Chapter 441: Swiftly Growing Coordination

Dou Qi suddenly surged violently within the dense forest. A moment later, a human figure slid against the ground as he shot backward before finally smashing heavily into a protruding rock that was on the ground. His face twitched and a trace of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth.

The intense pain that transmitted from his back caused a fierceness and brutalness to flash across this yellow-clothed young man’s eyes. However, without waiting for him to act, the black shadow in front of him suddenly flashed and stopped. An enormous, dark shadow carried the sound of wind being split as it heavily and angrily smashed at the head of the former in front of him.

“Don’t!” The dark shadow pounced in front of him. The terrifying force contained in it finally caused a shock to flash across the yellow-clothed man’s eyes as he cried out involuntarily.

As the voice of the yellow-clothed man sounded, the dark shadow, that was smashing toward his face, suddenly stopped. Even though the dark shadow had stopped extremely punctually, the wind that was contained with the swing still passed through the air and ruthlessly caused the yellow-clothed young man’s face to go through an upheaval of changes a couple of times as though it was a water wave. Only then did he recover.

The dark shadow gradually left and an enormous ruler was heavily inserted into the ground in front of the yellow-clothed man. The black-robed young man looked down at the yellow-clothed man from above. His faint voice caused the latter’s face to tremble again, “Hand over your Fire Crystal Card.”

“You... you are new students. Why do you need our Fire Crystal Cards?” The yellow-clothed man swallowed a mouthful of saliva and eyed the four other intense battles going on. His eyes rotated a little as he opened his mouth to ask.

“Naturally, we want the ‘Fire Energy’...” Xiao Yan softly laughed. His palm, which was holding the Heavy Xuan Ruler tightly, tightened its grasp a little further. He smiled and said, “Hand over your Fire Crystal Card within ten seconds or I will first beat you until you are half dead and take it myself. Which option do you choose?”

A coldness swarmed into the yellow-clothed man’s heart as he eyed the smiling, delicate, handsome face that belonged to Xiao Yan. This fellow was really terrifying... As he sensed the ice-cold tone within Xiao Yan’s voice, the yellow-clothed young man felt unwillingness in his heart, but he did not dare to procrastinate. His face was filled with bitterness as he took out a pale, blue-colored crystal card from his storage ring, and handed it over to Xiao Yan.

Xiao Yan smiled as he received the card. His eyes glanced at the number on it: thirty-two, and nodded quietly in his heart. Not bad. A very fruitful harvest. It was really unexpected that this fellow was actually even wealthier than the people that they had previously robbed.

Xiao Yan’s body suddenly moved as he held the card in his hand. His right leg kicked at the yellow clothed man’s temple with a strength that was neither hard nor soft, coincidentally controlling the strength such that he only kicked that fellow until he fainted, and not to the extent of him losing his life.

Not long after Xiao Yan finished off the yellow-clothed man, the other four battles also approached their ends. A moment later, when four human figures bounced heavily off the ground and collided together, the battle had finally ended.

“Five Fire Crystal Cards. If we subtract the seven days of ‘guaranteed minimum’ ‘Fire Energy’, we have gotten our hands on a total of a hundred twenty-five days worth of ‘Fire Energy’, which can be distributed... Each person can coincidentally be allocated twenty-five days of ‘Fire Energy’. There is no disagreement right?” Xiao Yan received the Fire Crystal Cards from the hands of the four of them and calculated. After which, he waved the five cards and smiled as he asked them a question.

“Yes.” The four of them nodded. As they had already agreed on this distribution method, it would naturally be impossible for them to disagree.

Seeing that the four of them nodded, Xiao Yan smiled and threw the cards toward the four of them while speaking with a smile, “Everyone, take it for yourself. If there is not enough, take it from another crystal card.”

The five people held a card in each of their hands and used force to rub them against each other. A glow immediately flashed. The original red-colored number on the dark, black Crystal Card increased by a little bit once again.

