Chapter 125: Five Rounds of Attacks

"Junior brother, how utterly shameless you are!"

Seeing Chen Qi strike with his blade smoothly and without the slightest hesitation, Yun Tianxin scolded him just as Elder Chi had done, though there was far less sternness in her tone and much more playfulness.

The long blade grazed the neck of Yun Tianxin's shadow, a surge of blood Qi splashing into a rippling display of light and shadow along the edge of the sword. Chen Qi's expression suddenly shifted as he felt a chill closing in from his side and rear.

"This misty movement technique is so damn cheap!"

A fleeting complaint flashed through his mind. Realizing it was too late to withdraw his blade, Chen Qi erupted with all his body's blood Qi, propelling himself forward in a dive.

Feeling the fabric at his lower back tear into a small hole, Chen Qi did not stop his forward momentum and instead launched into several consecutive rolling evasion maneuvers on the ground.

Tendrils of shadow struck the ground like stubborn bone-eating leeches wherever Chen Qi rolled, leaving behind finger-printed pits a full meter deep.

Looking at the destructive marks left by every single finger strike of the shadow, Chen Qi, despite still being in the middle of battle, cried out in exasperation:

"Senior sister, just what kind of cultivation level were you when you were an odd-job disciple?"

In the distance, leaning against a smooth stone pillar, Yun Tianxin chuckled softly upon hearing this and replied in a teasing tone:

"I forgot to tell you, junior brother—right after my battle with Elder Chi's shadow, I happened to break through to the Xiantian realm."

"???" Before he had a chance to ask anything further, the shadow's next wave of attacks arrived. The densely packed finger shadows made the light within the cavern feel heavy and oppressive. Striking completely at random, they rained down toward Chen Qi and the surrounding area.

Chen Qi twisted his body, dodging a little more than half of them, and thrust his blade upward in an uppercut aimed at three finger shadows in mid-air.

"Clang!"

The long blade struck the shadow, sending sparks flying. The sheer force transmitted along the blade nearly knocked it out of Chen Qi's grip.

Not only that, but two more bizarrely angled finger-print shadows suddenly closed in from unexpected directions—one stabbed diagonally upward toward Chen Qi's left thigh, while the other slashed horizontally across the ground toward his right cheek.

With his strength completely spent, Chen Qi could only barely tilt his head, choosing between facial disfigurement and a wounded leg by opting to avoid the former.

"Hiss!"

True to form, a bloody hole instantly appeared on Chen Qi's thigh. Even though he was long accustomed to pain, he still grimaced and bared his teeth.

At this moment, a trace of heartache involuntarily flashed across Yun Tianxin's eyes as she spoke up once more:

"Junior brother, why don't we call it quits? If we keep fighting, I feel like I'm going to have to carry you down the mountain."

Chen Qi clenched his teeth without answering, charging his body straight toward the shadow.

He chose close-quarters combat, believing that his graceful senior sister surely could not be his match when it came to brute force.

However, the shadow Chen Qi lunged at once again faded into nothingness, only to resolutely materialize behind him. With the exact same movement and the exact same sky-filling finger shadows—even though it had only just regenerated—Chen Qi already felt a chilling breeze sweep across his entire back.

With no time left to turn around and respond, Chen Qi exerted force through both feet and leaped high into the air. Performing several consecutive aerial flips, he slashed downward with his blade every time he flipped backward, striking at the shadow's finger radiance.

"Clang, clang, clang!"

A continuous series of collisions rang out. Chen Qi managed to weather this wave of attacks, but two more bloody holes were added to his back, and his right arm—the one holding the blade—was mostly paralyzed.

Yun Tianxin's shadow did not display a shred of the pity currently shown by the real Yun Tianxin. Its fingers curled into the familiar gesture once more, and the ambient light dimmed once again.

"Hold on! The projection stone should be recording the state I was in right after I defeated Elder Chi's shadow. This kind of explosive output can last for at most three more rounds."

Closely monitoring the situation, Yun Tianxin suddenly realized something, and in her anxiety, she blurted it out directly.

Following her urgent words, countless shadow finger prints once again surrounded Chen Qi, drowning him in a dense sea of lethal intent.

"Three rounds?" Holding onto this thought as if grasping a sliver of hope in a desperate abyss, Chen Qi trusted his intuition and swung his blade. The sword light illuminated his profile as he slashed out from the side of the shadows, and violent frictional sparks erupted within the darkness.

His body pressed tightly against the narrow edge of the long blade like a tiny boat drifting amidst shadows. The moment all the shadow finger prints from behind closed in to encircle him, he seized a microscopic chance at survival.

Chen Qi rolled out from the curtain formed by the shadow finger prints, crashing heavily onto the ground. Although no new wounds were added to his body this time, the wrist holding his blade had already begun to numb.

This numbness did not cause physical injury; given Chen Qi's current mastery of swordsmanship, it would merely make his sword swings a fraction of a second slower, and under non-combat conditions, simply relaxing his muscles for ten-odd minutes would likely relieve it. Yet, on the eve of the next incoming attack, this was tantamount to a fatal blow.

