Chapter 596: We can’t all be brutal(2)
[Spring Brawler]: Zhen Hai
[Alright, if my memory serves me right, Zhen Hai is an extreme close combat fighter with a formula called “Abyssal King’s Grace”, has recently merged with the core of a Diamond Crusher Shark and was possessed by Hurricroak and Razorstella. That should be everything, assuming my brain isn’t lying to me…wait, do I even have a brain?]
*THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!*
“SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!”
“Hahaha! Dance for us boy, dance!”
[Oh, that isn’t good.]
Zhen Hai was fairly certain that out of all of his participating family members, he had drawn the short stick, well, the worst marble of the bunch.
‘Godsdammit, I can’t fucking get close at all!,’ Zhen Hai cursed as he kept dodging, ‘how the hell am I supposed to take this bitch out if I can’t punch her?!’
Shortly after Zhen Hai pulled the marble from the treasure, he was teleported into what appeared to be a big open field, that was just miles and miles of wind-swept grassy plains.
There were no obstacles, no rough terrain and no places to hide in such a battlefield, meaning Zhen Hai would have little to no issues finding and defeating his chosen opponents.
Unfortunately, this also meant they had no trouble finding him…which is exactly what happened moments after he had landed within the open fields of the marble arena.
[They have him completely surrounded and are closing that circle around him…damn, this is some cage match tactics shit…and I don’t think he has any means to move in weird directions either…]
Zhen Hai was rushed by soldiers that began to run literal circles around him. Strangely, none of them attempted to attack him while they were doing so unless Zhen Hai got too close to the edge.
It was only when the leader of soldiers appeared that Zhen Hai understood why they had chosen this course of action.
“Come on, boy! Afraid you’ll like it too much when my whips finally kiss your skin?!,” the armored woman roared while flailing about two wicked looking bullwhips that looked a bit like giant vipers and had this strange pungent smell to them.
Zhen Hai had no idea what this woman’s name was, because she didn’t bother to introduce herself, opting to just jump into the circle of running soldiers and start whipping at him straight away.
How this woman became an elite soldier, Zhen Hai would never know for certain.
‘Alright, I just need to keep dancing and then-‘
*Fwip*
“SHIT!”
“Haha! Got you now!”
Immediately after Zhen Hai was just about to come up with a plan of action on how to deal with this crazy whip woman, one of his arms got wrapped by the elite’s bullwhip. Making matters worst, when he attempted to break the whip’s hold, it began to tighten around his arm on its own accord.
“Fuck, an aether treasure?!”
“That’s right, little boy,” the whip wielding woman taunted, “once my Thunder Boa Whips latch on, there’s no way to break them, but that’s not all!”
[Wait a minute…]
“Get ready to taste the lightning!”
“OH FU-wait, what?”
[Oh boy.]
Unaware of Zhen Hai’s sudden change in tone, the whip woman began to feed her aether into her whips, causing the aether treasure to react in a strange manner.
Wisps of lightning began to form around the woman’s hands, seconds before they began to travel down the whips and into Zhen Hai.
The woman began to cackle a rather horrible laugh in the process.
“Get ready to fry, little boy!”
[Huh…I think this is the first time I have ever felt pity for someone…but not in a good way…]
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[Frosttusk]: Zhen Feng
“GEHAHAHA! INTERESTING, INTERESTING! I DIDN’T EXPECT A BRACKBORN CHILD TO HAVE A SPINE AS STRONG AS YOURS! COLOR ME SURPRISED!”
“Too…loud…”
[Hmm….power…vs…power…colliding…matching….]
“How…do…I…beat…him…?!”
“I WOULD SAY I WOULD EASE UP, BUT I MADE A PROMISE NOT TO!”
[Hmm…loud…]
In this moment in time, standing in the middle of a wetlands habitat, surrounded by the unconscious and bruised forms of several Acolyte soldiers, a contest of pure brawn was taking place as two fighters locked hands and tried to overpower each other.
On one side was Zhen Feng, the sixth young master of the Zhen branch clan of Stampeding Bison, who was built like a giant boar, larger than his cousins in both directions, with the strength and stubbornness to match one. With the [Mountain Boar Mantra] formula as his cultivation foundation, Zhen Feng was essentially the strongest and most defensive oriented among his peers.
On the other side was an elite warrior from the Zhen main clan named Niu Bao.
Both Zhen Feng and Niu Bao were similar in terms of height and width, but Niu Bao wasn’t as chubby as Zhen Feng.
