Saint Qi flowed out of Jin Tengfei's palms and entered the sword he held. As soon as he did, he covered his sword with his Sword Qi and slashed toward Alex in a hurry.
The Sword Aura had freaked him out so he hit as hard as he could at once.
Alex saw the slash coming and sent his own sword slash back. However, it didn't really do much against Jin Tengfei's attack aside from making it weaker, which his body was able to handle.
Jin Tengfei gave a weird look. 'Why didn't he stop that?' he wondered.
Alex tried to dash forward, but the man used the same attack again, forcing Alex to either attack back or get out of the way.
Alex used the first sword attack of the Elusive Heavenly Dance to attack back.
While sending out Qi slashes were nice and all, they didn't carry the damage that came from his Body Cultivation. Since he was clearly the weaker of the two when it came to just Qi and Sword Qi, Alex had to put his body into the fight too.
The golden slash disappeared into a bunch of light, surprising Jin Tenfei again.
This time, he could only be said to be confused.
'How strong is he? Is he weaker than me or not?' he thought. He didn't expect Alex to be a body cultivator at all, so between the two attacks he made, he couldn't get a clear idea of Alex's strength.
'Does he have Sword Aura or not?' he thought.
Alex used the moment of confusion to send out Heaven's impact attack, but obviously, Jin Tengfei had to be wearing a defensive mental artifact.
"Tsk!" Alex thought. He could try a couple of times and try to fight back against that defense, but he could only use so many Heaven's Impact.
Over the course of the many years, his spiritual energy had only grown denser but not vaster.
As a result, while his mental attacks were incredibly strong, they couldn't really be used a lot consecutively.
'Should I throw it all out and hope for the best? Or should I keep it so I can use my spiritual sense?' he wondered.
After thinking for a bit, he came to an answer. 'That should be my worst-case scenario. If all else fails, I use that,' Alex thought and rushed forward.
Friction disappeared from all around him like snow on a hot day. His speed doubled if not tripled as he arrived in front of Jin Tengfei.
Their swords clashed and they started fighting in close combat.
Jin Tengfei's sword was filled with Saint Qi, while Alex drew on the power of his body.
Tengfei swung his sword horizontally. Alex swung his own sword to send it aside and followed through to stab at Tengfei.
Tengfei leaned to the side and dodged the stab as he swung at Alex.
Alex had his arms outstretched and couldn't bring them back in time to dodge at all. So instead, he simply teleported behind Tengfei and swung at him.
Tengfei immediately ducked as he too was midswing and couldn't do anything else to dodge. He slashed his blade backward without looking and accurately struck Alex's sword.
He quickly moved forward and turned around to look at Alex, but he couldn't see him at all.
'Huh?' he quickly swung behind him, but he only met with empty air.
"What the he—"
BANG!
A strong attack landed on Jin Tengfei's armor that barely managed to block him from getting hurt.
He was sent back a few steps before he stopped. Jin Tengfei remembered how He Liwei lost his match.
'Shit! He's invisible,' he thought. A wave of Qi floated all around him as he used his Qi sense to locate Alex.
He sent out a sword slash in Alex's direction with was met with Alex's sword.
'I can't do it,' Jin Tengfei thought. 'I can't win like this.'
Alex teleported in front of Jin Tengfei, but he was ready for his this time. The sword landed on the other sword as sparks flew in the air.
Alex was pushed back as he came out of invisibility. With Qi sense, it didn't make sense to keep being invisible anymore.
Alex thought of using explosions instead of just swordsmanship, but with the armor his opponent had, it didn't make sense.
"I need to—" Alex paused as Jin Tengfei suddenly brought out two more swords from his storage.
Three swords flew around him, while he wore armor and a defensive mental artifact. All 5 of the artifacts that were allowed to be used were on show now.
The three swords hung in the air with their tips pointed downward, and slowly they started circling Jin Tengfei.
Alex got cautious and got into a position to fight again. As he did so, he saw new swords from around Jin Tengfei.
They were all made up of white light as if they had been constructed solely from Sword Qi.
Numerous white swords like that formed around him, all of which were powered by his saint Qi. In the end, there were 21 swords in total hovering around Jin Tengfei.
'Shit!' Alex thought.
Suddenly, the swords started flying toward Alex. Alex smashed one of the white swords into pieces, while he hit one of the real swords that flew at him.
He was pushed back a little but he quickly got hold of himself to strike away the next illusory sword as well.
One after another, the 21 different flying swords attacked Alex relentlessly.
The illusory ones were destroyed, while the real ones were only pushed back. Since the swords had both Qi and Sword Qi, each attack was equivalent to a normal attack by Jin Tengfei.
Which meant that Alex had to give it all to survive.
Through the attacks, Alex saw that Jin Tengfei was continuously recreating more illusory swords to count for the ones he had lost.
After a while, the swords stopped attacking Alex.
When Alex finally had a chance to breathe, he couldn't as fear took over him at the sight of what was in front of him.
21 swords. 3 real ones at the front, 6 illusory ones behind it, and 9 more behind that formed 3 layers of swords that started spinning around quickly.
The audience watched this move with great intent. After all, it wasn't every day that someone got to see the Jin Family's famed 21 Sword Array.
Alex took a deep breath as he readied himself for the attack. His body turned marbled as the defensive technique activated.
A simple barrier appeared in front of him too. At the same time, he clutched his sword as hard as he could and poured everything he had into it, waiting for the array of swords to come down upon him like hellfire.
When it did, Alex moved.
Alex struck back as hard as he could as he clashed against the 21 different swords. He struggled for a moment, his sword Qi pushing back against the attack even as it was destroyed.
However, none of this managed to stop the sword array's attacks at all. This resulted in a deafening blast that sent both Alex and Jin Tengfei tumbling backward.
Alex hit the ground as he heard the clanks of many things that fell next to him. He wearily looked to the side and saw the broken pieces of his sword.
He tried to lift his arm to check the state of the sword he was holding, but to his surprise, he couldn't move his arm at all.
He tried to force it, but that only brought on more pain. When he used his spiritual sense to see what had happened, he saw the broken sword in his palm. As his senses moved upwards, he could see the many parts of his skin that had split open from the force of the attack.
As a result, the bones on his right arm had also been broken.
Alex's was fine for the most part, but his right arm was mostly unusable anymore.
His spiritual sense expanded as it fell on Jin Tengfei who had already managed to stand back up. The most he was feeling was a little disoriented.
Even then, he was back in shape already.
Alex slowly got up back to fight.
Jin Tengfei started to gather up his swords again as he used the final remaining bit of Saint Qi to create the array again.
Alex looked at the swords that were starting to gather in the sky again. He sighed.
An illusory sword only he and the referee could see appeared in his hand. "If a sword fight is what you want, then shall give it to you."
