Douluo Continent: The Book of Witness and Peerless Tang Sect

Chapter 287

【cough cough】

Just as Long You was staring at his palm with some hesitation, Liu Jun coughed lightly in his mind, waking Long You from his silence and hesitation.

It's not a problem with the fundamental laws of wood, it's a problem with your proficiency. Although you had the wood-type soul skill "Water of Life" before, that soul skill should more accurately be classified as a life-type skill.

You're trying to leverage the power of the fundamental laws of wood using wood-attribute soul skills, which will often inadvertently trigger my power. While this triggering won't activate your Martial Soul True Form, my power greatly enhances abilities like vines and entanglements, potentially making your attack power somewhat unpredictable.

[I see. That puts my mind at ease. With more practice, I can return to my original, precise combat style.]

That's it, focus on the fight. Your opponent doesn't seem ready to give up right now. Actually, if you had revealed your seventh spirit ring from the beginning, you should have been able to end the battle by now.

As another opponent with slightly reddened eyes walked up to Pi Shi Zong's rest area, Long You's lips curled into an indifferent smile.

[The point was to get used to my combat abilities as quickly as possible; the more matches, the better! My manipulation of the laws isn't smooth enough yet, so I'll test my skills against these guys.]

With a slight smile at the referee's fierce glare, Long You calmly awaited the start of the next match. Although he still hadn't used his lightning-attribute soul skills, after realizing that he was still very unfamiliar with his current fighting style of leveraging the power of laws through soul skill attributes, Long You had already decided that he would only use ice and wood-type abilities in the following matches.

As the match began, several soul-guided rays instantly struck Long You, followed by a large number of soul-guided cannonballs covering the half of the field where Long You was located.

The Pishi Sect's opponents noticeably quickened their attack pace and immediately employed a barrage of attacks, an adjustment made to counter Long You's ability to create illusions and his skill in utilizing a defensive counter-attacking rhythm. However, even with the Pishi Sect members adjusting their fighting rhythm, this level of firepower was clearly insufficient to affect Long You.

A thin layer of ice appeared beneath Long You's feet. With a slight push of his thighs, Long You began to glide rapidly as if stepping on ice. Utilizing the principle that water can refract light, Long You left behind illusions in the places he moved, which were temporarily indistinguishable from reality with the naked eye.

The Pi Shi Zong member didn't frown even though all his attacks missed. This situation was not unexpected. However, when all the Long You figures on the field raised their longbows and scattered runic wooden arrows made with wood attribute power, the sixth sense formed by long battles brought this soldier a strong sense of crisis.

Before the soldier could react effectively, the familiar mist appeared around him. Suddenly losing his ability to see, the soldier instinctively frowned and activated all his detection soul tools. After using a defensive soul tool on himself, he also began to activate his flight soul tool, attempting to escape this uncontrollable combat environment by taking off.

Unfortunately, despite being a seasoned Soul King, the continuous activation of various soul tools caused this member of the Pishi Sect to experience a brief period of soul power vacuum, preventing him from taking off quickly. This meant that he completely lost the opportunity to ascend.

Lush, resilient vines surged in from all directions of the mist. Although this time the vines weren't used to bind them, the Pi Shi Sect members were still completely trapped in the woven net. There was room to struggle, but the more they struggled, the deeper their despair became.

"tick"

Cool water droplets fell onto the faces of the Pishizong members, which were not covered by visors. The distinct coolness of the water droplets instantly calmed the Pishizong members' previously agitated mood.

The intense heat began to permeate the soul tools equipped on the Pishi Sect members, but before the warrior could actually launch an attack, the rain that had been falling only a drop or two turned into a torrential downpour in a short time.

The fog that obscured their vision dissipated in the localized downpour, but it also dissipated the air around the Pishi Sect member, which had already begun to distort. It was clear that this Pishi Sect member had originally intended to use methods such as high-temperature burning to burn away all the vines and fog surrounding him.

