Cohabitation with Sword Spirit-Chapter 200 - 169: Maneuvers (Double-Length) (Part 2)

Shan Heqiu had asked his family elders for an evaluation before the competition. With his current state, he could unleash power nearly at the Cloud Flipping Realm, unless he met those few championship favorites, otherwise, he could be considered unstoppable.

This was also Shan Heqiu's biggest trump card in the competition. With this trump card, he set his goal at this Competition to secure a spot in the top ten, aiming for the top five... If those few championship favorites could face each other early and both suffer losses, he could even hope for the top three.

For this Cyan Cloud Tournament, Unmoving Manor had spared no expense in investing resources to cultivate him, with the investment period lasting ten years!

Unlike those families who hastily increased their investments upon hearing the news from Heaven-Reaching City a few months ago, Unmoving Manor had made up its mind ten years prior, fully striving for results in this Cyan Cloud Tournament. The championship might be an extravagance, but the top five or top ten still held significant importance for Unmoving Manor today, and it was especially significant for Shan Heqiu!

For this purpose, Shan Heqiu began his planning the moment he stepped into the Immortal Realm.

With mediocre aptitude and slow progress, breaking through the Wind Barrier at 15... everything seemed to convey to the world that he, Shan Heqiu, was just an unremarkable cultivator among the countless ones in Cyan Cloud City. For years, he repeated this false propaganda day in and day out. It wasn't until the competition began that he started revealing one trump card after another, surprising everyone. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

But now, it seemed his luck was quite lacking. In the first round, he encountered a top middle-rank contestant with the same calculations, and he had to use one trump card to defeat him. The second round was even worse, as he was assigned to face Shen Qingming.

No matter how others evaluated this fourteen-year-old girl who had only recently broken through the Wind Barrier for half a year, in Shan Heqiu's eyes, anyone capable of eliminating a championship favorite, regardless of the method used, was worth his full effort.

Next up, I only hope Shen Qingming can have the same determination to go all out, otherwise, it would be quite a spectacle if she just got eliminated by an obscure Young Master of Unmoving Manor right after defeating a championship favorite!

Moments later, both combatants stood ready. After the referee confirmed everything was in order, he nodded and swung his arm.

"The match begins!"

Shan Heqiu operated his divine envoy, forming a delicate mechanism. He gently opened a small breach on the swelling Thunder Pool within his body.

In an instant, thunder poured out, transformed from the exceedingly pure True Essence at the Cloud Surge Realm into Thunderous Power. It was like a dam collapsing, torrential floods rushing, spreading through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians in a split second, and then, along the path opened by the Divine Sense, surging forward with full force!

A straight and magnificent column of thunder almost formed at the very moment the referee's arm fell, starting from Shan Heqiu and evenly dividing more than half of the arena into left and right sides!

In an instant, the entire audience felt the strong light piercing their eyes, making it difficult to stare directly. They could barely see the constraint array at the edge of the arena being struck by the thunder column, emitting waves of rippling arcs.

The powerful constraint array, set up personally by a Great Cultivator in the Mountain-Overturning Realm and supported by over two hundred Spirit Stones, handled the impact of the light beam effortlessly, but the spreading ripples fully illustrated the terrifying power of this light column.

A few knowledgeable individuals even saw a glimpse of Tribulation Lightning in that full Thunderous Power. If this lightning fell outside the arena, a single strike would be sufficient to demolish a thick city wall or annihilate a tightly packed battalion of a hundred men.

And this was merely the opening move of a nineteen-year-old!

Many years ago, it was commonly acknowledged in Xiangzhou Continent: the paths of immortals and mortals were different.

A young man practicing for just ten years could use the profound Immortal Techniques and Divine Techniques to manipulate hundreds or thousands, even tens of thousands, as if they were toys. Even the most outstanding Innate Martial Artist in the Mortal World was as fragile as an ant in the face of Immortal Techniques and Divine Techniques. Cultivators and ordinary mortals were like two completely different species, making it impossible to compare them on equal terms.

Fortunately, as time passed and civilization developed, cultivators no longer bullied the weak by exploiting Immortal Techniques and Divine Techniques, but rather formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Mortal World. The harmonious coexistence of immortals and mortals led to the unprecedented rapid development of Xiangzhou civilization. Nowadays, when mortals see cultivators, they often treat them with equal respect, engaging in equal discourse.

However, when the mortals in the audience witnessed the divine might of the thunder with their own eyes, they couldn't help but be astonished by the power of cultivators.

And this was only the first day of the main competition, the second round of eliminations.

Under such divine power, the petite and delicate girl, who loved to sing and dance in pink dresses, would likely be defeated in an instant. If it weren't in the arena but rather in actual combat, she might be utterly annihilated, her beauty reduced to ashes...

Yet, at the same time, Shan Heqiu felt a chill in his heart.

The seemingly unstoppable opening move did not have any sense of impact... In other words, his big move was a miss.

It wasn't entirely unexpected, but in his rehearsals, this seemingly unforeseen opening surprise — a sharp-on-defense and counterattacking, with attack range not exceeding an inch beyond the physical body — would have a four or five percent hit rate even against the top favorites, except for Lu Fangchen with his Yin Yang Pupils.