The few seconds that separated the ambushers and Yoze seemed to have expanded in their point of view. From a few seconds, time seemed to pass by 10 times slower as they watched Yoze break through the limits of his human form and showed the demon deep within him.
Yoze transformed into a six-headed demon that had a body created by the fusion of a Fox, Elephant, Snake, and Leopard demon. It was an abomination that shouldn't have existed but the mere existence foretold that they were simply creatures to be eaten.
They might have been the elites of the human race but compared to a demon they were just the same as regular humans. Breaking out of the illusion the ambushers realized that it was too late to dodge and instead fortified their positions.
The ambushers activated their strength causing blood to pour out of their pores and formed centimeter-thick blood strings that pierced into the earth. With only five ambushers making these blood strings, Yoze counted that they created at least several hundred of these centimeter-thick blood strings.
Each one of these blood strings seemed to have a mind of its own as the blood strings that didn't bury themselves into the ground seeking out the blood strings from Blood Masters. With hundreds of blood strings seeking each other, they quickly tangled up to form blood ropes. The blood ropes continued to seek out more blood strings and blood ropes before in a blink of an eye a large blood net was formed.
"The Tree Sect's specialty, Blood Entanglement." Yoze's mind quickly remembered the information that River had told him on the way.
"The ambushers come from a variety of martial art sects but the one that you should be most careful of is the Tree Sect. They have a technique that is custom-made for this body cultivation method called Blood Entanglement."
"Blood Entanglement can mix the strength of martial artists to form a giant blood net that is extremely tough to break out of. Not only that it doesn't have a limit to the number of martial artists that can use the join, meaning the Blood Entanglement can become increasingly stronger."
"While they individually are not as strong as ordinary Blood Masters from martial art sects they are terrifying to escape from when they join hands. It has even been documented that ten Blood Masters from the Tree Sect were able to capture a Martial Grandmaster with Blood Entanglement."
"If the ambushers didn't want to let me escape to inform the City there was a high possibility that I would have been captured." River shivered as she thought about how lucky she was to have escaped from danger.
She could not tank as much damage that her brother could take even though she was a battle God on the battlefield. With her having to fight so many strong opponents she would do good in the short term but long term she wouldn't be able to keep up.
Even though so much happened in reality only a fraction of a second had passed by the time the group of five Tree Sect members reacted and created a wall of blood that was more than ten feet tall and an inch thick. Being so close to the blood net made Yoze feel his stomach churn as the smell of blood was incredibly pungent to the point that it would have caused people with weak willpower to faint from the smell alone.
Without much time to think about what was the best option Yoze let his heart take over and he increased his speed. He wanted to see if the Tree Sect's famous blood net could stop his mad charge.
In less than a blink of an eye, Yoze crashed into the blood net which seemed to act like an organism wrapping around his body to stop his movements. The blood net increasingly tightened its grip on his body trying to suffocate him to death.
The Tree Sect's blood net was astonishing as it even could slightly slow down Yoze's charge but that was it. The blood net was flexible, sturdy, and could make a Martial Grandmaster take it seriously but just like it needed ten Blood Masters using the technique to capture a Martial Grandmaster, five was never going to be enough to stop Yoze.
If more than 10 Blood Masters or several Martial Grandmasters used Blood Entanglement then they could have tried to capture even young demons. At that level, they could even have had a possibility of slowing down Yoze to a stop but that was only an if.
Yoze kept charging as the blood net tried stopping him only to end up being dragged alongside him. Being attached to the blood net the five Tree Sect members were dragged across the rough ground for several feet and they were helplessly dragged along until they heard a crisp snapping sound coming from the blood strands that were buried underground.
The blood strands couldn't handle the stress of being pulled by Yoze's charge and being stuck to the ground and snapped in half causing a chain reaction that destroyed the blood net. Just as the blood net was formed in less than a blink it was destroyed in less than a second later.