As the mist dissipated, the vines binding the Pishiro Clan members were the first to be affected. Water droplets in the air turned into ice the moment they touched solid objects. Although the ice that condensed on the vines wasn't very solid (it wasn't frozen solid enough), for summer plants, this level of low temperature was enough to kill the vines.

The restraints on his body had dissipated, but the Pi Shi Zong member showed no joy. The icy rain that fell from the sky did not spare his opponent, and now his body was covered in frost.

However, this one wasn't as fragile as the vines that Long You had created using his half-baked wood magic. The scorching aura began to spread again. The not-so-sturdy frost immediately showed signs of melting, but this place had ultimately been transformed into Long You's home ground.

As the icy rain poured down, Long You once again raised his longbow, and lightning energy began to condense. A lightning arrow pierced the sky, aiming straight for the face of the Pi Shi Sect member.

The Pishiro Clan members, struggling to break free from the icy rain, were powerless to resist and unable to dodge the arrows before they arrived. Fortunately, with the fog gone, the referees on the arena noticed the Pishiro Clan members' predicament and came to their aid in time.

Although defeat was inevitable, this guy was ultimately luckier than the previous two. After studying the first two matches, Long You had much better control over the methods he could use.

While waiting for the Pi Shi Sect to send out the next contestant, Long You leisurely returned to his starting position, taking out his milk bottle to replenish his soul power. For Long You, who had just broken through to Soul Saint and whose soul power level was only 73, using his domain for an extended period of time was a high-energy-consuming method.

One minute, two minutes later, with the support of the baby bottle, Long You felt that his soul power was almost fully restored, but the next opponent of the Pi Shi Sect still had not appeared.

Seeing that the referee on the field still did not urge Pi Shizong to send out the next player as soon as possible, the spectators around the field gradually began to boo, whether out of a desire not to let Long You recover too much or because they could not tolerate the referee's blatant bias.

Just as the referee on the field could no longer ignore the boos from the audience and was about to urge Pi Shi Zong to send out the next contestant as soon as possible, a white towel was thrown from Pi Shi Zong's preparation area onto the Soul Fighting Arena, and Pi Shi Zong conceded defeat.

Rewinding slightly, Pi Shi Zong's third contestant returned to the preparation area, pale-faced and shivering. Despite his disheveled state, he was ultimately conscious when he returned.

"Don't continue fighting this guy from Tang Sect. He's not a Soul Emperor, at least not a simple one."

Our goal is not to win the competition, but to figure out as much as possible the fighting patterns of the sects that might become obstacles to His Highness the Crown Prince's great cause.

Intelligence now indicates that this Tang Sect is actually the former Shrek Academy team. We don't need to gather intelligence on Shrek. There's no need for us to waste manpower on an opponent who basically wipes out one of our players in every match.”

"I agree with He Zhi's opinion. Although I didn't get to experience it directly, it's very likely that Tang Men used the power of his domain in the previous three matches."

Seeing that he shows no signs of exhaustion so far, I have reason to suspect that he is a Soul Saint. After all, back in the previous competition, these Tang Sect participants had already demonstrated the ability to change the color and number of their Soul Rings.

We may not be unable to win, but we have no reason to continue being worn down.

Although it couldn't be confirmed that Long You was indeed a Soul Saint, after three matches, Pi Shi Zong was certain that they couldn't win with limited resources, and were even more likely to lose in a normal match. Therefore, to better complete their mission, conceding defeat became the logical and painful decision.

As for the seriously injured teammates, everyone does want revenge, but since the hatred hasn't reached the level of a blood feud, the mission is more important.

Time returned to normal. Watching the white towel fly onto the competition stage, Long You raised his eyebrows slightly. His sparring partner was gone, and he had only just begun to regain a sense of control.

Delighted that he wouldn't have to exert himself anymore, yet annoyed that he had just started to get into the swing of things and had to stop training. After the referee solemnly announced that Tangmen had won this round of the round-robin tournament, Long You returned to the rest area with slightly complicated feelings.

