Chapter 219: The Demonic Phantom
After the constant practicing of Zen, the demonic life vitality became darker as the purple color mixed in it gradually faded away. The tiny starlight embedded in it became more lustrous and brilliant.
Inside Zen's body, there were six streaks of life vitality flowing out. Under his control, this life vitality would form a silhouette of Zen, but a smaller version. This was the form of the demonic phantom.
Zen glued his eyes on the phantoms, pointed his fingers at them and uttered lightly, “Rise up!”
In an instant, the six demonic phantoms started flying in the room. As the demonic phantom itself originated from life vitality, it was weightless. Thus, it could fly briskly and fast. Moreover, the six of them flying around would make the best defense from enemy attack.
With Zen's current strength, he could only summon up to six demonic phantoms. However, according to the records from “Heavenly Ogre Fist”, with much practice, those with strong psychic force could summon up hundreds of demonic phantoms.
Each demonic phantom could absorb the enemy's life vitality to strengthen its own–a special attribute of demonic life vitality. Once the demonic phantoms matured, their powers would be more terrifying.
“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…”
“Bang….” Something was flying crazily and crashing onto something. It just happened with a blink of an eye.
It was one of Zen's demonic phantoms. Due to Zen's relatively weak power, it slipped out of his control, crashed directly into the wall of his practice room and then penetrated through another two walls of the house, leading to the collapse of the half outer wall of the house.
The inner disciples' houses had a secret practicing room where they could conduct further studies and practice their own unique skills in their own time. The walls of these rooms were filled with heptyl gold–a kind of hard metal that isolated the soul snoop.
Obviously, Zen did not expect that the demonic phantom could be so powerful that it would directly crash through the hard walls made from heptyl gold.
“What the heck happened?”
“Why did the walls collapse?”
Other disciples were surprised to see what happened and didn't understand what caused the hard walls to collapse. Zen's house was not far from the other inner disciples' houses; thus, they easily heard the loud noise, so they went to check out what happened.
Zen came out from the hole on the wall, wearing an awkward smile, and said apologetically, “I'm sorry! It's just a small accident while I was practicing.”
The damage on the outer wall of the house was no big deal as a few civilian craftsmen could repair it. However, when they saw that the wall of Zen's secret room was also damaged, they could not help but gasp. They knew very well that the walls of the secret practicing room were made of heptyl gold and iron sand. It was supposed to be extremely solid to resist any impact, even one's whole might.
What kind of cultivation was he practicing exactly?
The onlooker inner disciples were all between five-grade to six-grade natural level. But even at a high-grade natural level, they couldn't be able to break the walls of the secret practicing room unless they had a high-grade weapon.
“Hey, Zen!” Just then, someone called out Zen's name abruptly.
Zen looked around and saw Cleve walking towards him. Since Zen became an inner disciple of the Drizzle Peak, he concentrated on practice at the secret room every day, thus hardly had any time to meet Cleve. The last time they saw each other was when they fought demons together.
“Hey, Cleve! Long time no see,” Zen greeted with a smile.
“Yeah! Anyway, I am here to deliver a message from our senior disciple, Yehudi. He asked you to come over his house to discuss the matters of All Peaks Competition,” Cleve said, cutting through the chase. Cleve had also locked himself in his own secret practice room to cultivate, and it was just a few days ago when he completed his secret practice. The desire to improve his strength was stimulated by Zen when they were both in a trial of killing demons.
During his long practice, Cleve made another big improvement in his strength. But when he saw Zen's strength jumped from half step to nature level into the grade-two natural level, he could not help but admire the progress that Zen was making. Moreover, being sensitive to “sword intent”, Cleve could also feel the strong spiritual aura that Zen was emitting at present, even though the latter was just plainly looking at him.
'Has he already grasped the sword intent?
How did he do it?' Cleve's mind was racing wildly.
He had seen Zen's fighting technique and how the latter used to rely on his fists and his mysterious flying knife.
'When did he learn to use a sword?
And how could he have grasped the sword intent if he hadn't used a sword?' Cleve thought to himself.
Cleve had been practicing swordplay for decades, but until now, he couldn't grasp the sword intent at all. Sword intent was something that could not be learned easily. It would just come out naturally and only those with a high power of understanding would be able to figure it out.
'But for just a short period of time, Zen has grasped it?' Cleve asked himself.
Though Cleve found it hard to believe, the faintly discernible strong spiritual aura emitting from Zen was undeniably sword intent.
In front of many onlookers, Cleve couldn't bring himself to ask Zen directly. Anyway, he would find out later once Zen participated in the All Peaks Competition. At the Competition, Zen would inevitably encounter strong enemies that would require him to show his sword intent, if he had already grasped it. But deep down, Cleve could not bear the thought that he might be right about Zen. After all, the sword intent was not easy to acquire, at least for him since he still hadn't got it after many years of hard practice.
“Matters about the All Peaks Competition? All right,” Zen said and nodded. In any case, it would be quite important to understand the strength of the other disciples participating in the upcoming All Peaks Competition.
Meanwhile, in a decent pavilion on the top of Drizzle Peak, six disciples in black robes gathered.
They were the top second to seventh inner disciples from the Drizzle Peak.