After snatching the ‘Fire Energy’, Xiao Yan threw the pale-blue crystal cards back onto the chests of the few Inner Academy students. He smiled at them, who were tied to a tree trunk, immobilized, and said, “Seniors, thank you for your gift. We will repay you if we have the time to do so in the future. For now, we will first bid you farewell.”

“Hurry up and leave. I sense that there are other groups headed toward us.” Xiao Yan turned around, and spoke one sentence to Hu Jia and the other three. After which, he waved his hand and swiftly fled into the dense forest. Behind him, the four people, whose faces were filled with excitement. followed shortly after. Now, they suddenly realized that selecting Xiao Yan as the leader was quite a wise decision. In just a few hours, they had already successfully obtained the ‘Fire Energy’ from two groups of Inner Academy older students. This bountiful harvest really caused them to be extremely excited.

.....

Around five to six minutes after Xiao Yan’s group disappeared, the tree branches of this part of the forest suddenly shook a little. Immediately, five shadows flashed out. After they appeared and saw those five Inner Academy older students that had been tied to the tree, with even their mouths were covered, their faces were immediately stunned. They exchanged glances with one another. One of them carefully cut the rope. Immediately, that five unlucky people fell down flaccidly and panted swiftly.

“We were actually robbed by the new students!” After catching his breath, that yellow-clothed man immediately jumped up and cursed out loud with a green face.

The group of older students, who had just arrived after hearing the clash of the fight, were startled when they heard the curses of this yellow-clothed man. Their faces were instantly filled with strange expressions as they looked at the yellow-clothed man’s group.

“What are you looking at? If you were to meet that group, you would definitely not be in much better shape! Why does this batch of new students have such abnormal fellows?” The strange expressions of the other party caused the yellow-clothed man to be furious. He did not care whether it was this group which had fished them out of the deep waters or another. He simply parted his mouth and scolded. In any case, they may be able to rob new students in this forest, but they were also allowed to attack the older students.

“Rest assured that we will not be as useless as some people who actually had their ‘Fire Energy’ stolen by the new students. This is a strange occurrence that has never happened before in the past ten years of the inner academy. In the future, you will likely be considered famous within the Inner Academy.” A person leading that group had also become a little angry because of the yellow-clothed man’s words and was too lazy to continue stopping here. He waved his hand and led his companions to swiftly move into the dense forest. They immediately disappeared.

“When you all meet them, you will know the definition of depression. What use is there to have such a tough mouth now?!” The yellow-clothed man waved his fist furiously at the group which had just left. He took out the pale, blue-colored Fire Crystal Card from his chest and saw the eye-piercing number on it: seven. His expression was gloomy, much like a storm was about to approach. He appeared extremely frightening.

Nearly three hours after Xiao Yan robbed the yellow-clothed man’s group, they had finally met another solitary group of older Inner Academy’s students as the sky gradually became dark.

This time around, however, their plans were completely dashed. This was because this group of older students had a degree of cooperation and teamwork that far surpassed the expectations of Xiao Yan’s group. When they met the two groups from the Inner Academy earlier, Xiao Yan’s five man team had relied on their outstanding individual strength to spread out the opponent and finally defeat each of them individually. This time around, however, they had met a tough metal plate.

Although this group had initially felt some panic when they were ambushed by Xiao Yan’s five man group, it was merely for an extremely short while before they swiftly recovered their calm. The five of them had their backs facing each other, much like a metal drum. No matter how Xiao Yan’s five man group tempted them, they only relied on their excellent cooperation and teamwork, combining their strength to resolve the attacks. After this seemingly stalemate-like situation lasted for around half an hour, Xiao Yan finally made a decisive decision, waved his hand and lead his team to retreat. This time around, they returned from their hunt without reward. It was also because they had undergone this failure that they clearly understood just what kind of difference existed in the degrees of cooperation of this team of theirs when compared with those of the Inner Academy.

