Chapter 71 - Battle 2!

Hengsheng was quite shocked that "the Prince" had noticed his presence even while he was in concealment mode—something that should be impossible for someone still in the Spiritual Foundation Realm. Yet it had happened right before his eyes.

He gazed at the 500 black-masked cultivators surrounding him and smirked; he was not afraid of their numbers, because he knew that even if they were more numerous, they could do nothing against him, who possessed the power of the Dao Heart and the Power of Law.

But what disturbed him most was "the Prince," whose mysterious aura resembled that of the God Spawn. His strength was also high—just slightly inferior to Hengsheng's—despite his impressive record in cultivation achievements compared to most.

Hengsheng looked at his right hand, the one he used to perform the World Shatter Palm to counter the Prince's axe strike. He tried to move it, but he couldn't; he didn't even feel numb—he simply did not feel his hand at all, as if it never existed.

However, with his Heavenly Insight mode still active, he could see an unknown energy hidden deep within his hand, nearly reaching his body essence. Without hesitation, he used both his Dao Heart and the Fire Law to destroy that energy. Immediately, ash rose from his hand and quickly dissolved away.

With the foreign presence gone, he moved his hand again. The Prince, who had just risen from the floor, looked shocked by Hengsheng's removal of the unknown energy. Hengsheng narrowed his eyes as he observed that the wound he had inflicted on the Prince healed instantly—no different from the regeneration seen in God Spawn.

Without a word, as their gazes met, Hengsheng and the Prince soared from the ground and collided in a split second.

Boooooom!

The crash caused the ground beneath them to crack, sending a massive shock wave in all directions. The low-level black-masked cultivators were thrown backward by the force of the impact.

At the center of the chaos, Hengsheng exchanged blows with the Axeman Prince; each punch and palm strike caused the Axeman's flesh to explode, only for the enemy to regenerate instantly, just as the God Spawn did.

Every strike from the axe against his hand caused him to lose all senses from the hit hand, but he soon recovered them with the same method he did the first time.

From the outside, the main battleground between Hengsheng and the Axeman Prince, other black-masked cultivators launched sneak attacks at regular intervals with both long-range and close-range Qi techniques. Yet, whenever their attacks reached Hengsheng's body, a white rune shield appeared, intercepting the blows and sending them back to their owners—rendering their plan to overwhelm him with numbers useless.

Then, an axe hacked down above his head. Hengsheng redirected the axe blade to the side with the back of his hand, and he used the other hand to slap forward with a powerful World Shatter Palm infused with Fire Law, aimed at the chest of the Axeman Prince.

BOOM!

A massive hole in the shape of a palm appeared in the Prince's chest, and his body was thrown into the bamboo forest behind the camp and disappeared.

The surrounding attacks gradually faded away. The fight was temporarily suspended due to the disappearance of Axeman, no one dared to come forward to replace the Axeman position in this battle.

When Hengsheng prepared to chase after the Axeman to finish the job, he noticed two more cultivators emerging at the edge of the battlefield.

Their auras were just slightly weaker than the Axeman's: one was a man with a small build but surprised the entire arm bigger than normal, he wielded a one-edged sword with a brutal aura, and the other held a sword along which lightning flowed, his face was giving the vibe of the innocence youngman but Hengsheng can tell from the Krama thread that full with the mortal sin this guy totally scumbag.

"Meow?" Yunsu, who obediently perched on his shoulder, cried out as if she had asked if he needed her help.

"No, thank you, but you should be the trump card," Hengsheng replied, rubbing the cat's head, as though the whole situation were a joke to him.

Two newcomers, seeing this, wore angry expressions—they had not been in Hengsheng's sight at all.

"You must be Lan Hengsheng. I can tell from your dress and appearance that my junior brothers mentioned. I've been looking for you for a long time, but you seem too good at hiding. Now that you're in front of me, there's nowhere left to hide," the cultivator holding the lightning sword said with an arrogant tone, as if he had not witnessed Hengsheng just beat up the Axeman.

