In the empty air, sword aura flashed as if a gentle breeze had brushed across the face. Before anyone realized when Feng Piaoling had drawn his sword, it struck precisely against all the golden light spheres, powered by the eighth stance of the Swift Wind Nine Swords—Traceless Wind.
The light spheres burst prematurely three zhang away from Feng Piaoling, splashing golden specks of light everywhere like a shower of radiance.
In a flash of movement, Feng Piaoling broke through the light rain and appeared right in front of Dai Yaoheng, thrusting his sword forward using the Golden Brilliance Quake-Kill Sword as a conduit.
"What?"
The sword technique Feng Piaoling had used just a moment ago wasn't particularly powerful, possessing only a broad area of effect; yet somehow, in an unknown manner, he had managed to detonate Dai Yaoheng's White Tiger Meteor Shower ahead of time.
Because of this, the sudden arrival of this second sword caught Dai Yaoheng completely off guard.
It was fortunate he had Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Detection Sharing; otherwise, he would never have been able to block this strike.
"Second Soul Skill—White Tiger Light Wave!"
At the critical moment, the second soul ring on Dai Yaoheng flared to life. The soul power within his body erupted like a volcano, violently spitting out a milky-white sphere of light.
However, he had clearly underestimated the power of Feng Piaoling's Golden Brilliance Quake-Kill Sword.
Sizzle!
Although the momentum of the Azure Lotus Sword slowed slightly, it still pierced through. The milky-white sphere of light dissolved, and the golden sword beam thrust straight toward Dai Yaoheng's chest.
"Get the hell off me!"
Having bought himself a brief moment, Dai Yaoheng didn't have time for careful thought. His sixth soul ring illuminated as he unleashed his strongest soul skill, White Tiger Destruction Kill.
A fierce white light erupted, striking against the sword beam.
The clanging of metal echoed throughout the entire venue. The Azure Lotus Sword in Feng Piaoling's hand was bent by the white light before snapping back, causing him to float backward gracefully. Dai Yaoheng, however, was in far worse shape.
His White Tiger Body Barrier shattered, leaving his chest dripping with blood where a sword wound deep enough to expose bone had appeared.
Had the White Tiger Destruction Kill not offset most of the strike's power just now, this single sword would likely have pierced straight through his chest.
Gazing at the scene on the competition ring, the onlookers were left dumbfounded.
"What is going on? Isn't this too exaggerated? A single strike injured the eldest son of the White Tiger Duke, one of the four Soul Emperors in this Soul Master Tournament!"
"With such an endless array of combat techniques, could it be that Feng Piaoling was just playing around earlier and hasn't fully shown his true strength?"
In everyone's minds, excluding the Green Bamboo Bee Cloud Swords soul tool, Feng Piaoling's speed was slightly higher than Dai Huabin's, but their overall strength was roughly equal. In certain aspects, Feng Piaoling was even somewhat inferior.
For instance, his soul power level was a major flaw.
Yet right at the start, Feng Piaoling shattered everyone's assumptions, injuring Dai Yaoheng with an incomprehensible sword technique.
Dai Yaoheng's gaze burned like fire. "You have successfully enraged me. Now, prepare to face my fury."
With a loud shout, Dai Yaoheng produced from his spatial storage soul tool the Class 8 melee soul tool he had purchased at the auction earlier: the Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade.
This war saber had a total length of four feet six inches, with the widest part of its spine measuring a full inch. Styled like a horse-chopping saber, the hilt up to the handguard bore subtle bone-like shapes, and the handguard itself was extremely broad, formed in the shape of a tiger's head.
This saber had a restriction: to exert its full power, one needed a cultivation level at the Soul Saint rank.
However, this restriction was merely a general rule of thumb. In the original trajectory, when Ma Xiaotao burned her Phoenix Flame, she was capable of using this war saber to launch several attacks.
