The metal-braided whip struck at Alex, and Alex fought back with his sword. He moved aside to dodge the next attack and dashed forward.
He continued advancing toward Jianyu, who had now decided to stay at one place and fight. The closer he got, the harder it became to continue forward, but Alex did.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Alex stopped each attack, fighting back against the flurry of whip attacks, stepping forward with each stop. As he continued doing so, he fell into the thought that the only thing he could do was continue this until he reached Jianyu.
But as it became harder to continue on, Alex finally realized that he didn’t just have to take on the attacks.
He jumped back instantly, just outside of the range of the whips.
Jianyu finally stopped. He was a little haggard from all the battle, but he was still ready to go for more. As he wondered why Alex had stepped back, Alex stabbed the sword before him with a grin.
He spread his arms to the side, blood flowing out of his wrists onto his palms. As they gathered, they seemed to flow down into a long rope of sorts, almost like a…
Jianyu’s eyes widened.
‘A whip?’
Alex formed two whips with his blood and struck out with one of them.
Jianyu was ready to protect himself when he realized that he wasn’t the target.
‘Shit!’
He barely realized in time that Alex was targeting the people of the array. These people had no way of protecting themselves, so Jianyu whipped his whip at the blood whip, stopping it from reaching the people.
However, just as he did that, the second blood whip went to the other side and grabbed onto someone.
The man Alex had targeted tried to fight back, but he was far too weak. Alex pulled on him instantly, dragged the man toward him.
The man screamed as he flew toward Alex, but his cries didn’t last for long. The moment Alex got his hand on the man, he stabbed his fingers into the man’s head, killing him instantly.
He pulled his arm back out as the whip formed in his hand again.
Alex looked toward Jianyu, the smile permeating through his face more scary than anything. “How many can you protect?” he asked, swinging both whips at the same time, targeting two completely different people again.
Jianyu tried to stop both the whips, but he was only a single man. Even when he tried to put himself in the path of the whip, it didn’t work. One of Alex’s whips managed to grab onto the group and pulled them away, quickly dealing with them.
Then, he went for more.
Panic spread among the Grayhounds.
“Keep the formation active!” Jianyu shouted, but it didn’t work. The panic had spread far too much.
As Alex began picking them one at a time, killing them, the ones at the front knew they would die any second now. So, they chose to live instead of dying here.
They began running away one by one. The ones with more courage or stupidity stayed behind, hoping to somehow kill Alex, but as even more died, even those people chose to run away.
Panic filled not just the courtyard but the street as well. Only a few people, along with Jianyu, remained in the courtyard, who he himself appeared to want to leave.
But as the main target of Alex’s current animosity, he had no way of sneaking away.
“I-I won’t stand in your way,” Jianyu said. “You can leave. I promise, no one will stop you.”
Alex paused and smiled. “That was all that I wanted.”
Jianyu felt relieved. “Then—”
“Earlier,” Alex said. “That was all that I wanted earlier. But you didn’t give me that, and now it’s changed. All I want right now is to kill you.”
“I’m letting you go, dammit!” the man shouted. “Just go. Leave.”
“Sure,” Alex said. “After I’ve killed you.”
Jianyu gripped his whip tighter, finding what little courage he had in his heart. “Fine, come.”
Alex stepped forward and charged.
Jianyu struck his whip at Alex, but it had become noticeably slower. Alex easily dodged around it, dashing straight toward Jianyu.
As Jianyu realized he couldn’t stop Alex, he found that he had no choice but to run away. He turned around and immediately ran.
But he was far too slow to do that.
Alex arrived right next to him, his sword already raised high into the air.
Jianyu turned around immediately, swinging his whip at Alex’s head.
Alex took the attack head-on and only smiled. The attack wasn’t strong enough to blow away his head like it had last time.
“Damn you!” Jianyu shouted, swinging his whip back at Alex as hard as he could. “Damn you!”
Alex had no need to continue listening to him scream. He poured all that he had into the sword, empowering it most of all with the True Fire Dao and swung down.
True Immolation Strike
The attack cut through the metal whip first, instantly melting the edges before it landed on Jianyu. At such a close distance, there was nothing the man could do to avoid it, nor did the attack have to travel at all.
The sword slash passed through Jianyu, instantly cutting him in half, while also engulfing all of the flesh along the cut into flames.
The man’s scream lasted half a second before two halves of his body, burned to a crisp on the cut end, fell down to the street where Jianyu had managed to run away to.
When the people saw what had fallen, they immediately recognized Jianyu as the strongest Extolite their chief had hired. And seeing him die, it only scared them further.
Alex landed next to Jianyu with a loud thud and turned toward the scared individuals that filled the street. He stared at them for a second before recognizing them as the people who had formed the array earlier.
His enemy.
Alex immediately raised his sword again. He had to kill all his enemies.