Chapter 290 - 287: Fourth Turn Meat Grinder

Chapter 290: Chapter 287: Fourth Turn Meat Grinder

How could one describe a Fourth Turn battle?

Explosive! Dominant! Mighty!

In any battle between Fourth Turn experts, the mere shockwaves from their clashing fists would be enough to severely injure any Third Turn Martial Artist who dared to get close.

And that was before even considering the terrifying battle that had just occurred between Ji Donglai and Xiang Hongtu.

Even other Fourth Turn experts risked injury just by getting near.

If the battle between Xiang Hongtu and Ji Donglai represented the upper limits of Fourth Turn combat...

...then the current fight between Ji Donglai and Chisong showcased the lower limits.

Down in the mud, the struggle between Ji Donglai and Chisong could only be described as utterly farcical.

Their two mud-caked bodies rolled about clumsily in the bog, looking for all the world like a pair of writhing earthworms.

Ji Donglai could barely open his mud-caked eyes. He desperately grabbed a handful of Chisong’s golden hair, trying to shove his head into the muddy water.

But under the effects of Chisong’s ’Primordial Purity,’ the strands of hair were as slippery as an eel. With a SLIP, they slid right through his fingers.

Chisong, with a look of pure incomprehension, grabbed a handful of mud and slapped it right onto Ji Donglai’s nose. The splatter coated Ji Donglai’s fierce, scarred face, making him look like a buffoon.

Just a dozen or so meters away from them was a volcanic hellscape torn open by the previous Fourth Turn battle, with rivers of molten rock hot enough to melt steel.

But anywhere near Chisong, that lava had transformed entirely into mud, leaving the two of them free to roll around and grapple in it.

’My power...’

Ji Donglai looked at the staggering cost of two hundred billion per second to maintain his power, yet here he was, as helpless as a common mortal and more pathetic than he had ever been.

A moment’s thought was all it took for him to realize this was the effect of his opponent’s ’Primordial Purity.’ ’A boy who’s never even left his village has probably never seen lava,’ he reasoned.

"Damn you, you innocent little brat! I’m going to kill you!"

Ji Donglai seethed, but to Chisong’s ears, his words were just gibberish. ’What’s this guy babbling about?’

Through Chisong’s Celestial Eye Technique, he saw Ji Donglai standing on the mud, smiling and waving at him, speaking in an unintelligible tongue as he invited him to a grand mud war.

So, just as his grandfather had taught him, he planted a fist right in Ji Donglai’s eye socket.

"AH!!!"

Ji Donglai clutched his already swelling left eye in disbelief. ’My invincible golden body’s defenses were actually broken?’

In Chisong’s eyes, however, his opponent didn’t look hurt at all. In fact, he was smiling and pointing to his other eye, as if inviting another punch.

The two figures on the screen looked like mud-men, a far cry from the magnificent spectacle of the earlier Fourth Turn battle.

’My three-year-old nephew’s fights have more technique than this...’ some people thought to themselves.

Even as they grumbled internally, they couldn’t help but marvel at how bizarre Fourth Turn abilities could be.

In the distance, a Third Turn Martial Artist from the Sacred Heart lineage laughed boisterously. "Our Great King Chisong is invincible!"

"Ever since the Holy Son was born, at every hour of every day, at least four elders of the Heaven-Ascending Road have been by his side, attending to his every need."

"Every step he took during his childhood, every single action, was frantically analyzed by us to determine if it could be in any way harmful to his mind."

"Before the Holy Son even felt the urge to relieve himself, we would teleport him away. If his vitality became too vigorous, we would drain it. If it was depleted, we would replenish it. We kept him in a constant state of being unperturbed by the external world—a state of no birth and no death, no defilement and no purity, no increase and no decrease!"

"At the same time, we constantly maintained the Purifying Heart Spell on him to ensure he felt no carnal desire, so he couldn’t be seduced by temptresses like those from the Pure Heart Sect."

