Chapter 317: Breakthrough in Combat
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Ye Chong lifted the statue and attacked!
Wham! The ground shook, and three cockroaches were instantly crushed into mush. Their body fluid splattered outwards, reeking an unheavenly stench. Everyone stared in shock. The golden statue did not look that strong, but in the hands of this young man, it was like a big hammer. Poor statue! The girls nearby looked at the statue in Ye Chong’s hands with pity. She should be put on display against red satin in a high class exhibition stand, receiving the adoration of thousands of admirers. Now, however, she was used like a hammer in the hands of a man with inhuman strength. Poor she!
The heavy statue seemed to also put a huge pressure on the people watching in the building. The old man gasped, "H*ll, I didn’t think he’s so violent!" He seemed to think of something then, and quickly ran deeper into the school building.
It had been a long time since Ye Chong had to fight himself. It reminded him of his foundation training on the trash planet, where strength training was an important part of it.
With his growing excitement, the heavy statue weighed like nothing in his hands, swinging around in the air. All the students and teachers watched, dumbfounded. The ground that trembled with each attack using the statue reminded them again and again that what they were seeing was really happening.
"This is crazy!" Mi De swallowed heavily.
Fatty nodded mechanically. "It’s inhuman! Is that guy some unknown master in the combat facuty?"
The other people in the building had the same thought. Only the combat faculty would harbour such a crazy person. They never imagined that he was actually a student from the humanities faculty. There were so few humanities students that none of them were here to recognize him.
The statue swung over easily and blocked the path of another rat that managed to enter the building. He loosened his grip and stepped lightly, and was right in front of the rat in the next second. His hands moved, and the statue drew an arch midair. Ye Chong was now holding onto its waist.
The people around him watched, stupefied. They saw a student carrying a half naked statue by the waist in a suggestive fashion. The female students blushed, and Fei Si’s cheeks also reddened in embarrassment.
Ye Chong did not care for these trivialities. He wrapped his hands around the statue in the next moment, avoiding an attack from the rat. Those who understood the situation regretted his move, since he was now in a most vulnerable position, with his back to the rat.
When everyone thought Ye Chong was going to lose this time, his next move surprised them all. Ye Chong bent backwards, still holding tightly onto the statue, and pushed the statue to the back and down.
Wham! The head of the statue hit precisely on one of the rat’s paws in a decisive attack. The paw was instantly reduced to a useless lump of flesh. The rat squealed in pain.
The people around him gulped heavily at the terrible shriek.
Ye Chong did not stop at that. He leapt backwards in a somersault, landing on the rat’s back. What happened next made everyone watching felt a chill in their hearts.
Whish! The statue seemed to disappear from Ye Chong’s hands. They heard a loud "Clang!", and the rat’s head suddenly exploded, blood and brain matter splattered across the floor.
What an attack! Those from the combat faculty exchanged looks of shock and fear. None of them seemed to be able to see that attack clearly.
In fact, Ye Chong’s attack was simple. He had used the statue to strike at the rat’s head. However, his attack was too fast to be observed clearly. The loud clang was from 15 consecutive blows to the rat’s skull.
Ye Chong was too engrossed in the fight to notice his audience. Calmness had always been his way, but his long suppressed fighting instincts were now finally awakened. Before he met Mu and Shang, his fighting skills might be deplorable, but he did not lack the passion for combat
However, after meeting Mu and Shang, Ye Chong was deeply influenced by Mu, and began to learn to think with cold logic. That was when Ye Chong’s battle style changed markedly. It was only when he met particularly strong opponents that Ye Chong would feel his initial fervour for battle. However, even these occasions were getting rarer.
The simple bare-handed battle today had finally reignited Ye Chong’s long absent feelings of enthusiasm.
Ye Chong launched himself into the hoard of insects, waving the statue around like a scythe, attacking furiously. The only thing that annoyed Ye Chong was that the statue was unsuited for more versatile ways of attacking. He could only used it to hit directly on the enemies. There was nothing he could do about it. Ye Chong lifted the statue and hammered down again and again. Blood and flesh flew across the battlefield. The sounds of bone crushing never stopped.
