Volume One: The Youngest Among Three Hundred Chapter 131: Third-Grade Art Initiation

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After enduring a dizzying sensation of the world spinning around him—much like the woozy, muddled feeling he experienced whenever he visited the Fragrant Pavilion—Chen Changan’s hazy consciousness finally stabilized. Looking around, he saw nothing but towering ice ridges and snow-covered mountains. The freezing wind howled, its bitter chill piercing to the bone, making him sneeze again and again.

“Hahaha! Hahahaha!”

A burst of wild laughter rang out. Amid the raging wind, Prince Jing’an Bai Jinghu’s robes snapped violently. He slowly descended from the sky with both arms spread wide. His right fist clenched toward Chen Changan, the crack of grinding knuckles echoing through the air.

“What? Did you really think Cao Wu and the others could protect you and let you escape unscathed? If so, you’re far too naive.”

Bai Jinghu’s sudden appearance put Chen Changan instantly on full alert. Recalling everything that had happened outside Prince Jing’an’s residence, he ventured, “This place… isn’t the real world?”

“That’s right!”

Bai Jinghu looked at him as though he were nothing more than an ant.

“This is a second space detached from reality. It lies within the prison created by my Original Art, Spirit Prison. And you are not here in your true body—only a wisp of your soul, or rather, a consciousness forcibly extracted from your body.”

“But if I destroy your soul here, the Chen Changan in the real world will die as well. In truth, there’s hardly any difference.”

“Damn it!”

Chen Changan cursed under his breath and drew Hidden Name. His wrist trembled slightly. It did not matter that his opponent was a counterfeit Late Profound expert whose realm had been forced upward through drugs and acupuncture. Even a counterfeit Sixth-Grade Harmonization expert was beyond what a Second-Grade Soul Tempering cultivator like him could withstand.

But… he really did not want to die!

“Right! I’ll go to the Fragrant Pavilion and ask Sister Taohua for a few boosts. Once I’m stronger, I’ll come back out.”

As the old saying went, anyone who had a cheat and failed to use it was a fool. With that thought, Chen Changan immediately tried to activate it. To his surprise—or rather, to his despair—no matter how he urged it, nothing happened.

“The Fragrant Pavilion!”

Even after he shouted the name aloud, he remained trapped in the icebound spirit prison. The surrounding scene did not change in the slightest.

“What the hell…”

Chen Changan cursed furiously. It seemed the Fragrant Pavilion only supported travel between reality and the virtual world. When he was already inside an illusion, he could not pass through it.

So… his cheat was useless?

Chen Changan’s eyes went dark, and he nearly collapsed.

Hearing him shout about the Fragrant Pavilion without understanding why, Prince Jing’an sneered coldly. “Hmph. I know you’re afraid of death, but is there any need to shout so wildly? Have you no dignity?”

“This…”

Chen Changan put on a shameless grin. “Your Highness, there’s really no need for us to take things to the death. Why don’t we just put on a show and call it even?”

“Bullshit!” Prince Jing’an roared. “If I hadn’t activated the Twenty-Seventh Original Art, Spirit Prison, I might have been able to fight my way out and escape safely. But by activating Spirit Prison, I’ll have to kill you within this prison and then return to my body. My strength will certainly be completely exhausted by then. With Cao Wu, Cheng Mulong, and Ying Hong attacking me together, I’ll surely die.”

“But I still chose to do it, because you deserve to die!”

“For decades, I schemed and exhausted myself to build the Dragon-Slaying Society into what it is today. I was only one step away from seizing the throne. Once I obtained the contents of the Changning Record and used them as leverage to control the civil and military officials, I could have launched my uprising.”

His emotions suddenly surged. Veins bulged across his forehead as he threw back his head and roared, “But all of it was because of you! Everything that should have become reality was ruined and reduced to smoke and shadows. Tell me… don’t you deserve to die?”

The instant the final word left his mouth, Bai Jinghu tore off his outer robe. Its broad sleeves created drag and slowed him down. With a sharp crack, he shattered the ice beneath his feet and shot toward Chen Changan like a cannonball.