All the blood that formed the blood net seemed to lose its liveliness and each of the blood ropes and blood strands melted back into regular blood and soaked the battlefield in blood. The sudden destruction of their Blood Entanglement didn't allow the Blood Masters an opportunity to retrieve their blood before it was too late and all five collapsed to the ground.
Judging from the complete lack of movement coming from the five Tree Sect members, the remaining 6 ambushers felt their hearts drop as they assumed that they had died instantly or were about to. To see so many of their allies be defeated in less than a second, made the rest know that the City's reinforcement was incredibly strong, very likely a Martial Grandmaster.
Luckily, they had brought along a Martial Grandmaster themselves in case such a circumstance had occurred. Knowing that they had their own Martial Grandmaster protecting them, the rest of the Blood Masters split into two groups.
The first ran toward the wagons that stored all the demon meat and bones while the second group joined in the other ambushers that have been trying to kill Timothy and the remaining soldier for the past twenty minutes. However, even with the increased pressure Timothy and the other soldier held on strong.
Completely soaked in his enemy's blood, Yoze felt his mind racing as he lost control of his body, he watched as his body fell to the blood-soaked earth like a goat and charged forward deeper into the battlefield. Just as Yoze's body left his spot, a flash of white light flew above his head at a speed several times faster than the speed of sound.
"Boom!!!"
"A spear?"
As the white light flashed above his head, Yoze's eyes saw that within the white light was a silver spear that had white electricity surrounding it. For such a deadly weapon Yoze tracked down the ambusher who threw the spear and noticed that he was very different compared to the other ambushers.
The man was an elderly man with a face full of wrinkles, hair that had turned gray, and eyes that had turned a murky white color. However, for how old his appearance made him, the elderly man stood up with a straight back showing off his height and the muscles underneath his silver armor.
"You must be Swampscott City's Armored Giant. You are much larger than your description." The elderly man's murky eyes glittered with light as he looked at Yoze with interest.
"Who are you?" Yoze wasn't surprised that the ambushers had some knowledge of him since they had planned this ambush; they must have had a way to find important information.
With how much power the silver spear contained, Yozs was more interested in the elderly man's identity. He wanted to know if his hunch that this elderly man was a Martial Grandmaster was correct.
"Martial Grandmaster Silver Thunder or Martial Silver Thunder for short. I'm a senior member of the Blood Crossbolt gang. After all my years of practicing martial arts, there are not many people who could be said to be as talented and full of potential as you."
"So I'll offer my support and recruit you to become a member of the Blood Crossbow gang. You will get massive benefits that will allow you to fully utilize your talent." Martial Grandmaster Silver Thunder smiled as he extended his invitation.
Martial Silver Thunder's unhurried voice and his pride in being a martial artist made Yoze's eyes widen as he didn't think he would meet Martial Grandmaster Silver Thunder. In the past, he had heard countless stories about Silver Thunder's adventures from starting as an orphan that had been bullied all his life to standing on top of the food chain.
Every child had heard of Silver Thunder's achievements but Yoze never thought he would meet the man behind the stories. Yoze didn't hide his admiration for Martial Silver Thunder as he was someone that he had looked up to in the past.
But times had changed and Yoze wasn't listening to a story but was in a life-and-death battle with him and wasn't going to allow it to cloud his judgment. He only focused on the fact that not only was Martial Silver Thunder strong but his unique lightning martial arts were both flashy and deadly.
"Unfortunately, I'm not interested at the moment." Yoze shook his head, rejecting Martial Grandmaster Sliver Thunder's invitation.
While Martial Silver Thunder's invitation was incredibly valuable for most martial artists, it wasn't for Yoze. He could reach the Martial Grandmaster realm on his own and he was more powerful than most Martial Grandmasters in his current state.
That was simply the truth as his Spiritual energy techniques such as Spiritual Suppression could incapacitate Martial Grandmasters easily. With Yoze's current proficiency at Spiritual Suppression, he could suppress more than 10 people at the same time.
