THE MARTIAL KING, VOLUME 6 - Season 16 Episode 24

Ezra’s bloodshot eyes glowed an intense cyan as he fully activated the Bronze Blood.

The effects were instantaneous on his body: thick, snake-like veins popped underneath his skin as his meridians significantly bulked up on his arms and his muscles.

The amount of power within him would be enough to overturn mountains in the Lower World.

But not here. His strength wasn’t nearly enough to pull the two axes out of Zen’s hands.

‘Just a bit more… He should’ve already reached his limit!’

Ezra thought, urging himself to go on.

“Slash at him now!”

Ezra roared. Since he couldn’t pull the bloody axes away then he would have to recalibrate his strategy. What if he pushed instead?

With a roar, Ezra threw his entire weight onto his bulked-up arms and violently pushed the bloody axes towards Zen.

The sudden change should’ve caught the young man off-guard, perhaps even made him drop the axes.

But that wasn’t what happened. Whether he pushed or pulled, Ezra’s efforts remained ineffective against Zen.

“Hey, dude!” Zen called. Ezra frowned when he saw the mocking smile on his opponent’s face. He was then caught off guard by the sudden force that Zen exerted into his hands.

“Crack!”

The bloody axes that he had been holding suddenly started to split and crack along their surface.

“Plop!”

The force was devastating on the axes which quickly shattered into fine fragments right in front of everyone’s eyes.

Ezra could only watch in despair as the mighty axes were reduced into wooden stumps.

These bloody axes were his clan’s greatest treasure but there was another cause of his frustration.

It was important to remember that they were in the Illusion Battlefield where nobody died and no weapon was damaged for real. Everything and everyone were mere projections and whatever weapon was damaged within the arena, whether it was a simple stick or a clan’s treasured weapon, was only a copy. The real one was perfectly safe and sound outside the battlefield. This was why divine and supreme divine weapons could be used by mere Soul Sea Realm warriors. Such weapons of caliber were often only wielded and owned by world lords, grand world lords, or Supreme Lords. It was only in the Illusion Battlefield that lower-ranked warriors had the opportunity to take these weapons out for a spin. The bloody axes that had unfortunately shattered into a million pieces just now were still safe and sound in the real world.

So why was Ezra finding it so hard to stomach the loss of his weapon?

It was because of the fact that Zen was able to crush a secondary first-rank divine weapon with his bare hands and Ezra wasn’t willing to accept the horrifying strength his opponent had.

The young man in front of him couldn’t be this strong, right? He couldn’t be. But as Ezra gazed at the two wooden sticks in his hands, the disbelief gradually turned into some kind of deep-seated fear. He looked up at Zen and couldn’t help but think to himself, ‘This guy is a monster.’

“It’s over!”

Zen shouted, not wanting to waste too much time with Ezra. His main goal was to get as many Illusion Points as possible and defeating Ezra meant getting plenty of points. He was about to hit the mother lode!

Ezra’s power was considered extraordinary among the ogres but to Zen, he was even weaker than the Celestial Mouse.

He could never hope to compare with Zen who, time and again, had emerged victorious in fights against warriors of the same level and above.

Zen approached Ezra and quickly pointed his finger at his forehead.

“Puff!” There was a crisp sound as the latter’s head exploded into a horrifying mix of brain, bone, and blood and another dull thump as his headless body fell onto the floor.

“Boom!”

There was a loud boom as his body slowly dissipated and a red dot of light immediately shot back to the main city.
At the same time, a large number of yellow Illusion Points flew out from where Ezra’s corpse had been and shot straight into Zen’s body.

Ezra had accumulated around seventy to eighty thousand Illusion Points and his death by Zen’s hand meant that the young man now obtained half of Ezra’s hard-earned wealth.

It was no surprise that most of the ogres that stood watch on top of the city wall were currently grumbling amongst themselves at Zen’s victory.

They just couldn’t help but feel jealous of his success.

“A total of thirty-seven thousand and four hundred points. If I add the points I got before then that means I’ve now surpassed forty thousand! In this supreme world, my ranking would be at… the five hundred and twenty thousandth place. And I rank number twenty-four million in the Illusion Battlefield.”

These rankings were no easy feat and were already considered high among normal warriors.

