Zu An spat out the blood that had accumulated in his mouth as he slowly stood up from the ground. Even though he was shaking a little, he seemed to possess a resolute strength.

“You… how are you still able to stand up?” Mosquito Daoist was shocked. She was very clear about the strength behind her earlier strike, and knew that it should have rendered her opponent unable to continue fighting.

Zu An wiped away the blood at the corners of his lips. He chuckled and said, “Why wouldn’t a real man be able to stand up again?”

Qiu Honglei’s face blushed. Even at this sort of time, he’s still able to make that sort of joke.

She suddenly recalled him calling her ‘his woman’ earlier, and her heart rate inexplicably quickened. She snorted inwardly. When did I ever become your woman?

Despite this, she wasn’t angry at all. On the contrary, she couldn’t hold back a smile.

Mosquito Daoist snorted. “Let’s see how many times you can stand back up!” She rushed at Zu An.

Her main objective was still to obtain the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra, and she was worried that he might somehow slip through her fingers and escape, now that he had stood back up.

After all, even the closest of couples might declare that they would fight and die together, but when the threat of death reared its ugly head, they could easily have second thoughts. She didn’t dare to take that risk, and decided to capture him first.

Seeing her coming towards him, Zu An used his Sunflower Phantasm and moved in to engage her, wanting to create an opportunity to stab her with his Poisonous Prick. He was seriously injured right now, which meant that the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra’s strengthening effects had kicked in. It was still possible that he could fashion an opening.

He didn’t dare bring out the dagger now, in case his opponent noticed something amiss and put up her guard. He bided his time, waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

Mosquito Daoist frowned. She had a strange feeling that his speed seemed to have increased. However, she attributed this to the slowing effects of Qiu Honglei’s lantern, and didn’t pay it too much attention.

Now that she had gotten serious, Zu An was now put under an increased amount of pressure. Even though his speed and power had been greatly enhanced, the difference in their strength was still too great.

Not only was he unable to hurt her, he could barely fend off her attacks.

He couldn’t help but chastise Qiu Honglei. “Silly girl, why are you staring stupidly? Use your lantern!”

“Oh, right…” Qiu Honglei’s face went red. She seemed to have only just woken up from her daze. She quickly shone her lantern over at them.

Zu An was incredulous. “Don’t aim that shit at me!”

When the pale yellow radiance covered him, he finally experienced what everyone else had been subjected to. His body immediately felt much heavier.

Qiu Honglei’s face grew warm. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

She quickly aimed the beam of light at Mosquito Daoist.

Zu An’s request was actually a rather difficult one, because her lantern’s radiance affected a large area, and it wasn’t easy to exclude Zu An from its effects.

However, she possessed a sharp mind, and quickly discovered a workaround, using her hand and her clothes to block off some of the light. Even though this severely reduced the amount of light shining on the battlefield, it became easier to control where the beam went.

Mosquito Daoist was clearly unhappy with this new development. Even though she was fast, whenever the beam of yellow light landed on her body, her movement speed was significantly affected.

Because of this, Zu An almost managed to injure her several times.

Fury bubbled within her heart. Both of these kids had cultivations that were much weaker than her own, yet it seemed like everyone had special abilities these days, constantly tripping her up and preventing her from steamrolling them like she had planned.

Several times, she thought about turning around to deal with Qiu Honglei, but Zu An doggedly kept her from doing so.

He fought wildly, willingly suffering injuries in order to create opportunities for himself, which left her with quite the headache.

Given his cultivation, she had originally believed that it wouldn’t make much of a difference even if she took a few hits. However, a mysterious sense of danger had crept up on her, warning her that she absolutely could not be wounded by her opponent in any way.

Even though her cultivation was high, she was rather infamous, and had made many enemies over the years. Having been pursued by them for many years had made her extremely sensitive toward danger.

Even though she didn’t understand where this feeling of danger was coming from, she never doubted her intuition. She had relied on exactly this sixth sense over these years to get her out of some very tight spots.

He was able to get back up despite suffering such serious injuries… This style of fighting, disregarding any injuries you might suffer just to try to injure your own opponent, isn’t usually a sensible choice either. His constitution must be quite special. She turned this over in her mind, and could only come up with this one conclusion.

The sudden increase in his speed and power had to be due to the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra as well.

It really was worthy of being a legendary technique!

