Chapter 1110: Interesting

Vermilion Bird placed her hands on War Tiger’s and Qing Ling’s shoulders, injecting them with dormant energy that would allow them to triple their power at the price of going into a three-month coma. The two could choose whether to activate the energy. If they didn’t, the energy would fade in half an hour.

War Tiger and Qing Ling knew that it would be their last resort. If they did activate it, they would be fighting to their death.

Like a gray-green phantom, War Tiger charged at his father. Mark’s body suddenly split with countless thin cracks, from which brown energy of different sharp shapes protruded, like the abstracted version of animal horns. He shot forward in a brown blur.

Boom!

Father and son collided at the center of the running track, wild ripples of energy pulsing outward. War Tiger swung the Dragonslaying Greatsword down at Mark's head with both hands. Mark's right hand shot up to block.

The moment after the block was the true start of War Tiger’s attack. The tremoring power imbued into the greatsword rippled into Mark’s body. The cracks covering his arms and upper body quickly expanded, and more brown energy surged out to form more abstracted horns, spreading toward his back. From afar, it looked as if a giant coral had grown out of him.

Mark stopped himself from being pushed back with his feet digging into the ground and his brown horns anchoring him in place.

He scoffed. “Interesting.”

The countless horns retracted, and the cracks covering his body closed. Quick as lightning, his left fist flew toward War Tiger’s heart.

War Tiger started. He didn’t have the time to rotate his greatsword to block the punch, so he had to raise his left hand last second to catch the fist. It was a brute force he had never experienced before.

His left arm exploded into a spray of meat, blood, and shattered bone. The remaining force slammed into his chest, launching him through the wall of a nearby building.

Bam!

Mark was just about to follow up with another attack when a glint flashed toward his eyes. He bent back violently, dodging the two Black Gold darts aiming to blind him.

Qing Ling’s Xiu Dao stabbed at him with a cyan blade aura. Mark caught it easily with his steel-like right hand, stopping the blade from sinking into his forehead. At that moment, powerful lightning crackled out and engulfed him like a serpent.

Two seconds later, the lighting subsided. Brown horns shot out of Mark once more, the forms even more twisted and fierce than before like wild thorny growths.

Brown energy returned to Mark like components finding their rightful places. Mark was just about to make a move when a tremendous power came at him from the side.

War Tiger!

Losing an arm and covered in blood, he grinned widely. The greatsword in his remaining hand appeared almost mist-like, tremoring with overwhelming power.

It only took a few seconds for War Tiger to return to the battlefield.

The passive ability of Killing Expert granted him greater explosive power the more seriously he was injured. And level 7 Killing Expert granted him a new skill on top of that—Eye for an Eye!

Every bit of damage he suffered could be converted into pure energy for his weapon. The devastating hit he'd just endured now tripled the force of his Dragonslaying Giantsword.

“Hah!”

He swung with everything he had, aiming to bisect his father at the waist.

Old man, you look the coolest in a wheelchair!

Bam!

The horizontal slash came too quick and precise for Mark to dodge sideways. As he prepared to leap upward, a second killing intent—no less fierce than War Tiger's—descended from above.

Qing Ling!

She had vaulted off her blade, her body forming a perfect line with her arm and Tang Dao as she plunged toward Mark's head.

Caught between the two attacks, Mark could only endure them.

A tremendous blade aura exploded from his head and waist. The wild stray energy scattered into countless fierce arcs of cyan, gray, and brown, threatening to distort space itself.

There was a one-second silence.

Soil erupted like wine from a shattered glass, scattering before drifting back to earth. The running track now resembled a bombing site, pockmarked with countless craters.

At the center of the field, Qing Ling’s Tang Dao had driven into Mark’s raised right palm with level 7 God of Blades, piercing through his arm and then his shoulder. From the side, War Tiger’s Dragonslaying Giantsword had cut into Mark’s waist like a chainsaw, slicing through two-thirds of his torso.

Mark remained where he was, mouth filled with blood and body covered in injuries. Wild brown energy spilled from the opposite side of War Tiger's strike and beneath his feet, manifesting as thorns that stretched more than ten meters.

His gaze was pained, yet excited. He slowly broke into a grin with crimson teeth.

“Interesting.”

War Tiger and Qing Ling stared in disbelief.

Energy exploded from Mark's frame. Though both awakeners dodged in time, the force still hurled them backward. They landed thirty meters away, catching themselves mid-flip.

War Tiger injected his severed arm with Medicine C. “Shit, it’s a little troublesome.”

Qing Ling shook the blood off her Tang Dao. “You can just use Equivalent Exchange.”

In other words, she didn’t need that yet.

War Tiger spat out blood and insisted, “This is nothing. I’m just warming up.”

His hunch told him that Mark was much stronger than what he had shown. War Tiger couldn’t pull his trump card yet.

Mark had become a third bigger than before. Brown energy erupted from his split waist. His forehead cracked, and a thin, blinding brown beam pierced through. He reached to his sides, brown energy crawling up his arms. With a bestial growl, he shaped the power into scimitar-like horns, their swirling patterns spinning like electric drills. The energy from his forehead coalesced into a unicorn's horn, rotating and bleeding like a motor driving into flesh.

The gushing blood covered Mark’s face in crimson. He looked like a demon born from a blood pool in hell.

“Interesting.” He grinned. “You...made me mad.”