Chapter 124: Anticipating the Shot
That sword was dazzling beyond compare. Its sword intent, vast as the heavens themselves, cleaved through the sky and struck viciously against the Yuan Shield of Lan Chen’s Fifth Uncle from Ancient Lan City.
Boom!
The Heavenly Firmament sword energy crashed into the Yuan Shield, unleashing boundless, terrifying destruction. The supposedly indestructible shield cracked apart beneath the blow, and in an instant the dreadful sword energy pierced through his body.
“Ah!”
Lan Chen’s Fifth Uncle suddenly let out a thunderous scream.
Yi Tian’s sword had inflicted a grievous wound, nearly piercing his heart.
Boom!
He erupted with overwhelming force, instantly blasting Yi Tian and the five members of the Reincarnation Battle Team backward. Then he vanished into the distance in a flash. Within a dozen breaths, he had covered dozens of miles. Taking a Small Creation Pill from his storage ring and swallowing it in one gulp, he watched as the bloody hole in his body rapidly closed and his injuries were staunched.
Without the slightest pause, the Fifth Uncle seized Lan Chen and soon disappeared from Yi Tian and the others’ sight.
Only after watching their opponent leave did Yi Tian and the others finally breathe a sigh of relief.
The battle had been extraordinarily perilous.
The six of them had cultivated the ancient Sun-Shooting Heavenly Art, allowing them to unleash formidable combat power. They could even suppress experts of the Yuan Art realm for a time, and perhaps kill them within an extremely brief period. But if they failed to finish off their opponent, the balance between offense and defense would be reversed, and they would fall into a passive position.
Yet the enemy they had faced was a top-tier Yuan Core expert among the Human Rank. Even after cultivating an ancient heavenly art, they had been unable to suppress him and could only barely hold him at bay.
Thus, although all six members of the Reincarnation Battle Team had fought with everything they had, they had merely managed to contend with him temporarily. If the battle had continued, defeat and death would have been their only fate.
“Yuan Core experts don’t seem all that frightening after all!”
Seeing Lan Chen’s Fifth Uncle flee, Yi Shan spoke with some disdain.
He had expected a Yuan Core expert to be astonishingly powerful, yet the man had been driven back by the six members of their Reincarnation Battle Team. This had fallen far short of his expectations.
Yi Li said, “Don’t underestimate a Yuan Core expert. He was merely careless just now and suffered a serious injury from the captain’s strike. Otherwise, we would have been slaughtered. Besides, he never even used the magical treasure in his hand. If he had fought with all his strength, we would probably have been unable to withstand him.”
Yi Hong nodded. “Our Sun-Shooting Heavenly Art is more powerful than the magical treasures we carry, so for us, using or not using those treasures makes little difference. But given his cultivation and status, even the lowest-grade magical treasure in his possession must be at least Extraordinary Grade. It may even be Top-Tier Grade. Once he used it, his combat power could increase dozens of times. We wouldn’t even have been able to resist him for a moment.”
Having heard Yi Li and Yi Hong’s analysis, Yi Tian said, “Your analysis is sound. He was merely careless.”
Yi Tian knew full well that Lan Chen’s so-called Fifth Uncle was a top Human Rank expert who had condensed a Yuan Core. If he fought with all his strength, the entire Reincarnation Battle Team would be no match for him.
After all, Yi Tian and the others could unleash the greatest power of their Sun-Shooting Heavenly Art only with their treasured bows. Yet at their current level, they could not even track their opponent’s movements. That rendered their greatest trump card useless.
By contrast, their opponent was a Yuan Core expert backed by Ancient Lan City, a power with a heritage stretching back tens of thousands of years. Even if he used an Extraordinary Grade lower-grade magical treasure, his strength could double or even triple. If he used a Top-Tier Grade lower-grade magical treasure, he could unleash more than ten times his ordinary power.
Lower-grade magical treasures corresponded to the Human Rank.
However, magical treasures of every grade were divided into levels: Common Grade, Extraordinary Grade, and Top-Tier Grade.
The power of each level of lower-grade magical treasure differed enormously.
The lower-grade magical treasures in Yi Tian and the others’ possession were all Common Grade. They cost anywhere from several spirit crystals to a dozen or twenty.
As for Extraordinary Grade lower-grade magical treasures, they cost at least seventy or eighty spirit crystals, with some exceeding a hundred.
The price of a Top-Tier Grade lower-grade magical treasure was even more astonishing. Such treasures were worth at least a thousand spirit crystals, scarcely less expensive than Common Grade middle-grade magical treasures. They were the ultimate treasures that a Human Rank expert could wield.