“Holy crap!”

Chen Changan shouted in alarm, raised his sword, and likewise stamped against the ground, borrowing the force to leap straight upward. He barely avoided the attack.

Bai Jinghu’s blow missed. He was momentarily stunned before exclaiming, “By all rights, the soul and consciousness of any warrior below the Fifth-Grade Divine Tempering Realm should become extremely weak after being forcibly extracted from the body and brought into a second space. Why are you… even more energetic than you were in reality?”

He did not understand.

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He did not know that Chen Changan’s soul and spirit had long since been tempered to extraordinary resilience through his training in the Fragrant Pavilion.

Of course, that could not erase the difference in strength between an Eighth-Grade expert and a Second-Grade cultivator. At most, it was enough to cause Bai Jinghu a little surprise.

At that moment, three streaks of strange radiance, each a different color, forcibly pierced through the walls of this world from outside. Their brilliance had dimmed considerably, and they drifted toward Chen Changan.

“Hmph! You think you can force your Original Art manifestations into this place? Dream on!”

Bai Jinghu swept out his palm and struck the three lights apart in midair. He watched Chen Changan fall, no longer restrained by gravity, and his lips curled into a sinister smile.

“Today, you will die without fail.”

With a flash, his figure vanished from its original position. He teleported behind Chen Changan at a frequency utterly contrary to common sense, arriving almost at the same instant as the word “fail” left his lips.

If this was not supersonic speed, nothing was.

“Ah!”

Chen Changan’s heart tightened. He hurriedly turned and prepared to thrust Hidden Name, but before his thoughts could command his arm to move, Bai Jinghu—an expert of the counterfeit Eighth-Grade Late Profound Realm—had already clamped his right wrist in an iron grip.

With a sharp twist, Hidden Name fell from his hand and plunged into the boundless snow and ice below.

“Bang!”

Bai Jinghu immediately poured all his strength into a punch that struck Chen Changan in the left cheekbone. His entire face was blasted into a grotesque distortion. Acid surged from his mouth, throat, and stomach.

He should have been sent flying miserably, but the instant his body tilted, Bai Jinghu seized and dragged him back. Without the slightest hesitation, another punch came crashing down.

“Bang!”

“Bang!”

“Bang!”

The dull thuds of fist against flesh rang out one after another, like someone pounding meat into a bloody paste. Chen Changan’s head was knocked away, then dragged back, knocked away, then dragged back again. The scene was brutally horrific. Bright red blood sprayed from his mouth in successive bursts, scattering through the air like clusters of crimson flowers before falling onto the snow, stark and dazzling.

After beating him for a full three or four minutes, Bai Jinghu finally felt satisfied. He swung his arm and hurled Chen Changan high into the sky. At the same time, he leaped upward and flashed to an even greater height.

When Chen Changan’s momentum carried him upward to within arm’s reach, Bai Jinghu poured every ounce of his strength into his right fist. His face twisted savagely as he let out a furious roar and slammed the punch into Chen Changan’s chest.

Boom!

The enormous force tore through his frail body. Far below, on the ground nearly a thousand meters away, it shook open a deep crater dozens of yards across. Endless glaciers and snow-covered ridges collapsed in rapid succession, as though the altitude of the entire world had been shaved down by half in an instant. Heavy snow rolled outward in every direction, creating a scene of overwhelming visual force.

Chen Changan’s body convulsed violently. The sensation of every bone shattering into powder spread through him in its full, soul-rending horror. It was agony beyond endurance, a torment worse than death.

The heart-protecting mirror gifted by Taohua shattered with a sharp crack and dissolved into ash.

Following a perfectly straight trajectory, Chen Changan plummeted downward, dragging a line of spraying blood behind him. He plunged headfirst into the bone-chilling snow and ice, sending fragments flying. His body smashed through layer after layer of frozen earth, burrowing deeper and deeper.

“Bang!”

