Yi Potian, who was leading the way, was increasingly surprised. He was filled with mixed feelings of joy and worry. He was happy that the stronger Lin Yao was, the more self-protective he would be and the less likely he would be to be harmed or coerced. He was worried that once Lin Yao reached a certain level, he would still be willing to help the Yi family with all his might, because Lin Yao had not yet agreed to serve as the Yi family's Supreme Guest Elder.
Just as he was thinking this, Yi Potian's pupils narrowed, and he instantly stopped. The transition from movement to stillness was extremely abrupt, yet it was also perfectly natural, as if Yi Potian had always been standing in this position.
A master is ahead!
Lin Yao was originally more than ten meters behind Yi Potian. As soon as Yi Potian stopped, Lin Yao immediately stopped his descent by taking advantage of the terrain and stopped on the steep hillside. He barely managed to get a little over a meter behind Yi Potian, making a big commotion. This also showed that the gap between him and Yi Potian was still very large.
Hostility! Lin Yao instantly understood Yi Potian's actions. About fifty meters ahead, a very obvious hostility was rushing towards him. Having experienced absorbing spiritual energy at the bottom of Tianchi Lake and having a large spirit stone in his body, Lin Yao was particularly sensitive to this kind of aura and the energy of heaven and earth.
Neither of them spoke; they stood still, observing the situation before making a decision.
"Pei Haoran, a disciple of the Pei family, greets senior and respectfully inquires about your name." Before he arrived, his voice preceded his arrival. The man named Pei Haoran's voice was not loud, but it penetrated the dense forest and clearly reached Lin Yao's ears, as if the other party were speaking right next to him. This must be a profound technique of using true qi.
Yi Potian remained silent, ignoring the other party's question, while his mind raced, analyzing the other party's intentions.
The Pei family ranks first among the four great families today, and the Yi family ranked second before its decline, making them extremely powerful overall. This Pei Haoran is very famous. Although he is a collateral descendant of the second generation of the Pei family, his cultivation has already reached the peak of the Earth level. After accumulating to the peak of the Earth level, he may break through to the ranks of Heaven level experts. Because Pei Haoran is very young, only about thirty-five or thirty-six years old, he is definitely a genius of ancient martial arts.
That's it! He must have been discovered by the garrison when he flew over Tianchi to save Lin Yao three days ago. Yi Potian instantly found the answer.
It was daytime, and the lake was wide open. It was impossible for two grown men to leap across the lake without attracting the attention of the garrison. The result of the reports going up the chain of command was that the Pei family, who controlled the Shenyang Military Region, learned the details and knew that a Heavenly-level expert had appeared at Tianchi. Only then did they arrange for people to surround and investigate the various passes leading down the mountain.
"I shouldn't have chosen this route!" Yi Potian felt very regretful. Even if he was going to go down the mountain alone, he shouldn't have chosen this seemingly secluded route that would definitely attract the attention of those who wanted to ambush him. It would have been safer to disguise himself as an ordinary tourist and take the off-road vehicles and eco-friendly buses arranged by the tourist area.
Now that the Pei family would find out that someone from the Yi family had advanced to the Heavenly Realm, Yi Potian felt increasingly distressed. He simply put on a stern face and remained silent, staring at the dense forest in front of him.
A figure quickly rushed up the hillside. Lin Yao saw the person who had spoken. He had bright, star-like eyes, a high nose, a square face, and thick eyebrows. His bronze skin made him look very capable. He was about forty years old, but his whole body exuded a vitality and enthusiasm that far exceeded that of young people.
Another exceptional person like me. Why do I always run into people with such great looks and demeanor? They're all so handsome and stylish, it's unbearable for anyone to live like this.
In that tense moment, some seemingly unrelated thoughts suddenly popped into Lin Yao's mind, surprising him. He quickly found the answer. These people, who had always been at the top of society, or the upper echelons, through generations of selective marriage and alliances, even their appearances tended to become more and more outstanding, not to mention their intelligence or abilities in certain areas like martial arts. This could be considered a form of artificially controlled evolution.
Those landlords of the old society, besides engaging in marriages based on power, also frequently abducted beautiful women from the common people. Lin Yao felt a surge of anger, indignant for the beautiful women who had now turned to dust and bones.
"Please forgive my rudeness, senior!" Pei Haoran gave a junior's salute, then unleashed his attack.
Without Xiaocao's help, Lin Yao would be nothing more than a weak lamb in a duel of this level. He couldn't put himself in danger and disturb Xiaocao's seclusion and recovery, so he consciously retreated to the side, keeping a distance of fifty meters, seemingly a matter of course to avoid the situation.
This Pei Haoran is quite impressive. He's polite, decisive, and doesn't mince words. When polite inquiries failed, he immediately resorted to fighting, using combat to uncover Yi Potian's identity. It's also strange that the Yi family members used to age so quickly; they looked like eighty or ninety-year-old men even in their forties. Based solely on the images collected from the Pei family, Pei Haoran naturally couldn't recognize Yi Potian, which is why he acted so decisively.
Yi Potian remained silent, quickly considering the matter, but still couldn't find the best solution. Revealing the Yi family's secrets now would be inappropriate. Lin Yao hadn't helped most of the Yi family members advance, nor had he passed on a solution that would last forever. If it were sabotaged by rival families, he, Yi Potian, would be a sinner against the Yi family.
