The assessment officially begins!
Tang San made the first move.
He flipped his palms outward, and more than a dozen strands of Blue Silver Grass abruptly burst forth from the ground, winding and slithering closely along the surface.
Advancing and circling, they intended to form an inescapable net beneath Qin Yun’s feet.
Simultaneously, a warm, jade-like radiance lit up Ning Rongrong’s fingertips as the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda slowly rose from her palm.
Amid the flowing seven-colored halo, two amplifying beams of light fell respectively upon Zhu Zhuqing and Xiao Wu—Strength Amplification and Speed Amplification.
Xiao Wu’s toes tapped the ground, and her entire body flanked from the left at an extreme speed.
With her right hand’s five fingers slightly splayed, the explosive force of the Soft Bones Rabbit was already accumulating in the bend of her legs;
Meanwhile, Zhu Zhuqing moved almost simultaneously.
Lowering her figure, her Hell Civet Spirit dragged an almost illusory afterimage behind her, a cold glint faintly appearing between her claws as she went straight for Qin Yun’s right ribs.
The four of them cooperated with exceptional tacit understanding.
One in front and one behind, one on the left and one on the right.
While applying close-range pressure, there was also the Blue Silver Grass blocking movement paths, coupled with the amplification support from Ning Rongrong in the rear.
Faced with this offensive, ordinary fortieth-rank Spirit Masters might not even be able to receive it.
However, Qin Yun merely pinched his right index finger and thumb together, snapping his fingers crisply out of thin air.
“Boom——!”
An abrupt explosion occurred three feet directly ahead of Xiao Wu’s advancing path.
The explosion was not violent, but the sound was extremely crisp.
It was like an invisible mass of gas being suddenly ignited, blasting out a circle of visible white qi waves, carrying a shockwave as it rushed straight toward Xiao Wu.
Her forward momentum unspent, her whole body collided as if into a taut drumskin, heavily bounced back by the qi waves, retreating over a dozen steps with staggering footsteps.
Immediately followed the second sound
——”Boom——!”
This time, the explosion blasted at Zhu Zhuqing’s advancing position.
Qi waves rolled, and Zhu Zhuqing was shaken so that her arms flew upward.
Her cat claws crossed in defense before her, yet she was still pushed by the shockwave to flip backward in a tumble, her boot soles scraping a long, shallow groove across the ground before she barely managed to steady her center of gravity.
She knelt on one knee, her cat pupils filled with solemnity.
Tang San’s Blue Silver Grass also took the opportunity to charge forward, coming close to Qin Yun.
But right at this moment, a wisp of spirit power quietly flowed between Qin Yun’s fingertips.
The trace amounts of free white phosphorus elements in the air were precisely stripped out by him, attaching to the surface of the Blue Silver Grass in an extremely light and thin amount.
The ignition point of white phosphorus was terrifyingly low.
Under forty degrees Celsius, driven by the slight heat of direct sunlight and air friction, it instantly ignited a faint white flame.
Tongues of fire spread rapidly along the vines, scorching Tang San’s deployed Blue Silver Grass into a winding fire dragon in the blink of an eye.
Tang San’s expression changed slightly, hastily recalling his Spirit, and with a flick of his wrist, he whipped the burning vines against the ground to extinguish them.
In just a single exchange, the offensive of all three of them was thoroughly frustrated.
Xiao Wu steadied her body amidst the qi waves, patted the dust clinging to her skirt hem, her small face pulled tight.
Although unconvinced in her heart, she no longer chuckled carelessly as before.
She said in a low voice.
“How on earth did he explode that?
I didn’t see him throw anything at all!”
Qin Yun hadn’t even moved half a step just now, merely flicking his fingers to neutralize the combined joint attack of the three.
This trick of “detonation out of thin air” left everyone completely baffled.
The real reason was known only to Qin Yun himself.
Prior to the finger snap, he had already quietly separated and gathered a small concentrated mixture of oxygen and flammable gas in the air.
