Hua Ye was also part of the first group and landed safely in the forest. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to sense the mark on Chu Lingxin. He could only feel her general direction in which he headed to become the first person that encounters them.
As he was confident of his ability to survive against anyone besides the top twenty on the rankings, he didn't team up with anyone. He departed in the direction that he sensed the mark while traveling at moderate speeds to prevent being ambushed.
During his first two hours, he encountered ten low-rank saint beasts and two mid-rank saint beasts, which he killed and collected. After two hours of traveling, he finally sensed the mark better, which indicated him closing in. His motivation had reached its peak, and he accelerated towards the mark. After another hour, he had finally arrived within the mark's 5-kilometer radius, which allowed him to sense its accurate location.
Hua Ye slowed himself down and prepared some artifacts he was going to use. He took two perfect quality binding type saint artifacts to restrict his target's movements when subdued, he also took out a bottle of pills that would temporarily limit their cultivation and turn them into ordinary mortals. When everything was prepared, he slowly approached his targets until he saw a beautiful lake with an open cave next to it. He sensed that his targets were inside the cave, which made him happy as he wouldn't be disturbed inside the cave when acting out his plan.
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Jiang Mang and the two girls had settled down inside the cave for an hour already. Feng Xue and Chu Lingxin decorated the cave to become usable for both alchemy and meditation. The two girls excavated four rooms to be used while Jiang Mang was responsible for monitoring the surroundings.
He was playing Nature's call to control all the plants and fauna in combination with the Di tier technique Vine storm to monitor all activities in a radius of 1000 meters while his inner vision scanned his surrounding 100 meters.
He had suddenly noticed an intruder entering their territory alone. He didn't attack as he didn't know the intruder's power, and his technique had only the strength to constrict early saint stage cultivators who haven't comprehended an offensive intent. The intruder was slowly closing in until he entered Jiang Mang's inner view, which allowed Jiang Mang to sense his cultivation at the late saint stage. The intruder was Hua Ye, who wanted to capture and mark Jiang Mang.
Jiang Mang was astonished when he sensed the intruder as he had a high cultivation level but also because he sensed a desire of possession towards himself from the unknown intruder. Jiang Mang assembled the girls while keeping his eyes on Hua Ye. Hua Ye, however, had stopped beside the cave. He was still oblivious that he was discovered and performed a technique that lowered his presence to allow him to ambush the boy and girl.
Jiang Mang inwardly laughed at his useless actions and prepared a plan of attack. Normally facing an opponent at the late saint stage among these young talents meant an opponent that they couldn't easily handle but because of Jiang Mang's heart intent, he was able to sense Hua Ye's desire of lust towards himself. This desire could be exploited by Jiang Mang who specialized in illusions and charm techniques.
He directed Chu Lingxin to intercept Hua Ye while Feng Xue would support her with ranged attacks. Jiang Mang knew that victory would only be possible if he could pull the intruder into an illusion or charm the intruder. He knew that illusions would have the lowest chance of succeeding due to the disparity in cultivation, while his charm technique had a higher chance of success due to that desire of lust towards him.
Jiang Mang hid in the shadows and waited until the right moment to unleash all three of his charm techniques to guarantee the greatest chance of success.
Hua Ye entered the cave when he was fully prepared, but when he was about to turn at the first corner he was attacked by a sword slash. This attack was unexpected and required him to defend himself with a qi barrier, which was barely able to block the attack. The person who attacked him was Chu Lingxin which showed him that his presence has already been found out, but he remained confident in his ability.
He was then attacked by another person with a powerful flame attack a bit weaker than the previous sword attack. Hua Ye was now completely prepared and defended himself with a water wall. He then noticed that the second attack came from another beautiful girl, which he counted as a bonus to be captured. He had determined that both girls were weaker than him and wouldn't be able to defeat him even if that young boy joined them with his speed and claw attacks.
He didn't find that boy and thought that he had temporarily gone out and thus directed his focus to battle against the two beauties. Hua Ye possessed a giant sea serpent as his profound spirit, which granted him incredible control of the water element. He had also comprehended the wave intent to the great accomplishment together with both the soft and power intent at the small accomplishment stage. He also wielded a whip as his main weapon, which was a peak quality saint artifact.
The moment when Hua Ye started to counter-attack both girls were suppressed, but they were able of holding a temporary stalemate by combining Chu Lingxin's soft and sword intent with Feng Xue's wind and scorching intents to form a flame barrier to weaken the water attacks while the sword would neutralize them.
This situation continued until Hua Ye became impatient and discarded all of his defenses to launch a large scale water attack in the form of a sea serpent. That moment of vulnerability was exploited by Jiang Mang, who launched both Charming eyes and Charming voice while appearing and performing Charming dance. This charm attack, which was a combination of three skills interrupted the casting of the sea serpent while attacking Hua Ye's consciousness and heart without him being able to defend himself.
The charm attack then used his desires and emotions towards Jiang Mang to condense a charm seed that would keep him charmed until it was destroyed by Jiang Mang or other people with a mind stronger than himself as he would interfere in any attempt to do so.
This was the first person that Jiang Mang had charmed after comprehending the charm intent. Before he was only able to change their emotions and desires to charm his targets, which could be easily broken by outsiders, but now that his techniques had reached the di tier. Every successful charm will either result in a love seed or a charm seed. Those who have a love seed will unconditionally fall in love with the caster but will not act against their wishes and principles while those with charm seeds will obey any command given.
Hua Ye had become a charm puppet to Jiang Mang, which he would make full use of as Hua Ye is stronger than all three combined in physical combat and could only be defeated by unorthodox mental cultivators like Jiang Mang if caught unprepared.