Wu Yuan's cultivation was only a sliver higher than Ge Feng's. As such, he couldn't easily succeed in a sneak attack.
'Perhaps only when fighting the cultivator below can I find a suitable opportunity.' Thinking this, Wu Yuan's immediate desire to kill Li Yan vanished. He would use Li Yan to create his chance.
When the Demon Cabinet hovered less than a hundred feet above Li Yan's head, Li Yan was just struggling to his feet from the pile of rubble. He supported himself with his flying sword, his body swaying as he looked up at the sky. Li Yan's face was deathly pale, and his clothes and hair were covered in withered grass and broken branches, giving him a very disheveled appearance.
The moment Li Yan looked up at the sky, Ge Feng was already striding through the void. Each step he took covered dozens of feet. His body, like a black tower, pressed down with the menace of a descending Divine Giant. And some distance to his side, Wu Yuan had also put away the Demon Cabinet and was similarly striding towards Li Yan in a pincer formation. It was just that as Wu Yuan walked, he intentionally or unintentionally closed the distance with Ge Feng. At this moment, Ge Feng was rushing towards Li Yan with a ferocious expression and didn't notice this subtle detail.
Li Yan's pathetic state and vacant eyes seemed to suggest he was frozen in fear. He only subconsciously raised the longsword in his hand. All of this confirmed to Ge Feng and Wu Yuan that the other party was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
"Hahaha, human boy, you can return to reincarnation! Oh, you don't even have a chance at reincarnation. How dare you be so bold as to take a treasure of my Demon Clan's senior and embed it on a flying sword. This is disrespect to the spirits of my clan. You deserve to die, to have your soul fly and be annihilated!"
Amidst Ge Feng's savage laughter, he had already stepped above Li Yan's head. With a "swish," he stomped down towards Li Yan, his foot carrying a piercing sound of breaking air.
At this time, Wu Yuan had also arrived to Li Yan's left. A sharp glint also flashed in his eyes. With a stretch of his arm, an eyebrow-height staff appeared in his hand, and he also swung it at Li Yan from his waist.
Logically, with their cultivation, just one of them could easily kill a late-stage Foundation Establishment human cultivator. There was no need for both to attack at the same time. But for the sake of the Demonic Core in Li Yan's hand, both wanted to kill Li Yan first.
Feeling the two gusts of wind arrive beside him in an instant, Li Yan's somewhat dazed gaze suddenly became sharp, and a strange smile appeared on his face.
Ge Feng's stomping foot was already less than a foot from the top of Li Yan's head. Li Yan suddenly raised the longsword in his hand to block it. A dull, heavy thud echoed in his ears.
Ge Feng was stunned. Since he had attacked first, he naturally intended to kill in one blow, and then directly wrap up the longsword in Li Yan's hand, preventing Wu Yuan from getting it. Therefore, this stomp of his contained eighty percent of his power. He estimated that not only would Li Yan's arm be broken, but even that longsword might shatter. In the next moment, Li Yan would turn into a pile of flesh paste and a rain of blood, flying everywhere. Ge Feng was quite confident in the power of his foot. The strongest magical treasure of a demon cultivator was their own body, and Ge Feng was no exception. He was not like those disciples from large sects like Wu Yuan, who sometimes needed to rely on external magical treasures. Ge Feng's greatest weapon was his body. To temper his physical body, he had to endure endless pain every day. As for whether this step would directly shatter the longsword Li Yan raised, Ge Feng didn't care at all. His only goal was the Demonic Core embedded in it.
At the same time as he heard the dull sound, Ge Feng also saw the strange smile on Li Yan's face. He immediately thought that this human cultivator must have been terrified to the extreme and had gone mad. Although he was puzzled, Ge Feng's attention was more focused on his own attack. Noticing that the sound was wrong, Ge Feng hurriedly looked down at his foot.
His vision was immediately filled with a wave of golden heat. For a moment, he didn't know what had happened. Immediately after, Ge Feng felt an unprecedented sharp pain coming from his ankle, shooting straight to his mind. He couldn't help but let out a loud shout of pain, his body already slanting to one side.
Just as Ge Feng's body tilted, there was another loud bang. Ge Feng's first cry of pain became even more high-pitched, shooting straight to the clouds, piercing and shrill, turning into a heart-rending scream.
Ge Feng felt that his right leg must have been severely injured. Although he didn't know what method the other party had used, the constant struggle on the edge of life and death in the Demon Realm had long since formed an instinct in Ge Feng. As his body slanted, he planned to use the momentum of the other party's longsword to retreat and then check his injuries. But just at this moment, a deathly fear that made his skin crawl and the hairs on his body stand on end rose from the bottom of his heart. This was a sense honed over many years on the edge of death, even sharper than divine sense. Ge Feng didn't have time to think. He hurriedly twisted his body forcefully, and at the same time, the demonic qi in his body circulated madly, trying to forcefully pull himself up and to the side.
But his right leg was suddenly out of his control, and even his demonic qi could not circulate freely. This delay ultimately made his reaction slow.
Ge Feng felt as if his right rib had been viciously rammed by a charging ferocious beast. Then, a series of cringe-worthy creaking sounds came from his formidable body, which he had always been proud of. This was the sound of his bones reaching their limit and groaning under the strain. Then, Ge Feng's massive body was thrown heavily to the side. The mournful scream he let out in mid-air was quickly muffled by the large amount of blood he spewed from his mouth, making the piercing sound become chaotic and blurred.
It was as if a bright rainbow had streaked across the sky, only this rainbow was mixed with a large amount of internal organ fragments.