The legendary Nine-Dragon Bell belonging to Gu Huaiyu, master of the Skyward Tower, was said to be a Top-Tier Grade lower-grade magical treasure. The bell that An Qing of the Moon-Welcoming Sect had used to suppress the Three-Eyed Dragon Centipede at the final moment was likely a Top-Tier Grade lower-grade magical treasure as well. Otherwise, it could never have restrained a peak mid-level ferocious beast.
“This battle was extremely dangerous, and it also exposed several weaknesses of ours.”
Yi Tian turned to Yi Feng, Yi Shan, and the others. “When we face an expert whose speed is so great that our thoughts cannot even keep pace with it, we’re unable to lock onto his movements, and our strength falls by more than half. So this time, we won’t be going adventuring. Instead, we’ll strengthen our training in this area.”
“How do we train?” Yi Li was the first to ask.
Yi Feng, Yi Shan, and the others were curious as well.
“Falling Geese Mountain.”
Yi Tian quietly spoke the name.
After seven days of travel, Yi Tian and the others arrived at Falling Geese Mountain, thirty thousand miles from Desolate Qin City.
Falling Geese Mountain was an extraordinary peak, famous throughout the hundred-thousand-mile region surrounding Desolate Qin City.
The mountain soared to a height of three hundred thousand zhang, piercing the heavens. Even the clouds lay around its middle slopes. It was breathtakingly majestic, and only Earth Rank paragons could reach its summit.
Although Human Rank experts had condensed true essence and crossed the threshold of martial cultivation, granting them the ability to travel through the air, they could move only below an altitude of ten thousand zhang. The higher they rose above the earth, the greater the expenditure of their strength.
Falling Geese Mountain rose three hundred thousand zhang into the sky. Even wild geese could not fly across it. The terrifying astral winds would sweep them away, smashing them into a pulp and leaving not even an intact corpse. It was an exceedingly dangerous place.
Yet a flock of ferocious birds occupied Falling Geese Mountain: tiger-headed eagles.
The tiger-headed eagle was a mid-level ferocious bird. With its wings spread, it could reach more than a dozen zhang in span. Tiger-like markings covered its head, and it could tear tigers and leopards apart with ease. Its speed was astonishing as well; with a single beat of its wings, it could cross a hundred miles in a dozen breaths. In the sky, it appeared as nothing more than a succession of dark shadows.
Thousands of tiger-headed eagles occupied the summit of Falling Geese Mountain.
Yi Tian and the others had come to Falling Geese Mountain to use the tiger-headed eagles as targets for their archery training.
All of them had attained some degree of skill in prediction, but none had truly reached the limit.
The ultimate form of prediction was spiritual perception.
Spiritual perception was a realm in which archer and bow became one—a state of locking onto one’s opponent through the senses of the soul.
“Roar!”
Suddenly, more than a dozen dark shadows burst from Falling Geese Mountain, tearing through the air like bolts of lightning.
It was a small hunting party of tiger-headed eagles.
At that very moment, arrows suddenly shot out from the mountain forests below. In an instant, they tore through the air from behind the tiger-headed eagles, but each missed the birds’ true bodies by several zhang.
During their first training session, even Yi Tian failed to kill a single tiger-headed eagle, despite his consciousness being far stronger than that of ordinary people.
The other members of the Reincarnation Battle Team performed even worse.
The tiger-headed eagles that had nearly been ambushed circled overhead for a long while. Seeing no further movement, they once again spread their wings and soared away.
And so, on the land surrounding Falling Geese Mountain, Yi Tian led the members of the Reincarnation Battle Team in training for three months. Every day, they fired at the tiger-headed eagles as the birds streaked across the sky with lightning speed.
The tiger-headed eagle was a mid-level ferocious beast, and its speed was unbelievably fast.
Among Human Rank experts, even those who cultivated top-tier movement techniques were slower than tiger-headed eagles.
Over those three months, Yi Tian and the others’ archery improved tremendously. The improvement did not lie in the might of their attacks, but in their intuitive ability to predict and invisibly lock onto their prey.
Although they still failed to kill a single tiger-headed eagle, their arrows drew closer and closer to the birds’ true bodies with every attempt.
Several times, Yi Tian’s arrows passed within a hair’s breadth of a tiger-headed eagle.
One had to understand that although tiger-headed eagles were merely the most ordinary mid-level ferocious birds, their speed was terrifying. Even Yuan Core experts would be exhausted from trying to flee beneath the pursuit of a tiger-headed eagle.
After three months of arduous cultivation, Yi Tian and the others’ archery continued to grow stronger.
This was a rare form of training. In the past, Yi Tian and the others had never found ferocious birds as powerful as tiger-headed eagles with which to practice their archery. Moreover, their rise had been too rapid, leaving them no time to refine their skills. Thus, after three months of painstaking practice, their archery advanced by leaps and bounds.