Although Dai Yaoheng's soul power was somewhat lower than Ma Xiaotao's and he lacked her formidable Phoenix Flame, he possessed two amplification soul skills—White Tiger Vajra Transformation and White Tiger Demon God Transformation. Disregarding soul power consumption, he had enough to use the Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade to unleash one or two attacks.
"Die!"
With a single slash, a crystal-yellow light blade swept out with a frantic, howling wind, slicing brutally toward Feng Piaoling.
Seeing this, Feng Piaoling's expression didn't change in the slightest. His figure flickered and drifted repeatedly, dodging the light blade's attack. Then, with a shake of the Azure Lotus Sword, brilliant sword light gathered densely like rain, enveloping the nearby Dai Yaoheng.
Dai Yaoheng sneered. "You think you can still hurt me? What a joke! I, Dai Yaoheng, will never suffer a loss twice at the hands of the same person."
With that, he burst forward like a flash of lightning, executing a flying slash mid-air.
"Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade!"
The strike cleaved through the sword aura, cutting Feng Piaoling in two.
Feng Piaoling's expression remained tranquil, showing no sign of pain, nor did he spill a single drop of blood. Instead, his body dissolved into a cyan haze and vanished.
"Not good, it's an afterimage..."
Dai Yaoheng was pale with fright. Through Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Detection Sharing, he perceived that Feng Piaoling had dodged the Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade's slash in an instant, and his real body had already moved behind him.
Dai Yaoheng instinctively tried to swing his saber back to counterattack, only to find that the soul power in his body had been completely drained by the Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade.
Pfft!
Feng Piaoling's sword pierced through Dai Huabin's flesh, but just as he was about to drive it through his chest, his movement came to a sudden halt.
Right afterward, the audience below saw a large hand suddenly grab the hand holding the sword.
At the critical moment, the Fiend Douluo, Huang Jinxu, had intervened.
He had saved Dai Yaoheng.
Even so, the immense sword aura Feng Piaoling had poured into the blade still released a powerful shockwave.
Dai Yaoheng spat out a large mouthful of blood mist, and the Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade slipped from his grasp, flying through the air. Feng Piaoling casually caught it and stored it into his Four Symbols Coiling Dragon Belt.
Meanwhile, Dai Yaoheng pitched forward in a highly ludicrous posture, looking like the Crocodile Gang leader's wife in Stephen Chow's movie after being shot in the back by the Axe Gang chief.
A collective gasp echoed across the entire venue.
The eldest son of the White Tiger Duke, a descendant of the War God Dai Mubai, and a Soul Emperor with a soul power level as high as Rank 64, was actually no match for Feng Piaoling either—and that was even after utilizing a Class 8 melee soul tool.
"You..." Dai Yaoheng looked down at the sword mark on his chest, then felt the agonizing pain of broken ribs from behind. He seemed unable to believe that he had genuinely lost, a wave of nameless anger surging with nowhere to vent.
"What impressive methods. First draining Dai Yaoheng's two Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade slashes, and then delivering a fatal strike to leave his opponent no room for a comeback," the Emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, Xu Jiawei, took a deep breath and marvelled in admiration.
Snap!
Dai Hao's face was dark and solemn, the armrest of his chair cracking beneath his grip.
"This kid is truly crafty!" Beside him, the White Tiger Duke's attendant, Du Leisi, didn't know what to say. After holding it in for a long while, he finally blurted out this single sentence.
And the reason he called Feng Piaoling crafty was nothing else—
It was simply because Feng Piaoling didn't play by the rules. When faced with Dai Yaoheng's Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade, he actually chose to dodge and trick his opponent.
Had it not been for that, even if his Golden Brilliance Quake-Kill Sword technique was extraordinary, it could never have matched their young master Dai Yaoheng's Tyrannical Tiger Soul Blade.
Dai Hao snorted coldly without saying a word.
Having defeated Dai Yaoheng, Feng Piaoling had now secured three consecutive victories, which undoubtedly placed immense pressure on the rest of Shrek.
In particular, Ma Xiaotao, as the team captain, felt almost suffocated by this overwhelming pressure.