Chapter 370: Chapter 183: One-Punch Man
Dong Dongchen sat down again.
Then he let out a long sigh and drained his cup.
"Even if he got eliminated, lasting until the final week is still impressive for a kid from a humble background."
He poured himself another cup, a hint of regret in his voice.
"This might just be his limit."
Just as the two were lamenting, the image on the large screen suddenly flickered.
Match complete. Map loading.
The figures of Lin Ye and his opponent, "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish," appeared simultaneously in a dense, swampy jungle.
Dong Dongchen’s gaze immediately locked onto the figure that had been weighing on his mind.
"He’s changed his weapon. It looks pretty good. At least it’s not that standard-issue piece he had before."
Long Bohan seemed uninterested, paying it no mind.
"It’s normal for a kid his age to shoot up a few centimeters in a month. Let’s see if his actual strength has improved."
On the screen, the ten-second countdown hit zero.
The battle began!
His opponent, "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish," was clearly impulsive—or perhaps, he just had absolute confidence in his Swordsmanship.
The instant the countdown ended, he kicked off the ground and shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. His movements were elusive as his longsword bloomed into a brilliant flourish, thrusting straight for Lin Ye’s throat.
However, in the next moment...
No one saw what happened.
The upper body of the aggressive "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish" exploded into a thick mist of blood without any warning.
Blood and gore splattered everywhere, painting the screen red.
Then, his figure dissolved into a streak of light and vanished.
[Goblin Soldiers Wins!]
The victory notification struck the two men in the private room like a sledgehammer.
The battle was over in an instant.
Dong Dongchen’s expression was dazed, his mouth hanging open wide enough to fit an egg.
Long Bohan’s chopsticks, which he had just reached out to grab some food, froze in mid-air, completely still.
An eerie silence fell over the entire room.
"I... What the fuck?"
Dong Dongchen finally found his voice. He shot up from his seat, rushed over to the screen in a few steps, and worked the virtual panel with both hands.
Replay!
And at ten times slow motion!
The footage rewound rapidly, returning to the second before "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish" got close to Lin Ye.
This time, both men stared at the screen with wide eyes, not daring to blink.
It was the same elusive figure, the same sharp sword strike.
And then...
BAM!
The chest of "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish" first caved in abruptly. Then, a horrifying, bloody hole appeared from nowhere. Finally, his entire upper body burst apart.
From start to finish, they still couldn’t see what Goblin Soldiers had done.
Fifty times slow motion!
Dong Dongchen also zoomed the image to its maximum!
Dong Dongchen felt his limbs start to tingle.
It was an unprecedented excitement.
It was the desperate eagerness to prove his own judgment right!
The footage rewound again. This time, the playback speed was slowed to its absolute limit.
They finally saw it.
The very instant "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish" began his thrust...
The figure, who had been standing in the same spot from start to finish without so much as shifting his feet, simply raised his right hand and threw a punch.
It was a perfectly ordinary straight punch.
He didn’t use the longspear on his back.
There wasn’t even the signature burst of Qi and Blood characteristic of a Vein Opening Realm Martial Artist.
Just a simple punch, as unremarkable as one thrown in a street brawl.
The fist landed squarely on the chest of "Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish."
And then, an instant kill.
Long Bohan could no longer maintain his calm and collected demeanor; his face was written with utter disbelief.
"What was the skill level of that ’Wants to Eat Sweet and Sour Fish’?"
He turned to Dong Dongchen, his voice graver than ever.
Dong Dongchen said, "Late-Stage Meridian Opening Realm Great Perfection! The ones ranked in the five to six thousand range in the New Star Sequence are all elites of this realm! The kind who could break through at any moment!"
"Late-Stage Meridian Opening Realm Great Perfection..."
Long Bohan repeated the words, the shock on his face deepening.
"To instantly kill a Vein Opening Realm Great Perfection with a normal punch..."
A stunning theory took shape in his mind.
"He’s no longer in the Vein Opening Realm."
Long Bohan stated decisively.
"He broke through!"
Dong Dongchen’s heart pounded. "You’re saying... he’s reached the Gang Condensation Realm?!"
Reaching the Gang Condensation Realm at his age is exceedingly rare in the entire Great Xia!
"It’s highly likely!"
Long Bohan’s gaze was profound.
"If he really did participate in the Qiming General Star Training Camp and lasted until the final week, then breaking through to the Gang Condensation Realm during that nearly month-long, hellish training is entirely possible!"
He paused, then added, "This year is extraordinary. Our Great Xia... no, the entire world!"
"Young martial arts geniuses are emerging in droves! In previous years, anyone who broke through to the Gang Condensation Realm during the training camp was basically guaranteed to graduate."
"But this year... the competition is far more intense than ever before. Even if you break through to the Gang Condensation Realm, it’s still highly possible to be weeded out in the final placement matches!"
While the two were talking, the image on the screen switched again.
[Goblin Soldiers, Matchmaking...]
Soon, a new opponent appeared.
The spectator view popped up, but before Dong Dongchen could even open his mouth to introduce Lin Ye’s second opponent...
The next second, the exact same scene from before played out again.
The moment the opponent’s figure drew near, it instantly exploded into a mist of blood.
After reviewing the slow-motion replay, it was the same simple yet incomparably tyrannical one-punch kill.
At that moment, they looked at each other and saw an emotion in the other’s eyes that could only be called fanaticism.
That peerless dark horse who had once stunned them, the one for whom they were willing to stake their reputations...
He was back!
And he was immeasurably stronger than he had been a month ago!
These opponents at the Late Stage Great Perfection of the Vein Opening Realm didn’t even qualify to make him draw the longspear from his back!
