Seeing his sneaky move get called out and facing Lin Daozi's mockery, Nero didn't feel the slightest bit of shame. After directly ignoring the other's attitude, his gaze fell on Pei Yan outside the ring as he barked, "Are you done messing around?"

"Nope! You think it's over just because you say so?" Pei Yan pointed at Nero and snorted coldly. "I've put up with you people for a long time. The last two who got on stage kept dragging me into their crap every other sentence. Am I your dad or what? Why so close with me? We don't have your kind of unfilial edgy brats who get a bit of power and then stop recognizing their own parents, and still think they're so damn cool and special snowflake. That passive-aggressive crap might work on others, but it doesn't work on me, got that? And calling us monkeys like you're not from Earth yourself! Before others even look down on you, you already look down on yourself, your backbone's so soft it's jelly. If we're monkeys, you're not even on the level of a dung beetle!"

Having seen Pei Yan's poisonous tongue many times, Lin Daozi could already force himself to keep a straight face and not laugh, but Nero was clearly not used to this kind of shameless, rapid-fire trash talk. He was caught completely off guard—he'd been eloquent just moments ago, but now he just stood there glaring at Pei Yan, unable to find a single comeback.

"What, cat got your tongue? That's why they say if you don't have the skills, don't take the job. Look at you Bloodshra lot, each one acting all high and mighty, faces all screwed up like you're desperate to hide the fact you've got mental issues. Let me tell you, if you piss me off less, you'll live a bit longer. You can't beat us in a fight, you can't beat us in a roast, where do you get the confidence to jump around in front of me all day? Enough, I'll stop talking for now, say a few more words and I'll have you crying on stage—how embarrassing would that be for Bloodshra! Shut your mouth and just honestly fight your damn match. Listen."

After cursing him out and finishing with a line that sounded like he was coaxing a child, Pei Yan bounced back to his seat. Pei Yan's words, plus the laughter all around and those mocking looks, made Nero's face turn beet red. Perfect—he'd originally wanted to throw Lin Daozi's mindset off, but not only did he fail, his own mentality was almost shattered instead.

"You've played all your cheap tricks and you couldn't even win an argument. Can we officially start the match now?" Lin Daozi smiled as he watched Pei Yan return to his seat, then turned his head back toward Nero. The smile on his face slowly faded, replaced by an icy expression as he spoke in a low voice. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"We've already wasted so much time thanks to that clown's interruption. It's about time we got down to business, Lin Daozi! Don't worry, the fight between us won't drag on like the others. It'll be over quickly." Nero withdrew his thoughts, adjusted his state, then looked at Lin Daozi with a sinister grin.

"Pei Yan was right about one thing—when it comes to running your mouth and talking big, you guys really are talented." As Lin Daozi finished, a Longsword appeared in his hand. He took one step forward and thrust straight at Nero.

"Whether it's empty talk or not, let your body feel it for itself."

When words don't match, there's no point saying more. Once fully awake, Lin Daozi and Nero clashed the moment they disagreed, and from their very first exchange, the battle became intensely fierce. Lin Daozi pressed forward relentlessly, unleashing lethal moves one after another, while Nero was in no way inferior, countering each strike head-on, matching edge for edge.

"Lin Daozi, you watched my fight with Saraf before. Do you really think attacks like yours can actually do anything to me?" To outsiders, the fight looked spectacular, but in reality it was just mutual probing between the two. They both knew that without bringing out their trump-card killing moves, the outcome of this match couldn't be decided. So, in the midst of the exchange, Nero taunted Lin Daozi who was continuously attacking him with the Longsword in hand.

"Heh heh heh, don't think I don't know what you're relying on. You've got a Divine Artifact that can absorb the damage others inflict on you and then return it to them with interest, right? But if we're only talking about the absorb-and-counter capability of Divine Artifacts, yours is way worse than Ning Quanchen's Qiankun Guiyuan Mirror."

Lin Daozi's mockery didn't have the intended effect. Nero remained unmoved and sneered, "So what?"

"So what? Even the Qiankun Guiyuan Mirror has a limit to what it can withstand. Your Divine Artifact is the same!" As he spoke, Lin Daozi stepped into the air, his body leaping upward. Then his figure twisted, long arms stretching like an ape's, the Longsword in his hand plunging down from midair like a swimming dragon.

Facing that ferocious slash, Nero couldn't even be bothered to dodge. Relying on his powerful bloodline and his Divine Artifact's protection, he simply raised his hand to take the strike head-on—not only wanting to block it, he even planned to grab the blade and catch the sword bare-handed!

Seeing Nero acting so arrogantly, Lin Daozi was secretly delighted. The sword edge chopped down precisely toward the hand reaching to grab it. When sword and palm collided, a piercing metallic screech rang out. Just as Nero expected, Lin Daozi's attack only left a shallow sword mark in his palm and could go no deeper.

With the move succeeding and the momentum on his side, Nero prepared to snatch the sword away and mock a few lines—but then realized Lin Daozi had no intention of fighting over the weapon at all, letting him take the Longsword from his hand.

Holding the blade and still wondering what the other was up to, Nero suddenly felt a chill in his palm. Looking down, he saw the Longsword he'd just seized turn into a stream of molten iron in an instant, rushing into his body, leaving only an empty hilt that clattered to the ground with a bang.

"Lin Daozi, what kind of trick are you pulling?" Sensing something wrong, Nero wasn't stupid enough to think Lin Daozi would do something pointless just to scare him mid-battle. Shocked, he pressed a hand over the spot where the iron flow had entered, checking for anything unusual inside his body while glaring at Lin Daozi, who was landing from midair, and growling.

Lin Daozi completely ignored Nero's roar. After landing, he flicked his long sleeve, stepped into a pattern of astral steps, and his figure darted toward the eastern side of the arena like a ghost. Nero's gaze followed him like a shadow, afraid he was about to launch an attack—yet to his surprise, after drifting to the east, Lin Daozi intoned, "East—Jia, Yi, Wood," then, without stopping his feet, traced out a series of dizzying steps as he swept toward the south.

"Is he… dancing?" As Lin Daozi moved, his steps fell in an orderly rhythm. Not only that, while muttering under his breath, his arms also kept swinging, weaving up and down to create a special tempo, making it feel like one was watching a dance radiating a divine glow. No wonder Jiang Feiyang, watching from the stands, couldn't help blurting it out.

"Dancing? More like a dance of death." Jun Zhao's ghostly voice sounded again, laced with ridicule. "Humans' earliest dances came from praying to the gods, and what Lin Daozi is doing now—you can think of it as a dance to communicate with the god of nature."

At this point, Lin Junzhao changed tone, speaking with schadenfreude. "Pei Yan, use those electronic eyes of yours and record this fight properly. There'll be a good show in a minute! Bloodshra is finally going to stumble this time. If nothing unexpected happens, your next match will be against the Daoist Realm, and your opponent will be this Lin Daozi. That's not bad—keeps the goodies in the family, so to speak! Make sure you remember every move and technique of his. If you don't, you're going to suffer for it."