At last, he slammed into a rock more than five thousand meters beneath the ground and became embedded in it. His entire body was broken apart; his muscles, tendons, and bones were reduced to fragments. Even his nerves had lost the ability to register pain. Only a thread of consciousness remained… and only his eyes could still move slightly.

He stared in despair at the vast, heavy darkness before him and asked himself, “Am I… really going to die here?”

“No… I can’t!”

“This place… is the prison formed by Prince Jing’an’s Original Art, Spirit Prison. It is his world. Only the victor can leave alive… An Eighth-Grade realm!”

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“Eighth Grade… I’m only Second Grade. What’s more, within Bai Jinghu’s world, everything follows his rules and restrictions. How am I supposed to fight him?”

After a brief pause, Chen Changan struggled weakly and unwillingly.

“But… just because this is his world, does that mean I must be bound by his rules? Must the person with the higher realm be the one who survives?”

“No…”

“I cannot die!”

Crack!

Clenching his teeth, Chen Changan began reciting the Immortal-Slaying Heart Art. Once did nothing, so he recited it twice. Twice did nothing, so he recited it a third time. Again and again, endlessly and without pause.

Gradually, a mysterious force began to pour down from the crown of his head. It traveled through his body, repairing his shattered meridians and broken bones.

Once he had recovered somewhat, he gritted his teeth and forcefully dragged both arms free from the rock in which they had been deeply embedded. Even so, he remained terribly weak and collapsed face-first onto the ground.

After a long while, Chen Changan lifted his head and gazed into the darkness before him. He continued muttering, questioning again and again:

“I… am myself. I am Chen Changan. Why should I be bound by your rules?”

“Why should you be the one who is certain to walk out alive from the prison of Spirit Prison?”

“Why?”

“Why?”

Each time he asked a question, a ring of energy around his body exploded outward with a series of thunderous blasts, expanding several meters farther than before. Golden light began to shimmer along the lines corresponding to his meridians beneath the surface of his skin.

One question brought the same response as the next.

Again and again, without end.

More than five thousand meters above him, on the surface where the freezing wind howled and the snow raged, Prince Jing’an Bai Jinghu slowly descended. Looking into the deep crater Chen Changan had created, he curled his lips into a satisfied smile and coughed twice.

“This… is the fate of opposing me.”

He truly had not suffered any substantial injuries while fighting Cao Wu and the others. But the aftereffects of the drugs and acupuncture he had used to stimulate his potential and fabricate his realm were, in the end, far more serious than physical wounds.

By now, countless invisible injuries throughout his body were already throbbing with pain. The immense power unique to the Eighth-Grade Late Profound Realm faded away, and the decline Ruan Jingchu had mentioned earlier began to manifest. Bai Jinghu’s realm fell to the Seventh-Grade Life-and-Death Realm.

Before long, his weakening strength dropped him into the Sixth-Grade Divine Tempering Realm.

A quarter of an hour later, it fell again, reaching the Fifth-Grade Harmonization Realm.

“Heh!”

Bai Jinghu let out a bitter laugh. “Although leaving Spirit Prison and returning to reality will certainly mean death at Cao Wu and the others’ hands, I must at least inform them of Chen Changan’s death.”

Thinking of Chen Changan—the man who had repeatedly ruined his plans and destroyed the Dragon-Slaying Society—being personally slain by him, a look of comfort and satisfaction appeared on Bai Jinghu’s face. He turned around and prepared to leave.

“Stop!”

Unexpectedly, he had taken only half a step when the resonant voice of a young man rang out behind him.

Prince Jing’an’s brows drew together. He turned to look back and saw a dazzling radiance erupt from beneath the ground and shoot into the air. It hovered overhead, and as its celestial light faded, Chen Changan could be faintly seen standing above him, Hidden Name in hand.

The energy around Chen Changan continued rising, exploding with successive thunderclaps.

Bai Jinghu gritted his teeth, his fists clenched tightly.

“Third-Grade Technique Awakening… This boy actually awakened an Original Art within my Spirit Prison?”

End of Chapter

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