THE MARTIAL KING, VOLUME 6 - Season 14 Episode 93

Zen had already completed the eleventh round of the challenge. He stood on his platform, observing Layla’s battle.

He could not force back a shake of his head as he watched.

Layla was using some sort of profound Sword Cry Technique. The place rang with the blood-curdling cries of her opponents. It was brutal torture, the violence extending to the spectators.

Soon enough, the old man in the cotton clothes came forward to put a stop to it.
The blood mist exploded and the martial artists were kicked out of the Illusion Space.

The match was over; however, the image of pain was something that would haunt them forever. The memory was paralyzing, as if they were reliving the same ordeal.

Their faces had turned deathly pale, a few of them not managing to keep hold of their consciousness and fainting.

The martial artists on the other side of the Willow Island bore witness to this with growing rage.

The violence was needless. Layla was a top talent of the thirteen palaces. That had been established, but there was no need to go to the lengths of torture in which she subjected her opponents, since everyone here was a training partner. How could she use them as a display of power?

“That little bitch!”

“I will defeat her in the second round to teach her a lesson!”

“But we can only send out the martial artists from the second group for the second round. With her strength, I’m not certain they will be able to stop her…”

“Even if they can’t stop her, they will have to put her in her place!”

The plaza was abuzz with sounds of disorderly voices and mutters.

The tens of thousands of people in the plaza were divided into dozens of groups and ranked according to their strength and cultivation levels.

The second group of martial artists would be facing the twelfth round of trial in the Illusion Space. In terms of strength, they had a slightly higher rank than the first group.

At this time, a youth garbed in white walked out from the crowd. “Everyone, quiet down!” he spoke in a loud voice.

A hush fell over the plaza at his words.
This young man in white was not that strong. His cultivation was at the seventh level of the Life and Death Realm, and he was assigned to the first group. Zen and Layla were the last two at the other side, and there were quite many martial artists in the first group. He was inferior to the others, so there was no chance for him to fight.

They surely sent their best warriors to fight Zen and Layla, so the trials the two underwent were more difficult than those of the previous martial artists.

The young man in white was named Adrian Rao. He was weaker than the others, but he had a nimble mind, brimming with resourcefulness.

Previously, when they had been grouped up, he had given a lot of sound opinions and devised strategies with other martial artists that led to their victory over the others from the thirteen palaces.

“Adrian, what are you saying?” a martial artist inquired.

Adrian turned to him, his eyes glinting with certainty. “It will be impossible to defeat these two martial artists in the twelfth round, but I have an idea. I hope that you all can cooperate. It might give us a good chance.”

“Humph, their strength is something else. Whether we follow your advice or not, we will have to throw our lives away just the same,” a martial artist said with disdain, his voice edging on defeat. Hearing this, Adrian just smiled faintly and shook his head. “That can’t be right,” he answered.

“They are the most outstanding martial artists in the thirteen palaces, so they will definitely not stop at the twelfth, or even the thirteenth or the fourteenth round. In other words, it is impossible to stop them. Their skills are far beyond ours. Not to mention that the cultivation methods they practice and the cards they have in their hands are not something that we can match. We have all seen it with our own eyes. They were able to defeat martial artists several levels higher than them. It wouldn’t be a far stretch to say they could even easily kill us in the next few rounds!”

“So what?” a martial artist asked disinterestedly.

The faint smile on Adrian’s face did not falter. “I can force out their trump cards,” he said. “This way, the rest of you can counterattack with your own martial skills.”

Everyone went silent for a moment at his proposition, until a voice broke out of the group. “Forcing these two people to reveal their trump cards? We can’t even tell what kind of cultivation method that girl used, so how can we force her to use her trump card?”

Adrian turned to the direction of the voice and answered, “She only used the Sword Cry Technique. Perhaps the inheritance she received is better, and with her special skill, she managed to make use of the Sword Cry Technique to the extreme.” His voice was confident as he continued, “I know how to break the Sword Cry Technique.”

Some martial artists who possessed great talent found it difficult to improve their cultivation and strength. However, their skills lay in a different area altogether. They were known as think-tank type martial artists, and had a deep understanding of the laws, cultivation methods, legends, treasures, and even the patterns. They could read them like the palms of their own hands. Adrian was one of them.

