Chapter 292: Number One Peak
There were many reasons why Zen admired Rocher. One of them was his humility.
Since Rocher was born from nothing, it wasn't always easy for him to stay grounded after he achieved great success in practicing.
Some disciples who were also born from nothing became extremely proud after having made some achievements. They regarded themselves as the pride of heaven. They thought that they were so virtuous and talented as if nobody on earth could beat them. Thus, they gradually slacked off in practicing. Even if they were talented disciples, their arrogance slowly diminished their will of martial arts--and they became just mediocre disciples with time.
However, Rocher wasn't conceited or rash. He still had a good attitude and state of mind even though Zen's performance had made him feel hopeless and desperate. He didn't feel discouraged at all. He even told Zen that he would try his best to follow in his footsteps even though he couldn't surpass him.
Maybe other people were more gifted than Rocher, but only a few of them were as benevolent as him.
Now, although Rocher had spoken modestly, his move with the sword wasn't modest at all. Zen wouldn't dare underestimate this move.
The Heavenly Sword of Rocher could originally use the extremely terrifying power of heavens. After he had comprehended the consummate sword intent, his sword intent became even fuller and fiercer.
More importantly, he had comprehended the power of thunder in the Sword Washing Pool!
Now, he had both the powers of thunder and the heavens!
When the two of them were combined, the power of the sword would be equal to the punishment of heaven!
Meanwhile, Zen's face stiffened in horror as he looked at the sword with the punishment from heaven.
The sword spirit, Lily, instantly spilt into small fragments of sword intent under Zen's control and attached herself to the Streamer Sword in Zen's hand.
In reality, Zen wasn't that skilled in controlling the sword spirit. If he could use the sword spirit well, he didn't need to attach Lily to the Streamer Sword after he called her out. He could attach her directly to the Streamer sword through his body.
However, it was just a skill. Zen would control it in time as he became better in using the sword spirit.
Lily's malicious aura was quite strong, and it was unknown how many creatures she had killed to have such a powerful malicious aura.
When she stood next to Zen, she was able to contain all of the malicious aura in her body. However, the strong and fierce malicious aura suddenly burst out when she was attached to the Streamer Sword.
A butcher who slaughtered cows and pigs everyday would have an increasing amount of malicious aura in his body as time passed. This kind of aura was relatively weak, and only sensitive people could feel it. Others wouldn't say he looked murderous, but most people couldn't feel this kind of weak malicious aura anyway.
Dogs were always the most sensitive to the malicious aura. It was why they always barked at butchers when they saw them on the street. The malicious aura that emanated from the butchers made the sensitive dogs quite afraid.
Thus, it followed that malicious aura posed a threat to creatures. It had a stronger negative vibes compared to other kinds of strengths and auras.
For example, just a look from the war veterans who had fought for a long time, would make some people feel absolutely terrified. That was the kind of effect that the malicious aura had.
At present, the malicious aura in Zen's body wasn't that strong. Although he had entered the Killing Sword Mountain due to fate and passively chose the killing way to cultivate his sword skills, the malicious aura couldn't be gathered in just one night.
He had just started practicing the killing sword skill and his malicious aura was still weak, but it didn't affect his usage of Lily's malicious aura.
As soon as Lily was attached to the Streamer Sword, the turbulent malicious aura instantly burst out.
The crowd felt that it was a demon, and not a human who stood in front of them, under the influence of the malicious aura.
And, the devil was so cruel that he would cut off their heads at any time and in any place.
Some timid disciples even felt their legs tremble at the presence of the strong malicious aura. Their knees buckled and they crumpled down to the ground.
"Oh my!
Zen became a devil!"
Some disciples began to shout hysterically under the malicious aura's influence.
“What a horrible killing aura! What exactly has he gone through? He didn't have the malicious aura before, but why did he suddenly have a strong malicious aura now?” some of them exclaimed.
However, they were still clearly awed by the sight.
After a while, the two powerful auras instantly collided with each other.
Rocher's sword symbolized the power of heaven. He looked like he was an angel from heaven at that moment, sent to punish the criminals of the world for their sins.
On the other hand, Zen was like a devil raised against the heavens. His killing sword skill seemed like it could slaughter every creature in the world! To be the god of heaven through killing! To resist the strength of heaven through killing!
“Bang!”
A loud, booming noise came from the two powerful swords when they collided with each other.
