A blood-red tint surfaced over all nine rings of the Clear Sky Hammer. The same color covered Tang Hao's body and Martial Soul.
Wu Ling raised an eyebrow. "Oh, Ring Explosion? I remember you should be carrying hidden injuries. If you use Ring Explosion again, are you not afraid you will drop dead halfway through the fight?"
With only a little thought, Wu Ling understood Tang Hao's choice. Tang Hao truly wanted to kill him. He had actually used Ring Explosion, a secret technique that harmed the user heavily while harming the enemy.
Tang Hao ignored Wu Ling's verbal attack. His first four Spirit Rings, yellow, yellow, purple, and purple, exploded at the same time. Wu Ling finally became serious against this blow.
His right eye turned crimson. "A true hero kills with his eyes. Brahmastra: O Brahma, Cover the Earth!"
A laser carrying intense heat shot from Wu Ling's right eye and met the scarlet giant hammer. For a moment, all surrounding sound vanished. The earth split open, and the nearby plants were ground into powder. Then, with a vast flash of white light, a thunderous explosion erupted.
A short while later, flames and heat swept through the surrounding trees. The golden armor on Wu Ling blocked the aftershock. In the distance, Tang Hao was covered in blood. Hidden injuries across his body had burst open. If his body had been healthy when he used that attack, he absolutely would not have injured himself like this.
However, after the battle against Severin Cross all those years ago, Tang Hao had suffered repeated pursuit from Spirit Hall. Although he had fought and fled again and again, breaking through Spirit Hall's net, the prolonged delays had caused his injuries to settle into hidden wounds.
Together with the six years of decadence that followed, when he drowned himself in alcohol and let the injuries corrode his body, those hidden wounds had already become deeply rooted. He had sought specialized healing Spirit Masters before, but none of them could deal with such a complicated condition.
Those wounds had limited his progress to a great degree and left his cultivation stuck at level 95. At the same time, once he entered a high-intensity battle, his injuries could rebound exactly as they had just now. Still, for the current Tang Hao, everything was still within endurance.
Wu Ling spoke again. "Your body is almost collapsing, is it not? Can you still keep going, weak dog? A few exchanges and you already look like this."
Unlike Tang Hao, Wu Ling had endured several attacks capable of killing ordinary Titled Sages, yet his body still had almost no injuries.
Tang Hao answered, "You can try."
He did not know exactly what "weak dog" meant, but he could hear the mockery in Wu Ling's voice. Although Tang Hao was drenched in blood, his presence remained as domineering as ever. Only in his hands could the Clear Sky Hammer reveal its true might.
As for Tang San, because he came from Tang Sect, he was actually most suited to a Martial Soul like flying knives. Giving him the Blue Silver Emperor and Clear Sky Hammer was truly a waste of two top-tier Martial Souls. His compatibility with them was completely wrong.
For a Spirit Master and Martial Soul to release power beyond their limit, one key factor was compatibility. Put more plainly, a Martial Soul was easier to bring out when it suited the owner's personality.
For example, handing the Clear Sky Hammer to someone who thought about sneak attacks and assassinations all day was a genuine waste.
Tang Hao now fully displayed the personality truly suited to the Clear Sky Hammer: masculine, domineering, attacking without defending, advancing toward death, thinking only of direct collision and attack, and suppressing every opponent with absolute power.
By now, four of the nine Spirit Rings around Tang Hao had already shattered, turning into motes of Spirit Power and vanishing into the air.
This was the Clear Sky Sect's ultimate secret technique, the Great Sumeru Hammer's Ring Explosion. Through a special method, the user shattered their own Spirit Rings and temporarily erupted their Spirit Power to increase their own strength, unleashing power that shocked heaven and earth.
This secret technique could be called the peak of self-created Spirit Skills. Its creator was Tang Chen, the previous Clear Sky Sage who had brought the Clear Sky Sect to its greatest height, and its inheritor was the current Clear Sky Sage, Tang Hao.
Precisely because Tang Hao had inherited this secret technique and all the Clear Sky Sect's ultimate arts, he was qualified to inherit the name Clear Sky Sage.
"Huff, huff, huff..."
Tang Hao's breathing gradually grew heavier as his nerves stayed taut. He knew the condition of his own body. If he had not used the Great Sumeru Hammer, he could still have fought for a while. Now that he had even used Ring Explosion, he had little time left. If this dragged on, he would be dragged down by his hidden injuries before he could kill Wu Ling.
But before that happened, he had to kill Wu Ling. Even if he could not kill him, he had to leave him heavily wounded. Wu Ling was only a seventh-ring Spirit King now, yet he could already resist an attack that crushed ordinary Titled Sages and release a strike that matched Tang Hao after four exploded rings. If he became a Titled Sage in the future, his strength would be unimaginable.
More importantly, Tang Hao was a level 95 Titled Sage who had already used Ring Explosion, while his opponent was only a seventh-ring Spirit King. Tang Hao absolutely could not allow himself to gain nothing from this fight.
When cracks appeared over Tang Hao's fifth Spirit Ring, blood-red light flames surged again. This time, he moved even faster than before, and his power became even more violent.
Tang Hao's speed was as fast as lightning. In Wu Ling's eyes, this assault-type Spirit Master had already surpassed Ghost, a level 96 agility-type Titled Sage, in speed.
He moved at high speed to Wu Ling's front and smashed down with the hammer. Wu Ling blocked with the golden spear, but Tang Hao used the force of the collision to change position and attack again. Hammer after hammer fell like a blacksmith forging iron, each strike more terrifying than the last.
"The Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer Method? Do you think I will give you time to build momentum?"
Wu Ling saw through Tang Hao's technique. His other hand drew the axe-sword and smashed it against the Clear Sky Hammer from the opposite direction. Tang Hao's wildly building momentum stopped dead in midair, forcibly cut off by Wu Ling's counterblow.
A flush rose across Tang Hao's face. Rage, shock, and killing intent mixed together and filled his mind. With a fierce shout, the Clear Sky Hammer in his hand released a blood-red vortex. As the fifth Spirit Ring completely shattered, an unmatched explosive force directly annihilated the air in that spot.
A massive wave of energy surged into the sky and formed a huge pillar of blood-gold light, blasting Wu Ling backward. As he flew back, a thin line of blood flowed from his mouth.
Wu Ling imitated Karna and used flame to adjust his posture in the air. He wiped the blood from his mouth and thought, "As expected of the world's strongest assault-type Martial Soul. The current Tang Hao does not feel like a level 95 Titled Sage at all."
Generally speaking, even a pure strength-type Titled Sage could only unleash power one level above their peers at most. After level 96, every single level represented a different grade of power.
Yet Tang Hao, despite having only level 95 cultivation, had erupted with power that exceeded even level 97. Worse, he had done it while his whole body carried hidden injuries and while he had only exploded up to his fifth ring. That was truly frightening.
Of course, monsters like Tang Hao had only appeared twice across several centuries of the Clear Sky Sect, grandfather and grandson. Even the later Tang San had merely learned to use the technique. He could not bring out the Clear Sky Hammer's might like this at all.
Now, a ring of blood-red light flames circled Tang Hao. Ring Explosion meant temporarily erupting the power of a Spirit Ring and merging it fully into the body, using a special method to stimulate the user's abilities and raise their explosive force.
In this state, Tang Hao could not use Spirit Ring skills, but he could use the Clear Sky Sect's Great Sumeru Hammer and release physical power that approached the level of gods.