The Void Spirit Sword Sect was founded on the sword, and its disciples naturally all carried long blades. Yang Kai hadn't noticed it before, but now, drawing his weapon on instinct, he realized it.
Pfft.
A soft sound rang out. One of the Human Rank eighth-level warriors who had charged at him froze in place, staring down at his chest—where a longsword had punched clean through. A sharp pain radiated from his heart.
"You—" The follower raised his head to look at Yang Kai, his face full of disbelief. He had no idea what had happened, no understanding of why he'd been impaled.
"Pang San!" Several of the other followers' faces went pale. From their perspective, Pang San had simply stumbled forward and accidentally run himself onto Yang Kai's blade—and now he was like this.
Shhk.
Yang Kai pulled his sword free. Blood sprayed. Pang San, face drained of all color, toppled backward.
"You're dead!" The remaining followers flew into a rage. Several experts at the eighth and ninth levels of Human Rank, all attacking a single fourth-level kid together, and they'd somehow managed to let him kill one of them? It was the ultimate humiliation.
With furious shouts, they simultaneously channeled their power, drew their swords, and closed in from both sides.
A fight had broken out here—someone had actually died—and the main hall of the restaurant erupted in screams. Patrons scrambled toward the exits. Even the restaurant's manager and waiters had fled without a trace.
Inside the hall, Yang Kai had already fallen into a chaotic melee with the remaining followers.
Sword light flashed. Yang Kai shielded Wan Yingying as he retreated, raising his blade to deflect the fierce attacks raining down on him. The clanging of steel rang out without end.
The backlash from each clash sent waves of force through his arm, numbing it and churning his blood. This was the disadvantage of inferior cultivation—head-on confrontation always left him on the losing end. Looking at his own sword, it was trembling wildly in his grip, as though it might be knocked away at any moment.
"Shhk." Another soft sound rang out.
A ninth-level Human Rank follower stumbled to a halt, staring in disbelief at his chest. His eyes bulged.
He'd met the exact same fate as Pang San—Yang Kai's sword had pierced straight through his chest and into his heart. Before he could even process what had happened, he felt an invisible hand seize his heart. His vitality drained away in an instant, and he toppled backward.
The two remaining followers were struck with both horror and dread. Why did their companions keep throwing themselves onto someone else's sword?! The kid across from them was clearly far weaker than they were, yet he'd somehow killed two of their own.
If anything, it wasn't that Yang Kai had killed them—it was that they had impaled themselves on his blade.
"Weak. Too weak!" Yang Kai's face was full of dissatisfaction. The body this Divine Artifact Realm had granted him was so weak it was painful to look at. Compared to his own true strength, this Yang Kai of the Void Spirit Sword Sect was no different from an ant.
The reason he'd been able to kill two of them came down to nothing more than superior technique. His real power couldn't be unleashed here, but after years upon years of slaughter and combat, his skills could be deployed freely. Even if his opponents outnumbered him and outmatched him in strength, as long as he seized that fleeting moment of opportunity, killing them wasn't difficult at all.
Even with spiritual power shielding the bodies of these eighth and ninth-level Human Rank followers, Yang Kai could find the weakest point at the most critical moment and drive his sword through it—letting them impale themselves.
It wasn't so much that Yang Kai had killed them as it was their own power that had done them in. That was why, to any outside observer, the two who had fallen looked as though they had simply committed suicide—utterly bizarre.
Zhan Yulin had originally brought six followers. Two of them had been sent to deal with Shen Suanzi, and their current whereabouts were unknown. Of the remaining four, Yang Kai had killed two, leaving only two left.
Those two followers now stood frozen in place, their faces masks of terror—all trace of their earlier composure gone. With two companions dead in rapid succession, it would have been strange if they hadn't realized something was wrong with Yang Kai.
And yet, no matter how they looked at it, Yang Kai was merely at the fourth level of Human Rank. The spiritual power fluctuation on his body was far inferior to theirs.
"Hesitation on the battlefield is the greatest opening!" Yang Kai flicked his sword in a casual flourish and let out a cold laugh. His body shifted, and to everyone's surprise, he charged forward toward the two of them, his longsword weaving a dense, airtight web of strikes—nimble and unpredictable.
The last two followers were shocked into action, scrambling to defend themselves. But what frustrated them to no end was that, despite being far stronger than Yang Kai and possessing denser spiritual power, that figure across from them moved like an eel, impossible to pin down. Meanwhile, their own fear kept creating openings.
A moment later, two more bodies lay on the hall floor, blood pooling across the ground.
"A family should be all together!" Yang Kai flicked the blood from his longsword. The blade was now riddled with dents and chips.
His sword hadn't been much of a weapon to begin with—just a simple Human Rank longsword. Clashing against four eighth- and ninth-level Human Rank warriors had pushed it just about to its limit.
He raised his eyes toward Zhan Yulin. Zhan Yulin had gone completely blank.
When the fight first started, he'd been shouting and hollering from the sidelines. But as one follower after another had fallen, the terror on his face had grown steadily worse. Now he was frozen like a statue.
Was this really the same Yang Kai who used to stammer and couldn't even muster a boastful word whenever he saw Zhan Yulin? Zhan Yulin felt as though he were in a dream—everything was unreal.
Even Zhou Cen, who stood beside him, wore a face full of shock and doubt.