My Clones Can Cultivate

Chapter 132

Liyu’s actions, as everyone with eyes and a working brain would be able to tell, carried only one meaning. It was nothing but a total form of disrespect, not just toward his two opponents, but also toward their entire clan. He was completely disgracing the Guan Clan with both his actions and his words.

The eyes of everyone watching couldn’t help but twitch in surprise and shock. They had thought they had already experienced enough shock today, yet, somehow... they were being shocked even more.

Liyu’s gaze remained calm as he started reading the comic book in his hand. With the help of the System Shop, getting comic books that he used to binge-read back on Earth wasn’t difficult at all, and the one in his hand happened to be one of his favourite stories.

As Liyu read, he quickly became engrossed in it. The crowd, meanwhile, was even more stunned.

"Someone please tell me that isn’t true..."

"What I’m seeing isn’t true."

"He is really reading and completely disregarding the Twin Fiends..."

Someone said, almost shouting in pure disbelief. "Maybe he sees them as nothing but ants," someone from the Li Clan spoke, his tone cool and filled with satisfaction, "and to him, ants aren’t worth his attention. This will teach those lowly vermin not to mess with our Li Clan."

At the leaders’ seats, Shi Gubing’s face grew darker and darker. Not because he cared so much about the Guan Clan losing face, as that didn’t really concern him. What truly concerned him was nothing but the 50,000 gold coins he had bet on the Twin Fiends.

With the four-times multiplier, he would recover the 200,000 gold coins he had lost earlier. But seeing how the battle was unfolding... he was beginning to have a terrible premonition that the Twin Fiends might really get their asses kicked.

He wouldn’t have thought like this, and he would have confidently placed his trust in the two fiends, if not for the fact that they were already being toyed with by Liyu.

Liyu had taken all of their attacks without a single mark appearing on his body. He didn’t even look messy. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. And yet... he had casually made complete fools out of the two brothers.

For someone as powerful as Shi Gubing, he could see more than clearly that this Liyu possessed far more power than he had displayed during his battle against Shi Lan.

And he had made another mistake by betting against him in this round as well. Damn it... Shi Gubing thought as anger surged through his chest.

Damn it!

Guan Ju’s gaze turned murderous as he looked at Liyu, who was calmly reading what seemed to be some kind of poetry or work of art in the middle of the battle. His expression remained calm. One hand rested inside his pocket.

The other held the book. And his demeanour... his demeanour was that of someone enjoying a break or a vacation, not that of someone competing in a serious tournament against two of the Guan Clan’s strongest young geniuses.

He is completely dragging my clan’s name through the mud... Guan Ju’s face turned livid with indignation as he almost wanted to swoop down there and personally murder Liyu on the spot.

But he couldn’t act rashly. If he did... then the rest of the Guan Clan’s candidates, which at this point would only be his ace, Haoran... would be disqualified. He took a slow, calming breath. He still had Haoran.

With him, at least, the Guan Clan could still secure one... or maybe even two Golden Tokens. It would still be a victory, although far below his expectations. Guan Ju leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, refusing to look at the smug expression on the Li bastard heir’s face.

Because if he did... he truly wasn’t certain he could restrain himself from snapping the kid’s neck.

While the other two clan leaders showed clear signs of anger and disdain... the Li Clan Lord was happier than ever. A proud smile curled across Li San’s face as he nodded at Liyu’s actions. "You are doing well, kid."

The reason behind Li San’s smile was simple. He could see through the schemes of the other two great clans with absolute clarity. Without the slightest shred of doubt, he had already concluded that they didn’t merely want to defeat the Li Clan.

They wanted to disgrace them. They wanted to reduce the prestige the Li Clan had built throughout the Night Region. As long as they could prove to the locals that the Li Clan was no longer as powerful as it used to be... the people’s faith and confidence in them would slowly weaken.

That, in turn, would allow the Guan and Shi Clans to rise in influence while steadily eroding the Li Clan’s dominance over the Night Region.

Li San understood all of this without needing to think too deeply about it. And he could have easily wiped the two clans out before the seeds of rebellion ever had the chance to bloom.

But he had restrained himself from doing so. After all... the Night Region was vast. The Li Clan couldn’t manage everything alone. Still... the moment the two clan heads gave him a genuine reason... he would thoroughly investigate them and set their heads straight... just as he had done many years ago.

Unfortunately for him... they hadn’t yet crossed that line. Li San watched the scene unfolding before him with a satisfied smile. "Crush them all, kid. You’ve got this," he said with a smile.

