Chapter 211 (II): Finished

At the sight, the Taiyi Sect's Nocturnal Specters felt the weight come off their shoulders. It had been too close. Zhao Chenghuang had nearly lost to Yuanshi Tianzun, of all people. Luckily, he'd been quick enough to spot the flaw in the item and defuse the whole crisis.

"Whew, false alarm. Yuanshi Tianzun's out of moves now, isn't he?"

"Zhao Chenghuang's hurt badly. But Yuanshi Tianzun didn't have it easy either, pushing him this far."

"This is what you call the tide turning."

Sun Miaomiao, Maoshan Warlock and the other top contenders said nothing, but they too felt their breathing ease. Fengdu Ghost King, Yin Ji and the other Saints wore satisfied looks. As the backbone of the Taiyi Sect, they had no wish to see Zhao Chenghuang fall to Yuanshi Tianzun either.

Among the Five Elements Alliance Walkers, apart from the ones who'd bet on Zhao Chenghuang, most couldn't keep the disappointment off their faces.

Yuanshi Tianzun's play had been, frankly, brilliant. He'd used the war armor to buff his yin corpse so that it could go up against Zhao Chenghuang's biggest asset, then opened a formation with that robe item to turn the tables on the spirit-enhanced Zhao Chenghuang.

He was the underdog, yet he had somehow kept his opponent pinned the whole way. Anyone else who had to go up against a Zhao Chenghuang this strong would have folded and conceded long ago.

"What a shame," Annie commented, sounding genuinely regretful. "This Zhao Chenghuang is clever. He's a hard one to handle."

Bill, though, was smiling. "No, look at it another way. Yuanshi Tianzun managed to dispel that terrifying state that Zhao Chenghuang channeled. Look, Zhao Chenghuang's hurt badly, and putting himself into that state was a huge strain on him, while Yuanshi Tianzun looks completely fresh. He's hardly spent."

Annie blinked, focused hard on the faintly panting Zhao Chenghuang, and her eyes lit up. "You're right."

Bill's expression turned serious. "Zhao Chenghuang knows the state he's in better than anyone, so he'll surely go for a killing move next. He won't play around with Yuanshi Tianzun anymore."

Down on the arena floor, Zhang Yuanqing shook the Yin Yang Spell Robe open and draped it over himself, the regret plain on his face. Shame I couldn't finish him inside the ten minutes...

In the dual elemental state, he feared neither physical attacks nor a spirit body ambush. It was a perfect counter to Zhao Chenghuang, preventing that mysterious spirit servant of his from doing anything. It had been his best opportunity to win.

But like Zhao Chenghuang said, the Yin Yang Spell Robe had a ceiling—a flaw. There wasn’t enough damage output. That was the biggest drawback, especially when his items were capped at three.

Previously, he'd barely scraped past Li Xianzong when leaning on the water and fire powers alone. Back then, he'd needed his items to back him. What then could he do against Zhao Chenghuang in Origin Overdrive? The man had spotted the flaw in the Yin Yang Spell Robe quickly. He clearly had a few tricks of his own.

"That was your trump card, wasn't it?" Zhao Chenghuang said between breaths, his rhythm completely wrecked, like an ordinary man after a hard run.

His stamina had been depleted by at least forty percent. Origin Overdrive was too heavy a load on the body, and healing those sword wounds and burns he'd taken in the formation had burned through his cells' vitality as well. It had only been short minutes, and he was already worn out.

"It was," Zhang Yuanqing nodded, not denying it.

"Then it's my turn to play a trump card," Zhao Chenghuang said through shallow breaths, his voice cold. "You know I've got a spirit servant I hardly ever use, but I'm sure you don't know why I don't use it."

"Why?" Zhang Yuanqing asked, playing along.

Zhao Chenghuang's eyes abruptly narrowed. "You'll find out soon enough."

He reached into his inventory and pulled out a bronze box, a full meter in every dimension. Two armies squared off across its surface, blades and halberds leveled at one another in a brutal scene. A deadly, unspeakable aura of killing rolled off it.

The armored swordsman, seated among the elders, was stunned at the sight of that box, while the Five Elements Alliance elders stared at it in silence.

"A Puppet Soldier Storage Box?" one of them ventured.

Not far off, Elder Zhao smiled. "Just a replica."

The armored swordsman gave him a long look. "Replica or not, if it carries the Puppeteer trait, then using it is considered a foul."

Elder Zhao smiled and said nothing.

