As the sound of several cannon shells leaving their barrels rang out, the shells fired by multiple soul guidance cannons tore through the smoke, arriving in an instant before Bai Chen.
And at that moment, Bai Chen had already opened his eyes.
Faced with these incoming shells, he made a move that most people would find impossible to comprehend.
Bai Chen leapt straight up from the ground, spun a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees in the air, and turned his back toward the incoming shells.
At the same time, a flash of violet light crossed his eyes. He reached out and, with pinpoint precision, snatched the long whip that came lashing through the dense smoke.
"!"
At the other end of the whip, Jing Ziyan's mouth fell open in stunned disbelief.
That Bai Chen could react fast enough to counter the flash grenade — she could actually understand that. She had never underestimated this junior's expertise in the field of soul guidance devices.
But how had he done this?
What Jing Ziyan had just pulled off was actually an extremely cunning trap. Ordinary people absolutely could not have reacted to it in a single instant.
Among soul guidance cannons, there is a type that can fire on a time-delay. By pre-injecting soul power, you can make the cannon fire automatically after a set interval.
But this technique has many problems.
Since soul power dissipates naturally, the delay time currently achievable is generally very short — even a rank seven soul guidance cannon can only manage around ten seconds, while a rank four type like the ones Jing Ziyan had crafted can barely manage a three-second delay.
At the same time, the dissipation of soul power also causes a reduction in firepower — the power of this type of cannon is already lower than that of standard cannons of the same rank, and the original power drops even further the longer the delay.
On top of that, the complex craftsmanship required is another drawback. It's a classic case of high investment, low return — very few normal soul masters bother to learn how to make this type of cannon.
And as fate would have it, Jing Ziyan was that abnormal soul master.
Her goal is to become a complete-system soul master, so even techniques that most ordinary soul masters would find completely useless, she takes seriously and studies.
She had even developed her own unique techniques in the learning process.
In the battle just now, Jing Ziyan had first hidden herself in the dense smoke and set up several time-delay soul guidance cannons, pre-injecting soul power into each of them.
Then she immediately fired the flash grenade, drawing Bai Chen's attention.
At the precise moment Bai Chen shut his eyes, she dropped the flash grenade in her hand, circled to Bai Chen's back at maximum speed.
And at that instant, the time-limit on the delay cannons ran out — those several cannons would fire simultaneously, launching their attack on Bai Chen from behind.
The smoke and flash grenade imposed a dual lockdown on vision; the sound of the cannons also effectively interfered with Bai Chen's auditory judgment, making him think the flash grenade's extraordinary purpose was this round of fire — causing him to ignore the attack coming from behind. All of this was orchestrated so that this sneak attack could succeed.
Jing Ziyan's martial soul is smoke, which has no particular offensive power — her ability is honestly not that impressive among soul masters of the same rank.
Yet despite that, she had been able to suppress Ji Juechen for this long. There was naturally a reason for it.
She took her unique advantage as a complete-system soul master to its absolute limit, her tactics endlessly varied — ordinary people simply could not keep up with her thinking.
Ji Juechen could not counter her ever-changing combat style with an unchanging fighting method, but she was certain of one thing: Bai Chen was absolutely not the Ji Juechen type.
So how had this kid managed what he just did?
Jing Ziyan had actually miscalculated on one point. Bai Chen's Violet Demon Eyes, although not yet capable of seeing through her smoke, could still reduce the influence her smokescreen technique had on him to a minimum.
Because of this, many of Jing Ziyan's tactics were very difficult to achieve their intended effect against Bai Chen.
Whether it was the flash grenade or the time-delay cannons, Bai Chen noticed their existence when they were still quite a long distance from him — which gave him ample time to think and react.
On top of that, he had learned a great deal of knowledge from Xuan Zhe (his master), so one could say that the moment those time-delay shells appeared, he sensed something was wrong —
As an attack launched by Jing Ziyan, these soul guidance shells were simply too weak in power.
Their striking force was only comparable to an ordinary rank three soul guidance cannon, and would be hard-pressed to even break through Bai Chen's defenses.
Jing Ziyan would never be foolish enough to try to defeat him with something like this — so the answer was obvious:
These shells were not her real killing move. Like the flash grenade, they were merely setup. The real killing blow was somewhere else.
Once he figured this out, the subsequent counterattack became a matter of course.
Bai Chen grabbed the whip and yanked hard.
"Hm?!"
A terrifying force transmitted through the whip from that side, and Jing Ziyan involuntarily let out a sharp sound, her whole body being pulled uncontrollably toward Bai Chen.
"Tch, he's really a monster!"
You had to understand that Jing Ziyan's close-combat soul guidance device had a built-in touch-triggered explosive function!
In other words, the hand Bai Chen was using to grip the whip was being continuously subjected to explosive strikes at this very moment.
Yet this was completely incapable of causing him any harm at all, blocked by the dual defenses of his Steel Bone Trembling Gold and Dark Gold.
In just a single instant, the distance between Jing Ziyan and Bai Chen had shrunk rapidly to the point where she could make out his face — just as she saw him raise a Dark Gold Terror Claw, Jing Ziyan bit her lip. With no choice but to release her grip, she activated the soul guidance thrusters on her back, using the recoil force to flip through the air and barely — just barely — dodge Bai Chen's strike.
The whistling sound of wind echoed in her ears. Even though she hadn't actually been hit, the razor-sharp aura radiating from the Dark Gold Terror Claw still made Jing Ziyan's skin crawl.
She still wanted to make another move — and then she saw Bai Chen raise his palm again.
"Swoosh——!"
A brilliant light erupted. The ten-meter-long Dark Gold Terror Claw descended upon the empty ground right next to where Jing Ziyan stood.
"..."
Jing Ziyan stared somewhat numbly at that long, deep claw mark in the ground, and couldn't help swallowing.
"I lose…"
She was a gracious loser — she wasn't someone who couldn't accept defeat. If that claw from Bai Chen had actually landed on her, unless she activated an invincible barrier, she would have been shredded to pieces on the spot.
The burst power of that strike had already reached the Soul Emperor level. This was simply too terrifying…
As Jing Ziyan conceded, the dense purple smoke dispersed, and the figure of Ji Juechen — still locked in combat with the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear — came into view.
Worthy of the name, wasn't he? Even facing such an immensely powerful spirit beast, he was still holding the advantage.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear's defensive superiority meant nothing in the face of his razor-sharp sword intent — the creature had already sustained several wounds.
But on the other side, the hands Ji Juechen gripped his sword with were also trembling uncontrollably at this point, and his eyes looked as though he could barely keep hold of his sword.
His sword intent posed a tremendous threat to the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear — but the Terror Claw Bear's strength was also far above his, was it not?