Teng Ran hunched up, making himself smaller. His wings kept on oscillating, figure darting around the void non-stop as he dodged the blood-colored lightning bolts coming at him from all directions.
In his original form, his mastery of Strength Rule was much smoother.
If forced to, he could even use compounded Elemental Enlightenment and affect the trajectory of Lin Huang's telekinetic flying dagger attacks but the effects were very minimal.
Even so, the disparity between his abilities and Lin Huang's was still too great—like before, he continued to be completely overwhelmed.
Lin Huang did not panic at all and maintained his original tempo of battle. The number of rules that had been compounded on the telekinetic flying daggers remained unchanged, but the red gleams that shot out from the cuffs of his sleeves kept increasing.
Initially, it was only four thousand telekinetic flying daggers, but that quickly increased to five thousand, then six thousand...
Each of the telekinetic flying daggers transformed into scarlet lightning bolts and shot out like lasers. They drew countless fine lines across the void, hurtling toward Teng Ran like a dragnet.
In contrast, Teng Ran was like a little fly flying wildly through a realm covered with cobwebs.
By the time number of telekinetic flying daggers had increased to 10,000, the blood-red gleams left in the air by every one of those daggers was like a blood-red torrent of lightning arcs that swept toward Teng Ran to overwhelm him.
At the same time, the dragnet that Lin Huang had woven finally took shape, completely sealing off all Teng Ran's avenues of escape and containing him within a sphere-shaped space.
This scenario caused the entire Thousand Snake Sect immense anxiety. Seeing that Teng Ran was finally completely hemmed in, almost everyone fell into despair.
This time, it was Teng Ran's original form that was trapped; he was unable to use his divine ability to shed his skin for the second time. Moreover, if his original form died, he would truly be dead with no possibility of being resurrected.
In the void, the entire blood-red sphere-shaped space formed by the telekinetic flying daggers kept getting continuously smaller, shrinking the area that Teng Ran could move about in.
Teng Ran kept flying along the boundary of the sphere with Rapid Speed. He tried to find a point he might be able to use as a breach, but he could find none at all.
When he saw that the sphere-shaped area delineated by the telekinetic flying daggers was becoming smaller and smaller, Teng Ran suddenly accelerated and charged toward a random point within the space. Just when Lin Huang felt puzzled, Teng Ran's figure suddenly shrank rapidly, almost instantly becoming the size of a mosquito. With his golden spear suspended in front of him, he hurtled toward the gap between two flying daggers.
The next second, the golden ray pierced through the blood-red ball of lightning arcs, causing a fissure in the scarlet sphere created by the thousands of telekinetic flying daggers.
"Huh?!" When he saw this, Lin Huang could not help exclaiming in surprise. His enemy's attack—a desperate gambit for life—did indeed end up giving him a fighting chance of survival. However, Lin Huang's surprise was only momentary, and the corners of his lips quirked up the faintest hint of a smirk.
Teng Ran did not linger around to try and do more with this end result. Powered by Rapid Speed, in a flash, his figure swooped out through the fissure in the sphere.
Right as he was about to continue his escape, he discovered that there was a figure already standing in front of him.
Fixing his gaze on this apparition, he felt a chill suddenly run through his entire body. It was Lin Huang who was blocking his way.
He had no idea either when Lin Huang had appeared.
Teng Ran's fright lasted only briefly as he suddenly became aware that Lin Huang was right in front of him. In that instant, he harbored the illusion that he could turn the tables.
"This fellow is a psychic; he's only proficient in mid-to-long range attacks. He's certain to be weak in close combat, but close combat is my strong suit. As long as the threat of those telekinetic flying daggers can be eliminated, this fellow's nothing to be afraid of!"
With this thought in mind, Teng Ran's courage returned.
His figure instantly returned to normal size. Golden spear suspended in front of him, he hurled himself forward to attack Lin Huang.
In an instant, the spear was imbued with compounded layer upon layer of Rule Bending Power.
With this attack, Teng Ran no longer merely compounded eleven layers of Control-level rule power; he also stacked them with all 67 rules that he had mastered.
In a flash, he threw himself toward his opponent and the spear hurtled through the air from a distance of less than one meter away from Lin Huang. Wherever the tip of the spear pierced through, it seemed as if time and space disintegrated inch by inch.
When Teng Ran saw that Lin Huang remained expressionless from beginning to end, he assumed it was just because the distance was too close, and the speed of his attack was also too fast for Lin Huang to be able to manipulate the telekinetic flying dagger attacks in time.
However, the moment his spear thrust forward, Teng Ran suddenly noticed that a blood-colored hilt had appeared in Lin Huang's hand out of nowhere.
'Where's the blade?' Just as suspicion floated up in Teng Ran's heart, he suddenly felt a cold sensation coming from his neck.
When he looked at Lin Huang again, he realized that the blade was a narrow silver one—and that it was stained with a golden-red splash that was dripping down along the point of the weapon.
"I don't know where you got the courage to engage in close combat with me." The sword in Lin Huang's hand gradually dissipated and he looked at Teng Ran with pity in his gaze.
These were also the last words that Teng Ran heard before his consciousness was completely obliterated.
The gigantic python's head slowly slid down and the headless corpse collapsed forward onto the ground.
Two strands of Lin Huang's telekinetic threads reached through the air, and the headless corpse was deposited into his space storage. However, another telekinetic thread suspended Teng Ran's head in front of Lin Huang, parallel to his own head.
When Lin Huang stared into the pair of blue diamond-like eyes in the python's head, his pupils instantly turned dark blue, like that of a starry sky.
The Control-level god rule Brain-Read instantly initiated.
Brain-Read was the best type of god rule to decipher a brain that was not completely dead but had lost its sense of self-protection.
This was also why Lin Huang did not need to keep Teng Ran alive.
Unlike Heart-glimpsing, which probed the level of the soul in a mere passing flash of time within the material realm, Brain-Read required a specific amount of time.
Lin Huang waited for the Brain-Read progress bar to slowly rise while he looked at the push notification that Xiao Hei had just sent through.
"Congratulations to the Host, you've obtained a complete Monster Card Teng Mang (Pseudo-supreme God)"
'I obtained a complete Monster Card?!' Lin Huang was a little surprised and immediately retrieved the card to check it.
"Monster Card: Teng Ran"
"Rarity: Supreme-God (Pseudo)"
"Monster Name: Teng Mang"
"Type of Monster: Mutated Snake Species/Winged Snake Tribe"
"Bloodline: Teng Snake (Unawakened)"
"Combat Level: Sixth-rank True God (Ninth-rank True God)"
"Major: Spear Dao, Wind Elemental Enlightenment, Water Elemental Enlightenment"
"Major Skills: God-Slaying Spear, God-Crashing Storm..."
"Minor Skills: Sea of Illusion..."
"Spear Dao: True Meaning Level"
"God Rule: Sharp..."
"Elemental Enlightenment: Storm Wind, Sea of Wrath..."
"Summon Authority: Activated"
"Card Remarks: Trainable! "
"Remarks: It is recommended that training start with the purification of the Wild Beast's Bloodline. "
When he saw that there were hundreds of skills on Teng Ran's skill slots, and even the page on Rule Bending Powers was densely packed, Lin Huang felt that he had profited greatly by this card.
Xiaohei even helped note suggestions about the direction training should take, obviously extremely optimistic about the Teng Ran card.
'If a Wild Beast really has the potential to achieve Pure Spirit rank-6 as the stone tablet says, then this Teng Ran card definitely needs to be properly trained!'
Lin Huang had already begun to quietly plan in his mind how he would train Teng Ran, his newly acquired imperial monster...