Even though they were almost face-to-face, she still did not feel much heat.
As long as it was not a physical attack or an excessively strong energy impact, fire like this could no longer harm Hua Jian in the slightest.
Her Ling Sword had become incredibly hot under the intense heat.
For any other cultivator, they would need to use Spiritual Power to control the sword’s temperature to avoid being unable to hold the hilt.
But Hua Jian did not need to do that. There was a layer of white gloves between her and the Ling Sword.
The temperature on the hilt could not reach her hands at all, saving her a lot of Spiritual Power consumption.
This caused the Strong Man to curse, “You little brat, you sure have a lot of treasures.”
He was also quite envious of the Spiritual Garment that was completely unafraid of his fire attacks.
He suspected the grade of this garment might have already exceeded the Ling Wang Realm and reached the level of a Ling Emperor.
‘She’s practically a pay-to-win warrior!’
“One must have some means of self-defense when traveling, and besides, I got this through my own hard work.” Hua Jian was quite indifferent to the Strong Man’s complaints.
If she had obtained this garment by being a spoiled rich child, she might have felt a bit embarrassed, but she was no rich second generation.
She, Hua Jian, was a Tiansha guxing. Her entire net worth relied on her own effort and struggle.
If she hadn’t put in great effort with Venerable White Flower back then, the Venerable would not have given her such a treasure, right?
The two of them fought while bickering. Hua Jian was fighting and retreating, trying her best to lure the Strong Man away from the center of the Forbidden Land.
The Strong Man also saw through Hua Jian’s thoughts.
He could even sense the group of cultivators charging toward the stone pillars in the distance, but just as Hua Jian thought, he could not attack them.
Those cultivators were simply rushing straight toward a key location in the Secret Realm. Who knew if they actually knew the secret of the stone pillars?
As the old saying goes: if life or death is uncertain, they are dead. Applied here, if it was unknown whether they knew, then they did not know.
Since he did not know, he could not attack before those cultivators stepped onto the platform. He could only hunt Hua Jian and Shiqi.
And Hua Jian and Shiqi clearly were not in a stance to fight to the death with him; they were merely distracting him.
As a Saint Sect disciple, he could naturally see what Hua Jian was planning. This was an open scheme.
If he wanted to break the situation, he could only pretend not to see Hua Jian and Shiqi, stay on the platform, and stop the cultivators immediately after they touched the stone pillars.
But doing that would be a bit too cruel. He had been reminded during examiner training that he should occasionally go easy on the examinees.
“I’ve chased you too far. I must go back to protect the pillars.”
“Hey, Senior Brother, you haven’t defeated me yet! You can’t go back!” Seeing the Strong Man about to fly away, Hua Jian immediately launched a Maple Explosion.
Fiery red leaves smashed toward the Strong Man, causing his movement to pause.
“You brat, I kindly let you go, yet you dare to provoke me? If I don’t destroy you today, I will—”
“Senior Brother, don’t make any oaths. I’m afraid you really won’t be able to destroy me today, and I’ll have to bear the karma. It’s not worth it, not worth it.”
Hua Jian giggled twice and then quickly ducked to avoid a fire ray shot at her head.
The crimson beam of light brushed past her black hair. It should have burned the strands to ash, but Hua Jian’s hair seemed unafraid of the fire, maintaining its luster even after being hit.
Neither Hua Jian nor the Strong Man noticed this small detail. After all, who would care if someone’s hair was singed during a fight?
And soon, the attention of both would no longer be on such trivial matters.
An incredibly sharp and muffled sound came from afar. Subsequently, the flow of Spirit Energy throughout the Forbidden Land became chaotic following the loud noise.
The Strong Man’s expression changed instantly. He shouted, “Oh no! You actually used a diversion!”
He immediately turned around and rushed toward the stone pillars.
“Don’t leave! Take my sword!”
However, on his path back, Shiqi had already been waiting with her sword for a long time.
While Hua Jian was fighting the Strong Man, she had not been idle either.
Instead, she had been accumulating Linglong, preparing to launch a powerful attack.
Now was the perfect time to use it!
The Ling Sword, filled with Spiritual Power, pointed at the Strong Man. Shiqi let out a loud shout, gripped her sword, and lunged, swinging it heavily toward him.
Swoosh!
Faced with such an attack, the Strong Man did not dare ignore it. He quickly raised his arms, and flames surged across his body.
A powerful, blistering air current erupted from him like an exploding bomb, forcefully interrupting Shiqi’s attack halfway.
Then, he immediately rushed in front of Shiqi, whose momentum had been greatly reduced, and threw a kick toward her chest.
Bang!
At this critical moment, a bullet fired from a distance hit the back of the Strong Man’s head. Concentrated mist instantly erupted.
Under the interference of the strong impact and the mist, the Strong Man’s movements paused.
