84: Chapter 84 The more afraid you are of death, the faster you will die!

The fierce battle continued madly, without a single moment of rest.

The fiendish blood-battle state unsealed by Lin Ye never faded, and his all-encompassing suppressive offensive was continuous, leaving no flaws to be found.

The origin plague of the Plague Seed Mosquito took root in the bodies of the Six-Winged Angels, continuously corroding their sacred origin.

The soul impacts of the Soul-Devouring Owl layered on top of each other, constantly tearing apart the angels' soul defense line.

The Shahun Hounds charged fearlessly in turns, tangling and holding back the enemy with their physical bodies, giving the opponents no chance to catch their breath or recover.

Bai Ruoxue exhausted all the buffs from her Heavenly Saint Descent, forcibly boosting the combat power of the Angel Legion and bitterly supporting the remnants of the battle, but the declining trend of the situation still could not be reversed.

One Six-Winged Angel after another shattered and fell successively, their brilliant holy light extinguishing on the arena time and time again; the scattered golden feathers and fine holy crystals all over the ground were proof of the destruction of astronomical foundations.

Three hundred!

The moment the three hundredth Six-Winged Angel was swallowed by the fiendish Qi and completely annihilated, Bai Ruoxue's heart sank completely to the bottom.

Exactly half of the Angel Legion was completely wiped out, and half of the top-tier dependents built with all this time's painstaking effort and massive resources were buried in this arena duel.

Yet Lin Ye's sacrifice was equally tragic.

The continuous berserk fierce attacks and the endless close-quarters grappling caused his dependents, who had already gone through bloody battles, to suffer heavy blows once again.

Only a little over six hundred of the one thousand three hundred Shahun Hounds remained, and the surviving Soul-Devouring Owls and Plague Seed Mosquitoes suffered another fifty percent loss. With the wreckage of dependents scattered everywhere, the concentration of fiendish Qi dropped drastically, and the overall combat power was halved again. Both sides were in a horrific state of attrition.

Yet it was precisely this crazy life-for-life fighting style that completely crushed Bai Ruoxue's psychological defense line.

Looking at the three hundred scar-covered Six-Winged Angels with dimmed holy light lingering above the battlefield, the anxiety and heartache in the depths of her eyes completely turned into resoluteness.

The battle could no longer continue.

Once the remaining angels were completely wiped out, the family foundation accumulated over several years, countless resource investments, and cultivation with day-and-night painstaking efforts would completely go down the drain.

Not to mention subsequent cultivation, academy assessments, and high-tier tournaments, even the foundation of her holy path would develop irrepairable cracks due to the complete annihilation of her dependents.

Although the rewards of this Quanzhou's first-place tournament and the ultimate gift of Jinghun Hall were undoubtedly valuable, compared to her Angel Legion, which was more than half destroyed and on the verge of total annihilation, they were simply not worth mentioning.

Continuing to fight to the death would yield losses outweighing the gains; it would only completely hollow out all her own foundations and reduce her to a complete loser.

Without the slightest hesitation, Bai Ruoxue immediately reined in her divine kingdom's coercion, raised her hand to call a halt loudly, and her cold voice, carrying barely concealable exhaustion and hoarseness, resounded throughout the audience: "I surrender!"

At this moment, the noisy audience suddenly quieted down, countless viewers' pupils contracted sharply, and their faces were filled with disbelief.

The undefeated myth, Bai Ruoxue, had surrendered in Quanzhou's ultimate showdown!

Yet above the arena, the torrent of slaughter had not stopped.

At this moment, Lin Ye was long past being calm and composed.

His divine soul immersed in the battlefield, high-intensity slaughter throughout, endless fiendish Qi washing into his soul, coupled with the dual berserk blessings of the Fiend-Unsealing Seal and Blood Boiling, had long caused his consciousness to be eroded, engulfed, and devoured layer by layer by the monstrously violent fiendish Qi.

His eyes were completely dyed crimson, his gaze cold and bloodthirsty, and there was only a single obsession left in his mind—defeat the opponent, trample the battlefield, and fight a bloody battle to the end!

All the surrounding noises, the audience's exclamations, and Bai Ruoxue's words of surrender were completely isolated by the violent fiendish Qi, unable to reach his ears at all.

