Chapter 592: …and everyone got their teeth kicked in.
=On it.=
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‘Oh now I remember! Although, these guys look a bit more refined than those bandit guys…gonna have to be a bit more underhanded…’
[Would you like me to assist milord?]
‘Not yet, rather give them some false information for now.’
[As you wish.]
‘Besides…I’m gonna have to take a breath for this one.’
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Yue Tai Lung’s Perspective
[Colliding Meteors Strike!]
*CLANG!*
In the blink of an eye, Yue Tai Lung had closed the gap between himself and Zhen Liu and was just about to slam the skull in of the latter with both of his Black Steel Maces.
However, instead of hearing the satisfyingly loud crunch of skull and flesh trying to resist the impact of black steel going at ludicrous speed, Yue Tai Lung ended up hitting his maces against each other and causing a loud, echoing ring to occur as the shockwaves of his own attack traveled up the handles of his weapons.
‘Tsk! My arms!’
Yue Tai Lung had spent years learning how to use his Black Steel Maces, so he had trained on how to mitigate such damage if it ever occurred to him.
That being said, it still stung like a motherfucker.
As this was happening though, Yue Tai Lung noticed that Zhen Liu had launched himself upward in order to avoid his attack.
[Piercing Fang!]
Reacting on instinct or training, the soldiers accompanying Yue Tai Lung proceeded to launch spear-based aether arts at the airborne Zhen Liu, hoping to skewer him or at least break his defenses.
Yue Tai Lung took this time to recover from his own missed attack, but he made sure not to let his guard down in the slightest as he did.
‘If I remember correctly, this guy was the only aether puppet master among the “branch” clan’s younger generation. If he’s like any other puppet master I’ve fought before, then he’s probably gonna try and hide somewhere before summoning his puppets.’
Moments ago, Yue Tai Lung proclaimed that he had no idea who Zhen Liu was, but that he also knew that the latter was a member of the “branch” clan of Stampeding Bison.
This was technically a half-lie, since he actually did know who Zhen Liu was in his entirety…mostly.
Prior to this battle in the marbles, Yue Tai Lung and several other “outer branch” warriors were offered a chance to join in the clan’s inner circle. All they had to do was defeat one of the bastard spawn of Zhen Shi the Exile, an easy task…or at least it should’ve been.
From what the report stated, the branch clan scions were mostly peak Aether Acolytes, an understandable limit given their branch clan’s lack of resources, with their most talented individuals being Zhen Hai, Zhen Yue and Zhen Liu.
The former two were marked off as “regular” talents, as in they pursued aether cultivation in a more traditional sense and reached the limits of their power via martial prowess. The latter one was interesting though due to the man being formerly labeled a cripple, until suddenly blooming as a talent for puppet mastery, so much so that he broke through into being an Aether Master.
Regardless, none of the outer warriors knew for certain who among the scions they were going to fight, but at least they had an advantage in knowing ahead of time what to expect.
The moment Yue Tai Lung saw Zhen Liu, he could sense that while both of them were Aether Masters, technically on the same level, Yue Tai Lung was at the peak with five rings to his name and just about ready to break through to Aether Grandmaster. Zhen Liu on the other hand was at most a one to two ringed Aether Master.
This meant, to him at least, that if they had fought in a straight up brawl, he would win nine times out of ten due to sheer power scaling. This is why when he first encountered Zhen Liu, he decided to open up with one of his fiercest attacks to end it early.
That and because, aside from sending this obvious power difference, Yue Tai Lung sensed something else mixed into the young warrior’s aether. Something that made him uneasy and understood that it was something that had to be nipped in the bud before it had a chance to bloom.
‘And if he’s going to try and hide somewhere, the only place for him to go would be up and…huh?’
The thing about fighting in wetlands, is that the presence of water makes it incredibly hard to move through it unless one knows the methods to do so, i.e., how to coat oneself in just enough aether to either walk on water or move through it like a fish.
Knowing full well that the branch clan children were all from the desert, Yue Tai Lung had assumed that he was the luckiest out of all the outer ring fighters since his assigned fighting space was the wetlands area. It was for this same reason why he had all of his soldiers armed with spears, since the long reach would make it significantly easier for them to attack some young dumb idiot launching themselves into the air in order to get more freedom of movement.
However, much to his and soldiers’ surprise, this was not the case.
Shortly after their attacks hit, the soldiers soon realized that they were hitting nothing but a strange looking gourd that didn’t bend or break in the slightest despite being stabbed in four different directions.
In Yue Tai Lung’s eyes, it looked as if these soldiers were holding up this jug with nothing but their spear tips, like some weird party trick, when this should’ve been an execution.
“How…”
He was just about to yell at his subordinates, when one of them called out to him.
“Master Tai Lung, your feet!”
“What?”
“Hello!”
It wasn’t until one of the soldiers looked down out of curiosity that they realized that Zhen Liu didn’t jump up in the air like an easy target, but had instead dropped into the water, moved towards Yue Tai Lung and had grabbed him by the shin.
In that exact second, Yue Tai Lung had this weird feeling of dread.
‘Why…do I feel like I’ve made a terrible mistake getting this close?’
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Zhen Liu’s perspective
[Colliding Meteors Strike!]
‘What is it with me always facing guys who rush in like this? I mean it’s less annoying than dealing with snipers, but still.’
Perhaps it was due to the fact that he was technically a Grandmaster, or maybe because he was used to sparring with the kaijin, but the way Yue Tai Lung was charging at him felt…slow.
Really, really slow.
So much so that Zhen Liu had an opportunity to notice that while Yue Tai Lung was charging straight at him, making it so that he was a big obvious threat and target, that the spear-wielding soldiers he brought along were all charging up aether arts into their spear tips.
If he had to guess what their plan was, they were going to try and force Zhen Liu to jump so that he would get shish-kabobed like a pinata that were handed over to some rather sadistic children.
‘Well then…I guess I shouldn’t disappoint them too badly.’
In the moments that Yue Tai Lung was about to crush in his skull, Zhen Liu detached the [Godoku Gourd] from his hip and threw it into the air. He wasn’t too worried about it being broken into pieces by these asshats, due to having tested just how durable it was after misplacing it once and having seen Frosttusk sit on the damn thing.
It took a bit of time to remove it from the gourd shaped hole in the ground that was created.
But at the same time as this was happening, Zhen Liu proceeded to take a deep breath and dive straight into the water beneath him, directly towards the charging Yue Tai Lung.
He could see through the watery distortion how Yue Tai Lung slammed his maces together, sending minute shockwaves throughout his own body and into the water directly beneath him.
Evidently, Zhen Liu forgot that shockwaves and the like tended to travel through water faster and bit more vigorously than in the air, so much so that it rattled his skull a bit.
It didn’t hurt mind you, but it felt like he somehow belly flopped while underwater. Not the most pleasant sensation in the world.
Regardless, it was under the water that Zhen Liu could see as the soldiers failed to both pierce and realize that their target had disappeared and was replaced by a weird looking gourd, while their actual target had gotten incredibly close to their leader.
In a couple moments though, they were going to realize how badly they had fucked up.
‘Okay, now I just need to grab this guy like this and not suddenly snap his leg off…wait, maybe I should freak them out a bit instead.’
Zhen Liu had originally planned to just grab the guy and place him into a chokehold until he surrendered or passed out…but if they wanted to go loud…then who was he to change that?
‘Huh…I don’t think its healthy that I keep trying to use other people as weapons…oh well.’