Elder Ting relaxed in his seat with a small amused smile on his face. No... the smile wasn’t born merely from amusement. It was born from disbelief. Just who is this kid? Even if he had expected Lady Shiyuen’s son to be monstrously talented... this was still complete overkill.

He was ridiculously powerful for someone his age. And that wasn’t even the most unbelievable part. He was nonsensically arrogant... and didn’t seem the least bit concerned about incurring the wrath of the other two great clans.

The ones most annoyed by Liyu’s display of blatant disrespect were, of course, none other than the two Guan brothers he was fighting in the first place. Guan Jian’s eyes twitched, and even the corners of his mouth twitched.

His rage was like a rushing dam threatening to burst through at any moment. But it wasn’t only him. No, his brother was in an even worse state. Guan Feng’s entire body was trembling as he barely held himself back from cursing Liyu’s entire ancestry.

Guan Feng spoke, his tone dark, "Tell me... do you really believe that you would be able to take both of us down while focusing on that? Aren’t you too full of yourself? Your arrogance would bring about your downfall."

Guan Feng spoke, his voice trembling with the shame and anger that this bastard Liyu had made them feel. Yet Liyu didn’t answer his question. He didn’t even act as if he had heard him to begin with. Instead, he simply continued reading his comic book with a calm expression.

The two brothers felt as if they had just been slapped across the face once again by Liyu, and their rage finally spilled over. The two brothers rushed forward with the aim of breaking and crushing Liyu. "Die!" Guan Jian roared.

"You bastard!" Guan Feng shouted. The two brothers attacked from different angles. By all logic, Liyu shouldn’t have been able to dodge this. And yet he shattered that logic once again. His body bent at an unnatural angle.

His head almost touched the ground while his back folded in an impossible arc as the two attacks merely slammed into each other instead. The resulting shockwave forced the two brothers to stagger several steps backwards from the impact of their own collision.

Liyu slowly straightened himself once again. His gaze never left the comic book in his hand as he calmly continued reading. The expressions of the two brothers changed.

They rushed forward once more and began attacking with everything they had, striking from impossible angles and moving with such speed that even late Qi Refining experts would fall into despair if they had to face them.

And yet, none of it seemed enough to even startle Liyu. He casually dodged some attacks. He blocked others with equally casual punches and kicks. The two brothers struggled and struggled as they tried their absolute best to deal more and more damage to Liyu. But forget about dealing damage.

The battle had already been going on for several minutes ever since Liyu had started reading his comic, and they still hadn’t managed to land even a single blow on him.

Feeling the gazes of the crowd... feeling the shame and humiliation piling onto them more and more... the two brothers finally grew desperate. They unleashed the Beast Art to its fullest.

It was a powerful combat art... the very foundation of the Guan Clan itself. It possessed truly terrifying capabilities when used with the right amount of skill and Qi. The Twin Fiends attacked Liyu with everything they had. They fought. And fought. And fought.

Yet nothing changed.

Liyu would casually dodge some attacks... counter others... land smoothly on his feet... then calmly flip open another page of the comic book he was reading before continuing where he had left off.

He made no sense whatsoever.

He was able to move in ways that simply made no sense. He could move in a circular pattern as though an invisible force was carrying him.

But that wasn’t even the end of it. He could also move sideways... diagonally... left... right... forward... backward... and in countless other directions that shouldn’t even have been possible unless one was using some strange trick or special movement art.

Yet he repeated those impossible movements over and over again as though that was simply the natural way his body moved.

Freakish... that was the only thought running through the minds of the two brothers as they slowly began to grow wary of the freak called Liyu. Every single one of his steps seemed unrestricted by the normal and conventional laws of movement.

He moved as though the very concept of movement itself bent to his will. At this point, the two brothers of the Guan Clan were almost certain that this had to be a powerful movement technique. It had to be Liyu’s ace... a supreme movement art taught to him by the Li Clan.

They would be both right... and wrong. Right that this was indeed a movement technique. Wrong that he had learned it from the Li Clan or from anyone else. No.

As unbelievable as it sounded... as many heart attacks and shocks as everyone present would suffer if they were ever to hear the truth from Liyu himself... the truth was that Liyu had personally created the movement art he was currently using. He called it... Primal Step.

It was a movement technique he had created in the heat of life-and-death combat against his own reflections. Back then, he had been pushed to the very brink, and the Momentum time limit had already been reached.

