Bing stood face to face with Chun. A man more than 6 stages ahead of him. Him at the 3rd stage of the Qi Consolidation stage and himself at the 6th stage of the Qi Gathering realm. A hopeless and completely futile battle. A fight he knew he had no chance of winning. Then why was he still standing here ready to try everything to survive against this man, he had no bad blood with? Bing didn’t know the answer to that question. It seems Chun wouldn’t give him a second to think on it either.

  Bing could barely follow Chun’s movements and suffered a heavy blow to the face that sent him flying into Hu Tao’s cube. Blood dripped from his nose as an aching pain followed after. He didn’t even know how he just got hit! Was it a punch or a kick? Did he use a weapon?! Bing couldn’t tell and thinking about all of this was only distracting him.

  He had to focus. Focus only on surviving to his best ability. Eventually, he’ll be able to spot a weakness in Chun’s movements that he’ll be able to take advantage of. It’s a good thing that taking and avoiding attacks were the only things he would claim being somewhat decent at. In his shield art, it said that, “The thought of Offense shouldn’t even be a lingering thought in your mind until Chapter 3. The only thing you should be worried about is wearing out your opponent and taking the least amount of damage.”

  Bing planned to use everything he’s learned in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to survive against this superior foe. The Art of Blocking and the Art of Deflection were the titles of those two chapters. It was time to see if he was able to put what he’s practiced for several months to good use. The hefty 6th stage cultivator took a deep breath and focused entirely on Chun.

  In his eyes, there was nothing but the figure of Chun. His shield was raised forward in his direction and his left foot was leading in front of his right. This was the proper stance for wielding a shield taught to him in his Shield Art, Learning How To Master The Shield by The Shield King. In this stance, he would be prepared to handle any attack from any direction but at the cost of his movement and attack power. A stance used solely for defending and nothing else.

“Heh. No need to be so scared fatty. I’ll make sure to kill you quick. That shield of yours does look pretty valuable. I could probably get some quick cash selling it off.” He snickered.

  Bing didn’t respond nor even look as if he heard Chun speak at all. His eyes watched Chun’s body like a hawk, looking for the slightest motion of movement. Being cautious was in Bing’s nature since childhood. Death came too quickly for those who weren’t.

“Watch his feet and you probably won’t die as quickly.” Hu Tao advised.

  Bing nodded and switched his focus on Chun’s slender well-toned legs. It seems he was getting fed up with Bing not responding to his taunts. The angrier he gets, the bigger the chance of him making a mistake. This would work out in Bing’s favor if he’s lucky but knowing his luck, he wouldn’t dare count on something lucky happening. If anything, being angry just might make him fight better with Bing’s karma.

“My eyes are up here fatty!” Chun appeared above Bing with his black blade and chopped downward.

  Bing’s eyes met with Chun as his attack came. His pure white bone shield shined from the sun’s rays. The thick veiny muscly arms of Bing rose with a sharp quickness to meet Chun’s sword strike head on. A distinctive clink echoed into the surroundings from the impact along with a surprised look on Chun’s face.

“Just a fluke!” He vanished and reappeared elsewhere.

  Bing’s senses were stretched to the absolute limit as Chun unleashed numerous slashes from multiple directions on his stationary figure. The round youth could only respond to less than half of these strikes, leaving him a bloody mess. Blood was dripping from all over his body but he didn’t seem exhausted at all. This was because he made sure to protect his vital areas at all times. Chun’s attacks were quick, but they were not necessarily lethal. He couldn’t get his sword more than a couple centimeters deep inside his body.

  But that sword of his wasn’t just any ordinary sword. It was a magical treasure that seemed to affect Bing’s senses every time he was cut by it. At first, his sight was affected. Things were slowly getting blurry the more he was slashed by that black sword. Then when everything was mostly a blur, his hearing was targeted next.

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  Bing knew that if this went on, it wouldn’t be long before he was derived of all of his senses and became nothing more than a pig on a platter ready to be chopped up. If he didn’t have that spirit weapon of his, this plan of his would’ve worked fine. But it looks like he’ll have to try something crazy if he wants to survive. And if this doesn’t work, he’ll have to try something a bit more suicidal in nature.