Amidst everyone's shocked gazes, Lin Ye's mind urged once more, and all his surviving dependents erupted again. Black-red fiendish Qi soared into the sky, and they still fiercely launched a fatal onslaught against the remaining Six-Winged Angels, showing no signs of stopping.

The situation instantly spiraled out of control!

Once this wave of offensive landed, Bai Ruoxue's remaining three hundred angels would undoubtedly suffer even more losses!

At the critical moment of a hair's breadth, a steady and majestic figure suddenly broke through the air above the arena barrier—the chief referee of this tournament had personally stepped in!

Hum—!

A gentle, majestic, upright, and peaceful force of rules enveloped the entire arena, forcibly isolating the violent torrent of fiendish Qi.

The chief referee condensed a soft holy light in his palm, which accurately landed on the center of Lin Ye's brows, slowly washing and purifying along his soul pathways, peeling away the violent fiendish Qi that had invaded his soul and eroded his consciousness bit by bit.

The originally crimson and bloodthirsty gaze slowly faded of its blood color, his turbid consciousness gradually cleared up, and the violent murderous and fierce Qi quickly receded and fell dormant.

After a few seconds, the fiendish Qi around Lin Ye calmed down, his eyes regained their clarity, and he completely broke free from the erosion and control of the fiendish Qi.

Looking at the empty battlefield with only lingering breaths left, and then looking at Bai Ruoxue beside him with a complex expression, her eyes full of exhaustion and heartache, he instantly understood everything that had just happened.

The audience was dead silent, one hundred thousand spectators held their breath, and no one dared to break this heavy atmosphere.

For a long time, Bai Ruoxue raised her eyes, gazing steadily at the youth in front of her. With a cold voice carrying a hint of incomprehension and melancholy, she softly asked: "For the sake of a Quanzhou's first place, do you really not feel any heartache at all for your dependents' heavy losses?!"

She could not understand.

She was willing to surrender because she weighed the pros and cons and was unwilling to exhaust her painstaking efforts and family savings.

Yet Lin Ye's posture just now was to risk all his foundations, gamble away his own Dao path, and fight to the death regardless of everything, as if he completely didn't care about the life and death losses of his subordinates' dependents.

Facing Bai Ruoxue's questioning, Lin Ye slowly raised his eyes, his gaze calm and firm, without a shred of regret, every word sonorous and impactful:

"On the battlefield: If you fear losing, you will always lose!"

"The more you fear death, the faster you die!"

"The reason you surrendered is because you are afraid of your family savings being completely ruined and your painstaking efforts going to waste, but I am not!"

His gaze looked towards the high sky of the arena, towards the emblem of Jinghun Hall that symbolized the ultimate reward, and a burning obsession ignited in the depths of his eyes.

"In this match, there is something here that I must get and can never afford to miss."

"Therefore, I cannot retreat, nor do I dare to retreat."

"If my dependents are gone, I can cultivate them again. Inside my divine kingdom, there are still underage dependents, but if this opportunity is missed, it will truly be gone forever!"

Hearing this, Bai Ruoxue's pupils trembled slightly, and the doubt in her heart grew even stronger. After a moment of silence, looking at Lin Ye's stubborn and firm eyes, she softly asked: "Then what on earth is the thing that you are willing to risk the total annihilation of your dependents to get?!"

This sentence was also the question of everyone in the audience.

Everyone could see that Lin Ye could clearly develop steadily and proceed step by step, yet he chose to risk all his dependents' foundations and let his own consciousness be eroded by fiendish Qi just to fight to the death to win the championship. This resoluteness was definitely not just for the empty title of Quanzhou's first place or ordinary tournament resources.

Facing Bai Ruoxue's continued questioning, Lin Ye didn't hide anything at all. He raised his eyes to look at the quaint palace-shadow emblem floating at the very top of the arena, and his clear and resolute voice resounded through the entire dead-silent arena: "Jinghun Hall!"

"You saw it with your own eyes just now during the slaughter: my consciousness would be eroded by fiendish Qi, and my dependents, due to being immersed in fiendish Qi year-round, are bloodthirsty, manic, and extremely prone to losing control. This is a congenital hidden danger we are born with, and it is also our shackles."