As Jiang Chen spoke, the Sky Leviathan Flowing Light Escape transformed into a bolt of lightning and descended onto the arena.
With his hands clasped behind his back, Jiang Chen's tall figure stood ramrod straight. His resolute expression, combined with his imposing and awe-inspiring aura, completely suppressed Gan Ning's presence in that moment.
Jiang Chen's gaze, brimming with divine radiance, pierced toward Gan Ning. "Call up all your so-called brothers. You alone are not worthy of fighting me."
Gan Ning was, after all, a genius who had just broken through to the third level of the Heavenly Position. Among the younger generation of the Sacred Land, he was universally acknowledged as one of the five great young lords.
That ranking was no empty title.
Gan Ning carried the natural pride of a genius. Hearing Jiang Chen's words, he was so enraged that he actually laughed.
"Shao Yuan, did you not sleep last night? Are you talking in your sleep in broad daylight? With your mere Emperor realm, I could crush you to death ten times over with a single hand. Believe it or not?"
Jiang Chen smiled languidly and shook his head. "I don't believe it."
Gan Ning's eyes snapped wide. "You don't believe it? Then I'll make you believe it."
As he spoke, Gan Ning's right hand flicked lightly, and his entire right arm seemed to shift from substance into void. A strange, rippling distortion enveloped the whole limb.
In the next instant, Gan Ning's arm became utterly bizarre.
Jiang Chen let out a soft snort. The Evil Golden Eye blazed with golden light, and a powerful surge of divine sense erupted forth like a sharp arrow, hurtling straight at Gan Ning.
When facing enemies now, Jiang Chen adhered to one principle — fight at his own pace.
No matter how many tricks his opponent had, no matter how many Divine Abilities they wielded, he would move according to his own rhythm.
In the end, what martial cultivators truly compared in combat was raw strength and the depth of their foundation.
Gan Ning's divine-patterned arm undoubtedly had some strange properties, but for Jiang Chen, it was utterly irrelevant.
All he needed to do was maintain his own tempo and crush Gan Ning without mercy.
Compared to its original state, the Evil Golden Eye had improved not fivefold or tenfold — far beyond that. Combined with the chain-seal's enhancement of his divine sense, the attack power currently stored within the Evil Golden Eye was absolutely comparable to a full-force strike from a third- or fourth-level Heavenly Position powerhouse, and that was just its standard mode.
If Jiang Chen were to unleash the Evil Golden Eye at full power, sparing no effort for a peak strike, its might would actually surpass the strongest blow of a fourth-level Heavenly Position cultivator.
It had to be said that the Evil Golden Eye had become one of Jiang Chen's most formidable trump cards.
Gan Ning had been building his momentum, raising his arm slightly as he prepared to launch a devastating attack. But before he could gather it, the Evil Golden Eye's assault had already shot toward him in a flash.
"Senior Brother Gan Ning, watch out for his eye attack!" Xiahou Ying suddenly called out from below the stage, disregarding all decorum to warn him.
She had already suffered from it earlier and could not help but speak up.
Originally, Gan Ning would not have given such an attack a second thought. But with Xiahou Ying's warning, combined with a sudden spike of danger in his divine sense, everything changed.
In that lightning-fast instant, Gan Ning's body blurred. He refused to meet Jiang Chen's gaze and instead twisted sideways, narrowly dodging the powerful strike.
Gan Ning's choice left everyone on the arena floor dumbstruck.
They thought they must have seen wrong.
The formidable Senior Brother Gan Ning — the Senior Brother Gan Ning who had just broken through to the third level of the Heavenly Position — had been suppressed by Shao Yuan in the very first exchange?
When faced with Jiang Chen's attack, Senior Brother Gan Ning had not clashed head-on but instead chose to retreat, to dodge the brunt of the blow? Could it be that even with all of Senior Brother Gan Ning's strength, he could not suppress this Shao Yuan?
The boy was merely at the peak of the Emperor realm — half-step Heavenly Position at most.
Half-step Heavenly Position against third-level Heavenly Position should have been an utterly one-sided matchup. How could the first exchange have produced such a shocking reversal?
For a moment, even Jing Yi felt a pang of disappointment. He was one of Gan Ning's most loyal followers and had believed that when Senior Brother Gan Ning took action, he would crush this Shao Yuan boy with ease.
But the scene before him utterly demolished that rosy fantasy.
Gan Ning let out a cold hum, his heart equally shaken. This kid's gaze alone could produce such a devastating attack? Was this a divine sense strike — or a physical one?
What was even more frightening was that Gan Ning could not even discern where the true profundity of this attack lay.
If it was a physical strike, it had almost made his divine sense tremble in fear.
If it was a divine sense strike, Gan Ning felt that taking the full force of it with his physical body would leave him crippled even if it did not kill him.
Though shaken to his core, Gan Ning's rhythm did not change. He let out a cold laugh, raised his arm once more, and from the tip of his index finger, a ripple-like distortion suddenly appeared, spreading outward in concentric rings.
"Boy, don't get cocky. Accept your fate."
"Water Ripple Space!"
The rings of ripples spread like layers of space itself, instantly claiming the area surrounding the arena.
A powerful spatial suction force generated a raging vortex, sweeping toward Jiang Chen.
Jiang Chen snorted softly, activated the Sky Leviathan Flowing Light Escape, and vanished through the void, slipping beyond the range of Gan Ning's attack. With a single leap, he landed on the opposite side of the arena.
At the same time, Jiang Chen wasted no time. His eyes flashed again, and an even more powerful Evil Golden Eye beam shot forth. This time, the speed of his attack was even swifter.