Elevating the oxygen density far beyond normal levels, he then used a trace amount of spirit power to form a hair-trigger boundary.
The tiny vibration provided by the crisp sound of the finger snap was enough to break the boundary’s equilibrium, triggering a precise deflagration.
The principle was very simple to describe, just the three elements of combustion in basic chemistry.
But these four naturally wouldn’t be beaten back by this minor setback.
Zhu Zhuqing bounced off the ground once more, her cat pupils abruptly turning vertical as the aura around her body suddenly condensed.
Under the Hell Civet possession state, her speed skyrocketed once again, her figure transforming into a blurry black line.
This time she no longer charged straight at the front, instead advancing in a serpentine fashion from left to right, changing positions with every step she landed, making it difficult for others to predict her attack direction.
Xiao Wu also gritted her teeth and charged forward again, her Soft Bones Rabbit Spirit fully released, her legs bursting with astonishing jumping power.
Flipping continuously in the air, she chopped a high whip kick carrying a wind-breaking sound toward Qin Yun’s shoulder.
One high and one low, one fast and one fierce, the two compressed Qin Yun’s evasion space in all directions to the absolute limit.
Qin Yun still stood in place, neither dodging nor evading.
He merely turned slightly, his right hand’s five fingers splayed, and gently pressed toward the Void Realm in front of him.
The moment spirit power surged from his fingertips, the free carbon elements in the air were seized, condensed, and rearranged by him at an extremely high speed.
Under extreme compression and spirit power guidance, carbon atoms rapidly crystallized, countless tiny diamond crystal nuclei intertwining and growing within the frontal Void Realm, constructing a translucent crystal shield radiating a glistening, cold light in the blink of an eye.
This shield was approximately three chi square, with a mirror-smooth surface and a dense structure.
Zhu Zhuqing’s twin claws happened to rip down at this very moment.
“Clang——!”
Her Hell Civet sharp claws grabbed fiercely onto the surface of the diamond shield, sparks flying in all directions.
A sharp pain came from all ten of her nails almost simultaneously, her finger joints numbed by the shock, and a trace of blood oozed from the webbing of her thumb.
She let out a muffled grunt, flipped backward using the force to land, and looked down at her slightly trembling twin claws.
A few tiny cracks had already burst out on the edges of the nail plates at her fingertips; if she hadn’t reacted in time and pulled back some of her strength, this claw strike probably would have shattered all of her nails.
The diamond shield remained completely motionless, not even leaving a single scratch.
“Good heavens…
What on earth is that thing?”
Ning Rongrong saw it clearly from the rear, couldn’t help but gasp a breath of cold air.
“What he conjured out just now was a diamond?”
“Such a huge piece of diamond?”
When Xiao Wu’s high whip kick swept over with the sound of wind, Qin Yun had already calmly shifted sideways by a step, the shield simultaneously deflecting to the left to block Xiao Wu’s offensive outside as well.
The surface of this translucent crystal refracted fine, seven-colored light spots under the sunlight, extremely beautiful.
But falling into the opponents’ eyes, it was a form of silent oppression.
Tang San stood a few steps away, having all along not rushed to make a move.
He was observing every single action of Qin Yun.
To defeat an opponent, one must understand their offensive methods.
But Qin Yun’s combat style was entirely different from ordinary Spirit Masters, and he completely couldn’t see through it up to this point.
However, right at this moment.
The footsteps of the four of them suddenly paused.
Xiao Wu shook her head and said.
“Little San…
why do I feel my head spinning so badly?”
Ning Rongrong and Zhu Zhuqing also furrowed their brows simultaneously, a trace of pallor flashing across their faces.
Both of them supported their temples with their hands, each staggering half a step underfoot.
Ning Rongrong said.
“I’m dizzy too…
Could it be that we’ve already been poisoned?”
Zhu Zhuqing bit her lip without speaking, but the fine sweat seeping from her temples already explained everything.
This was the carbon monoxide that Qin Yun had previously set up taking effect.
This colorless and odorless gas had already quietly seeped into their bodies.