High Martial Arts: Enlightenment after Practices

Chapter 723: Chapter 696: Shadow Sword Technique

The Ape-shaped Beast King on the right was different. Having only recently advanced, its perception of Rules wasn’t quite as keen.

It merely sensed that the aura of this newly arrived human wasn’t weak. But that was about it—he seemed roughly on par with the guy who had been trapped opposite it for the past two months. Letting out a low roar, the beast leaned its massive body slightly forward, assuming an attacking stance.

Xu Wuyi ignored it, turning his gaze to Ren Bai instead.

“Grandmaster Ren, how much longer can you hold out?”

Ren Bai fell silent for a moment before replying, “Half a month. If it’s just a standoff, I can hold out for another half a month. But if a fight breaks out, three days at most.”

Xu Wuyi nodded, mentally noting the timeframe. He turned back to face the two Beast Kings.

The Tiger-shaped Beast King on the left continued to glare at him, the wariness in its scarlet eyes growing ever thicker. The dangerous aura it sensed from Xu Wuyi made it instinctively want to back away. However, its territory lay right behind it; it couldn’t retreat.

The Ape-shaped Beast King on the right, meanwhile, had already grown impatient. It unleashed another roar and abruptly leapt from its hovering position. Its massive body, like a small mountain, hurled itself toward Xu Wuyi.

Its speed was astonishing. It crossed the distance of over ten meters in the blink of an eye. Its long arms raised high, and its ten-centimeter-long razor-sharp claws tore through the air, producing an ear-piercing screech.

Ren Bai’s expression shifted. He tried to get up to help, but the moment he moved, the Tiger-shaped Beast King on the left let out a low growl, its immense aura instantly locking onto him. It was not about to let Ren Bai aid the newcomer. Keeping him pinned down was its task—the division of labor it had agreed upon with the Ape-shaped Beast King.

Ren Bai had no choice but to stop. He watched the Ape-shaped Beast King lunge at Xu Wuyi, a flash of worry crossing his eyes.

Yet, he quickly realized his concerns were entirely unfounded.

Faced with the lunging Ape-shaped Beast King, Xu Wuyi didn’t retreat, didn’t dodge, and didn’t even draw the long spear from his back. He simply stood rooted to the spot, his expression perfectly calm as he watched the behemoth draw closer and closer.

Fifty meters. Thirty meters. Ten meters.

Just as the Ape-shaped Beast King’s sharp claws were about to touch the top of his head, Xu Wuyi finally moved. He raised his right hand and grasped the hilt of the spear on his back. Then, he drew it.

The motion was so fast it was a blur. There was only the crisp sound of metal scraping against metal as a flash of cold light swept out from his back, drawing a graceful arc through the air. The spear tip was aimed directly at the Ape-shaped Beast King’s chest.

A glimmer of disdain flashed in the Ape-shaped Beast King’s eyes. It had seen human weapons before; when those things struck its body, they couldn’t even break its skin. Its dark red fur appeared soft but was actually as hard as steel. Ordinary weapons would only shatter upon impact.

However, it quickly realized that this spear strike was entirely different from anything it had ever seen. The moment the spear tip thrust toward it, it suddenly felt an indescribable sense of weirdness.

It could clearly see the direction the spear tip was coming from, could clearly perceive the trajectory of the thrust. But the moment it prepared to dodge, it found it couldn’t move. No, it wasn’t that it couldn’t move—it was that every single one of its judgments had gone haywire.

It felt as though the spear would pierce its left chest, but the tip was actually thrusting toward its right. It felt that the thrust was slow enough to dodge, but in reality, the spear was moving twice as fast as it perceived. This jarring disconnect between perception and reality stripped it of any possibility of evading.

The spear tip pierced perfectly into its chest.

The instant it made contact, the Ape-shaped Beast King felt something surge from the spear tip and bore into its body. That thing wasn’t Energy, nor was it a toxin; it was something far more uncanny. The moment it entered its body, the Ape-shaped Beast King felt as if all Order within it had descended into Chaos.

Its Qi and Blood no longer circulated along their established pathways. Instead, they began to surge wildly and erratically. Its consciousness was no longer clear and sharp, plagued by bizarre hallucinations. Its perception was no longer accurate and reliable, instead feeding it a barrage of false information.

It felt like it was still in the air, but its mind told it that it had already landed. It felt like it was still attacking, but its Qi and Blood told it to retreat. It knew it was still alive, yet every part of its body screamed that it was about to die.

The sensation of chaos was utterly overwhelming, so intense that it completely lost control of its own body. It simply froze in mid-air, suspended in its lunging posture, utterly motionless.

Xu Wuyi withdrew his spear and stepped back. He looked at the Ape-shaped Beast King standing before him, now consumed by chaos, and a wondrous feeling welled up in his heart.

This was the effect of Chaos.

He had studied it at the Red River for over two months and tested it on training dummies thousands of times, but this was the first time he had used it in actual combat. The effect was even better than he had anticipated.

The Ape-shaped Beast King was, after all, an existence at the Grandmaster Level. Although its Rules had only recently formed, they were still genuine Rules. Under normal circumstances, using the Power of Order to influence it would not have been so easy.

But the technique Chaos did not rely on his own Power of Order. Instead, it hijacked the Order already existing within the enemy’s body. The moment the spear tip penetrated, it used Spirit to interfere with the operation of that Order, throwing it into chaos.

The toll this method took was minimal, but the payoff was tremendous. Especially when used for the first time, enemies had no understanding of the technique’s underlying principles, leaving them entirely clueless on how to counter it. By the time they realized what was happening, the battle would already be over.

Still suspended in mid-air, the Ape-shaped Beast King’s massive body began to tremble slightly. The tremors grew increasingly violent, spiraling completely out of control.

Its eyes would shoot wide open, then squint into narrow slits; its mouth would gape in a silent roar, then clamp tightly shut; its limbs would lock up as stiff as iron, then suddenly go as limp as noodles.