Facing the other prodigies of the New Star Sequence, he simply blew them apart with one punch—brutal and absolute!
It was impossible to imagine the terrifying spectacle that would unfold when he finally got serious and drew that longspear!
The two simply stopped talking, eating their food while staring intently at the screen.
Third match, one punch.
Fourth match, one punch.
Fifth match, still one punch.
「Over an hour later.」
On the screen, a massive hole was blasted through the chest of Goblin Soldiers’ twenty-first opponent, who then dissolved into a stream of light amid a sky full of blood mist.
In that hour, he had already achieved an unstoppable twenty-one-match winning streak!
Including his previous record,
the number of consecutive wins for the ID "Goblin Soldiers" had now reached a terrifying 145!
HISS...
Long Bohan drew a sharp breath, forgetting to put down the wine cup in his hand.
He turned to Dong Dongchen and asked a question that even he found absurd.
"With this level of strength... how was he eliminated?"
Dong Dongchen almost spat out the wine in his mouth.
"How should I know! You’re the one who kept saying he was eliminated, man!"
"Could it be..."
Long Bohan’s brow furrowed deeply. "Did he attend the training camp in the Imperial Capital or our one here in Yanjing?"
"If he ran into those two monsters among monsters, Xiao Lingchen and Xia Lianxue, then being eliminated would at least be plausible."
Long Bohan immediately shook his head. "Not the Yanjing camp. I’ve seen the final list, and he wasn’t on it."
"When he contacted me back then, he told me his name was Lin Ye."
Dong Dongchen’s eyes lit up. "Then can you check if there’s a Lin Ye in any of the other provinces’ camps?"
"I can’t check."
Long Bohan said helplessly, "That information is classified until the camp is over. Only after graduation is the full list of graduates released to the public."
"I was only able to see the Yanjing camp’s list because my dad is responsible for selecting a few young geniuses from the Firewood Martial Hall to attend..."
Upon hearing this, Dong Dongchen felt as if a million ants were crawling all over him.
Just then, a new matchup appeared on the large screen, and his spirits suddenly lifted.
[Goblin Soldiers (Rank 4786) VS It’s Mi Yue, Not Mi Yue (Rank 3564)]
"What the hell?" Dong Dongchen exclaimed, sitting bolt upright.
"I recognize that name, ’It’s Mi Yue, Not Mi Yue.’ She’s the daughter of the Mi Family from Jiangnan."
"If I remember correctly, she already successfully broke through to the Early Stage of the Gang Condensation Realm two weeks ago!"
"Even though she only just broke through and her foundation isn’t stable, the Gang Condensation Realm and the Vein Opening Realm are two completely different concepts!"
"This should finally force him to show some of his true strength, right?"
On the large screen, the countdown had begun.
Map loaded.
They were in the ruins of an ancient battlefield, with yellow sand filling the sky and tattered banners snapping in the wind.
Lin Ye and his opponent appeared on the desolate battlefield at almost the same time.
"Oh?"
On the other side of the screen, Mi Yue was a woman with a bewitching figure and a seductive face. When she saw Lin Ye’s ID, her red lips curved slightly as she let out a flirtatious chuckle, her voice coming through clearly over the open channel.
"Well, aren’t you a handsome one."
"You’ll go easy on me, won’t you?"
Her voice was velvety and cloyingly sweet, carrying a seductive charm that could make a man’s bones turn to jelly.
Dong Dongchen pursed his lips.
"Typical of the Mi Family. It’s the same old routine, hasn’t changed one bit."
Long Bohan didn’t say anything, his gaze locked on the screen.
He knew that women like her were often the most vicious when they struck.
Sure enough, the instant the words left her mouth, her flirtatious face turned ice-cold!
Her killing intent was palpable!
Mi Yue had asked him to go easy on her, yet she exploded into motion the instant the countdown ended, pushing her speed to the limit.
Her feet touched the sand without leaving a single trace as she drifted toward Lin Ye like a phantom.
The two daggers in her hands, cloaked in her Water Attribute Gang Sha, glowed with an eerie blue light and radiated a piercing cold.
The tips of the blades pulsed with a sharp, cold light as they aimed straight for the point between Lin Ye’s eyebrows!
’Distract the opponent with words, then launch a sneak attack!’
However, just an instant before the deadly daggers were about to touch Lin Ye...
Lin Ye’s figure, right before Mi Yue’s eyes and under the watchful gaze of Dong Dongchen and Long Bohan, simply vanished into thin air!
"What?!"
Alarm bells screamed in Mi Yue’s mind as a chill originating from the depths of her soul shot up her spine!
She had no time to think about how he had done it; combat instincts drove her to make the most correct split-second decision.
VMMMM!
Gang Sha, like flowing azure water, surged from within her, instantly condensing on the surface of her body to form a magnificent and sturdy suit of blue armor.
Watery ripples flowed across the armor’s surface, encasing her entire body.
But in the very next instant after her Gangsha Armor took form...
BOOM—!!!
The blue Gangsha Armor on Mi Yue’s body instantly disintegrated and vanished.
Then, a massive hole was blasted clean through her chest!
Her figure froze in place, her expression locked in that final moment of horror and disbelief.
Then, her entire body turned into a stream of light, dissipating into the wind and sand.
[Goblin Soldiers Wins!]
Only then did Long Bohan and Dong Dongchen notice with stunned amazement that a terrifying, bottomless hole had also appeared in the rock cliff behind where Mi Yue had originally been standing!
The force of that punch, after penetrating the Gangsha Armor and physical body of a Gang Condensation Realm Martial Artist, had continued unabated to blast through the distant cliff!
And still... it was just an ordinary punch!
There was still no sign of any surging Gang Sha around his body.
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