By this time, Zhao Chenghuang had drawn a deep breath and exhaled a stream of Power of the Dark Moon. The soft, wispy cloud of power drifted to the back of his head and coalesced into a hazy figure draped in a tattered robe. The figure hung in the air like a god out of some old story, its arms spread wide.

Clang!

The bronze box swung open.

The figure behind Zhao Chenghuang lowered its gaze a fraction, staring down at the box, and fine, ghostly black threads streamed out from its ten fingers. The threads rushed into the box like a waterfall, and a moment later, a humanoid figure leapt out.

It was a bronze puppet, its features like a terracotta warrior's, with raised brows and fierce eyes. Its body and limbs were cast in bronze and crusted with a greenish patina, every joint long since hardened. It steadied itself with a wobble, its joints moving with a grinding sound that set one's teeth on edge. A rusty war blade rested in its grip.

The Nocturnal Specters watching could see the ghostly black thread running from the back of the bronze puppet's skull all the way to the spirit servant behind Zhao Chenghuang.

One figure after another sprang from the bronze box. Ten, twenty, thirty... There were thirty bronze puppets in all. They stood there, swaying, all with the same face and carried the same standard longsword.

The spirit servant in its tattered robe gave its arms a small shake.

Creak~

Every bronze puppet's head tipped to one side, and all of them fixated upon Zhang Yuanqing in unison. They had no expression at all, yet that only made it seem all the more grim and chilling.

"I don't like using this spirit servant because its ability is too narrow," Zhao Chenghuang said, his voice cold. "It can only work on lifeless puppets. It needs the right item to match before it shows its real strength."

Up in the elders' seats, Elder Teddy's head snapped around, glaring at Elder Zhao. "How shameless! How is this any different from using the Puppeteer ability?"

One spirit servant working thirty puppets was basically thirty men mobbing Yuanshi Tianzun. How was he supposed to win that?

Elder Zhao smiled. "If it were the Puppeteer ability, a single puppet would be enough to cut Yuanshi Tianzun down. You can't call my great-grandson a cheat just because his spirit servant happens to move puppets."

Puppeteer was a Level 7 Scout ability. The skill itself was also named "Puppeteer," and it granted the power to command puppet soldiers. One Puppeteer was worth a thousand men and horses. A whole army.

The Puppet Soldier Storage Box was the item of a White Tiger Legion elder, and only a Puppeteer could use it. Without one, the soldiers inside were no better than dead things.

This explained what the armored swordsman had said earlier. If the Puppeteer ability was truly in play, it would be considered cheating, since it was beyond the Transcendent tier. However, Zhao Chenghuang genuinely was not cheating. His spirit servant's puppet-controlling ability wasn't the same as a Puppeteer's. They just looked similar, since both were able to control puppets. However, the way this spirit servant handled them, in the elders' eyes, was crude and unsophisticated.

To a Transcendent-tier Walker's eyes, though, it was unwinnable. How did Zhao Chenghuang have this up his sleeve as well?

Most of the crowd sat there, slack-jawed, as the stared at the dense mass of thirty bronze puppets littering the arena floor. How was this still a one-on-one bout? This was just plain bullying.

Bill Tarantino's expression grew tense. "God, it's over..."

Over in the White Tiger Guard's seats, Shichiro, seated behind Fu Qingyang, snarled. "Shit. There goes five years of our budgets."

Phoenix Descending and the others held their silence.

Maoshan Warlock, seated beside Sun Miaomiao, laughed till he turned pink in the face. "So that's Zhao Chenghuang's spirit servant. Sun Miaomiao, why didn't you tell me sooner? With a little heads-up, I would have upped my bet."

Having lost to Yuanshi Tianzun himself, he was more than happy to watch Zhao Chenghuang steamroll his nemesis.

Sun Miaomiao shot him a sideways look. "How would I know? Odds are Elder Zhao had the Scholar family forge that thing overnight. Zhao Chenghuang's never used it before."

"Tsktsk. It must be nice having a Sovereign-tier great-grandpa," mused Maoshan Warlock.

Just then, the smiling Elder Zhao heard Elder Sun to his left mutter in a tone of raw, grieving dismay, "It's over. Now it's really over..."

Faintly puzzled, Elder Zhao turned to look at him and frowned. "Aren't you the one who can't stand this Yuanshi Tianzun?"

Elder Sun said sourly, "I meant it's all over for your great-grandson's trump card."

That drew the attention of Elder Hongying and the others.

"Old Sun, what are you getting at?"