Now that she thought about it, she wanted it even more. She had to deal with Zu An first. Compared to the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra, the Empress Lantern didn’t seem nearly as important.

Now that she was going all out, Zu An was hard-pressed to hold it together, even with the help of the mystical lantern’s light.

His body was struck several times in quick succession by the horsetail whisk.

Her horsetail whisk looked soft and gentle, but every single strand of it felt like sharp steel wire when they lashed against his body. They lacerated his flesh, opening up deep wounds.

If it wasn’t for his special constitution, he would have already been diced into little chunks.

“You little bastard, I’ll give you credit for lasting this long with just five ranks of cultivation. However… This game ends here!” Mosquito Daoist crouched down, and then she tore up an absolutely massive chunk of earth.

The massive chunk of earth perfectly blocked off the light from Qiu Honglei’s lantern.

Qiu Honglei was stunned. This mosquito monster wasn’t an earth element cultivator—why was she able to control the earth?

She thought about it a little more, and finally understood what had happened. Mosquito Daoist had always been moving around the same area. She thought that she had been busy attacking Zu An, but she must have been using her movements to wear down the earth beneath her as well.

That was a terrifying level of skill to have. After all, she had to carve out the outline of this chunk of earth while ensuring that the surface remained in one piece. Only then would she have been able to lift it up as a single mass and block her lantern’s light.

Qiu Honglei didn’t have time to admire her strategy. The only thing that filled her mind was worry over Zu An’s safety. “Ah Zu!”

Now that she wasn’t restrained by the lantern’s radiance, Mosquito Daoist’s speed suddenly increased severalfold. She reached a hand towards Zu An’s shoulder.

Startled, Zu An frantically shouted, “Whatcha lookin’ at?!”

“I’m looking at you, shithead!” Mosquito Daoist replied, causing her to lose her focus for a split second.

Zu An immediately used Grandgale to blink a large distance away.

Mosquito Daoist could not believe what had just happened.

You have successfully trolled Mosquito Daoist of 251 Rage points!

Despite her anger, she felt a grudging sense of admiration. Despite having a rather ordinary level of cultivation, his combat sense and techniques were top-notch, far superior even to those of some well-known experts.

She felt an even stronger need to kill him. This kid was already like this at just the fifth rank—what would happen once he actually matured?

Her thoughts were racing quickly through her mind, but it did not slow down her attacks. With a flick of her hand, the strands of her horsetail whisk extended again. She had already witnessed his instantaneous movement technique, so there was no way she would be caught completely off-guard again.

Zu An teleported again, but, to his horror, he was already surrounded by whisk strands. It was as if his opponent had already anticipated that he would dodge in this direction.

The horsetail whisk wrapped around him in the blink of an eye, the ends of its strands looking like straws as they stabbed towards his face.

Mosquito Daoist had clearly had enough of his never ending tricks. She decided to suck out a portion of his blood and completely cripple his movements first.

She had confidence in her ability to hold back. She could cripple him without taking his life.

As he saw the strands approach his face, Zu An recalled Solitary Ice’s mummified appearance, and couldn’t help but panic. He had enjoyed Qiu Honglei sucking on him earlier, but there was no way he was going to let this woman have a go!

Just as he was about to bring out his final trump card, a burst of black flame flew through the air, setting the incoming strands on fire.

Those black flames behaved extremely strangely. They instantly raced upwards along the whisk strands, heading towards Mosquito Daoist at incredible speed.

“Ah!!” Mosquito Daoist let out a horrifying shriek. She quickly retracted her horsetail whisk and frantically tried to put out the fire.

Given her cultivation, there was no way she could be injured by these flames, but it was a different story when it came to her horsetail whisk.

A good chunk of it had already been burned off by Zu An earlier while they were at the inn, and another half had just been burned away by these strange flames. Her horsetail whisk was now a sorry, barren thing, with just about a quarter of the original threads hanging loosely from the handle.

She whipped around in anger. “Show yourself!”

She froze almost immediately, swallowing subconsciously. So big! Her eyes lowered towards her own chest, and she was overwhelmed by an intense feeling of inferiority.

“Big Manman!” Zu An was overjoyed to see her enchanting figure.

Unexpectedly, Pei Mianman herself expressed no joy at all. She watched as Qiu Honglei ran towards Zu An with a face full of worry, then sneered and said, “All the way here, we worried about you constantly, but it seems you were actually enjoying yourself with another woman.”