The third battle had swiftly ended with Huo Mingling gaining a victory and the much anticipated fourth group's battle was about to start.
"Would the fourth group please come up onto the stage" Zhou Feng waved his hand once again.
A Young man clad in a dark blue robe with his hands behind his back walked up to the stage while another young man who was wearing a black mask which covered his facial features also walked to the stage. Meanwhile, Zhou Xinqiu stood up and glanced at her opponents on the stage before she too walked onto the stage and stood face to face with Hei Fengjue and the mysterious katana wielding man.
"Young Mistress Zhou, its a great achievement for you to reach here already. Unfortunately for you, you ended up having us in your group"
"The fourth group of the third elimination round... Begin!" The chunk of land rose to the sky once more and the protective array was activated.
"Liiii" The mysterious katana man unsheathed his katana and disappeared into thin air. Hei Fengjue began to levitate and he closed his eyes while his purple robe fluttered in the air. Zhou Xinqiu's heart pounded and a fragment of soul essence appeared in her palm.
A tense atmosphere was created where each participant didn't dare to release an attack. This peace was quickly broken when the mysterious katana man appeared behind Zhou Xinqiu and slashed down at her neck.
"Who are you" She took a step forward after detecting the attack barely dodging the attack.
"Someone that you can't afford to offend" he leaped up into the air as a black flame spiraled around his arm before transforming into a huge illusory Jiao Dragon and lifted him up into the sky.
"Enlighten me then, Nine sword dance art.. 7th stance!" The 7 illusions of herself separated from her body and rushed towards the mysterious katana man.
"You want to fight swords with me?", The Mysterious Katana Man's body was now engulfed in the black flames as he stared at Zhou Xinqiu. "Hell Sovereign Katana art" Nine Katana revolved around him with each containing a unique destructive aura. He sent 7 out of the 9 katana to block the rushing sword arcs. When they met in the sky, to his shock, instead of completely dominating, the two attacks were at a complete stalemate before dissipating. "Hm, decent"
Hei Fengjue opened his eyes and his voice rang out in the stadium "Divine Black Jade Sabre" he summoned a huge black sabre and flew into the battle.
"Soul imprint!" six dark red palms appeared behind her and combined into one extremely powerful imprint and she slammed her palm into the red imprint sending it flying towards the mysterious katana man.
The mysterious katana man's eyes narrowed and he sent the last 2 katana towards the imprint but both of the katana were shattered upon impact and the imprint continued flying towards him. Right when the imprint was about to fall onto the mysterious katana man, Hei Fengjue appeared in front of it and thrusted the sabre straight into the imprint. The ground shook as a ginormous shockwave was released and the sabre had a huge crack on it. The imprint on the other hand was sent flying back towards Zhou Xinqiu, no matter how hard she tried she found that she had lost all control over it and could only wait for her demise.
"Its over" Hei Fengjue threw the sabre onto the floor and descended back to the ground with his hands behind his back.
The imprint smashed into her chest and she spat out a lot of blood onto it as she was flung onto a huge rock. Suddenly, the imprint began reacting to the blood and started to expand in a deformed way. She was barely able to open her eyes and look at the scene before her and when she did, her eyes, and Qin Gong's from inside her body were shocked to the extreme. The Imprint expanded exponentially until it reached the size of mount tai, showing off its dominance to the world without any fear. As it grew, so did the life force in Zhou Xinqiu. She was lifted off the ground and started to resemble something of an ancient goddess.
"What is this!?" The mysterious katana man flew to the side of Hei Fengjue.
"I don't know, just stand behind me and listen to my command" Hei Fengjue formed a hand seal and stared up at the imprint.
"Listen to your command? Who do you think you are? My master only sent me here to temper myself not become your puppet" The mysterious katana man furrowed his brows and yelled.
"Do you enjoy living? Does this attack of hers look like something you can handle alone? If you want to try, then be my guest" He removed his ring from his finger and began inserting his Qi into it and an array began spinning around it.
"Hm, Fine just this once I will listen to you" The Mysterious Katana man agreed and watched the scene unfold.
The array slowly grew bigger and bigger before an extremely huge purple serpent emerged from it and eyed the massive imprint. "Input all your Qi into this ring"
"Alright" He put his palm in front of the ring and focused his qi towards it. The purple serpent turned into a mixture of purple and black from the combination of both of their Qi and now emitted two different distinct auras instead of just one.
"BREAK" Hei Fengjue spoke one simple word and the huge serpent slammed itself into the imprint releasing sparks of extremely hot Qi which fell to the ground and disintegrated the rocks and trees on the chunk of floating land. The protective array began to shake and a huge crack appeared onto it as an inferno of purple and red qi began spiraling around each other feeding off of the other.
Zhou Xinqiu finally woke up from her unconscious state and was confused to the point of madness. The last thing she saw was the imprint growing before she became unconscious. When she woke up, suddenly the imprint was as huge as mount tai and there was a gigantic serpent slamming into it. "How..."
The serpent array suddenly grew even bigger and 2 more serpents the same size of the first one emerged.
"DESTROY IT" The three serpents resonated with each other and surrounded the imprint from all sides before crazily attacking it simultaneously. Chaotic tornadoes of Sword and poison auras were released heading off in all directions causing the entire protection array to fall to pieces. The serpents combined into one singular Grand Poison Serpent before it turned into a beam of light and went straight through the imprint shattering it. Since Zhou Xinqiu was directly related to the imprint, she also was heavily injured and sent flying out of the battlefield becoming disqualified.
Hei Fengjue turned his head to face the mysterious katana man before he also spoke. "So?"
"Ok, I admit defeat" The mysterious katana man walked off the battle field and sat back in his seat.
"NONSENSE! HE USED AN ARTIFACT TO CREATE AN ARRAY!" Zhou He stood up and yelled at the other elders.
"You think Zhou Xinqiu was able to make that huge imprint herself? Since both sides used external ways to fight then it will be forgotten and the ceremony will continue like normal" The other elders ruled in favor of Hei Fengjue and forced Zhou He to sit back down.
"The fourth round has ended... Hei Fengjue ranked first, the disciple of the hellish sword master ranked second, and Zhou Xinqiu... ranked.... third"