Hengsheng recognized that this man was the "Senior Brother" mentioned by four Thunderclap Blade Sect disciples, and he smiled, having found his number one target.

"Lan Hengsheng? I've never heard you before—are you the Shadow Unit of the Golden Sword Sect?" asked the other man with a one-edged sword, who did not seem to grasp what was truly happening.

"No, this guy comes from a second-rate force—" Before the "Senior Brother" could finish his sentence, Hengsheng closed the distance and appeared right in front of them. Hengsheng looked at both clowns who were now in shock, his face filled with a hint of arrogance.

While they were shocked by his speed and unprepared to fight, Hengsheng was about to strike.

At that moment, Suddenly, his Primal instinct deep inside his soul through his very being screamed; allowing him to feel the aura of the Axeman appear behind him without him noticing it before he even knew how this situation could happen. But it was too late for Hengsheng to completely dodge the Axeman's sneak attack, for the axe had already hacked his entire left arm off!

"Hiss!!" Yunsu, still on his right shoulder, hissed and swiftly extended her Qi claw at the Axeman, forcing him to take a defensive stance.

She unleashed her Beast Ball at the other two as well not giving them a chance to make a following attack on Hengsheng.

Boom!

Boom!!

The ground shakes and massive amounts of dust fill the air disrupting the naked eye.

Meanwhile, Hengsheng retreated using his Horizon Shift Technique—moving at a speed far beyond anything he had shown earlier—and disappeared completely into the bamboo forest.

Jin Da-Shan gazed in the direction where he had last seen the spy before they even could react. He is about to shout the order to chase after the man, but he decides to against it since it would be useless if the one who chased was not him.

"You should not miss his head. This guy is strong, and he will be an unexpected variable for our mission," Wei Bujia stated, holding the lightning sword as he mocked Jin Da-Shan for his failure.

"How could someone like this appear out of nowhere? His strength should be on par with, or even stronger than, the Immortal Seed of the Golden Sword Sect," Bao Long, the Chosen of the Iron Edge Hall, spoke with curiosity. "But it doesn't matter—he didn't have time to become immortal."

Jin Da-Shan, now injured and with his regeneration ability greatly slowed by the damage to the Sense of Life from the Black Robe cultivator's attack, said, "You seem to know who this man is. Tell me about him." Ignoring Wei Bujia's mockery, he was interested only in learning about the man who had managed to hurt him so badly.

Hengsheng moved back to his cultivation cave—he never expected to return so soon. His expression was grim because he had made a huge mistake.

He sat in the lotus position and observed himself using both his Divine Sense and [Heavenly Insight Mode] eyes.

It wasn't long before he detected a hint of unknown energy within his head—the same energy that had caused his hand to lose its sense of touch.

He did not know how it had appeared, but he quickly removed it using his Dao and Law power. The amount of unknown energy was small—just one touch was enough to completely destroy it.

Once the unknown energy was gone from his head, he began to regain his sense of danger. He reflected on how careless he had been: in the enemy camp, he had walked as if it were a park, completely losing himself and believing he was invincible.

"Why did I become like this? I should have retreated immediately after being exposed, but why I chose to fight for my own excitement," Hengsheng thought, trying to reflect more deeply.

His change began when he was struck by the battle axe with the strange aura during a counterattack. At first, the change was slight, but when two individuals who appeared to be part of the leader's group the same as Axeman stepped into the battlefield, he became completely full of himself.

"Damn it! Stupid! Fuck!" he cursed, hitting himself hard with the only hand he had left.

A while later, he calmed himself down and thought carefully. The unknown energy seemed capable of taking away his senses—both physical, like a sense of touch, and spiritual, like a sense of danger—endangering his very survival.

"What a dangerous power. Fortunately, my primal instinct for survival has not been stripped away."