CHAPTER 62: FIVE SECONDS ARE ALL I NEED

As someone in the midpoint of the Physique Transformation realm, having to listen to the crap this guy kept spewing was an insult to his martial prowess. The frustration made Shen Kai take a quick decision.

If Han Xuhan had any trump cards, he would have played them before degrading himself like this. What a righteous cultivator valued the most was his honor.

Besides, what can a cultivator with such a weak aura even do to him? This Crimson Snow Sect disciple barely seems to have scratched the surface of Mystic Arts, let alone set foot in the other, less travelled paths.

On the other hand, Mu Ran was waiting inside the tunnel. That guy was a real opponent, someone he couldn’t see through.

Shen Kai’s instinct told him that taking care of Mu Ran would be difficult. He had to finish up the work on this side as fast as possible lest Mu Ran should suspect something.

The distance between Han Xuhan and Shen Kai was barely Ten steps. As Shen Kai stepped forward and raised his dagger like a reaper ready to harvest a life, the soil underneath his foot felt slightly uneven.

He didn’t pay such a minor detail any heed, but he noticed a sudden shine in Han Xuhan’s tearful gaze.

Had Shen Kai paid attention to what lay under his heel, he’d have seen a single, ordinary-looking shoe.

Shen Kai’s body leaned forward and his right hand swung in a fluid arc. But before the dagger reached Han Xuhan’s throat, he noticed a cunning smirk replacing Xuhan’s pleading expression.

Shen Kai’s nerves tightened, every strand of hair on his body straightening up like a band of needles. So this guy did hide a trump card! And he was about to unleash it for sure!

Turning his swinging dagger into a powerless feint, Shen Kai instantly took a couple of steps back, an instinctive reaction to sneaky retaliations from past battle experience. Whatever attacking method he was facing, he could evade it as long as he could detect it.

Yet, he could not sense the impending retaliatory attack.

Shen Kai waited another two seconds, standing still with his nerves strained and pupils widened to the maximum. The moment he perceived a threat, every cell in his body would go into overdrive.

And for the second time, nothing happened.

Damned brat! He was pretending! But for what?! He wasn’t even trying to escape with the extended time!

Shen Kai’s anger reached an immeasurable peak as he howled like a raging tiger and rushed forward again at Han Xuhan. The infuriating young man scurried back with a pale expression.

Just when Shen Kai reached him—

BOOM!

With the unexpected, subdued sound of an explosion, Shen Kai felt a tremendous gravitational force pushing him in a tall arc like an arrow. Something had exploded right under his foot!

He had been tricked. This guy wasn’t pretending to have a trump card. He was toying with Shen Kai’s mind!

Shen Kai flew more than thirty feet in the air and fell into a thicket, while Han Xuhan stopped scampering on the ground and pulled out two small knives from inside his robe in a practiced motion.

Then, just as Shen Kai managed to stand up, Han Xuhan threw both knives at his unprotected face without any preparation or proper aiming,

The Whole process was beautifully executed, with not a single pause for a conscious thought. Shen Kai only saw the gleaming cold knives when they were halfway through their trajectory. But he couldn’t believe it!

The entire time Han Xuhan had been begging for mercy, had he been planning the details of this exact move?

Even after suffering such a blow, Shen Kai recovered his bearing in a fraction of a second. He didn’t dwell on the source of the explosion. He didn’t need to, in such a precarious moment. The knives were coming for his head, and the distance was short.

With a calm heart, he pushed his arms in front of his face and shielded his eyes from the closest knife. In that brief timeframe, the knife had almost reached him. That didn’t worry Shen Kai.

The reflexes and agility of a cultivator at the midpoint of the Physique Transformation realm were far beyond what a weakling like Han Xuhan could crack through.

However, what hit his palm was not the sharp tip of a knife; rather, the wooden butt, really softly at that too. The impression Shen Kai got from that impact was that... The attacker had never practiced throwing knives in his life.

Damn it! Another false move!

Shen Kai removed his hands from his face and saw the other knife flying toward his heart. Instinctively, he pulled his hands to form a shield over his chest, despite being certain that it wasn’t even a threat.

But the doubt haunted him, planted by the experience of the earlier reversal. What if the first throw had been an intentional blunder?

Within these two seconds since the explosion, Shen Kai’s mind had become a mess.

Adding to his chagrin, the second knife also hit his hand... and rebounded off like a twig. By then, Han Xuhan had brought out the glaive he had been carrying on his back.

One look at his grip on the glaive told Shen Kai that he didn’t know how to wield it. Sneering maliciously, he shook his arms and sprinted towards Han Xuhan with his dagger raised.

But once again, when he was just about to reach Han Xuhan, the ground beneath his feet exploded with invisible energy. This time, the outcome was even worse, because the explosion pushed him towards Han Xuhan uncontrollably.

Shen Kai could do nothing but numbly fly toward the waiting enemy, his body two meters above the ground.

What cursed weapon was this?! A powerful apparatus imbued with remote controlling methods?

The blade of the glaive held above Han Xuhan’s head was like a mobile guillotine waiting for his neck to fall under its arc. Han Xuhan’s eyes were just as cold and emotionless as that blade.

Shen Kai hadn’t lost his dagger yet, but he recognized the material of that glaive too. His dagger wouldn’t be able to withstand a proper swing from that blade.

How did things come to this? Shen Kai briefly wondered. Five seconds ago, everything had been under his control. Within these five seconds, he was about to lose to a mere rookie cultivator.

And humiliatingly enough, this rookie cultivator hadn’t even resorted to his Mystic Art!