But that tiny gesture went totally unnoticed by Ryan Ling. In his eyes, a single Severing Desire strike was already more than enough to deal with these three deputy Hall Masters from the Pill Hall—if anything, he was overestimating them.
Right now, Ryan Ling didn’t hesitate at all—he slammed down with the Infernal Madblade, so fast and so fierce that everyone around was left trembling. Even several cars parked in the distance were split clean in half, and the ground itself cracked open.
Two of the venom beasts instantly exploded with a bang, their bodies shattered on the spot—clearly no match for that strike.
Inside, Angie Chen was seeing Ryan Ling unleash this kind of brutal power for the second time, and honestly, her heart was bursting with joy. It was his savage strength that made her fall for him in the first place, and now, watching him look so badass, she was even happier than before.
The three deputy Hall Masters traded glances, shock in their eyes—but their faces stayed totally calm.
But right then, something jaw-dropping happened—the venom beasts that had just been slaughtered suddenly came back to life in an instant, even fiercer and more toxic than before.
“What the hell?” Ryan Ling froze.
“Hahaha!” Instantly, the three deputy Hall Masters burst out laughing. Clearly, they’d been waiting for this moment, and seeing Ryan Ling so stunned just made them even more smug.
“Kid, you’ve got skills, no doubt. But too bad you ran into us—the three great poison freaks of the Pill Hall! You think you can wipe out our tricks that easy? Dream on!”
“That’s right! Inside the Azure Dragon Society, Pill Hall has another name—the Poison Sect. All our techniques are formless and intangible. With your little tricks, you’ll never break them!”
“Forget breaking it—you’re about to suffer!”
The three deputy Hall Masters shouted in unison, “Go!”
In an instant, the three venom beasts floating in midair lunged at Ryan Ling, surrounding him. These freaky things were insanely toxic—even without direct contact, Ryan Ling could feel a stabbing pain all over his body. And he wasn’t some ordinary guy right now; his body was hell-forged, not just human.
But the bystanders who were standing a bit too close were totally screwed—one after another, their bodies rotted and they collapsed to the ground, dead in seconds. And that wasn’t all: the street, cars, and shop windows on both sides turned pitch black in an instant.
“Sis, Angie, get inside—don’t come out, no matter what!” Ryan Ling’s heart skipped a beat and he shouted urgently.
Angie Chen instantly understood and hoisted the half-conscious Lily Liu into the inner room.
In the distance, the three deputy Hall Masters watched Ryan Ling with shocked expressions. In their eyes, any martial artist above grandmaster level should already be rotting away, but although Ryan Ling looked uncomfortable, his body showed zero signs of dissolving—in fact, there was a faint invisible force as if he could actually resist the poison.
“Damn, this kid is priceless! If we drag him back to Pill Hall, he’ll be a huge asset!” one of the deputy Hall Masters suddenly got excited.
The other two nodded eagerly.
“Big bro, let’s crank it up to maximum poison-attack mode!”
“Good, we have to smash his defenses! If we take him down, it’s a huge win—might even let us set up our own Hall!” That deputy Hall Master was clearly ambitious, and the other two got even more hyped.
The three of them powered up together, blasting their own venom beasts with a fierce strike. The beasts’ jaws gaped wide, and three clouds of ink-green poison gas shot straight at Ryan Ling.
This time the poison was at least a hundred times deadlier than before—the whole street turned black in an instant, and a dozen innocent civilians dropped dead on the spot.
Ryan Ling was feeling the pain, no doubt about it. It was his first time getting hit by such intense toxins; his whole body felt like it was being stabbed and torn apart, and his skin nearly split open. Faint yellow light oozed from his hell-forged body, clearly sensing the extreme danger and automatically switching to defense mode.
“No matter what, we have to capture this kid!” The lead deputy Hall Master’s eyes went wide at the sight.
He’d never seen anything like the changes happening to Ryan Ling’s body, but his first thought was that Ryan Ling was worth a fortune.
The other two deputy Hall Masters went even harder. Poison gas filled the air, completely engulfing Ryan Ling, and those three venom beasts seemed to have hundreds of lives—totally unkillable.
His hell-forged body could hold out for a while, but the Harbor City civilians, and Angie Chen and Lily Liu hiding deep in Su’s Pharmacy, were in extreme danger. Ordinary flesh would rot and die from even a tiny bit of this toxin.
He had to figure out a way to wipe out these freaks, fast!
Ryan Ling frowned, when suddenly the System yelled in his mind: “Kid, these three venom beasts aren’t real—they’re phantoms! Physical attacks are totally useless!”
“Phantoms?” Ryan Ling was stunned.
“Exactly. It’s just a smokescreen, so you’ll need another approach. Try using that mass of yin qi Angie Chen sent you—it’s intangible, too. If you coat your blade with it, you might be able to break through!” The System didn’t waste words, just gave the advice straight.
“Alright, I’ll try it now!” Ryan Ling didn’t hesitate. That energy was swirling inside him, hard to grasp, but it was worth a shot. He immediately released the yin qi and unleashed Severing Desire at the same time.
“Kid, your stamina is insane. You’ve thrown out this kind of full-power slash more than ten times, and you’re still going! I gotta respect that. But no matter how many times you swing, it’s pointless. You’re still too green to break our poison array!” The lead deputy Hall Master watched Ryan Ling unleash Severing Desire again, and his possessiveness only grew.
But as soon as he finished speaking, he sensed something different about this strike. The poison gas cocooning Ryan Ling started to evaporate, and the three venom phantoms actually looked scared.
“Boss, something’s wrong!”
“He’s figured out how to break the poison array!”
“No way! Hold it together!”
The three deputy Hall Masters unleashed all their grandmaster qi, wrapping it tightly around the three venom beasts. Instantly, the beasts doubled in size—the array was now at full power. Ryan Ling seemed completely trapped, unable to move, and even his Severing Desire slash looked like it just fizzled out.
“Haha, see? I told you—even top-tier masters can’t withstand our poison array! Once you’re controlled by these beasts, you’re dead, whether you’re green-realm, blue-realm, or whatever!” The lead deputy Hall Master laughed wildly.
“Bro, you’re right—this kid’s been a headache for the Azure Dragon Society lately. If we catch him, the rewards will be huge!”
“Haha, and not just that—this kid’s body is one of a kind! No clue what cultivation art he’s using, but his defense is way beyond normal martial artists. Getting his body would be huge for our next step in refining poison men!”
The other two deputy Hall Masters edged closer, clearly itching to get started!
“Ryan Ling!” Right then, in the deepest storeroom of Su’s Pharmacy, surrounded by mountains of herbs, Angie Chen was crying as she watched where Ryan Ling was—she could just barely see him through the vent window.
Lily Liu was already completely unconscious, and Angie Chen herself was barely hanging on, almost at her limit. But she clung to her last bit of strength and stubbornness, staring at Ryan Ling—she refused to believe someone like him would die here.
Just as she was about to suffocate, suddenly, from the jet-black core of the poison cloud, a world-shaking saber light tore out.
This strike was not only more powerful than ever before—it carried a weird, soft yin quality mixed into its ferocity, almost like two blade forces overlapping.
“How—how is this possible? The poison array is formless and intangible. How can his solid blade have any effect?” The lead deputy Hall Master was shaken, totally unable to believe what he was seeing…