Vigorously enduring the persistent soreness in his wrist muscles, Chen Qi switched to a two-handed grip. Raising the long blade high with both hands, he drew a perfect semicircle, while the nearly withered blood Qi within his body showed signs of surging upward once more.

He did not immediately slash downward with this strike, because he was certain that doing so would only hit an afterimage. Given the massive gap in strength and movement techniques, the so-called weakness pointed out by Yun Tianxin was nothing more than self-deception; his only hope lay in betting that the shadow truly only had the stamina for five rounds of attacks.

Opposite him, the gaze of Yun Tianxin's shadow was blurred. Unlike the previous times, however, it did not immediately make a move. Instead, stepping back a few paces, it maintained a constant distance of over ten meters between itself and Chen Qi.

This was an extremely safe distance. Given the shadow's movement technique, even if Chen Qi completed the buildup for this strike and made it three times faster, he would still have no possibility of harming the shadow whatsoever.

Chen Qi, still gathering his momentum, was so infuriated that he felt like his eyes were splitting with rage. He could not help but blurt out in grieved indignation:

"Senior sister, your shadow is even more shameless!"

Indeed, the torrential storm of attacks unleashed by Yun Tianxin's shadow just moments ago had made him subconsciously assume that the shadow's combat instinct was purely offensive. He had never expected it to possess such evasive tethering tactics.

At this moment, the long blade wielded in Chen Qi's two hands had been dyed a deep, bloody crimson by his blood Qi. A tantalizing reddish aura rose into the air, evaporating sweat on Chen Qi's closely hovering face.

The trembling in his hands grew more and more violent, especially in his right wrist, which had previously suffered from numbness; the stabbing pain was becoming increasingly distinct.

Watching this scene from the sidelines, Yun Tianxin saw the smile that had just appeared on her face vanish. Unconsciously, she had already assumed a forward-charging posture, ready to strike at any moment.

Following her mother's series of treatments, she was basically free from the risk of losing her sanity outside of combat. Even though her mother had repeatedly warned her not to act rashly—a promise she had dutifully given—using her intervention here still aligned perfectly with her heart.

A person who could not even protect the person right before their eyes—how could they ever speak of guarding the sect?

The next moment, she saw Chen Qi slowly lower his long blade. Her heart skipped a beat, a trace of surprise welling up within her.

"Is junior brother planning to give up?"

Chen Qi finally put his long blade down. Then, completely ignoring the menacing figure glaring at him from across the way, he turned his head toward Yun Tianxin and managed a strained smile.

Yun Tianxin saw that the young man's smile was filled with pain, especially his right wrist hidden behind his back, which had been swollen three times its size by the backfiring blood Qi. Large areas of skin had split open, and streams of blood as thick as a pinky finger coiled around his arm, leaving almost no intact flesh in sight.

"Junior brother, you..."

Seeing such a miserable sight, Yun Tianxin could not help but blurt out, her fair heart finally overwhelmed with anxiety.

She did not understand why Chen Qi was fighting so desperately. In her eyes, this was merely a trial, to the extent that her intention to intervene now hesitated for yet another fraction of a second.

The shadow, however, felt no hesitation. Sensing a prime opportunity as Chen Qi turned and lowered his guard, its figure materialized five meters away from Chen Qi in the blink of an eye, and once again, hands formed of shadows thrust forward.

Unlike the ranged attacks of the first three rounds, the shadow deemed this an unmissable window and chose close-quarters combat. In the performance of the projection stone, this appeared to be the optimal solution under current conditions.

Yet this was merely the optimal solution for dealing with ordinary people!

Before the incoming attack from behind could reach him, Chen Qi's smile grew increasingly brilliant. While tenderly locking gazes with Yun Tianxin, he activated his concentrated burst.

He had originally intended to keep this trump card in reserve, but he realized he was about to lose his grip on the sword in his hand.

If not now, when?

The enhancement of his neural reflexes temporarily allowed Chen Qi to ignore the wretched, tangled mess of his wrist. The deep crimson long blade practically transformed into a ball of red fire, slashing backward as Chen Qi spun on his heel.

This strike was ferocious in force, controlled with absolute steadiness, and accompanied by calculations as precise as perfection itself.

From the moment Chen Qi turned around until the long blade slashed across five meters, it cut through four shadow finger Qi attacks hurtling toward him along the way. The outward-radiating blood Qi deflected two additional shadow finger strikes that grazed the blade, finally landing directly upon the index finger of Yun Tianxin's shadow.

The next instant, a gale whipped up inside the cavern, and shadows and crimson light burst forth brilliantly. The ground where Chen Qi and the shadow stood locked in combat caved in, forming a small crater.

Although this strike lacked the breathtaking astonishment of a thoughtless slash, it possessed a unique, tragic beauty—much like the final retrospective glance of a mortally wounded general.

Yun Tianxin subconsciously closed the distance by several meters, her large eyes beneath slender eyelashes staring unblinkingly at the scene. While an expression of rare infatuation involuntarily surfaced in her eyes, her whole heart once again plunged into hesitation.