In a contest of speed, Jiang Chen was not at a disadvantage, but neither could he claim the upper hand.
The two chased each other through the secluded valley terrain, tracing wide circles. Jiang Chen deliberately wanted to gauge the other man's absolute speed limit, so he kept his composure perfectly steady. Throughout the pursuit he used no other tricks or techniques—this was purely a contest of raw speed.
"Who on earth is this person?" Jiang Chen was filled with questions and shock. As far as he remembered, among the thousand-plus trial participants who had entered the Black Nightmare Mountains, there was no one matching this figure.
The other party was shrouded in a black cloak that covered him head to toe, giving him a deeply mysterious air. But Jiang Chen was almost certain—none of those thousand-plus trial participants included this individual.
"Could it be that there are other people in these Black Nightmare Mountains besides the trial group?" The instant this thought struck him, a strange tremor ran through Jiang Chen's heart.
If not one of the trial participants, then who?
Jiang Chen could sense that the other party had not yet entered the Celestial Position realm either. This only deepened his bewilderment. Theoretically, any genius who had not broken through to the Celestial Position realm should be someone Jiang Chen could steamroll effortlessly.
Yet this mysterious cloaked figure, merely an Emperor realm cultivator, apparently possessed potential that was nearly on par with his own.
Although so far the man had only demonstrated his speed, Jiang Chen had a gut feeling—this person's overall caliber was far from low.
Someone with this kind of speed—how weak could his other abilities possibly be?
Inside the black cloak, the shock was no less intense than Jiang Chen's—perhaps even greater. Without question, this cloaked figure was a genius from one of the Eight Great Houses of the Duowen Divine Kingdom.
Moreover, he was privately confident that among the twenty or thirty trial geniuses representing the Eight Great Houses, he ranked comfortably in the top five.
If the person who had seized the Xuanhuang Shouwu had been a scion of one of the Eight Great Houses, the cloaked man would not have been nearly so surprised.
But this opponent was clearly a trial participant from Dongyan Island.
That was what stunned the cloaked figure the most. Their Eight Great Houses geniuses hailed from the Duowen Divine Kingdom. At their age, they were considered peak-level talents across the entirety of the Abyssal Islands.
Under those circumstances, entering Dongyan Island for the trial, they had always treated it as a game. In their eyes, the so-called trial participants of Dongyan Island were nothing more than prey. They had never once regarded the Dongyan Island cultivators as genuine rivals.
But now, Jiang Chen's performance had completely overturned the cloaked man's understanding.
"I never imagined that this minor Huichun Island Domain could produce a genius of this caliber?" The cloaked man was awash with astonishment.
He had actually arrived near the Xuanhuang Shouwu before Jiang Chen. However, he had also spotted the dangerous factors surrounding the herb and had been calculating how to neutralize them.
He never expected that Jiang Chen would appear, beat him to the punch, deploy an array of techniques, and actually grab the Xuanhuang Shouwu first.
That had shocked the cloaked man profoundly. He immediately launched an interception attempt—but came up empty.
The ensuing pursuit had made it even more abundantly clear to the cloaked figure that the person he was dealing with was a truly formidable rival.
As the two chased each other, time flew by.
Before they knew it, a full night had passed.
The darkness of the Black Nightmare Mountains was actually terrifying. But for Jiang Chen, who cultivated the Heavenly Eye Divine Pupil, night was as bright as day.
The cloaked figure, for his part, seemed equally unbothered by the dark. The pursuit was not slowed in the slightest.
They chased from dusk into nightfall, from nightfall into the hour before dawn, from the pre-dawn glow into morning. After an entire night of pursuit, Jiang Chen's spirit remained unimpaired.
However, the night-long chase had also taught him something: this opponent might not be something he could shake off through speed alone.
Jiang Chen's pace gradually slowed, his speed ebbing.
At that moment, the two of them had entered yet another stretch of dense forest.
When the cloaked figure saw Jiang Chen decelerate, he eased off as well.
Jiang Chen came to an abrupt halt, whirled around, and fixed the cloaked man with a gaze as piercing as a torch.
They were separated by only a few hundred meters. Jiang Chen caught sight of those sinister eyes beneath the hood—and the terrifying energy that lay coiled behind them.
"It seems you're not a trial participant from Dongyan Island," Jiang Chen said flatly.
The cloaked man's voice was cold and detached. "Not running anymore?"
Jiang Chen shrugged. "Did it look like I was running?"
"Enough talk. Hand over the Xuanhuang Shouwu." The cloaked man's tone was devoid of any emotion, sharp and cold as a blade.
"You know what the Xuanhuang Shouwu is?" Jiang Chen was mildly surprised.
"You talk too much. I'll give you two choices: one, hand it over yourself. Two, wait for me to kill you and take it." The cloaked man's voice turned lethal.
Hearing this, Jiang Chen burst into hearty laughter. "I'll give you two choices as well. One, remove that hood. Two, wait for me to kill you and take it off myself."
Though the cloaked figure had demonstrated formidable potential, that did not mean he could intimidate Jiang Chen.