The thunder and lightning, which looked like a punishment from heaven, hit Zen with sword intent after sword intent. In turn, the malicious aura in Zen's Streamer Sword turned into spools of long threads and charged at the thunder and lightning as well. Some of the long threads shattered into pieces when they crashed against the thunder and lightning.
However, the long threads seemed to flow endlessly. After the thunder and lightning broke a series of the threads, another wave of threads burst out and rushed towards Rocher.
After a while, the abrasion from the countless long threads had weakened the power of Rocher's sword. The malicious aura finally disintegrated the surging thunder and lightning not long after.
The killing sword skill was a highly strong and powerful skill of swordsmanship. Zen didn't get to practice the cultivation method of the malicious aura, so he couldn't fully use the power of the killing sword skill--but he still defeated the sword of Rocher. Had he practiced the cultivation method that matched the malicious aura, its power would've been ten times stronger than it had been just now.
Although the killing sword skill was strong and powerful, it had a disadvantage. If the practitioner's body had too much malicious aura in it, demons would consume him and in the end, he might be destroyed by the malicious aura. Fortunately, Zen wouldn't have such trouble since he had a resonance between his soul consciousness and the Killing Sword Mountain.
After his move with the sword was defeated by Zen, Rocher took back the Blood-corroding Sword and returned it to its sheath.
However, the winner was still in doubt when Rocher took back his sword.
Then again, Rocher still chose to take the sword back and end the competition. It wasn't because he didn't want to fight anymore, but rather, he knew that Zen would also try his best if he gave his all in the fight--but he would still lose in the end.
He would do his best to fight back if his opponent was roughly as strong as him, because he might have a chance to win. However, Rocher had already lost to Zen when they comprehended the consummate sword intent. Moreover, his strength was far behind Zen's now.
Thus, it was useless to fight with Zen anymore since he would definitely lose to him in the end anyway.
“I lost!” Rocher declared.
The referee who stood next to them heard Rocher and proclaimed the winner.
“Zen, the disciple of the Drizzle Peak won! And Rocher, the disciple of the Skytop Peak lost!” he announced.
“Number One! We are Number One!” someone shouted.
Several masters of Drizzle Peak happily clapped their hands and celebrated Zen's victory with each other.
Meanwhile, Master Wen's eyes slightly moistened. Zen defeated Rocher in this competition and finally became the first out of all the disciples in thirty-three peaks.
Since Zen was ranked first among all the disciples in all the peaks, then Drizzle Peak became the first out of all the thirty-three peaks because of him!
The Drizzle Peak, which used to rank the last among all the peaks, suddenly became first! It was a miracle and it was all because of Zen!
The masters and all the disciples of Drizzle Peak couldn't believe the news. They thought it was unreal, as if they were in a sweet dream. If so, they hoped that they would never wake up from the dream.
The next and last opponent Zen had to fight was Patrick.
So far, no one had pushed Patrick to do his best in the competitions. He was the top disciple in Cloud Sect, only next to the extraordinarily talented Evan. It wasn't easy to gauge his real strength.
Zen clearly knew that it would be tough to win against Patrick in their upcoming competition.
Before he had comprehended the consummate sword intent, he wasn't that positive about his fight against Patrick. But now he had comprehended it, and the sword spirit Lily boosted his confidence in the competition.
However, it was still hard for Zen to determine what his chances were.
After all, he didn't know Patrick's real strength, and he didn't have a reference to measure it.
He just hoped that there would be someone powerful to fight against Patrick first.
Unfortunately, only a few disciples had the ability to challenge Patrick. Wing was a man of great power, but Patrick defeated him in a second. Jacques was powerful too, but Zen had already swallowed up his flood dragon bone spear so he couldn't do his best to fight Patrick anymore. As for Tracy, Zen thought that she wouldn't go all out to fight Patrick and surrender instead--although she tried her best and activated the body of the Blue Phoenix when she fought against him.
However, to Zen's surprise, Tracy was picked in the draw lots to compete against Patrick on the battlefield.
Just as Zen had guessed, Tracy cheerfully surrendered as soon as they got on the battlefield.
'The girl is only cruel when she fights against me!' Zen thought and shook his head.
Fortunately, the Lord expressed his wish to look after Zen. Thus, the referee drew lots again after Tracy surrendered, and Patrick's name was drawn once more.
This time, he was slated to compete against Rocher!
A smile formed on Zen's lips. Not everyone could force Patrick to do his best in the competition, but Rocher was the best man for the job.
However, Zen wondered how long Rocher would last, or if he could directly defeat Patrick.