Volume Two: The Many Faces of Youth, Illusion and Reality Chapter 106: The Entangling Dragon-Binding Vines

Time ticked away inexorably; inevitably, both sides were destined to face war.

“Less than a minute remains before the match begins. Each team has already deployed their formations within their own territories. The Red Team adopts a spear-like, sharp offensive formation, while the Blue Team forms a shield-like, steadfast defensive line. In this clash of spear and shield, who will gain the upper hand?”

As Shen Jiewen narrated, the countdown reached zero.

Simultaneously, the timers on every participant’s control panel hit zero. Without hesitation, the Red Team surged forward. The Blue Team, unwilling to fall behind, aimed to wear down and annihilate the entire Red force, thus seeking direct engagement.

A lone Blue warrior charged fiercely, shouting loudly. His skin instantly gleamed with a metallic sheen, rapidly shifting to a silver-white hue. He had seemingly coated himself with a layer of metal from head to toe. When a student from the opposing side struck a punch to his abdomen, he neither dodged nor blocked, steadfastly absorbing the blow—yet emerged unscathed.

Clearly, this warrior possessed a skin-armored ability. Coupled with his formidable close-combat skills, his individual power made him a nearly unstoppable force plunging into enemy lines. Attacks rained down around him like gentle drizzle, barely grazing him. Meanwhile, his comrades seized the opportunity to strike down those fixated on him, careless of their own safety.

In an instant, this frontline skirmish tilted against the Red Team, trapped by the nearly abnormal resilience of this armored foe.

Yet at that moment, a figure burst forth from the Red formation. Unarmed, his face concealed behind a black mask with gilded patterns, his forearms wrapped in coils resembling ropes—likely his weapons, though he seemed unwilling to wield them just yet. This was Night Rain Cold Crow, known as Huo Ye.

Huo Ye swung a punch at the steel-clad man’s abdomen. The opponent still did not evade or block. To everyone’s surprise, Huo Ye’s strength was immense; the punch penetrated through the metal armor, as if aiming to shatter the man’s internal organs. Fortunately, the man’s innards were also reinforced—not as dramatically as his skin, but enough to withstand such monstrous force.

Yet Huo Ye did not relent. Failing with his first strike, he continued to hammer the same spot with relentless punches, each blow landing solidly. The steel man’s expression grew increasingly grim.

Realizing the danger, Blue Team members tried to intervene but were too late. Huo Ye’s final punch landed with devastating force, as if driving straight through the man’s entire body. The steel armor that had been his shield slowly fractured, then shattered completely.

The armored man clutched his belly and collapsed to his knees. The brutal assault left him nearly vomiting onto the ground.

With a light chuckle, Huo Ye said, “So you thought wearing iron skin made you invincible? The fact you can still move freely means the metal only covers your skin’s surface, leaving your muscles untouched. It’s just a thin layer. Metal fatigue is easy to induce on such a coating.”

Metal fatigue refers to the gradual accumulation of localized, permanent damage in a metal after repeated stress cycles, eventually causing cracks or sudden breaks. Even if the stress never exceeds the material’s strength limit or elastic limit, repeated load variations can still cause failure—this phenomenon is known as metal fatigue failure.

Simply put, gently bending a wire repeatedly will eventually cause it to snap, even if the force applied is much less than what would be required to break or cut it outright.

Huo Ye had precisely seen through the steel man’s ability and exploited metal fatigue to break his power. Ultimately, no matter how incredible an ability appears, the superpowered must still obey certain scientific principles; otherwise, organizations like HRI would have no reason to exist.

With Huo Ye’s intervention, this smaller battlefield’s dynamics instantly shifted. However, elsewhere, the Blue Team’s similar tactics granted them the upper hand, rapidly pushing the frontline toward the Red Team’s headquarters tower.

Huo Ye and Shangguan Yudie did not rush immediately to the enemy’s rear to assassinate Dai Hua’an. A decapitating strike required careful preparation; the battlefield had to be chaotic enough to obscure their movements, allowing them to operate unseen.

Shangguan Yudie was a pure assassin. When she unleashed her killing intent, it often meant a life was about to be extinguished. On the battlefield, her presence approached zero—this was not mere stealth but a result of her ability.

Psychic waves could not only sense but also adjust. By tuning her waves to synchronize with her target’s, Shangguan Yudie made herself indistinguishable from the target’s own existence on every sensory level, including the elusive sixth sense, enabling a deadly strike.

They continued to fight, searching for a chance…

Huo Ye and Shangguan Yudie moved among scattered skirmishes offering support, but the battles were too dispersed, and their response too slow. In previous calamities, the two could cover an entire 500-meter wall. Now, the Blue Team deliberately prevented swift assaults by spreading out the Red Team and then picking them off one by one through prearranged coordination.

Faced with such an expansive offensive net, the tide of attack and defense reversed; the Red Team’s space shrank bit by bit, their decline increasingly evident.

“We’re barely holding on!”

“What kind of coordination is this? Are they really just randomly matched?”

“We’ve already lost so many here!”

Screams of despair echoed over the comms. Sensing danger, Huo Ye formulated a plan—if the battlefield was too overwhelming, then strike at a point to break the whole!

Suddenly, Huo Ye flicked his arms. The Dragon Spike Rope tied to his forearms shot out like a living creature, aiming straight for a Blue Team member’s eyeball.

“Pfft!” The spearhead pierced the skull with ease, instantly killing the man. But that was not the end. The rope then retracted along the same path as if reversing a playback button, withdrawing from the victim’s eye socket. Once the spearhead left the body, the man’s form dissolved into a cloud of data and vanished.

Without any visible movement from Huo Ye’s wrist, the Dragon Spike Rope suddenly changed direction like a venomous snake targeting another throat to pierce.

The Chaotic Dragon Binding Rope was an ancient martial art technique requiring mastery of leverage and finesse, where one misstep could cause the flexible weapon to recoil and injure its wielder. But in the era of superpowers, the Huo family reformed it, merging traditional skills with abilities to create new martial arts.

After modification, the rope could be controlled like a living serpent by infusing it with superpower energy. This allowed for free manipulation of its trajectory, turning the moves into a unique form of ability technique—applying the principles of internal energy flow to manifest distinct power.

Though convenient, controlling the rope through abilities lacked the original martial art’s spirit. Chinese martial arts train the body externally—muscles, bones, and skin—and cultivate an internal breath. This internal breath refers to innate vital energy and spirit, essential to unlocking a technique’s true strength.

Furthermore, without mastering the weapon’s intrinsic properties—the way the rope twists and bends under various forces—one cannot claim basic proficiency. A towering building must be erected on a solid foundation; without it, future success is impossible.

These insights came from a hand-copied manual left by Huo Xialan. She seemed to have anticipated that Huo Ye lacked understanding of martial theory, so she meticulously annotated the text—exemplifying thorough care.

Because of her advice, Huo Ye initially trained in the fundamental, original version of the Chaotic Dragon Binding Rope technique rather than the ability-driven style.

Past battles were practice, but now he had to unleash his full strength without revealing his identity. So, for the moment, he set aside basics to showcase the Huo family’s secret art!

The serpentine dragon—

The Dragon Spike Ropes coiled around enemy after enemy. Holding one in each hand, Huo Ye bound over twenty foes into two chains. Then, spinning rapidly at the center, those caught felt as though caught in a hurricane, the world spinning wildly.

As everyone grew dizzy and unable to use their abilities, Huo Ye traced a large circle in the air with his arms. The chained enemies crashed to the ground in a long line, kicking up clouds of dust.