So he was able to deal with not only Martial Silver Thunder but every single one of the ambushers. But Yoze didn't want to do that unless it was necessary since it would turn the situation where he couldn't test how powerful Martial Grandmasters could be.
Even though he was attracted to the thought of learning a Martial Grandmaster's martial techniques and body cultivation methods. Yoze didn't think he would have been able to acquire them easily due to similar reasons as to why the New Swampscott City was holding back on giving Blood Master body cultivation methods to him.
"That is unfortunate," Martial Silver Thunder sighed with regret before staring at Yoze with eyes that shone bright white light.
A wave of danger gripped Yoze's heart as his body jumped away from where he previously stood as quickly as possible. Just like before, the moment he had left his spot Yoze saw the white flash caused by the white spear rush right past him before landing gently on Martial Silver Thunder's hand
If he was a second too slow that spear would have pierced right through the back of his chest. Yoze predicted that his current physical defense would have done almost nothing to stop that attack. The silver spear would have destroyed his internal organs, including his heart, before exiting his chest and making a giant hole
"I'm in urgent need to upgrade my physical defense," Yoze frowned as this battle was making him realize how fragile he was.
Yoze could kill demons and fight Martial Grandmasters with his speed, and strength, and with the help of his martial art techniques and body cultivation methods. He could even kill demons without even landing a single physical attack if he learned to invade demons' bodies with his spiritual energy.
However, while Yoze had strong physical defenses compared to first-rate martial artists and Blood Masters he was simply lacking when compared to Martial Grandmasters and Demons. If he doesn't fix this, there is bound to be a time when his Mindless Legs isn't able to dodge an attack and he becomes heavily injured or even dies without knowing the reason why.
"I need to break through the limits of Iron Skin as soon as possible while I search for more defensive body cultivation methods and martial art techniques." Making a mental note to himself, Yoze watched as the Martial Silver Thunder lifted his spear.
"You might be strong but you still have some way to go before you can challenge a Martial Grandmaster." Martial Silver's murky eyes became brighter as they started to create white trails whenever they moved.
As soon as Martial Silver finished speaking his last word, he vanished into a white pillar of light that sped right to Yoze. The white pillar was so fast Yoze wasn't able to react himself and even Mindless Legs failed to react fast enough.
That was when Yoze felt everything begin to slow down as Mindless Blood Legs activated at full force and took complete control over his body.
With all his energy focused trapped in his mind Yoze's eyes saw the pillar of light slowed down enough to a point that he was able to see Martial Silver Thunder's body covered in white light that cracked from time to time.
By the time Martial Silver reached the spot where Yoze was standing, Yoze had already escaped from this range of attack and was rushing toward the center of the blood fog. Realizing that the fight with Martial Silver was going to be a much bigger problem to deal with, strengthens Yoze's resolve to rescue Timothy first before going back to deal with Martial Silver Thunder.
"Come to me!" Yoze said loudly to get Timothy's attention.
Suddenly hearing Yoze's voice through all the sounds of fighting, Timothy turned his head to see a nearly 7-foot-tall giant wearing armor soaked in blood rushing toward him. At first, his heart jumped as he mistook Yoze for the ambusher ally before feeling a weight come off his shoulders when he saw it was Yoze.
"Follow me!"
Understanding that Yoze wanted him to meet him halfway to prevent them from being surrounded by the ambushers and being cut off from one another. Timothy told the soldier behind him to follow him and disengage from their battle.
With his blood boiling Yoze took control of his body and the full force of Mindless Blood Legs to rush to Timothy. Yoze felt a tingling sensation coming from his back as a wave of heat tried to catch up to him.
"Boom!"
Yoze stomped on the ground hard creating a massive hole to give himself enough boost to reach Timothy and the remaining soldier just before the heat wave caught up to him.