Shiqi also quickly blocked her chest with her sword, relying on the sword’s durability to take the Strong Man’s counterattack.
The attack she had prepared for so long only achieved this much, which truly hurt Shiqi’s pride.
But when she thought about how much stronger the opponent was than her, it seemed even stranger if her attack had actually broken through his defense.
Shiqi’s mindset gradually leveled out.
“No need to fight him head-on. Our mission is to stall for time. Just give the stone pillars enough time to return to their positions.”
Hua Jian caught Shiqi in mid-air, reminding her not to lose her cool and fight to the end.
The BOSS was still very strong. Once the mechanism was finished, it would be their turn to show off their skills.
“Yes!” Shiqi nodded quickly. she had only wanted to try, but she hadn’t expected the opponent’s strength to reach this level.
If she was like this, the other geniuses on the Genius List wouldn’t be much better off. Shiqi had truly fought several of those geniuses and knew their specific strengths.
An opponent she could not beat would be the same for that group.
Even if they attacked together, they would likely be taken down one by one with a single punch from this Strong Man.
In fact, if Hua Jian hadn’t been taking the brunt of the pressure, Shiqi alone wouldn’t have been able to maneuver for long.
And even what Hua Jian could do was merely distract the opponent; she couldn’t deal any substantive damage.
The Saint Sect’s intention in arranging such a cultivator as the Forbidden Land’s BOSS was very clear: to force the examinees to use the mechanism and work together to defeat a powerful enemy.
If you could truly kill the BOSS without using the mechanism, then there was nothing more to say—the Direct Disciple position would be yours.
But such ‘cheating’ shouldn’t be possible. In the Saint Sect’s history of nearly 10,000 years, such an outrageous existence had never appeared.
Even those Immortals in their youth probably couldn’t achieve such a feat.
‘I hope the people over there can react quickly enough later and not be so scared they can’t even move…’
Hua Jian whispered to herself.
The two of them certainly couldn’t stall the Strong Man for too long.
Even including the time he spent rushing back, it probably wouldn’t be enough to let the stone pillars be completely reset.
At that time, their raid group would have to conduct a defensive battle in front of the pillars to ensure the reset process wasn’t interrupted.
They couldn’t help with the first wave of the Strong Man’s charge, so the cultivators on the other side would have to handle it themselves.
But then again, Hua Jian felt that among so many people, there must be someone who could figure this out.
If there wasn’t even one, then the future of the Right Path was truly tragic.
“I say… are you just going to stand here and watch?”
After looking around, Xia Hui wore a strange expression and couldn’t help but ask.
Aside from the five cultivators driving the reset array and Little Brother Sun, who was translating the ancient texts, the other cultivators were actually just standing around watching.
This was a bit too lacking in a sense of crisis.
When Xia Hui asked, the other cultivators in the group scratched their heads.
Weren’t they guarding the area to see if any villains wanted to launch a sneak attack? This wasn’t exactly ‘slacking off.’
“My point is, you should prepare some defenses. You felt the commotion from the other side earlier, right? If that enemy attacks us directly, we won’t be able to block it like this!”
Waving her small hands, Xia Hui stated the current situation more concisely.
Before the others could ask any stupider questions, she spoke first to shut them up.
“Do you want to depend on Miss Hua Jian for everything? She is only a Spirit Master, and the one who went with her to lure the enemy is also a Spirit Master. They won’t be able to stall that Ling King forever.”
“We can’t just do nothing here. Even if Miss Hua Jian truly stalls that Ling King, we won’t lose anything by making preparations, right?”
Spiritual Power could be recovered once used. Taking precautions and preparing defensive measures first was the correct path.
The cultivators who had nothing to do looked at each other and felt that what Xia Hui said made sense. One could never be too safe.
“Everyone, I assume you all know the Five Elements Protection Array!” a cultivator shouted.
This array was the kind that was common throughout the Central Continent.
Its effect was simple: use the five elements of Spirit Energy to create a turtle shell to resist external attacks.
The effect of this array was quite mediocre. It had no specific attacks it countered, nor was it countered by any specific attack. It could block a bit of everything, but only a bit.
It certainly couldn’t compare to those secret arrays passed down within sects, but everyone knew it, and it could be used anytime and anywhere.
Among the people present, they had all the five elements, so forming the array was not a problem.
Soon, they set up the array around the Spiritual Pillar, turning their Spiritual Power into a five-colored barrier.
Xia Hui did not join them. Instead, she volunteered to act as a scout to detect danger for the others who were immobile after forming the array.
The little scout proved useful before long, but not extremely useful.
When she ran back screaming about an enemy attack, the red clouds on the horizon were already an anomaly everyone could see.
After Xia Hui finished shouting, a massive fireball several people high fell from the sky, slamming heavily onto the array.
The impact caused the faces of the cultivators inside to turn deathly pale.
If they hadn’t set up the array, this fireball would have certainly caused heavy casualties.