Fortunately, the Pei family has always been a respectable and upright family. At this time, they did not reveal the "Yi Jin Jue" skill and directly mobilized the energy of heaven and earth to fight. This was a rare opportunity for them to spar. It was difficult to find an opponent at the peak of the Earth level, and the Yi Dao of the family would never go all out to spar with the Grand Elder.
The battle began instantly...
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Chapter 139 The Yi Family's Return
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This was the first time Lin Yao had witnessed a high-level martial arts duel, and it broadened his horizons.
Yi Potian gathered the energy of heaven and earth, creating a whirlwind out of thin air. It tore the surrounding vegetation to pieces, and small stones, yellow soil, and flying sand and stones gathered around him, like a small tornado encircling his body.
Lin Yao immediately sensed the changes in the energy of heaven and earth. At this moment, his perception was sharper than ever before. The gathering and swirling of the energy of heaven and earth, and its use by Yi Potian to form an attack, were all reflected in Lin Yao's perception. This gave him an enlightenment, which was completely different from guiding and absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into his body for cultivation.
Pei Haoran's martial arts skills were mediocre; Lin Yao could clearly sense that his strength lay in defense, or rather, counter-attack. In this duel with Yi Potian, Pei Haoran launched significantly more attacks, leading Lin Yao to believe that he was abandoning his strengths and using his weaknesses in the fight.
With a deafening roar, a whirlwind of flying sand and stones suddenly spread to both sides, uprooting shrubs and snapping some nearby trees as thick as a wrist in half. Countless branches and leaves were scattered, as if combed by a giant comb, leaving bare branches and broken trunks, leaving the scene in a mess.
"Good lad, not bad." Yi Potian's hearty laughter showed that he was in a very good mood. This was also the first time he had mobilized the energy of heaven and earth to fight, and he had to deliberately conceal the secrets of the Yi family's techniques. He had met the best opponent, and a martial artist's mood would be inexplicably excited.
"You flatter me, senior." Pei Haoran responded neither humbly nor arrogantly, but his skills were anything but polite, unleashing a barrage of ferocious attacks.
"Condense!" Yi Potian paused, his palms crossed in front of his chest. Lin Yao felt the scattered energy of heaven and earth after the collision regroup, and under the guidance of Yi Potian's palms, they crossed in front of him, like two wide ribbons, blocking all of Pei Haoran's attack directions.
"One force subdues all!" Pei Haoran roared, his legs firmly planted on the steep hillside, his feet sinking directly into the soil. His steady posture allowed him to concentrate all his strength in his right arm, the surging true energy causing his sleeve to explode into fragments that fluttered outwards like butterflies.
Pei Haoran's right fist surged with even greater force. Lin Yao felt the air in front of that fist distort, as if forming a tiny black hole that absorbed all the surrounding vital energy and the energy of heaven and earth. This long, cylindrical black hole stretched straight toward Yi Potian and rushed into the barrier formed by the two energy barriers of heaven and earth.
The two energies came into contact silently, without producing the explosive sound of before, but the power they contained was even greater.
Lin Yao had no personal experience of the full power of a top-tier Earth-level expert's attack, but the strange spatial phenomena gave him some sense of it. The move called "One Force Subdues All" was clearly a mental technique that used force to overwhelm all skills, crushing all obstacles and techniques through violence.
If it were him, without the help of the grass, he would probably have been pierced through the chest, right? Lin Yao thought with a chill.
Pei Haoran's attack was powerful, but the accumulated force didn't have much of an effect when it hit the energy belt. Lin Yao felt that the two intersecting energy belts deformed, like slippery ribbons, and contracted backward under the huge attack, as if a fist had been inserted into a mosquito net, with the belts denting in the direction of Yi Potian.
The invisible fist-shaped elemental energy rushed towards Yi Potian, but its speed gradually decreased, as if it had encountered a great obstacle. Like stirring a spoon in thick honey, it finally stopped half a meter away from Yi Potian's chest and could not advance any further.
"Open!" Yi Potian shouted, his voice not loud, but his power was even stronger than Pei Haoran's earlier. The two bands of primordial energy composed of heaven and earth energy suddenly trembled, rapidly changing from an intertwined state to a separate state, surging towards Pei Haoran. The true energy force of Pei Haoran that was wrapped within them had disappeared without a trace.
With a thud, Pei Haoran was knocked down by an invisible force, rolling backward. His feet, deeply embedded in the hard soil, couldn't maintain their balance, and he slid down the hillside, dragging the mud from his heels, leaving two ditches about thirty centimeters deep in the ground.
After sliding for about three meters, Pei Haoran's waist and legs finally gave way, and he fell backward, tumbling down the hillside in a backflip position, breaking countless plants and trees. He finally stabilized about fifteen meters away and struggled to his feet, leaning on a large tree behind him.
"Thank you for your mercy, senior. I will remember it forever." Pei Haoran clasped his hands in a salute at the foot of the hill with a drop of about ten meters, facing Yi Potian respectfully. The blood spilling from the corner of his mouth and the mess all over his body could not diminish his dazzling demeanor.
"Hehe, not bad, kid. You're about to reach the peak of the Earth level. You'll definitely be able to advance to the Heaven level in the future. The Pei family is blessed." Yi Potian was overjoyed. The exchange just now deepened his understanding of the energy of heaven and earth. Pei Haoran's humble yet dignified demeanor was also admirable. At this moment, he did not put on the posture of a victor at all, but instead clasped his hands in a salute. Although the other party was a junior, he had already gained his recognition and appreciation.