Before, the enemy had been in the shadows while Jiang Chen was out in the open.
But now, the roles were reversed—Jiang Chen was the one lurking in darkness while the enemy stood exposed.
Jiang Chen activated the Heart of Rock, striving to bring his mental state to the level of an ancient well—perfectly still, utterly undisturbed. He even reined in his breathing.
Even so, his palms were slick with a thin film of sweat.
"If that one hadn't let something slip, I'd probably be a corpse by now," Jiang Chen thought with a lingering sense of dread.
It was clear that the Marquis Longteng had spared no expense this time, managing to hire four assassins at the True Qi Realm master level.
Even without the self-inflicted wound gambit, if four True Qi masters had managed to surround him, there would have been a seventy to eighty percent chance they could kill him.
"If anyone's to blame, it's that these assassins were too cautious, too focused on playing it safe," Jiang Chen mused, putting himself in their shoes. He could understand their logic.
After all, this wasn't the outside world. This was the Endless Cavern—a vast underground realm of perpetual darkness, with tunnels branching off in every direction and an incredibly complex terrain.
If the ambush failed and the target escaped, hunting him down in this endless maze would be an enormous undertaking.
The enemy's excessive caution had allowed Jiang Chen to cheat death. But he wasn't about to let his guard down. Of the four True Qi master assassins, he had managed to eliminate two with his stratagem. The remaining two, however—one excelled in close-quarters combat, the other in ambush tactics—appeared to be even stronger than the pair he had already dispatched.
Jiang Chen was currently at the Nine-Meridian True Qi level. Combined with his formidable martial techniques, he could hold his own against a single True Qi master in a straight confrontation without falling behind.
But facing two at once—two cold-blooded killers—was a genuinely dangerous proposition.
Close combat, perhaps he could handle. But that impossibly skilled archer was something you simply could not defend against.
That last arrow, if not for the soft armor's protection, would have claimed his life on the spot. Even with the armor, the tremendous force of the True Qi had still left him with roughly thirty percent injury.
Jiang Chen pressed his back lightly against the rock face, pushing the Wind-listening Ear to its absolute limit.
The drip of water on stone, the bubbles rising through the swamp, the various underground creatures stirring in the earth below—all these minute sounds streamed into his ears, one after another.
"Shoo!"
A powerful whistling sound tore through the air without any warning, hurtling straight toward Jiang Chen's position.
Another arrow!
And the targeting was devastatingly precise, aimed directly at his hiding spot.
It pierced through stone like it was splitting metal, the arrow blazing with True Qi like a trail of fire. It punched straight through the rock wall separating them.
"He found me?" Jiang Chen's shock was immediate. In the fraction of a heartbeat, his body shifted slightly.
Fortunately, the rock wall provided a barrier. Though the arrow's momentum was unstoppable, passing through the stone slowed it—just barely, by a hair's breadth.
And that hair's breadth was exactly what Jiang Chen needed to dodge.
Thud!
The tremendous True Qi pierced clean through the rock wall, carrying the arrow into the opposite side, burying it up to the fletching.
Bzzz!
The arrow embedded in the far wall emitted a piercing, buzzing vibration that sent chips of stone flying in all directions. The rock face cracked outward like a spider's web.
"Incredible True Qi!"
Jiang Chen's expression turned grave. The level of True Qi carried by that arrow was far beyond what even a ten-meridian True Qi master could produce.
"An eleven-meridian True Qi master?" His heart sank further. The Marquis Longteng had truly gone all out—hiring even an eleven-meridian True Qi master?
An eleven-meridian True Qi master was an existence fundamentally different from a ten-meridian one.
In the entire Eastern Kingdom, there probably weren't more than twenty eleven-meridian True Qi masters!
There was no time for Jiang Chen to dwell on it. The lethal arrows kept coming—domineering and relentless, like streaking meteors—shoo, shoo, shoo!
Three more devastating arrows of True Qi screamed toward the rock wall where Jiang Chen was hiding.
"Damn it! As expected of an eleven-meridian True Qi master—if I can detect him, he can detect me too!"
Jiang Chen suddenly realized that the advantages of his Heavenly Eye Divine Pupil and Wind-listening Ear had been completely neutralized in the face of an eleven-meridian powerhouse.
The only thing working in his favor was the terrain. The spot he had chosen to hide in was cluttered with jagged, irregular rock formations—plenty of walls to conceal himself behind.
For the enemy to land a hit, sometimes more than one layer of stone had to be pierced through.
But the rock walls that blocked the enemy's attacks also blocked Jiang Chen's counterstrikes.
Gripping a Heavy Feather Flying Knife in his hand, Jiang Chen fought to control his rising tension.
This was where the benefits of cultivating the Heart of Rock truly shone. The more dire the crisis, the calmer his emotions became.
Almost imperceptibly, Jiang Chen's mental rhythm began to merge with the jagged rocks around him. Each rock was different, yet his mind remained as unyielding as stone.
"Jiang Chen, you can't hide forever!"
Out of the darkness, the rasping, sinister voice of the lead assassin rang out like a demon from hell.
A cold-blooded killer was like a death demon—his methods of slaughter were terrifying enough, but even his voice carried a bone-chilling dread.
But against Jiang Chen's Heart of Rock, this kind of emotional pressure was utterly ineffective.
"Heh heh, Jiang Chen, I've got you. Take this!"
Another voice came—Second Brother, the assassin who had been impersonating Hu Qiu Yue, had used the covering fire of the arrows to close within twenty meters of Jiang Chen!
Shoo!
Yet another arrow, laced with cunningly shaped True Qi, blasted toward Jiang Chen's hiding spot!