After recognizing their shortcomings, Xiao Yan’s five man group also began to feel out and train together. After one sleepless night of training, the degree of cooperation between them may not be said to have soared greatly but compared to yesterday, it was an enormous improvement. This was because at the very least, they had recently begun to know how to join hands and not just rely on their own strength to interwise with one of the five opponents at the same time like they had initially planned.

It must be said that this one night of cooperation practice among Xiao Yan’s five man group did indeed benefit them greatly. This was because the next morning, Xiao Yan’s group had coincidentally and luckily met with the group that had forced them to retreat yesterday. When the two parties met, they were originally startled. Quickly following this, however, a fiery battle once again erupted!

This time around, Xiao Yan’s group finally, unlike yesterday, did not feel as though their hands and legs were bound. Although they still had difficulty breaking through the metal drum-like cooperation, at the very least, there was the faint trend of them being able to retaliate.

That group from the Inner Academy also discovered Xiao Yan’s group’s improvement. Moreover, they were also shocked to discover that as the entanglement between both parties became more intense, the cooperation within Xiao Yan’s group was also honed during the battle and gradually became more skillful. If it went on like this, it was likely that they would truly be finished off should they wait until their opponent’s cooperation became even more skillful.

However, not long after Xiao Yan’s group began to have the advantage, Xiao Yan’s expression suddenly changed. He could sense that there seemed to be two groups around them, which were flying in their direction and hurrying to this battleground of theirs. Clearly, they were attracted by the undulations of Dou Qi caused by the fight here. Immediately, he did not dare to delay any longer. With a wave of his hand he said sternly, “Let’s get out of here!”

Hearing Xiao Yan’s cry, Bai Shan and the others, who had already fought until they had some feeling, were immediately stunned. Although they felt some reluctance toward leaving this good situation, due to Xiao Yan’s extremely accurate warning during these two days, they could only forcefully stop and follow Xiao Yan to swiftly flee into the dense forest. Finally, they disappeared from the line of sight of the Inner Academy’s group whose members were covered with perspiration after having fought against Xiao Yan’s group for quite some time.

“Bastard. The improvement of these fellows is too much. The next time we meet, our cooperation is likely not going to pose much hindrance to them.” A young man, who looked like the leader of this group, stared at the spot where Xiao Yan’s group had disappeared into. He could not resist softly cursing with a gloomy face.

After the fight this time around ended in a draw, this group of older students from the Inner Academy suddenly felt a chill in their hearts as they discovered that this group of new students, three men and two women, seemed to expressively hook onto them. As long as there were no other groups nearby, this group of new students, which were hiding in some dark and quiet corner, would attack them from different directions, tiring them until they were totally exhausted.

In a mere short day, this group of older students from the Inner Academy had been attacked by Xiao Yan’s group no less than five times. Moreover, during these five instances, they realized that the cooperation and teamwork within Xiao Yan’s group was becoming stronger and stronger. Only at this moment did they discover that these fellows were actually using them as a stepping stone!

However, by the time that they realized this, it was already a little too late. Therefore, the current them had discovered that they were once again surrounded by Xiao Yan’s five man group, which had been lingering and pestering them. This time around, the cooperation that Xiao Yan’s five man group displayed finally caused them to end up in despair. In less than ten minutes, the group, which had caused Xiao Yan’s five man team to be at a loss on their first encounter, was attacked by this group until they fell to pieces. As the loser, the ‘Fire Energy’ in their hands naturally served as the spoils of war and were seized by Xiao Yan’s group.

After this battle, the news that there was a group of new students who were hunting for the ‘Fire Energy’ in the hands of the older students of the academy had finally and gradually began to spread within the forest. Therefore, some of the groups of senior students from the Inner Academy began to panic. The entire forest for the Hunting Competition had also begun to become chaotic. The good show appeared to have formally begun.