399: Chapter 399 The Sixth Screen Clearing and Breakthrough

Yan Pojun stared blankly at the dense forest of figures before him.

In an instant, his mind went completely blank.

The stands, packed with a hundred thousand spectators, were deathly silent.

No one dared to make even the slightest sound.

Everyone stared fixedly at the swaying man in the center of the arena.

Yan Pojun suddenly reached out and pulled his giant blade from the ground.

The veins on the back of his hand throbbed violently.

"Are you kidding me!!!"

This roar tore through the silence.

His voice was laced with an uncontrollable despair.

Dragging his giant blade, he forced himself to stand up.

His legs were trembling violently.

A red glow lit up on the blade's edge once more.

Only this time, the light was much dimmer.

He gritted his teeth and swung his blade.

A red arc sliced through the clone army.

Half of the clones dissipated into points of light.

The momentum of the giant blade was exhausted.

Using the inertia of his body's rotation, Yan Pojun delivered a second backhand strike.

The remaining clones were wiped out in the second flash of red light.

The fourth screen clear.

Yan Pojun leaned on the hilt of his blade with both hands and coughed up a large amount of blood.

The blood sizzled on the scorching ground.

His vision began to blur.

Nothing remained in his ears but the thunderous pounding of his heart.

He forced his eyelids open.

His gaze passed through the dissipating gray points of light.

Lin Yao's delicate face remained calm.

Her hand hadn't even been lowered.

*Snap.*

The fifth time.

A gray tide flooded the arena for the fifth time.

The mages raised their staves in unison.

The elemental energy in the air let out a sharp hiss.

Yan Pojun's body swayed uncontrollably.

The edge of his giant blade carved a deep furrow into the ground.

He looked up at the broken dome of the Organization.

"How am I supposed to fight this!!"

His raspy voice carried a sense of total collapse.

But he did not put down the blade in his hand.

A beast's survival instinct drove him to squeeze more from his broken body once again.

He roared and charged into the clone formation.

Red light flickered with difficulty within the gray ocean.

One strike.

Two strikes.

Three strikes.

His movements became increasingly sluggish.

The light on the blade looked like it would go out at any moment.

The speed at which the clones collapsed grew slower and slower.

Yan Pojun hacked through the crowd with great difficulty.

Every swing of his blade sent large droplets of blood flying.

Blood stained what remained of his battle armor.

A full thirty seconds passed.

Those thirty seconds felt incredibly long.

The spectators in the stands could only watch as that blood-red figure struggled bitterly within the gray army.

Accompanied by a final, exhausted roar.

The giant blade finally shattered the last clone.

Yan Pojun collapsed to the ground.

He lay on his back amidst the charred ruins.

His chest heaved violently.

His vision was completely unable to focus.

The bright lights above were so piercing he couldn't open his eyes.

He moved his fingers, trying to grip the hilt of the blade beside him.

But his fingers refused to obey.

The energy within his body was almost completely dried up.

He didn't even have the strength left to move a pinky finger.

It's over, isn't it?

He closed his eyes.

However.

*Snap.*

The sixth time.

That sixth crisp finger snap planted the seeds of despair within the deathly silent arena.

On the charred ground that had just been cleared, gray shadows appeared once more from nothing, spreading rapidly like ink dropped into water.

They twisted and swelled, squeezing physical forms out of the void.

One.

One thousand.

Tens of thousands.

The army of "Lin Yao"s in ornate mage robes descended for the sixth time.

Their expressions were cold, and the tips of their staves shimmered with light, looking like frigid deities gazing down upon the mortal realm.

Yan Pojun lay on his back in the scorching ruins, his vision already blurred.

He could hear his heart pounding like a drum and feel his life force draining away along with his blood.

The hand that had been tightly gripping the hilt of the giant blade was pale from the sheer force of his grip.

Then, finger by finger, it slowly loosened.

The last few flickering blue energy lines on the surface of his armor went out completely, falling into deathly silence.

His weapon slipped from his hand.

He gave up.

How the hell is anyone supposed to fight this? Who could possibly win?

I'm sorry, Captain Qin, it seems I haven't cut off this tail cleanly enough...

However, at the very moment his consciousness was about to sink into darkness, he used the last of his strength to slightly turn his blood-stained head.

His gaze moved past the shattered arena, past the panicked and silent audience, and finally fixed on a certain direction high above.

The VIP room.

Behind that dark, soundproof glass, two blurry figures stood quietly.

They weren't sitting; they were just silently watching everything below.

It was them.

Zhong Huai.

Wen Yan.

At that moment, a faint light refocused in Yan Pojun's pupils.

He remembered Fangs.

He remembered the Commander-in-Chief's orders.

He remembered the trial he was carrying out—to sever his past.

So... they had been watching all along.

The words from Fangs' training sessions flashed before his eyes... Yan Pojun, have you really reached your limit?

A tiny, imperceptible electric spark quietly lit up deep within the completely destroyed mechanical structure on his chest.

The hand that had let go suddenly jerked.

His fingertips touched the cold hilt once more.

He gripped it tight again.

Using every last shred of strength in his body, he once again grasped the giant blade that represented his honor and his past.

The muscles in his arms began to tremble unnaturally as he pushed off the charred ground.

He was going to stand up.

*Hum—*

A low hum emanated from within his body.

Beneath the shattered outer armor on his chest, the inner layer of armor suddenly flared with a blindingly bright red light.

That light was no longer the blue of energy lines, but a crimson red that looked like burning life force.

The light pierced through the broken metal and flesh, making him look like a demon returned from hell.

The suffocating silence in the stands was completely torn apart by this red light.

After two seconds of absolute quiet.

In the front row, a burly man with a rugged face suddenly leaped from his seat. He pointed at the swaying figure in the arena and roared with all his might.

"Yan Pojun!!!"

A second later, dozens of spectators around him stood up at the same time, like ignited gunpowder.

"Yan Pojun!!!"

The shouts converged into a growing wave of sound.

At that very moment, Lin Yao's clone army moved.

Tens of thousands of staves were raised high, their chants merging into one, as the elemental energy in the air began to hiss sharply.

To end the battle quickly, Lin Yao didn't choose spells with longer casting times, but instead used a massive volume of basic skills.

Countless magic orbs left the tips of the staves, turning into a rain of multicolored light that blanketed the center of the arena.

Yan Pojun pulled out his giant blade.

He didn't dodge, nor did he block.

He charged right into that sea of magical light that was enough to destroy everything.

The giant blade burned with a blinding red glow. Like a crazed beast, he slammed headlong into the rain of light.

Boom!

The first magic orb was sliced in half by his blade.

He took a step forward.

Boom! Boom!

Two more magic orbs exploded beside him. The shockwave made his body sway, but he didn't stop.

The giant blade in his hand became a red whirlwind of death, forcibly tearing a gap through the clone formation.

He completely abandoned all defense.

Fast-moving low-tier spells—ice spikes, fireballs, wind blades—constantly struck his shoulders and back.

Every impact made his body shudder violently, sending sprays of blood into the air.