"After decades of this, the Holy Son lived up to our expectations and broke through to the Fourth Turn with a perfectly pure heart. He is absolutely invincible."

Fang Can ’tsked’ softly as he watched the proud Third Turn Martial Artist.

He turned to look at the King of Shitty Gigs, who was still regenerating. It would be a few more seconds before he was fully recovered.

’Forget it. I’ll deal with Xiang Hongtu first.’ Fang Can looked over at Xiang Hongtu. The one-breath duration had passed, and he had officially reverted to his male form.

Xiang Hongtu’s expression was grim. The injuries from reverting to his male form hadn’t healed, but with his female form now dead, he had no choice but to fight.

But in the next instant, a flash of lightning tore through the void, arriving silently from a great distance.

Without a sound, a plain white longsword pressed against the back of Xiang Hongtu’s neck as a faint, blue figure flashed past.

Even Xiang Hongtu hadn’t anticipated a sneak attack from behind.

The flash of lightning was simply too fast. By the time he realized he was under attack, the blade was already slicing through his skin.

Moreover, the attacker’s assault was both swift and fierce, and their raw power was no less than his own. He was completely unable to react, forced to watch as the sharp blade cut deeper and deeper into the back of his neck.

SLICE!

Before Fang Can’s eyes, an arc of azure Sword Qi flashed with lethal sharpness. It extended for dozens of miles, cleaving a distant mountain peak clean in two. The thunderous roar of the impact only reached them several seconds later.

It all happened so fast. By the time Fang Can could process it, Xiang Hongtu’s head was already soaring through the air, turning to dust before it even hit the ground.

As for the attacker, they had vanished without a trace. There was no sign of them anywhere!

’Xiang Hongtu... is dead?’

On the livestream, no one could have predicted such an abrupt end to it all.

And that flash of lightning... that had to be from Jiejian Mountain. Only their legacy could produce such speed.

"My dad... No! My mom... is dead?"

Xiang Longtao’s expression was vacant as she watched the man she’d been hating with every fiber of her being just moments ago turn to ash.

Just a minute ago, she had finally come to terms with the fact that her father *was* her mother.

But not long after learning the truth, she now found herself a widow, an orphan, and motherless, all in a single day.

’It’s... over just like that?’

Even Fang Can felt a surge of disbelief.

’The man who had been fighting to the death just moments ago... had his life snuffed out so easily?’

As for the identity of the attacker, that hint of faint, ethereal blue gave him a pretty good idea.

Hundreds of miles away, Liu Qingmeng’s tense nerves finally relaxed. She sheathed her blue-hilted, unadorned sword.

Charming Blue Film was essentially a weaker version of Xiang Hongtu’s ability. In a head-on battle, she wouldn’t stand a chance. However, if assassination was the goal, she could kill him instantly if he let his guard down.

However, Xiang Hongtu’s supreme technique, the ’Yin-Yang Holy Fetus,’ gave him one margin for error.

Only after Fang Can had cost Xiang Hongtu one of his lives, stripping him of the Yin-Yang Holy Fetus, could she strike without restraint, using her Charming Blue Film to decapitate him.

Averting his gaze from Xiang Hongtu’s ashen remains, Fang Can turned. He was about to wait for the King of Shitty Gigs to revive so they could use a meme to deal with Chisong.

But then, a voice called out from the distance, "Donor, please wait."

As the voice spoke, an old man in simple monastic robes approached from the distance. With a wave of his arm, a ray of golden Buddhist light shot out and enveloped Chisong, who was still rolling in the mud with Ji Donglai.

Chisong, who had been unstoppable just moments before, was now as helpless as a lamb to the slaughter. He, along with a large swath of mud and lava, was sucked into the old man’s sleeve. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Looking at the old man’s monastic robes and his perfectly round, shaven head, Fang Can immediately guessed his identity. He had to be the abbot or a Supreme Elder from Brahma Sound Temple.

