121: Chapter 120 Luck! Luck!
"??????" "The number six seed tried to jump to the boat and failed?" "Am I seeing this right? Missed by four centimeters??" "My karma points!!!"
Chen Yang reacted the fastest, using Ground-Shattering Wave to stir up the ocean currents and hoist the soaking wet Instructor Liu Qiang onto Captain Ye Shuang's deck.
The moment Instructor Liu Qiang's feet touched the deck, his face turned livid.
Embarrassing.
Utterly humiliating.
It was being broadcast across all of Yanhuang Civilization, with over forty million people watching. He, an instructor for the Revival Society's Defense Administration, a holder of the Silver Grade Continuous Power Punch skill and Silver Grade gauntlets, and the core number six seed of the Thousand-Strong Selection Tournament—had actually jumped into the ocean while trying to leap across an eight-meter gap.
The dual flames of anger and shame exploded within his chest.
Instructor Liu Qiang was dripping with seawater, but his eyes were burning red.
Captain Ye Shuang was just three meters away.
The thirty-three-year-old woman's face was ashen, and her hands trembled slightly. She saw Instructor Liu Qiang's bloodshot eyes and the surging power pulses on his Silver Grade gauntlets, causing her to instinctively take a step back.
She knew she couldn't withstand a Continuous Power Punch. She couldn't even take one hit.
It was too late.
Instructor Liu Qiang roared and unleashed both fists.
Continuous Power Punch—operating at full power... though he still held back a little.
One punch.
Captain Ye Shuang closed her eyes subconsciously. The force of the punch grazed her right cheek. The loose hair by her ear was whipped up by the shockwave.
Didn't hit?
Two punches.
Three centimeters from her left shoulder.
Three punches.
Two centimeters above her head.
Four, five, six punches—
Captain Ye Shuang stood frozen in place.
It wasn't that she didn't want to move.
It was that her legs had gone soft. Fear of pain had stiffened her entire body, pinning her to the deck like a nail.
But she wasn't hit.
Not a single punch.
Instructor Liu Qiang's fists were like they had magnets repelling her. Every punch precisely missed Captain Ye Shuang's body by the narrowest of margins—sometimes two centimeters, sometimes three; the closest time, the wind of the punch tore the fabric of her sleeve.
But they just wouldn't connect.
Ten punches.
Twenty punches.
Thirty punches.
Instructor Liu Qiang, who had initially held back some strength, no longer had the capacity to care about the force of his strikes.
The entire arena had fallen completely silent.
In the combat zone, members of other teams who were fighting nearby stopped simultaneously. Some were half-crouched, holding weapons they had forgotten to lower, while others still had their talents emitting light effects, but their eyes were completely dazed.
Two referees stood on a patrol boat, their mouths hanging open, unable to close them.
The livestream's bullet comment System was enduring the highest traffic volume since the introduction of the small window view.
Forty punches.
Instructor Liu Qiang's breathing had become as heavy as a bellows. It wasn't a matter of physical stamina—the essence of Continuous Power Punch was tireless output. It was a mental breakdown.
Except for the first few punches, every subsequent one had been thrown with full force, each one seemingly shattering the air, each one aimed at the opponent's body—but likewise, every single one had—missed.
He stared at the woman in front of him, who had her eyes closed, her face pale, and her whole body trembling.
She wasn't even dodging.
He couldn't hit someone who wasn't even dodging.
Forty-five punches.
Captain Ye Shuang finally opened her eyes.
She saw Instructor Liu Qiang's face just inches away. Beads of sweat, seawater, and engorged, red veins were all clearly visible.
She saw Instructor Liu Qiang's fist graze past her ear for the forty-sixth time, the force of the punch blowing her long hair across her face.
Her brain finally rebooted a certain rational area.
A thought surfaced—he can't hit me.
Regardless of why. He can't hit me.
Then—
Captain Ye Shuang thrust both hands forward.
All of her Poison Fog, everything, without reservation, at zero distance, was poured directly into Instructor Liu Qiang's face.
The thick green toxic mist exploded between them.
Instructor Liu Qiang inhaled a lungful.
It wasn't that he didn't want to dodge. The Poison Fog came too suddenly; his forty-seventh punch was in the middle of being thrown, his entire body leaning forward, with his center of gravity pressed onto the ball of his front foot. By the time he tried to turn his head, the mist had already poured from his nasal cavity into his lungs.
He felt it.
The burning sensation of the toxin spreading through his veins. In his consciousness, he saw the health bar on his Numerical Panel dropping frantically.
Theoretically, with the Numerical Panel activated, even if he lost health from poison, he shouldn't have had any other negative status effects.
But at this moment, having previously unleashed forty-five full-power Continuous Power Punches, his energy and spirit had been consumed to an extremely low level. The two combined. His vision blurred. His knees went weak.
He wasn't knocked unconscious by the poison; he was truly mentally exhausted, too sleepy to hold on.
Utilizing a Silver Grade skill required the consumption of energy and spirit.
Holders of Silver Grade skills, talents, or special weapons and items generally have at least one, if not all, of their three-dimensional attributes exceeding twenty points. Otherwise, they would simply be unable to support the consumption required by these skills, items, and weapons.
A final trace of unwillingness flashed in Instructor Liu Qiang's eyes.
Then his eyelids grew heavy.
His massive, muscular frame, nearly two and a half meters tall, fell straight forward, face-planting onto the deck of her Houseboat, brushing past Captain Ye Shuang's flying hair, and landing with a dull, heavy thud. Thud.
Dead silence.
The entire combat zone fell into a deathly silence.
Captain Ye Shuang looked down at the man lying face down on the deck, motionless, her expression even more terrified than it had been before Instructor Liu Qiang fell.
She wasn't scared of him.
She was scared of herself—what had she just done? She had stood motionless for dozens of punches in front of a man capable of soloing a high-level sea beast, and then poisoned him into submission? Was there some sort of bug in this world?
Chen Yong stood to the side, his mouth hanging open in an 'O' shape.
Fang Rui's crossbow slipped from his hand and clattered onto the deck. He didn't even notice.
The two referees came to their senses and exchanged a look, both seeing the same word in each other's eyes—impossible.
But Instructor Liu Qiang's health bar had dropped below the thirty percent safety threshold due to the influence of Captain Ye Shuang's continuous Poison Fog. The System automatically popped up an elimination warning.
The referees didn't dare to delay; they steered the patrol boat over and jumped onto Captain Ye Shuang's deck. The two of them, one lifting his head and the other his feet, carried the unconscious Instructor Liu Qiang off the boat and urgently forced a red bottle of Life Spring down his throat, raising his health to the safety threshold.
Throughout the entire process, not a single person in the arena spoke.
Until—
"Wow~ Long live my brother—!!!"
A crisp, loud female voice that pierced the silence over the entire combat zone exploded.
Yang Yue jumped high up from the deck of her Houseboat. It wasn't a small hop. It was a jump where she pushed off with both feet, launching her entire body two meters into the air. Her high ponytail drew a beautiful arc in the air. The Silver Grade halberd was raised high above her head, reflecting a blinding silvery-white light under the twin suns.
Her face was full of unmasked, pure, overflowing joy.
"Brother! You're amazing!!!"
Captain Ye Shuang turned her head sharply.
Chen Yong, Fang Rui, as well as the yet-to-be-eliminated Han Feng, Zhao Lei, Chen Yang, and Wu Kai on the opposite side, along with the referees present, all seemed to realize something.
They looked toward Yang Hang, who was in the safe zone at the very end of Captain Ye Shuang's team.
The cognitive barrier was shattered at this moment!