Tang Hong and Liu Wencai were both gritting their teeth, unable to resist shuffling a few steps closer to the arena platform — only to be heartlessly blocked by the examiners.
When Long Juxue saw this, she sneered and shook her head. "Mud-dwelling commoners, through and through. They can't hold a candle on the real stage. Once they face a half-decent opponent, they're finished."
Clearly, Long Juxue had already sentenced Jiang Chen to death in her mind.
Lei Gangyang let out a savage grin, his confidence absolute. The smugness of a victor was already plastered across his face.
However —
Within the vortex of electric serpents, Jiang Chen's silhouette stood tall and solitary, his posture unbowed. Beneath the sky-spanning canopy of crackling purple lightning, he might as well have been standing in a light drizzle — not a hair out of place, his expression unchanged.
Jiang Chen simply lifted the tip of his blade, pointing it toward the sky from afar.
The next instant, every last electric serpent seemed to answer some mystical call, transforming into streams of violet energy that hurtled toward the blade's point, converging at impossible speed.
The blade tip radiated a strange, almost hypnotic pull, devouring every electric serpent without exception. Countless streams of purple qi were siphoned toward it, one after another after another.
The sky full of wild, fang-and-claw lashing electric serpents was entirely absorbed by Jiang Chen's nameless saber in the span of a single breath.
Jiang Chen's eyes blazed with the brilliance of twin stars, shooting out a cold, piercing light. He drew the blade tip across the air and leveled it at Lei Gangyang, his tone still perfectly indifferent: "Any other tricks up your sleeve?"
Electric serpents?
Jiang Chen had long since tempered his physical body with the Thundercloud Wood — granting him innate resistance to lightning. Moreover, in his previous life he had mastered countless techniques for controlling thunder. This purple lightning, while spectacular and imposing, was ultimately conjured by a Spirit Realm seventh-level warrior. For Jiang Chen, manipulating it was hardly a challenge.
With that simple draw of the blade, his Golden Thunder Body had absorbed every last trace of the purple lightning.
What?!
Lei Gangyang's face drained of color. His proudest technique — the Thunder Electric Serpents — had been neutralized by his opponent with absurd ease.
This Jiang Chen…
Was he even human?
No matter how composed Lei Gangyang prided himself on being, no matter how much confidence he carried, in this moment, panic was unavoidable.
One after another, his most devastating trump cards had been shattered. And shattered so completely, so decisively.
"Lei Gangyang — I told you I'd let you have ten moves, and I've given you even more than that. Now, take one of mine!"
The nameless saber seemed to awaken like an ancient, primordial beast, fusing with Jiang Chen in an instant. A heaven-shaking aura erupted almost instantaneously.
"The ultimate form of the Reverse Ocean Current Blade — Sea Withering!"
This was a strike of eons, of seas drying and stones crumbling — the finality of the end of all things.
The meaning behind this single strike had already transcended reincarnation, transcended the ages. It was an absolute slash across the boundaries of time and space, as if cleaving its way in from the primordial dawn.
This blade seemed destined to carve into the river of time itself, becoming eternal and imperishable.
In that instant, every truth, every ounce of essence, every spark of inspiration Jiang Chen had ever gleaned from the Reverse Ocean Current Blade surged to the surface of his mind, coalescing into this unprecedented, peak strike.
With this blade unleashed, it seemed as though it could sever the flow of time, sever the mortal world, sever the vast ocean — sever all things.
In a heartbeat, the arena below fell utterly silent.
Even the Four Great Sovereigns were completely lost in the profundity of this single slash.
They could not comprehend it. They could not see through it. The transcendent mystery of this blade had utterly surpassed their understanding of blade techniques, utterly exceeded the bounds of the Sixteen Kingdoms.
Shhk!
Jiang Chen's most supreme strike since his rebirth stripped Lei Gangyang of every last thought in his mind.
The blade had not yet arrived, but his will was already gone.
In that moment, Lei Gangyang stood like a wooden puppet, completely devoid of any reaction.
Shhk!
The blade's radiance pierced into his body, as if vanishing into the void.
A streak of light shot into Lei Gangyang's body. A sudden thought flashed through Jiang Chen's mind, and he subtly checked his blade's momentum — that razor edge of light advanced, then retreated, pulling back at the very instant it would have severed Lei Gangyang's lifeforce.
Shhk!
The blade's edge sliced across Lei Gangyang's skin, blood erupting in a spray of crimson.
Lei Gangyang's entire body shuddered, and a look of utter disbelief blazed in his eyes. In that moment, his consciousness had already descended into the realm of death — he had been certain he would die.
Yet he never expected that Jiang Chen's blade would pull back from the brink, leaving him a thread of life. Jiang Chen had forcibly dragged him back from the threshold of death itself.
It was not that Jiang Chen couldn't kill him — it was that Jiang Chen had shown mercy with his blade.
Lei Gangyang stood frozen, his mouth filled with bitterness, every trace of ferocity and hatred completely drained from his eyes.
He was domineering, he was powerful, he was arrogant — but he was no fool. He understood with perfect clarity that had Jiang Chen not harbored that single moment of goodwill, he, Lei Gangyang, would have been utterly obliterated by that blade's edge.
That strike had been like an antelope hanging its horns on a cliff — traceless and ungraspable — like an immortal descending from beyond the heavens, like something born from the primordial dawn. He could not comprehend it, and he could not have blocked it.
Even if he were given ten more chances, the result would be exactly the same: death.