower Dragon-Binding Cable into his saber techniques. The strikes Huoye had just unleashed against Shangguan Qingcai were the exact movements he had previously used during the large-scale team battle—The Winding Long Dragon.

The moment Huoye first applied The Winding Long Dragon to his twin blades marked his true entry into the mastery of skin-respiration.

Ancient martial arts had not regressed in the slightest, even in the era of psychic powers; instead, they shone with an even more brilliant luster. Transforming martial arts into psychic techniques relied on one fundamental concept: replacing the internal energy that powered martial arts with psychic energy. Treating psychic energy as internal energy meant one could never ignore the existence of meridians.

The Twelve Standard Channels and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians—as long as psychic energy could circulate within the meridians, not only was the efficiency far superior to ordinary psychic circulation, but Huoye also discovered that pairing it with the special breathing technique known as "Internal Gong" could render his psychic energy substantially denser, much like the relationship between Protium, Deuterium, and Tritium in hydrogen isotopes.

In essence, it was the same substance, but due to the differing neutron content, the relative atomic mass of Protium was 1, Deuterium was 2, and Tritium was 3.

If psychic energy were compared to fuel meant to combust into psychic techniques, the psychic energy generated through Internal Gong evidently yielded a greater caloric output than that produced by mere standard breathing.

With the sensation of performing internal observation of his meridians, Huoye genuinely felt his pores absorbing the surrounding air. No doubt about it, this was a genuine sensation.

Huoye felt a profound sense of gratitude toward Huo Xialan, who was not only willing to pass down the family martial arts to him but had also thoughtfully left behind a wealth of knowledge concerning meridians and Internal Gong within the handwritten manual.

These were things Huoye, having received a Western-style education from childhood, had never encountered before. Yet he felt no sense of rejection toward this knowledge; it was as if those concepts were instincts carved deep into his very bones, ready to be rapidly accepted upon systematic study.

So, at his core, he was still a descendant of Yan and Huang! In that case, his biological parents undoubtedly were as well.