Upon hearing that others wanted to continue watching the match, Long You immediately focused his consciousness into the Imagination Pearl. Time was running out for the final retreat, and the envisioned spatial invisibility soul tool needed to be put into operation as soon as possible. Before that, Long You needed to make significant progress in understanding the laws of space.

As night fell, Long You, immersed in cultivation, suddenly opened his eyes. The long period of comprehending the laws had left Long You feeling extremely exhausted, but the message that Bourne had just sent was enough to instantly dispel all of Long You's fatigue.

"Bourne, are you sure you haven't missed anything? Even if the Holy Spirit Cult isn't actually that concerned about the development of soul tools, it's still a warehouse that stores level-nine fixed-position soul-guided cannon shells and a large amount of top-grade rare metals. Would the Holy Spirit Cult's defenses be so lax?"

After obtaining the location of the Holy Spirit Cult's supply warehouse in the south of Mingdu from Jing Hongchen, Long You had Bern control various detection soul tools to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the warehouse.

Now Bourne's investigation results are in: the warehouse is filled with enough supplies to feed Longyou, but the warehouse's defenses are not strong, at least not enough to justify the amount of supplies stored inside.

"According to my investigation, the regular defensive force stationed around the warehouse is indeed only a five-person team led by a Soul Saint. Moreover, apart from the most basic soul tool traps, there are no overly complicated soul tool mechanisms in the warehouse. It is far inferior to the arms depot in Mingdu."

"Something's definitely fishy. What's going on around us? Is someone guarding that high ground? Is the Grim Reaper hiding there? Is there a major stronghold of the Holy Spirit Cult nearby?"

"No, none of these. However, during my investigation, I discovered some patterns that resemble magic arrays. I'm not sure if these patterns are some kind of defensive mechanism that I don't understand."

Do you have a video?

As an intelligent life form, Bourne's knowledge of soul tool technology is completely trustworthy, but when it comes to magic or laws, Bourne is somewhat powerless.

The images captured by the soul-guided device quickly appeared on Long You's retina. Upon initial observation, Long You did not find any magic circles or traces of soul-guided arrays with magic circle effects. However, with Bern's prompting, Long You quickly noticed the peculiar patterns.

"This arrangement does indeed resemble a magic array, not just a simple metallic pattern. Wait! Zooming in on this section, the patterns here seem somewhat familiar. Where have I seen them before?"

To the untrained eye, magic circle patterns and the core magic circle patterns of soul tools may simply appear as a collection of seemingly harmonious yet complex lines. Even experts, faced with a vast sea of ​​magic circle patterns, would find it virtually impossible to identify every single one. At most, they could determine the authenticity of a magic circle through some commonalities, but they would find it difficult to immediately explain its function.

Long You is now facing such a problem. Through his understanding of the magic circle, he has determined that the magnified pattern is the node pattern that plays a role in the magic circle, and he should have seen this pattern before.

Long You wasn't surprised at all that the Holy Spirit Cult possessed a knowledge system that should never have appeared on the Douluo Continent. After all, the Sun Moon Empire had already gotten involved in the exploration of the new continent, which shouldn't have been known in the original timeline, so it wasn't surprising that someone in the God Realm would give the Sun Moon Empire some benefits.

"Wait, if that's the line of thought, I understand."

Although many of the rules in the divine realm seem like mere empty words, the certain god-king has not yet turned the divine realm into his own backyard, so there are some things he cannot do too obviously.

"It needs to meet the requirements of the source of magic array inheritance in the Douluo Continent world, and it also needs to benefit the Holy Spirit Cult. It seems I'll have to trouble Elder Yi again."

Having identified the anomaly, Long You breathed a sigh of relief, and a deep sense of exhaustion washed over him. Giving up all resistance, Long You drifted into a deep sleep.