The senior disciple, Yehudi, used to be the top first place until Zen outperformed him in the assessment test, and he didn't challenge the latter to win back his rank.
“Yehudi, I do think you have the power to challenge Zen. You are the best amongst all the disciples!” one of them said huffily.
“I agree. Yehudi, you must not let a young boy outrank you. His nature level is only second-grade, while yours is the top grade,” another one seconded what the former disciple had said.
“What could be worse than to invite that boy over and discuss the All Peaks Competition with him? As a young boy who has just been promoted to an inner disciple, what qualifications does he have to sit among us?” one more disciple burst out angrily.
Apparently, most of them were not impressed with Zen being the first rank since he was too young.
Although he outperformed everyone in the test, it didn't warrant the disciples' respect towards Zen. For the inner disciples, Zen didn't deserve to be the top first.
According to the rules of the test, the ranking assessment must be carried out in the magic array, and the rankings would be determined by the inner disciples' score.
If an inner disciple was not satisfied with his own ranking, the way to dispute it was to challenge the inner disciple who outranked him.
The ranking would be decided based on the challengers' true strength in the battle ring.
With the previously concluded test, Zen outranked everyone by gaining 55, 000 points. He replaced Yehudi in the top first rank. Now, if Yehudi was not convinced by the result of the test, he could challenge Zen for a retest.
If Yehudi could win the challenge, then there would be no doubt that he deserved the top first rank. Yet, he never launched such challenge.
Yehudi took a sip of the tea, and then said with a smile, “In the Cloud Sect, strength is the most important qualification. Since Zen was able to get a high mark in the assessment, he has proved his strength, thus deserves to sit among us.”
Yehudi, 19 years old, was two years older than Zen. His ability to step into the consummation grade of nature level at such a young age was a testament to his great talent.
One genius often tended to welcome another genius' challenge. Compared with the other disciples, Yehudi was obviously more generous.
“But there must be something wrong in that guy's score. Being only second grade of nature level, how could he be so powerful to get the highest score? I guess, he might have used a special trick in the magic array!” a disciple in a black robe said heartily. It would be hard for him to believe that a guy whose natural level was second grade could outrank them. Without seeing Zen's power with his own eyes, it would be hard for him to accept the conclusion of the assessment.
Yehudi simply shook his head. He had originally planned to challenge Zen, but a Master on Drizzle Peak, who was Yehudi's close friend, reminded him not to do so.
To convince Yehudi more, the Master showed him Zen's performance records in the magical array. In the records, Yehudi saw that Zen simultaneously killed the phantoms of 10 disciples whose nature levels were consummation-grade. From then on, he became aware that Zen was out of his league, and he could not afford to challenge the young disciple.
Although Yehudi could kill one phantom with his current strength, he wasn't sure if he could handle 10 phantoms at the same time. If he was in Zen's place, he could have ended in a disastrous situation.
He was finally convinced that there was no chance he could defeat Zen in a challenge.
Therefore, to avoid further humiliating himself, he accepted the conclusion of the assessment wholeheartedly.
Yehudi also understood that his ranking amongst the disciples in the Drizzle Peak was not a big deal. There was nothing he could lose if he lost it. What mattered to him most right now was the All Peaks Competition.
“Let's put that topic to rest, shall we? Let's focus on what's important–the All Peaks Competition. Zen's strength is truly outstanding and that's a good thing for all of us. If Zen can lead us to improve our rankings among the 33 Peaks, the Drizzle Peak will get more support from Cloud Sect. If that happens, we can build large-scale magic arrays at our Drizzle Peak and many more secret practice buildings. I believe that would benefit everyone; thus, we should give him our warmest welcome!” Yehudi said lightly.
When the disciples heard Yehudi's enlightening words, they stopped arguing and complaining. They thought that maybe Yehudi was right and that Zen indeed deserved to be with them, and since he had become a member of Drizzle Peak, they should stop attacking him behind his back.
Drizzle Peak was currently at the bottom of the ranking list–the weakest Peak among the 33 Peaks. Since the number of disciples who could attend the All Peaks Competition was only seven, they should be united as a team.
A few moments later, someone knocked on the door, and one of the disciples in black robe bellowed, “Come in!”
It was Cleve. When he heard the permission, he pushed the door open and whispered to Zen, “Yehudi and other senior disciples are already inside. You can come in there and join their discussion.”
Although Cleve's strength was stronger than most disciples of the Drizzle Peak, he wasn't strong enough to be part of the top seven. As a result, he was not eligible to attend the meetings related to All Peaks Competition.
Zen thanked Cleve and stepped inside.
Yehudi looked at Zen, then stood up and said with a smile, “Are you Zen? This is our first time to meet you so forgive us if we don't recognize you. Nice to see you here. I'm Yehudi!”
“Nice to finally meet you, Yehudi. I've heard so much great things about you!” said Zen sincerely, greeting with his cupped fists.
“Please take a seat here,” Yehudi said heartily as he pointed to the top seat next to him. The top seat originally belonged to him, but now he was willing to give it to Zen.
Zen didn't have any knowledge of the inners' seat arrangement, so he just accepted Yehudi's instruction. He walked over and took the top seat as Yehudi offered.