Hong Jiu was already seething with rage, and Lin Li’s taunts were like pouring oil on a fire, thoroughly igniting his fury.
"Die!"
With a furious roar, a stream of green liquid shot from Hong Jiu’s mouth, aimed straight at Lin Li on the roof.
"Damn, you’re disgusting. You’re actually spitting..." Lin Li continued to taunt Hong Jiu as he dodged.
Lin Li easily dodged the stream of green liquid. Some of it splattered onto the rooftop, while the rest landed on the grass below.
"SIZZLE..."
The liquid produced green smoke upon impact. The smoke that rose from the rooftop was quickly blown away by the wind and dissipated.
But on the lawn below, where the green smoke touched the vegetation, vibrant flowers and grasses withered in an instant.
Seeing the green smoke cause the plants to wither, Lin Li instantly realized that the liquid spat by Hong Jiu, who had used his Superpower to transform into a giant caterpillar, was poisonous.
"You’re not just unbelievably ugly after transforming, you’re poisonous too. Truly disgusting..."
Lin Li tore his gaze from the plants withered by the green smoke. After throwing one last taunt at Hong Jiu, who was preparing to spit venom again, he hurled the massive, fully-formed Fireball in his hand toward his opponent.
"WHOOSH."
The half-meter-wide Fireball plummeted toward the courtyard. Faced with this enormous, fiercely burning sphere of flame, an intense sense of crisis washed over Hong Jiu. He instantly coiled his body and launched himself away, trying to dodge the incoming Fireball.
"BOOM..."
The Fireball reached him the very instant he shot away and exploded.
A heatwave radiated outward, and the resulting shockwave decimated the courtyard. The few Red Blood Gang members who had been barely clinging to life were killed instantly by the violent blast.
The massive roar echoed into the distance. Nearly everyone within the territory controlled by the Red Blood Gang heard the tremendous sound.
In fact, plenty of people even farther away heard the commotion from the Fireball’s explosion.
Some City Guards patrolling the streets heard the massive sound in the distance and immediately looked toward its source.
A pillar of black smoke had appeared in their line of sight. Seeing this, they knew instantly what it meant—Cultivators were fighting inside the city!
Subsequently, several City Guard patrols on the streets converged on the location of the black smoke pillar.
At the devastated battle scene, Lin Li stared at the spot where Hong Jiu lay buried under tiles from a collapsed roof and said coldly.
"Stop playing dead. I know that blast couldn’t have killed you on the spot."
"..." There was no response from the pile of rubble. The scene was utterly silent, as if to suggest that Lin Li had guessed wrong.
"Since you insist on playing dead, I’ll be happy to oblige..." Lin Li said, raising his left hand as another Fireball materialized.
The instant he used his Superpower to create the Fireball, the previously silent pile of rubble began to shake, and a massive green figure lunged at him.
"ROAR..."
Lin Li, who had been on guard the entire time, calmly sidestepped to the left, pushing off with his right foot to dodge.
After evading Hong Jiu’s lunge, Lin Li returned the Spiritual Artifact Dagger to the Mysterious Small Island and picked up the Spiritual Artifact Nine-Ring Saber that Hong Jiu had previously dropped.
Hong Jiu, in his giant caterpillar form, was covered in scorched black marks from the charged-up Fireball Lin Li had thrown earlier. His Spiritual Energy Wave had also weakened considerably.
But he was, after all, a genuine Second Order High Rank Cultivator.
Even in this grievously wounded state, he still possessed formidable combat power. As long as he hadn’t drawn his last breath, he would not simply wait for death.
’This fight isn’t over! If I can just get an opening, I can still turn this around.’
After the fierce battle, much of his stamina and Spiritual Energy had been depleted, and Hong Jiu was clearly at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, his eyes were locked on the distant assassin who had just picked up his weapon, and the will to fight in his heart had not been extinguished.
After so many years of struggle to become the Gang Leader of the Red Blood Gang and achieve his current status, Hong Jiu understood one thing perfectly: when facing an assassin so determined to take his life...
...the moment he allowed fear to take root in his heart, the moment he considered begging for mercy or fleeing, he would be truly doomed and his death would be imminent.
’It’s precisely in a critical moment like this, on the razor’s edge of life and death, that he couldn’t let his will to fight be extinguished. As long as he was still breathing, there was a chance to turn things around.’
...