The participants for this competition numbered at the trillions after all and most of them were geniuses and talented warriors themselves.

However, this wasn’t enough for Zen. There remained more than twenty million Soul Sea Realm warriors as his competitors and he was not willing to lag behind any of them.

His gaze drifted upon the ogres who watched from the city walls.

Ezra’s activation of his Bronze Blood earlier was an intimidating feat, but Zen’s defeat of their talent surely made a bigger impression upon all of them. How could they ever dare leave the city now?
However, the world was filled with all kinds of people.

Warriors generally came here in the Illusion Battlefield to seek glory and validation. Here, they fought with others and accumulated Illusion Points, challenging themselves and pushing their bodies to the limit in every single fight to emerge at the top. Such was the way of martial arts.

“Shoop! Shoop!”

Zen was about to leave when several ogres suddenly rushed out of the city walls and ran directly towards him as a kind of ambush.

However, the young man remained calm and stared at them indifferently. These ogres were only at the beginning stage of the Soul Sea Realm and posed no threat to him whatsoever. Besides, these were free Illusion Points and Zen wasn’t just going to pass on such a wonderful opportunity.

They were the ones who jumped into the arena to challenge Zen to see just how far the gap was between them and a strong warrior such as him.

And they were about to find out just how big the gap was. Zen, despite being at the same Soul Sea Realm level, could perfectly defeat an ordinary talented, Spirit Supreme Realm master. These ordinary talented Soul Sea Realm warriors were nothing to him.

The ‘fight’, if one could even call it that, ended as soon as it began. The ogres all disappeared into tiny red dots that quickly flew back to the main city before they could even realize that they had already been eliminated.

Zen remained standing in the middle of the arena, almost as if in a daze.

Was he tired? Did fighting with so many ogres finally sap his strength? No, it was merely because he was currently in a state of utter disbelief and disappointment. He knew the number of Illusion Points those ogres had would not be big but he didn’t expect it to be so low! Four warriors at the Soul Sea Realm and they only had a combined total of two Illusion Points!

He got one from each of the two while the other pair did not even have one! And yet they had the audacity to actually come for him!

Unbeknownst to him, these warriors, though crazy, were also hardworking. The moment they were resurrected and revived, they immediately looked for someone to kill. If they died, they would simply resurrect back in the main city.

Once up and running, they would immediately go back into hunting another warrior to fight with, forgoing rest for experience.

They belonged to the crazy bunch who only cared about cultivation and nothing else. They didn’t care about the Illusion Points and only wanted to take advantage of the Illusion Battlefield to cultivate. The stronger their opponents, the better trials they would get.

Just as he had sent those four ogres back to the main city, another three charged towards him.

He wasn’t that much interested in this group considering his experience with the former. It was evident that they only had a few Illusion Points based on the aura that they exuded.

Zen didn’t have the time to bother with them so he quickly took a step through space and disappeared right under everyone’s noses.

With his departure, the warriors on top of the walls sighed while those on the outside began to move once again.

Meanwhile, back to Zen: he had once again encountered another ogre, almost at the same level as Ezra’s, who was continuously harvesting Illusion Points from ordinary warriors outside the city walls.

He was cocky but it was his unfortunate luck that he ran into Zen who was very interested in his stock of Illusion Points.
Like all of Zen’s other opponents: the ogre quickly turned into a red dot and flew back into the main city.

Zen had encountered two ‘sheep’ outside the main city, one being Ezra and the other being this ogre. He absorbed an additional thirty thousand points this time and his accumulated number of Illusion Points had now reached around seventy thousand. His ranking in this supreme world was already at the four hundred and ten-thousandth place while it was at the nineteen millionth place in the Illusion Battlefield.

This was incredibly high but still not enough to be noticed. He still had a long way to go to reach the top.

Zen was hard at work harvesting as many points as he could. The warriors he faced were the sort to spend a lot of time fighting over a target for mere fifty points but he was someone who got tens of thousands by easily defeating one skilled warrior.

However, it wasn’t just him who made his return.

There was a saying: grass was eaten by sheep, and sheep were eaten by wolves.
Zen was a wolf who fed on these fat sheep who gave him lots of Illusion Points.

However, he wasn’t the only wolf in town and he was about to meet another of his kind very soon.