Xu Hui screamed as the eight heavenly swords became one sword. Straight from the sky, the Yan Jin sword, surrounded by a gigantic energy, swung down towards Li Qiye. Its path burned with fire; the battle stage now bathed in a sea of flames.
“This is the end!”
Nan Huairen turned around, not wanting to see the result of this monstrous strike. It seemed like Xu Hui wanted to finish this in one move, and he used his most powerful technique.
“Good!”
Li Qiye paid no mind. He screamed in a strange manner and jumped forward with a random motion, swinging his stick.
The scene that everyone was expecting did not happen.
The Serpent Punishing Stick met the weakest part of the Yan Jin sword during its trajectory. The sword’s energy dissipated, and the physical sword plunged to the ground; it was as if it was bitten by a poisonous snake, unable to obey Xu Hui’s command.
“Little boy, I will beat you into a pig’s head!”
Xu Hui hadn’t regained his composure, but Li Qiye was already in front of him. The stick passed through his sword fortress and rained blows directly onto his body.
“Die!”
Xu Hui did not retreat; he once again gathered his sword energy and surrounded Li Qiye with it.
“Gather!”
However, to no avail, his Virtuous Paragon sword technique had no effect. The Serpent Punishing Stick continuously struck at the formation’s weakest points, and he successfully negated the incoming blows. Finally, it struck Xu Hui’s face, and that one blow made Xu Hui redden with blood. He became disoriented; stars in his eyes and thunder in his ears.
“Bam, Bam, Bam!”
In the blink of an eye, Li Qiye had pummeled Xu Hui ten times, all of them hitting the meridians and his weakest spots. Xu Hui was like a snake without its skeletal body; unable to stand up. His blood force was in disarray, and his cultivation techniques were unusable. He fell to the ground with a busted face.
The Serpent Punishing Stick was not a heavenly treasure; it was only a regular wooden stick. Hitting a snake required one to aim for its head; this was true for the blows struck by Li Qiye as well. They have to hit the weak points and defensive holes of the opponents. Unless the opponent had reached the Heaven’s Primal stage, they could not escape the blows for he had not perfected his own understanding of the defensive mysterious truths. One of the requirements for Heaven’s Primal is a rebirth of one’s body and the understanding of techniques as well as a body protection aura, rendering the Serpent Punishing Stick useless. However, since Xu Hui was far away from Heaven’s Primal, the wooden stick was his prime nemesis.
Keep in mind that even Immortal Emperor Min Ren was beaten by the stick, repeatedly; the same applied for all of his strongest generals, including Nine Saint Virtuous Paragon.
The Serpent Punishing Stick was a regular branch grown from a small tree in the Demon Forest, basked by demonic aura throughout the ages. However, this made it anything but ordinary; the Demon Forest was one of the few Ancient Forbidden Dangers.
The stick also had another property that made it appealing to Li Qiye. No matter how many times a person is struck by it, they would not die from the blows. It was a stick specifically meant for punishment and teaching; this made it very appropriate for Li Qiye when dealing with the powerful geniuses under his tutelage.
“Bang, Bang, Bang!”
After Xu Hui had fallen unconscious, to the ground, Li Qiye did not show any mercy. He kept on striking the body of Xu Hui. His body was now filled with wounds, no one could tell if he was dead or alive.
This scene jolted the spectators. Yu He, once again, activated his mysterious eyes to look at the Serpent Punishing Stick, but he still couldn’t find anything special about it.