The higher Ge Feng flew in mid-air, the smaller the golden heatwave that had filled his vision became. Outside the picture of the golden heatwave, Ge Feng saw a scene that he couldn't believe. Wu Yuan was holding a long staff with one hand, suspended in mid-air, and the end of the long staff was right where he had been standing just now. But at this moment, Wu Yuan also had a look of disbelief, looking at the golden heatwave. All of this happened in an instant. From Ge Feng's attack to his own two consecutive counterattacks, only one breath had passed.
Until this moment, Li Yan's strange smile was still imprinted in Ge Feng's mind. But now he understood two things. "That kid is definitely not at the Foundation Establishment cultivation level. Everything before was deliberately done to lure us into a trap. Second, that human kid anticipated that Wu Yuan was going to kill me, which is why his face suddenly became strange. Wu Yuan, you and I..."
This was Ge Feng's last consciousness. Then, the boundless sharp pain from his leg and ribs made his eyes go black, and he crashed heavily into the rubble in the distance. It had to be said that Ge Feng's body was truly tough. Where he landed, not only did rocks fly, but a huge, deep pit was smashed into the incredibly hard mountain rock.
Before Ge Feng fainted, he didn't even have time to question Wu Yuan, "Why did you dare to attack a cultivator of your own clan? At a time when we need manpower, this is a capital offense?" Ge Feng, no matter what, could not have guessed that Wu Yuan would choose to attack him at this moment.
Wu Yuan, standing in mid-air, was also in a state of confusion. In his plan, his attack would only come after Ge Feng had killed this weak human cultivator. All of this stemmed from his understanding of Ge Feng's strength and his attack style. But the result was not so. While attacking Ge Feng, he was of course also paying attention to Li Yan at all times, for fear that his plan would go wrong. Or that this cultivator, out of fear, would directly throw away the longsword in his hand. Then he would have to consider whether to grab the Demonic Core first or continue his sneak attack on Ge Feng.
But what Wu Yuan didn't expect was that in his divine sense, the human cultivator first gave him a strange smile. In his opinion, this smile contained a sense of disdainful mockery. He didn't have time to think about it. Ge Feng's attack had already collided with the other party. The strange smile on the other party's face was still there, and Ge Feng was instantly knocked back. It was a complete rout. Not to mention Ge Feng himself hadn't expected it, even Wu Yuan, on the side, hadn't reacted.
Thus, Wu Yuan's originally delayed attack, when he wanted to retract his strength, was already too late. Everything happened too quickly. So the eyebrow-height staff in his hand had hit Ge Feng ahead of schedule. Wu Yuan's attack was of course also a killing blow, so its power was so strong that if it weren't for Ge Feng, who was also a powerful body cultivator, a human cultivator would have long since turned into a cloud of blood mist under his staff.
So even if the current Ge Feng was not dead, he was not far from true death. The moment Ge Feng landed heavily on the ground, Wu Yuan also came to his senses. He stared at the cultivator opposite him who was squinting his eyes and carefully sizing him up with a longsword in hand, and couldn't help but let out a low roar. "What a cunning human cultivator, to actually hide your cultivation. You're looking for death!"
Li Yan just shook his head lightly. He had originally thought he would have to go to a lot more trouble. Even he hadn't expected that the attraction of a Demonic Core would be so great that someone would want to kill their companion before he himself was even dead.
Wu Yuan actually hadn't seen clearly how Ge Feng was knocked back by this human cultivator. He had only seen a dazzling light erupt from Ge Feng's right foot the moment it came into contact with Li Yan's sword. And at this time, he also didn't have time to go over and carefully check on Ge Feng's situation to find out why he was knocked back by the other party.
So Wu Yuan became cautious. He held the eyebrow-height staff vertically in his hand, and black gas suddenly rose from the staff's body. The entire long staff seemed to have suddenly become several times thicker, like a giant black stalagmite, with black gas coiling and rotating like a giant python.
Wu Yuan did not launch an attack immediately, but just stared at Li Yan, who was looking at him with a playful expression, with extreme vigilance, carefully sensing the fluctuation of the aura on Li Yan's body. He was filled with suspicion. If he found out that the other party was a Golden Core or higher cultivator, he would immediately choose to turn around and flee. But the mid-stage Foundation Establishment aura on Li Yan's body remained stable, and no stronger aura appeared at all. This made Wu Yuan even more suspicious. 'This human cultivator should be a Foundation Establishment cultivator. The sword in his hand must have been tampered with during refining, hiding the grade of the magical treasure. Otherwise, it wouldn't have knocked Ge Feng back in one blow.'
Thinking of this, Wu Yuan's heart began to slowly burn with excitement. As long as the other party was a Foundation Establishment cultivator, he still wouldn't take him seriously. At the same time, as for whether Ge Feng was dead or alive, in his mind, he believed more that Ge Feng was severely injured by his own sneak attack. The other party had only knocked Ge Feng back by relying on the magical treasure in his hand.
Seeing that the other party did not immediately attack, but instead became cautious, Li Yan did not want to delay too much time here, lest something unexpected happen. He suddenly let out a sinister laugh. In Wu Yuan's shocked gaze, the figure in the rubble suddenly disappeared. When Wu Yuan tried to sense Li Yan's aura again, no matter how he concentrated his divine sense and locked it on the surroundings, there was not a trace of the other party's aura.
"Not good, this is a Golden Core cultivator!" Just as this thought flashed through Wu Yuan's mind in his alarm, before he could retreat and fly away, a cold voice sounded in his ear. "Fellow Daoist, don't you want the Demonic Core anymore?"