A puddle of blood spread beneath Caelen. In just a few breaths, blood had gushed out so fast that the puddle was forming incredibly quickly, spreading as if it would cover the whole platform.
What type of technique was this? Could all the blood in the body amount to this much? This was the first time that a lot of people had seen Caelen fight. And the first time most of them had seen a Seradon fight at all.
All most people knew about the Sicon family of Seradon was that they used blood as their way of cultivation!
In the middle of the blood puddle, Caelen stood there like a demon bathed in light. His red eyes were like the heat from the bottom of a volcano, and yet like the cold at the pit of a glacier. So contradictory and yet so fitting!
Aura exploded around him, and his killing intent was like red smoke that clung to him and floated around him! It swept the surroundings, surging like a tide. Inside that killing intent, there were faint figures of people screaming and shouting, wailing and dying.
Instructor Hadrian’s eyes narrowed, then widened with shock. That... that was the strength of an Ascendant! Caelen was an Ascendant rank!
At the same time that Instructor Hadrian was thinking about this, the bloodlust and killing intent from Caelen had already reached him and seeped into his body!
That fast!
Instantly, sword light burst from his body, sweeping from head to toe and clearing out any foreign influence. The sword light expanded around him, and each time Caelen’s blood intent reached out, it collapsed and was destroyed.
Now, the onlookers were silent. Class Thirteen was silent. Class Sixty-Seven was silent. Those who were watching from the shadows were silent.
Everyone was silent. This... was so unexpected!
The reason it was so unexpected was that, no matter what, how could Caelen have concealed his power from a young age until now? Everyone was an Essence cultivator. No matter what, they should have felt something!
And right up until the moment Caelen erupted with power, there hadn’t been any fluctuations of Essence. Wait... wait... Several waves of awareness swept forward like a tide, clashing with Caelen.
But... they still couldn’t feel any fluctuations from him!
It was as if he wasn’t using Essence!
Everyone sat up. Things wouldn’t go as they had expected. Far, far from what they had expected!
Instructor Hadrian’s face turned serious. "It seems I won’t be able to defeat you without showing my sword."
Caelen looked at him and said indifferently, "It’ll make no difference what you do. It’s all a futile struggle."
But internally, Caelen was worried about something.
’Just now, as I used my Sovereign of Blood Aspect... I could feel that it had weakened... my power had weakened!’
Caelen was someone who had mastered his power to its absolute limit. He had reached the pinnacle of what his A rank could achieve and had even expanded upon it. When he realized he couldn’t advance past A rank, he had tried every possible way to maximize his current strength.
But now, standing on this platform, he realized that his power had actually decreased.
Interesting.
’Is it because this world is different from my previous one?’
Instructor Hadrian’s face darkened. "You... because you hid your strength and showed it now, you think you’re stronger?"
Earlier, when Kolu warned Caelen that he might die on the platform, why hadn’t he reacted? Was it because he lacked self-preservation or because he thought he couldn’t actually die?
No, it was simply because Caelen was absolutely sure of his own strength! Within the same rank, he had no equal! At the same level of power, no one could stand above him!
Instead of answering, Caelen took a step forward. And while it seemed he was still standing there, blood-red footprints had already crossed to the other side, where Hadrian stood!
What was still standing in the blood puddle was actually just his afterimage!
The blood footprints were actually him, and he had already appeared in front of Instructor Hadrian!
"I will give you the opportunity to show me!"
Caelen’s hand came down on Hadrian like a mountain of blood!
He actually punched him!
Caelen’s original body was weak. When Caelen first took over, it was the first thing he had complained about. But he knew a lot of tricks, and one of them was the blood light that surrounded him. It was as if he were wearing a mountain of blood!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
In the short distance between them, the punch actually broke through the air barrier. The wind it stirred up was like a hurricane that blew beyond the platform!
Everyone realized... Caelen had been going for a serious fight from the very beginning. He hadn’t even tried to probe the strength of his opponent. Was he so confident in his own strength that he didn’t even care how strong his opponent was?
What type of arrogance!
And Instructor Hadrian suddenly realized... he actually didn’t dare to take that punch head-on!
But he wasn’t a weakling either! He was a sword practitioner, and his flying sword was strong. The sword light around him intensified, growing sharper and sharper! White light burst out of his chest and solidified into a sword in front of him.
Without hesitation, the sword swung, meeting the punch head-on.
Instructor Hadrian was declaring, between my sword and your punch, which is stronger!
The two collided, and the surroundings shuddered. What followed was a large shower of sparks and a loud screeching sound.
Caelen retreated a step, while Instructor Hadrian retreated ten steps!
Caelen looked at his hand, where a bloody gash had been carved, and then at Instructor Hadrian. "Not bad."
But Instructor Hadrian’s face was even grimmer. Although it seemed that he had won their first exchange by inflicting a wound, he knew otherwise. He had retreated ten steps, and his sword was still vibrating!
The strength of that punch...
But he straightened and reached out. His sword, a white blade with an inky hilt, floated toward him and fitted itself into his hand. The sword light around him instantly calmed and fell into some kind of equilibrium. It was as if everything around him became complete only when he was holding his sword.
He raised his sword without hesitation, and Caelen felt the sharpness emanating from that simple gesture!
Caelen was someone who liked seeing others progress in power. He appreciated power as if he were looking at something beautiful. He liked molding it. That was why he had been the best instructor in his former world. That was why he had trained the strongest people in his previous world.
It was just that... he also very much liked being the one who stood at the very pinnacle of such beauty, so that he could look down and appreciate it.
So, when he felt the sharpness of Hadrian’s sword from that distance, he couldn’t help but praise it. "Good sword!"
But Hadrian had a different reaction. His eyes were filled with gloom. After all, what he had used just now was actually a technique! What Caelen had felt and praised... was actually the sword intent of the Seven Delusions of the Fool!
It was supposed to make him fall into delusion, fooling his senses!
But Caelen had just shrugged it off as if it were nothing!
Instructor Hadrian gritted his teeth. "If I can’t fool you, then I’ll fool the world!"
By the time he said that, his sword had already descended!
All Caelen saw was that everything suddenly changed. In front of him was an almost infinite world, blooming with flowers. Beautiful flowers floated through the air, drifting toward him!
Caelen frowned, his brows furrowing.
As someone who had killed a lot of people and things, he had also been hunted. He had felt so many killing intentions directed at him that he had gained an almost passive ability to sense the slightest killing intent.
He didn’t know where the platform had gone or where he was. But he was absolutely sure that he did not want those flowers near him!
He couldn’t see his blood pool, but he was sure it was still there. He could feel it.
Caelen raised his hand, his eyes flashing. "Reverse Rain!"
He couldn’t see his own technique. But the world of beautiful flowers and sunset was suddenly bathed in blood. The air shuddered, and the world of flowers collapsed!
Caelen was back on the platform.
All around him, drops of blood stood in defiance of gravity. They hung there, gently floating upward... in reverse rain!
And over there, Instructor Hadrian was breathing hard, his chest covered in faint layers of blood.
He had fooled the world with his sword and had been just about to strike Caelen when the blood fell like rain!
This was the first time that technique had been broken by someone below or at the Ascendant rank!