High Martial: I Grind Professions

Chapter 548: Chapter 337: The Name of Blood Slaughter (Part 2)

His gaze was grave as he looked toward the empty arena.

Isabel, standing to the side, nodded lightly, a hint of apprehension on her stunning face.

Naraku, however, remained silent, his sharp gaze fixed on the entrance.

As they chatted, the air suddenly seemed to thicken.

An invisible and heart-stopping baleful aura began to permeate the area.

Blood Slaughter Barton was here.

He made no superfluous movements, simply teleporting in quietly to stand in a corner of the preparation area.

He wore a simple black combat suit, unadorned by any finery. Only the baleful aura coiled around him.

His arrival instantly hushed the surrounding discussions.

Countless gazes, filled with awe and admiration, fell upon him.

Li Wen, too, locked his gaze firmly on Barton.

His keen Perception Power clearly sensed that Barton’s baleful aura had grown even thicker since their last encounter.

Barton seemed accustomed to such scrutiny, completely ignoring the gazes from his surroundings.

He stood as if separate from the din, a flicker of indifference occasionally passing through the depths of his profound eyes.

”It seems Barton only smiles when he’s facing his own people,” Naraku suddenly murmured, breaking the brief silence.

He’d noticed that as Barton scanned the crowd, his perpetually cold expression had softened—an incredibly rare sight—but only when his eyes fell upon a small group gathered in a corner.

”That’s related to his background,” Ares sighed, his deep voice drawing the attention of Li Wen and the others.

”He used to be a slave. To be precise, the entire planet he’s from, Ande Star, was a slave planet owned by someone else. The people there were born as livestock, meant to be ordered around, bought and sold, even killed for sport.”

Ares’s words sent a jolt through Li Wen, and his gaze returned to Barton’s aloof, icy figure.

”Barton grew up in that hell. His survival is a miracle in itself.

That is, until his prodigious combat talent was discovered by chance during a gladiatorial match by a passing external deacon of the Source Net.”

Ares continued, a complex note in his voice, ”The deacon saw the beast-like will to survive in his eyes, as well as his terrifying potential,

but he didn’t just buy freedom for him and his people. The cost would have been too high, and there was no guarantee it would forge a truly powerful warrior.”

”What did the deacon do?” Li Wen couldn’t help but ask. He found it hard to imagine how someone like Barton had managed to claw his way out of that hellish slavery.

Ares’s eyes grew profound. ”The deacon gave Barton a near-impossible condition: he threw him, alone, into a battlefield ruin known as the ’Blood Abyss’.

It’s a paradise for interstellar pirates, exiled criminals, and rampaging Biochemical Beasts—a true mountain of corpses and sea of blood.

The deacon told him that if he wanted freedom, if he wanted to change the destiny of his people, he had to fight his way out. He had to kill a thousand opponents of the same tier or stronger, and then walk out of the designated exit alive.”

”That place...” Raymond clicked his tongue, apparently having heard of the Blood Abyss’s fearsome reputation. ”Forget a thousand kills. It’s a miracle to survive even ten days in there.”

”Yes,” Ares nodded. ”No one believed he could do it, not even the deacon, who was probably just taking a chance on him. But Barton... he succeeded.

No one knows the details of what he went through. They only know that when he crawled out of the Blood Abyss’s sole exit three years later, he was bathed in blood and barely recognizable as human,

but he was dragging behind him a path paved with countless skeletons and shattered weapons. He hadn’t just met the quota; he had also slain several powerful bandit leaders from the depths of the Blood Abyss.

His title, ’Blood Slaughter,’ began to spread from that moment on. The deacon kept his word and honored his promise,

Barton and his people were granted their freedom and brought to the Source Net to be trained. But that experience also forged him into the man he is today.”

Li Wen fell silent after hearing Ares’s story.

He watched Barton’s figure, still as a dormant volcano, and a wave of complex emotions washed over him.