With this in mind, Fang Can took the initiative to ask, "Master, does Brahma Sound Temple also intend to interfere in secular affairs?"

Given that the temple had previously acted as a guarantor for him, and factoring in the good impression Luo Yanmo had made, Fang Can wasn’t keen on making an enemy of them.

Besides, Brahma Sound Temple possessed the Fifth Turn-level artifact, Fangcun Mountain. It was hard to say how a fight would go.

"Amitabha!" The abbot placed his palms together, walked up to Ji Donglai, and said earnestly, "This old monk has come for young friend Chisong, not to interfere in the struggles of the secular world."

"Young friend Chisong learned our lineage’s Celestial Eye Technique, thus forging a karmic bond with us. Our temple bears a share of the responsibility for the sins of his killing, and thus, we have a duty to guide him properly."

Hearing this, Fang Can relaxed. He then looked toward the livestream camera and asked, "So, from now on, Brahma Sound Temple will not interfere in any secular feuds?"

"Monks do not tell lies," the abbot replied. "I hope that Donor Fang will not allow the grudges between Martial Artists to affect the common folk outside the martial world."

’It’s perfectly normal for Martial Artists to kill one another. I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.’

’He really wanted to say, "Do me a favor and just stop fighting. Wouldn’t it be better if we all just tried to live our lives peacefully?"’

’But that was obviously unrealistic. It would only drag Brahma Sound Temple into the endless feuds of the martial world.’

Hundreds of years ago, when the old generation of Fourth and Fifth Turn experts left, they had a tacit agreement to take most of the Fourth Turn and all of the Fifth Turn and above Sacrificial Artifacts with them.

The only reason they left behind the Fifth Turn-level Fangcun Mountain was because they saw these bald-headed monks as a bunch of simpletons who wouldn’t go around stirring up trouble all day like other Martial Artists.

’That way, if some absurdly powerful Martial Artist appeared in the power vacuum and went too far, the temple could step in and act as a check. It would prevent them from returning to find the entire Divine Continent shattered and the whole world wiped out.’

For example, a hundred years ago, after a period of peace and recovery, the number of Fourth Turn experts across the nations had successfully surpassed seventy.

As a result, the Great Derivation Imperial Family made a huge move. They launched a blitzkrieg combined with kamikaze-style suicide squads, which directly shattered countless Fourth Turn-level lineages, leaving them unable to recover.

Unable to bear the sight any longer, Brahma Sound Temple finally intervened, using their Fifth Turn Sacrificial Artifact to counter the military formations.

That war was a veritable meat grinder for Fourth Turn experts. When the dust settled, the losses were tallied: at least fifty Fourth Turn experts had died, including seven from the Great Derivation.

It came to be known as the First Martial World War! Or, as history calls it, the First Great War!

’It just went to show that every single Martial Artist was a powder keg of trouble, just waiting for a spark of power to go off.’

After that war, the terrified survivors finally decided peace was a better option and stopped making trouble. After another period of recovery, the number of Martial Artists bounced back to over thirty.

Even with the appearance of a "human cauldron" like Fang Can, they were only thinking of negotiating and cooperating to carve him up, not planning to take him for themselves.

OK. No more enemies on Earth, so enemies from beyond the heavens appear.

The nations had united, only for a group of super-powered individuals to emerge, claiming to be avenging Fang Can. Like a sales-focused livestreamer crashing the market, they completely devalued the Fourth Turn experts of the various nations.

Combined with the four kills from Liu Qingmeng, at least twenty Fourth Turn experts had died in under ten minutes. This probably counted as the Second Great War.

’Even the abbot, for all his self-cultivation, was completely floored. These Martial Artists could always manage to cook up some new kind of chaos.’

’To witness two spectacles of this magnitude within the thousand-year lifespan of a Fourth Turn expert was truly a rare sight. At this point, he might as well see what other grand disasters they had in store.’