<h4>Chapter 297: Hundred Dragons Soaring</h4>


    Zhang Lie''s words rippled through the crowd.


    The team leaders, who had seemed embarrassed just a moment ago, steeled their faces and began circting their gic energy. Red, green, blue, yellow, and white circles appeared underneath their feet. Soulshards shed; gic armor materialized over their bodies, and the five team leaders seemed to morph into five deities.


    Unbelievably dense gic energy crushed the arena, forcing Zhang Lie to circte his own gic energy as well.


    "Not bad, not bad!" Zhang Lieughed, likewise materializing his gic armor. The crystalline armor was patterned with mysterious runic inscriptions, giving it a surprising sense of grace and beauty despite its lethal nature.


    As the armor condensed over Zhang Lie''s body, a wave of gic energy swept over the arena, and an ancient, frightening presence made itself known. In his crystalline armor, Zhang Lie seemed to have transformed into a ravenous, frightening lifeform, one the likes of which they had never seen before.


    If the lifeforms that they had faced in the past were like tigers in their prime, then Zhang Lie at present seemed like a tyrannosaurus rex.


    His gic energy took the form of the deep sea, boundless and violent. The floor of the arena seemed topress a few inches under his might. Under such immense pressure, even the five team leaders were shocked. None of them could have imagined that Zhang Lie, at full strength, could reach such vaunted heights.


    They didn''t dare let himunch the first attack. Cooperating, they struck first. "[Heaven''s Dance: Rampant Storm]!"


    The skies lost their color, and wheels of five-colored light shot toward Zhang Lie. The wheels of light looked like individual projectiles, but their trajectories were unusually harmonized. They simultaneously struck at Zhang Lie from all directions.


    "Very well—take this! [Fists of the Silent Sea: Hundred Dragons Soaring]!" Zhang Lie concentrated his gic energy around his right arm, then released it in one gigantic torrent. ck dragons shot out of his right arm, one after another, forming a horde a hundredrge that nketed the skies in darkness.


    The ck dragons smashed against the wheels of light. The five team leaders, working in unison, had a reserve of gic energy that went even beyond his own. The seven wheels of light immediately destroyed nine of the ck dragons, but while there were only seven wheels, the dragons kept pouring out of Zhang Lie''s arm; Zhang Lie would win by sheer numbers alone.


    "Just who is this crazy kid?" one of the team leaders murmured, gobsmacked by the sight of the dragons filling the air. They were five seniors fighting together against a junior, and they even imed the first attack—how was it that the tide of the battle had turned against them so quickly?


    "Don''t give up now! Exhaust all your gic energy. We''ll use the strongest attack of the formation!" Ye Tiang shouted, his face pale.


    Indeed, the team leaders knew that, unless they fought back with all their strength now, they could very well lose just from Zhang Lie''s first attack. In that case, how could they afford to call themselves special forces?


    "[Heaven''s Dance: Chaos Incarnate]!"


    The team leaders, who were standing at the points of a pentagon, suddenly began to shift their formation. As they did so, the five-colored gic energy melded into a rainbow-hued gic energy which gave Zhang Lie a sense of foreboding the moment he saw it.


    The five team leaders'' movement formed a gigantic hoop of rainbow energy, which whirred so quickly that space began to distort in the center of the hoop. As the team leaders moved faster and faster, rainbow-colored streams of gic energy whipped out of the hoop, causing any of the ck dragons they struck to dissipate immediately.


    The rainbow hoop shed again and again with the torrent of dragons spewing forth from Zhang Lie''s arm. The frightening gic fluctuations that resulted from such a sh caused the entire underground barracks to quake; regardless of who won, both parties had more than adequately disyed their strength from the magnitude of the blows that were being exchanged.


    Within dozens of seconds, Zhang Lie''s attack was fully repelled by the five team leaders, but they all began to frown. After all, if they were alone, none of them would be able to defend against Zhang Lie''s blow. The five of them working together had been barely enough to match Zhang Lie, and just countering his blow with this formation had sapped far more of their gic energy than did Zhang Lie''s attack.


    [Heaven''s Dance: Chaos Incarnate] was a peak-grade technique, and the expenditure of gic energy required to maintain it was simrly immense. Just activating it for those dozens of seconds had consumed almost a third of the team leaders'' gic energy, and it was only natural that they were starting to feel exhausted already.


    At this point, the five team leaders didn''t think they had any chance of victory—they just wanted not to lose too badly...