It did not take much to convince everyone. After all, they had already been pushed to a wall.

Some of them were still unconvinced, but Adrian’s plan was their best chance. All of them were of the younger generation. Not one among them was willing to compromise on their own talent and humiliate themselves.

Adrian sensed the crowd’s approval as no one else followed with questions. He began laying out the details of the plan. “To my knowledge, the use of the Sword Cry Technique relies on the frequency of vibrations to produce special sound waves.”

There were some powerful martial artists in the plaza. Quite a number of them were at the Soul Sea Realm, with some at the advanced stage.

They were among the tenth group, or even the eleventh and twelfth groups, and they managed to defeat formidable opponents from the thirteen palaces in the twentieth round.

They remained silent as they listened to Adrian.

The information he had just provided them was very useful indeed. If they coordinated with one another well, they had a good chance of forcing Zen and Layla to reveal their trump cards. Should this be successful, it would be much easier for them to launch attacks in the nineteenth and twentieth rounds.

Before he brought up his opinion, Adrian had already observed Zen and Layla, silently scrutinizing their abilities, characteristics, and preferences.

“That martial artist called Zen Luo makes use of the edge of the long sword in his hand. He has only revealed his weapon, and his strength is still unknown,” Adrian said. “Those of you from the second group who are confident in your own cultivation methods, you may fight him yourselves.”
Adrian did not exactly know the figures released from Zen’s sword. However, the sharpness of the Nether God Shadow did not escape his sharp, perceptive eyes.

Without further information, the best approach would be using cultivation methods to create obstacles for Zen. This would test his strength and his skills.

After devising his strategy for dealing with Zen and Layla and discussing it with the others, he seated himself in a corner with a short wooden stick poking out from one corner of his mouth. He fixed his eyes at the image on the Picture Slab, squinting for better focus. He saw that Zen and Layla had stepped on a disk again.

On the surface of the disk was a word written in clear text “Twelve”.

It was the twelfth round.

Zen did not know how many rounds of trials existed in the Illusion Space. However, at the current stage, he was determined to use his Nether God Shadow and finish everything all the way.

The Nether God Shadow was efficient when dealing with many people. Zen controlled every shadow, each possessing different techniques.

Manipulating them required the use of a lot of soul power. However, Zen’s soul had already stepped into the Jasper Fighting Soul Realm, so it was not a big consideration.

But after the twelfth round had begun, Zen had discovered something strange.

During the eleventh round, the martial artists he encountered were all different. However, this round was much different. All of the martial artists in the twelfth round seemed to be proficient in movement techniques.

The moment Zen released his Nether God Shadows, his opponents used different kinds of Law Power to dodge his attacks.

Some used the Space Law to create illusions, some used the Earth Law to take cover under the earth and make themselves invisible, and some made use of the Wind Law to fly.

What was unusual about all of this was that despite using different approaches, none of them was fighting him directly.
Was this an obstacle that the old man had intentionally set up? Or had someone devised a plot against him?

Zen speculated the possibilities for a moment, his face wearing a pensive expression, but soon enough, a faint smile appeared on his face. It did not matter what their goal was; he only needed to follow his own plan.

The other martial artists’ movement techniques were powerful, so he could no longer stay where he was.

As he began to move, he was pulled back by something from underneath. Looking down, he discovered that a brown vine had appeared beneath his feet and firmly tied him to the ground.

‘It will take more than a flimsy vine to tie me up, ‘ Zen thought to himself.

Ignoring the coiled strand on his leg, he took a step forward. At first, he thought of forcing the vine to tear apart with the impact of his movement. However, he did not imagine that the vine was extremely tenacious. Not only did it remain intact, it even grew longer as it moved along with his body.

Whoosh!

With a backhand slash, the vine snapped in half. Immediately, two more vines sprang from the ground and once again restrained Zen, gripping him in their tight hold. It was at this same time that the martial artists who had been dodging his attacks began to charge towards him from all directions.

This scene had left the martial artists of the thirteen palaces bewildered and slightly impressed. It was beyond their expectations that these fellows would work together so well.

Even the lord of the Sunset World and the others had surprised expressions on their faces. One of the palace masters said faintly, “Someone from the Willow Island must have offered advice. I hate to admit it, but it is a clever plan.”