If he wanted to last any longer, he had to take inspiration from the Li Clan’s infamous Phantom Strike Art, and from it, he managed to create his own replica of Flash Step. The only difference was that what he created... or rather, what he was still developing... turned out to have vastly surpassed Flash Step even in its incomplete state.

It possessed the potential to become an extremely powerful and even more ridiculous movement technique once he fully developed Primal Step.

It was among the reasons why he had even managed to put up some fight against his three crazy clones and hadn’t been cornered and crushed much sooner. Still... he lost. That was quite disappointing, but acceptable. Those three were freakishly strong after all.

Liyu’s body continued moving at a pace that simply made no sense. Every attack, he either dodged or countered with the least amount of effort possible. Since the battle had started until now, he had not once allowed his eyes to wander away from the comic book in his grasp.

He hadn’t even paid the two Guan brothers any attention. All the dodging and countering he was doing had become completely ingrained into him through the countless battles he had fought.

Of course, battle experience alone wasn’t the reason for this. It was also because of his absurd speed and terrifying perception, both of which far exceeded those of any ordinary cultivator.

Li San looked at Liyu with a complicated smile on his face as his mind wandered before arriving at only one conclusion. The kid must have an expert nurturing him.

The moment he reached that conclusion, most of the things about Liyu that had never made sense suddenly started making sense.

Like how he had managed to survive for so long inside the Beast Forest... how he had healed his spirit root and somehow obtained a Sacred Grade Spirit Root... how he was using a movement technique that seemed to surpass even Flash Step...

Even his abnormal rate of growth could now be explained, at least to some extent, by the existence of whoever was secretly teaching Liyu from the shadows. I’ll ask him about it after the tournament ends, Li San thought as he relaxed back into his seat.

In his mind, he was already counting his fifty million gold coins with a satisfied smile on his face.

The crowd watched as the battle continued with stunned expressions plastered across their faces. It had already been more than ten times now that the Twin Fiends had unleashed some of their more powerful Beast Arts against Liyu, hoping to finally crush him.

Yet they weren’t even able to land a proper hit. And the few attacks that came close... he casually countered them. In one word, Liyu’s performance had completely destroyed the Twin Fiends’ reputation. They no longer looked like terrifying geniuses.

They looked like nothing more than fools. The people were still far too shocked to realise that they were about to lose another fortune because most of them had bet on the Twin Fiends.

At the Guan Clan camp... Guan Xueyi had finally come to terms with her defeat. After a long while, she regained her senses and looked around. She wanted to confirm that Yuexin wasn’t in danger.

After all, she had indeed been thoroughly poisoned. With that amount of poison, any normal person would already be dead. But... she wasn’t normal. Not normal at all.

That was something Xueyi had already accepted after losing to her. She soon found Yuexin and saw that her condition was already beginning to improve. She let out a sigh of relief. Only then did she realise something.

The arena was strangely silent. The cheers and discussions that were supposed to fill the entire arena had vanished. Instead... everything was eerily quiet. She decided to ask Haoran what was happening.

The latter himself looked somewhat stunned. Without saying a word, he simply nodded towards the stage.

Xueyi turned to look. The moment her eyes landed on the stage, she quickly realised that Guan Jian and Guan Feng were struggling desperately against a black-haired youth.

From the clothing alone, she could tell he belonged to the Li Clan. Liyu... her eyes narrowed slightly in surprise. Wasn’t he supposed to be weak? Yet he seemed powerful enough to casually toy with the Twin Fiends. She shook her head.

The information on him must have been wrong. Maybe he is actually at Peak Qi Refining Realm after all. With that thought, she carefully scanned him to confirm his cultivation.

The next moment... her entire body froze. Her expression stiffened. When she sensed his true cultivation realm, overwhelming shock washed over her, making her knees feel weak. "H-How... How can he still only be at the First Stage of the Qi Gathering Realm...?" She muttered in absolute disbelief.

Meanwhile... back on the stage... Guan Jian and Guan Feng were both breathing heavily as they stared at Liyu as though they were looking at a monster. Their minds raced wildly.

By this point, they had long reached the same conclusion. They were no match for this monster. Liyu casually flipped another page. Only then did he realise... he had finished the comic book. With a small sigh, he closed it and slipped it back inside his clothes.

Then... his gaze slowly rose towards the two Guan brothers. A warm... yet anything but gentle... smile spread across his lips as he spoke, "I guess... It is my turn now."