In a sharp visual contrast to Zhen Feng’s fat covered muscles, Niu Bao looked more…defined. He had visible looking abdominal muscles, visible glute muscles and huge muscular arms. In other words, the man was built like a gorilla and was hairy like one too.
It also didn’t help that instead of wearing any form of armor, Niu Bao was mostly naked except for a pair of baggy pants that was straining to hold back. It had come with a matching shirt…that shirt exploded when Niu Bao flexed his muscles in order to show off.
“COME ON, ROTUND ONE! I’M ONLY USING SIXTY PERCENT OF MY STRENGTH HERE!”
<
“WHAT WAS THAT? SPEAK TIDE TONGUE IF YOU WISH TO INSULT ME!”
“GAH!”
Zhen Feng was used to pompous because of Zhen Guo, but this was a whole other level of annoying.
[Don’t…lose…your…cool…]
Earlier, when Zhen Feng showed up to the arena, he had managed to take out the Acolyte soldiers by, literally, tackling all four of them at the same time and into a nearby tree.
The tree broke in the process, but it also knocked the four of them out.
Immediately after that though, Niu Bao had shown up and immediately tried to smash Zhen Feng into pieces with a large iron club that might as well have been a supporting pillar for a building at some point.
However, the club was just slow enough for Zhen Feng to narrowly dodge the attacks, so Niu Bao had decided to ditch in favor of just using pure brute force, leading to the current wrestling lock.
The two large sized warriors proved to be equal to one another in terms of brute strength, meaning this was going to be a battle of attrition…unless…
‘Godsdammit!,’ Zhen Feng mentally cursed.
‘How is this guy so strong?! He’s not budging an inch and I can barely match him! It’s like when I was sparring with…wait a minute, this guy is saying that right now he isn’t using his full power…maybe I can use that against him…’
[Power…without…direction…pointless…but…directions…can be…wrong…]
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[Hurricroak]: Zhen Guo
[Blue Feather Piercer!]
[Shadow Sparrow Step!]
*THUCK! THUCK! THUCK! THUCK!*
“Wow, I knew you were an obvious target, but I didn’t expect your attacks to be so obvious either!”
[Mierda, peacock boy! You gotta think tricky if you’re gonna be that flashy, tricky!]
‘Godsdammit, where’d he go now?!,’ Zhen Guo cursed in between breaths.
Standing in the center of a large clearing in the middle of a dense forest, Zhen Guo stood there, eyeing the surrounding trees wearily, waiting for an attack to come and ready to counter attack.
The only issue was that he had no idea which direction this attack was going to come from.
“You really need to learn how to make use of weird angles when you fight. Like this!”
[Slicing Shadow Ring!]
“Shit!”
Zhen Guo jerked his head to the side as a chakram made of dense shadow aether came flying out of the trees and almost sliced his head clean off his shoulders.
Instinctually, Zhen Guo fired off another attack in the direction the chakram had originated from, only to hit empty wood yet again.
“Hah! Missed me!”
“Dammit! I fucking hate assassination type opponents,” Zhen Guo cursed as his attacks failed to make a mark again.
[Puta Madre, Peacock boy! He just said he used weird angles to attack, think for a moment on what that means and work around it!]
Out of all of the Zhen Clan scions, Zhen Guo was probably the least stealthy of the bunch by a mile. But that wasn’t entirely his fault, despite having a rather showy personality.
Zhen Guo’s formula was something known as [Prismatic Peacock Method], a major corporeal formula that specialized in dazzling techniques, ranged attacks and generally sticking out like a sore thumb due to how unusually colorful the aether arts end up becoming due to cultivating this formula.
In essence, Zhen Guo never had to learn to be stealthy when cultivating, because there was no way he could be stealthy while cultivating this formula.
Unfortunately, this also meant that he had little experience of what to do when dealing with stealthy opponents, or at least opponents that were tricky like this.
“Come on, come on,” Zhen Guo’s opponent called out from the trees, “aren’t you going to try and attack me now?”
[Oh come on! That is so obviously trap!]
Zhen Guo was just about ready to charge into those woods and risk being attacked to find this guy, when something dawned on him.
‘Wait…aren’t I technically fighting five opponents? Where are the other four?’
As soon as this thought enter his head, a light went off and lighting began to spark…around his fingers, specifically.
‘Alright…if I can’t take you out with a single target…I think I know at least…one AoE…wait…why do I know that term?’
[Oh hold up, another person compatible with yours truly? Perfect! I just know the others are gonna be jelly over this…]