“I’m getting a bit bored now just cutting you up fatty. Don’t you have anything else you wanna show me before you die of a thousand cuts?” Chun yawned.

“Yeah... I got something to show. Try to land one more hit on me. Just a single cut.” Bing dared.

“Oh? Do you have a trick up your sleeve? I’m interested! Okay, let’s see what you got planned! Here I come!” Chun playfully spoke, clearly not taking Bing seriously in the slightest.

  A brief visible display of qi cloaked around Chun’s legs and that was when Bing lost track of him completely. The determined shield wielder overflooded his body with qi, knowing that he would only have one chance to pull this stunt off. Once it was seen, it would be impossible to try again. Bing’s body filled to the brim with qi was used solely on sensing the direction where Chun was coming from instead of preparing some sort of big attack.

‘Directly above me!’ Bing found his position. He barely had a second to utilize his plan.

  Bing bent himself over as far as he could and an enormous hand emerged from his back reaching upward to grasp Chun in its grip.

“Now this is a surprise!!! What the hell kind of martial art is this!?” Chun exclaimed in excitement and interest.

“Legs of the Crazy Wind God!” Chun narrowly avoided Bing’s giant hand’s grasp by kicking the air itself and launching himself out of the way.

  Once he landed, he couldn’t help himself from laughing.

“Now that was something. I hope you didn’t think I was actually going to take your bluff. You’re not that stupid right? I could see you were planning something a mile away!”

“I actually did hope you would be taken out by something like that.” Bing lowered his shield. His back was facing Chun and no one could see the front side of his body except for Hu Tao.

“Come on! Don’t lie to me fatty! There’s no way you thought I would’ve got caught by that, did you?!” Chun laughed even harder.

“You’d be surprised how many people are blinded by arrogance and confidence in their own abilities. Who would expect to die or get tricked by someone at a lower stage than them? It's quite sad how many cultivators don’t think that the weak are capable of hurting them.” Bing spoke as if he’s given up all hope of fighting.

“Oh? Have you taken out cultivators at a higher stage than you before? You don’t seem strong at all fatty! I guess everyone you ever fought must have been worse than trash! Oh, wait that’s not true. You’re very good at taking hits! Most people die to my sword in less than 50 cuts. Since you’re still standing even after taking over 1,000, I can’t call you trash now, can I? Hmm... How about kinda not horrible? That sounds good.” He chatted.

“Thanks for the compliment, I suppose. Before you kill me, I do have a question I want to ask.” A sizeable blood pool formed underneath Bing’s feet from his many injuries.

“Go on. I don’t mind hearing you out as long as it's not something pathetic like begging for your life. You have done a good job of letting me have some fun so far.” Chun smiled.

“What benefit does your clan gain from taking my life? Your clan has been after me for so long but I still couldn’t process why you would try so hard to kill me with no benefit to yourselves. I have no connections, average talent, and no treasure or secret worth coveting. Is it truly because I've gotten on your bad side that your clan wants to kill me so badly?” Bing asked.

“Yep basically. To think that a nobody like you dares to touch our clan members with absolutely nothing to your name is an embarrassment. You should’ve died a long time ago but you persisted and continued to hurt more and more of our family. To be honest, it's your own fault that you’re in this situation you know. I mean seriously, who goes around killing people they don’t know the background of? Even I'm not that careless.” He snickered.

“How stupid.” Bing responded angrily.

“Eh, its life. What are you gonna do?”

“That’s really stupid...!” He repeated with even more anger coating his voice.

“Welp. I’ll have to bring your head back to Leng. To try to die with some dignity on your face for me or just close your eyes. I’ll be quick in slicing off that fat neck of yours.” He prepared himself to attack.

“I think I bought enough time. What do you think Hu Tao?” Bing suddenly smiled. The cuts present all over his body were quickly healed up along with the return of his senses. The recovery pills he was downing during their conversation through his devil hand were really helpful!

“Haha! You fucking sneaky ass fat bastard! You still can’t win but if you survive a bit longer maybe Princess will arrive to help you out!” Hu Tao gave his thumbs up at his cleverness.

“Don’t worry. I have something else up my sleeve. Surviving won’t be an issue. Trust me.” Bing grinned with a strange confidence not normally seen from him.