He recalled his own origins on Earth. ’I wasn’t born into wealth or power, but at least I was born a free man.

’I had caring parents and Blue Star as my foundation. Even luckier, our world had once produced a mighty figure like Ancestral Master Chang Jia.

’That’s how our entire planet avoided the tragic fate of becoming a slave planet.

’Compared to Barton, who had to crawl his way out of a mire of flesh and blood, I’ve been incredibly fortunate.’

This fortune gave him a more complex understanding of Barton, one that went beyond simple apprehension or rivalry.

At that moment, time ran out, and the one thousand contestants in the preparation area were instantly enveloped in the light of a mass teleportation.

The next moment, they all appeared in neat formation on the vast arena stage.

The moment Barton’s figure appeared, the vast spectator stands surrounding the arena—composed of countless virtual projections—erupted in a tsunami of cheers!

”Blood Slaughter! Blood Slaughter! Blood Slaughter!”

...

The frenzied voices merged into a massive sound wave that threatened to overturn the entire virtual space.

Only then did Blood Slaughter Barton’s expression shift, ever so slightly.

His cold eyes shifted, landing precisely on a specific section of the stands.

There, a group of people dressed in coarse, rustic attire were waving their arms frantically, their faces alight with an excitement that could not be contained.

They were his people, from the Murphy Empire, from Barton’s home planet of Ande Star.

Seeing Barton look their way, his kinsmen grew even more excited, their roars nearly reaching their physical limits.

The corner of Barton’s mouth twitched upward—an incredibly rare sight, as fleeting as an illusion.

But it was, undeniably, a smile, carrying with it a hint of imperceptible warmth.

A smile that blossomed only for his people.

On the arena, Li Wen and the others had a clear view of this moment as well.

The fleeting smile, set against the frenzied passion of his people in the stands, was a stark, silent confirmation of everything Ares had just described.

”Countdown commencing... Ten... Nine...” The cold voice of the system announcement rang out, instantly pushing the tense atmosphere on the arena to its peak.

The one thousand Saint Realm geniuses on the arena were all elites who had distinguished themselves from trillions of contestants in the first stage.

But the moment Barton appeared, fear spread like a plague through the hearts of most of them.

Some fell into despair, wanting only to get as far from the center as possible;

others’ eyes darted about, searching for the slimmest chance of survival.

”...Three... Two... One! The battle begins!”

”KILL!!!” The instant the countdown hit zero, a desperate, do-or-die roar erupted from a corner of the arena.

The roar came from a burly man wielding a giant tower shield and a flail. He was a powerhouse, ranked around one-hundredth on the overall leaderboard.

”Don’t let him pick us off one by one! Everyone, attack Barton first! Otherwise, we’re all dead!”

The burly man roared as a heavy, earth-yellow light erupted from his body. He slammed his tower shield to the ground.

A powerful shockwave radiated outward as he tried to rally the others and draw aggro.

To everyone’s surprise, his call actually garnered a response amid the pervasive fear.

Instantly, seven or eight figures, shimmering with the light of various Laws, launched their attacks. Some struck from a distance, while others charged in for close-quarters assaults.

With do-or-die resolve, they all converged on the demon-like figure in the center of the arena.

They knew that fighting him alone was a death sentence. Only by banding together did they stand the slimmest chance of survival.

Faced with this sudden, coordinated assault, Barton’s expression remained unchanged. He didn’t even twitch an eyelid.

He remained standing, as if the ones rushing him weren’t a group of Saint Realm prodigies, but a swarm of insignificant moths.

Just as the attacks, each brimming with terrifying power, were about to strike—

VWOOM!

Barton moved.

There was no earth-shattering display of power, only a flash of blood-red light—a blade so fast it defied the eye, condensed to its absolute limit.

The blade light wasn’t a physical object. It was more like the manifestation of pure killing intent, fused with a highly condensed Law of Destruction.