His left hand swung forward with everything he had, sending the small hammer whistling through the air straight toward the center of the Man-Faced Demon Spider's chest.
The armor on the Man-Faced Demon Spider's chest was the hardest part of its entire body. Faced with Tang San's sudden attack, it instinctively chose not to defend.
Soul Masters could sense the strength of Soul Beasts within a certain range, and Soul Beasts could likewise gauge a Soul Master's power. The Man-Faced Demon Spider before him was originally far stronger than Tang San — it had only become less terrifying because of its injuries. But it could still clearly judge that Tang San's strength was nowhere near its own, which meant his attack naturally couldn't penetrate the hardest part of its armor.
So the Man-Faced Demon Spider paid no heed to the hammer hurtling toward its chest. Its eight long legs drove straight downward, intent on finishing Tang San in one strike and making him its meal. A Soul Master carrying both Soul Power and Soul Rings was an equally great delicacy for a Soul Beast — it could add years to one's cultivation.
Unfortunately, this time the Man-Faced Demon Spider miscalculated. After all, it was not yet a high-level Soul Beast with sufficient intelligence. How could its mind possibly compare to a human's?
With a muffled thud, the spider's plunging body was knocked upward, its entire form lifted off the ground by the blow.
The Man-Faced Demon Spider's assessment had been correct in one respect — despite the fact that this hammer carried all of Tang San's Soul Power and the weapon itself weighed a staggering five hundred jin, it still could not break through the defense of the spider's chest plate. The armor remained intact.
However, the sheer force behind that strike was too immense. Infused with all of Tang San's Soul Power, this black hammer delivered a blow well exceeding a thousand jin. While it couldn't truly wound the Man-Faced Demon Spider, it was more than enough to send its body flying upward.
This move was the same Soul Skill the Iron Brothers had once used against Tang San and Xiao Wu on the fighting stage, catching them off guard and landing a painful blow. Back then, the Iron Brothers had used this technique — a desperate, all-or-nothing throw — to injure Tang San. Reflecting on that painful lesson after returning to the academy, Tang San had given the skill careful thought. He realized he, too, possessed a hammer. Though he lacked the assistance of a Soul Ring, who said he couldn't use the same technique? True, he couldn't grant the hammer the tracking ability the Iron Brothers achieved with their Soul Skill. But he had the techniques of Hidden Weapons — and when it came to accuracy, he would be no worse than the Iron Brothers' desperate throw.
The hammer itself already weighed an astonishing five hundred jin. Even without channeling all his Soul Power into it, hurling it would make it an extraordinarily formidable Hidden Weapon. After that incident, Tang San had practiced the technique several times. Though the black hammer was incredibly heavy, he was no longer the child whose Soul Power had just awakened. Within ten meters, he could control the hammer's accuracy with complete precision.
Now, at this most critical moment, deploying this move drained every last shred of Tang San's Soul Power — but it achieved exactly the effect he had envisioned.
The Man-Faced Demon Spider's upper body was smashed upward, and its underside was exposed naturally. That grotesque human face formed by white lines seemed to instantly enlarge before Tang San's eyes. Its six still-open violet eyes glowed with cold, horrifying light.
Tang San's expression remained as still as undisturbed water. His right hand — which he had kept raised the whole time — moved.
What was the greatest advantage of a mechanism-type Hidden Weapon? That it required no internal energy whatsoever to generate devastating lethal force.
In his previous life, a person who couldn't fight had once used one of the Tang Sect's premier mechanism-type Hidden Weapons — the Rainstorm Pear Needles — to effortlessly kill a supreme martial arts master. That was the Tang Sect's true strength. Now, this unassuming black box in Tang San's hand, barely a foot long, was about to deliver that terrifying power to the Man-Faced Demon Spider before him.
Click, click, click — a rapid cascade of mechanism bursts erupted from Tang San's right hand. Streaks of dark shadow shot outward at blinding speed. His wrist made minute adjustments — partly to absorb the recoil from the black box, and partly to lock his aim. With his technique, at this close range, how could he possibly miss?
It was worth noting that most of the mechanism-type Hidden Weapons Tang San crafted used silent springs, making it easier to wound enemies without alerting them. So why were the mechanism sounds from this black box so loud?
It was certainly not a flaw in Tang San's craftsmanship. It could only mean one thing — in pursuit of maximum destructive power, Tang San had deliberately sacrificed the silent mechanism, allowing this Hidden Weapon to unleash its most terrifying offensive force.
A total of sixteen dark streaks shot forth. Under Tang San's precise, instantaneous control, not even the two eyes the Man-Faced Demon Spider had already lost were spared — two streaks pierced into each eye. In the blink of an eye, all sixteen had plunged deep into the spider's body.
The eye region was the Man-Faced Demon Spider's weak point, but it was not without defense. A transparent protective layer covered the surface of the eyes, offering what could be called reasonably good protection.
Yet against the dark projectiles spat from the black box in Tang San's hand, that layer of defense proved about as effective as paper — utterly useless. It spoke volumes about just how terrifying the penetrating power of those shadows truly was.
Earlier, when facing the Titan Giant Ape, Tang San had not failed to consider using this weapon. But the situation had changed too rapidly, leaving him no opportunity to deploy it. While the weapon's power was immense, the spring mechanism's explosive launch force was equally extreme, requiring it to be activated fresh each time it was used. If left under tension for too long, the mechanism would break.
That was why Tang San had not used it against the Titan Giant Ape. Now, facing the Man-Faced Demon Spider, he had finally brought out the most powerful heavy hitter among all the Hidden Weapons currently at his disposal.