When the disaster finally ended, people would return to this school building and find that the flooring in front of the building, made of a strong compound material, had been crushed to smithereens.
The statue was tough, Ye Chong will give it that. While it was now heavily deformed, there were no cracks on it. Anye Luoxue had created only five artworks in her entire lifetime. She was extremely fastidious regarding the material she used, and this statue was the one she took most pride in. However, this wonderful statue was now deformed beyond recognition, and covered with all kinds of gore and tissue.
Ye Chong never imagined that the deformed statue would still be preserved in the end, placed on display in the largest art museum on Zhou Jian planet as testimony to this calamity.
Just then, the old man wheeled over a bunch of stuff with him and arrived. "Heh, come come, there’s something for everyone. Haha, I never thought my job would actually come in handy." He had with him an ancient wheelbarrow, carrying all kinds of ancient weapons, and metal machinery that the others had never seen before. The other people recalled then that the old man was a lecturer in ancient machinery, and quickly approached him. The old man was gratified and excited, realizing that his own obscure field of study that he was usually mocked for by others in the academy was finally useful today.
Seeing Ye Chong exterminating the insects in front, the old man picked up an archaic lance and threw it towards him, shouting, "Hey, young man, take this!"
While Ye Chong was now in a state of heightened excitement, coolness was still his default state of mind. As his stamina slowly decreased, he gradually came out of that state of excitement. He heard the old man’s voice then, and saw an archaic lance coming towards him.
Ye Chong immediately relinquished the statue and received the lance. The lance was a long forgotten weapon, but one that Ye Chong was most familiar with, second only to daggers. When piloting the Harmony of the Winter Aria, its weapon of choice was Blue Winter, a lance. Mu had even designed a set of lance techniques through his calculations.
Ye Chong now used these techniques. He drew straight lines or arcs across the air, attacking swiftly with the principle of maximum efficiency. His every attack with the lance hit dead on target, and his footwork was impeccable.
The lance was made of metal alloy, but weighed like a feather compared to the gold statue. Besides, the sharp tip of the lance made it even more effective in drawing blood. As such, Ye Chong’s efficiency increased sharply, and his stamina was exhausted more slowly.
After learning so many kinds of combat techniques, Ye Chong now had a much deeper understanding of combat. The lance swung around unpredictably, as Ye Chong modified and improved on Mu’s lance techniques. They were now Ye Chong’s very own set of moves. He grew absorbed in this process of creativity. His moves were highly varied - September Lan Family’s moves, Black Cove basic combat techniques, and the Sang Tribe’s moves were all experimented on, as he tried to combine all of them while balancing their strengths and weaknesses. Ye Chong had always learned bits and pieces of everything, and never stopped his research in combat. He had also learned under the September Lan Family’s system. All these experiences that given him enough strength to achieve a breakthrough in this moment.
The endless stream of insects had given him the best opportunity to enhance his skills.
The tip of the lance glowed, swinging around unpredictably and strangely like a firefly dancing in a summer night. The insect’s tough exoskeleton crumbled easily under the assault of this pin-sized dot of light.
The battle felt easier and easier. Ye Chong’s movements grew smaller, but the tip of the lance still managed to find the weak spots of those insects with surprising accuracy.
The people around him watched in awe. Ye Chong was like a magician to them. They were lucky to witness the transcendence and transformation of a combat expert right before their eyes. This was a valuable experience that one can only encounter through fate. Ye Chong would never have guessed that, 20 years from now, three of the students here in the school building would become Jie experts themselves.
This was Ye Chong’s first real breakthrough. Ye Chong believed that, at least in terms of combat, he would be able to win against Mu and Shang. He had found what Mu once called the spirit of combat! This was an important factor in combat alongside strength, angle and timing.
From a long time ago, Mu’s strength seemed insurmountable to Ye Chong. All this while, his greatest hope was to become stronger than Mu. Now that he had achieved it however, at least in terms of combat, he did not feel happy at all.
"Mu, Shang, where are you?"