Chapter 408: The New Sun God Gem Shard Holder
Just as Iori Yagami was targeted by a sniper, Kyo Kusanagi naturally couldn't escape the cat's claws.
As Nero Cat had previously evaluated, Cat Princess's performance was top-notch among the Twenty-Seven Ancestor Cats. Her combat moves were full of surprises, delivering a huge impact to many fighters accustomed to battling humans. Almost no one could gain an advantage over Cat Princess in their first encounter.
Although Cheng Tian managed to do so, it didn't mean Kyo Kusanagi could as well.
Because he had been engrossed in defending the arena, Kyo Kusanagi never found time to leave the stage and watch battles on other channels. However, even if he had watched, experiencing it through a screen was completely different from experiencing it firsthand.
True Ancestor Ray, Six-Part Rocket Punch, Cat Spirit Rampage, Super Meow King Movie Bomb, Super Electromagnetic Secret Art Hundred-Strike Cat Palm… A series of new moves that hadn't been showcased against the more unpredictable Cheng Tian forced Kyo Kusanagi to take a beating.
"Where did this strange thing come from!?"
Relying on his tried-and-true "124 Shiki: Aragami," which carried the Kusanagi flame, had extremely high resistance to strikes, and could break through many moves and even flying projectiles, Kusanagi adopted a rare defensive counter-attack stance against Cat Princess's fierce offense.
After all, being teammates with a top judo master like Goro Daimon meant that many aspects of martial arts were interconnected. Some judo-related defensive techniques learned during team sparring sessions now came in handy.
Neither Goro Daimon nor Benimaru Nikaido had seen Kyo Kusanagi like this in a year. The last time he was pressured and beaten was during the King of Fighters '96 tournament, when he was pummeled by Goenitz, the 'Herald of the Storm,' a servant of Orochi.
"Where's your Kusanagi Sword? Where are you hiding it? Let me see, meow!"
Cat Princess had always been thinking about the "Kusanagi Sword," one of the Three Sacred Treasures mentioned by Cheng Tian. After a clearly temperature-controlled output, she directly shouted.
However, Cheng Tian was also mischievous. The topic he used to attract Cat Princess's attention was indeed the Three Sacred Treasures, but he brought it up with a special focus on "storage method" —
Cheng Tian spread a rumor that the Kusanagi Sword, one of the Three Sacred Treasures, was hidden in Kyo Kusanagi's belly button… The existence of the Kusanagi Sword was quite subtle; it was both an embodiment of the Kusanagi family's bloodline inheritance and also had a physical existence. Although Cheng Tian's rumor was absurd, to Cat Princess, who could pull out all sorts of things from her backside, she didn't find anything wrong with it.
Hearing Cat Princess's targeted remark, Kyo Kusanagi's expression visibly changed.
But just as he was about to say something, a soaring purple flame completely drew his attention.
"It's Iori's flame!"
"He really came! It's impossible for him not to come!"
"But who could force him to use flames of such a scale?"
Kyo Kusanagi, who had been dominating weaker opponents in the arena and finally encountered a formidable opponent who turned out to be non-human, making it impossible to treat her as a conventional opponent, suddenly had the idea of skipping out.
"Benimaru Nikaido! Goro Daimon!"
Kyo Kusanagi, who had been defending the arena alone since the start, finally spoke to his teammates.
Almost simultaneously, Kyo Kusanagi brought his fists together in front of him.
The moment his fists clashed, Kyo Kusanagi's body erupted with a dazzling and magnificent light, mixed with crimson flames!
It was as if the sun itself was shining directly into people's eyes!
"Meow-ya!!!!!!"
Blinded by this unexpected strong light, Cat Princess's eyes immediately turned stark white, and she instantly fell from mid-air, covering her eyes and starting to roll around on the ground.
Not only Cat Princess herself, but all the onlookers and preliminary contestants who were directly looking at Kusanagi, as well as the audience on the TV screens, were assaulted by the strong light, and their screams directly merged into a continuous wail.
However, Benimaru Nikaido and Goro Daimon, as teammates, seemed to have had prior experience. Upon hearing Kyo Kusanagi address them by their full names, similar to a safety word, they had already deliberately closed their eyes and lowered their heads, thus minimizing the impact.
And naturally, Comrade Irene, who was mingling in the crowd, was also flashed.
But unlike those around her, the moment Irene was flashed, her mind immediately recalled some of the ability talents and item equipment effects that Cheng Tian had once shared with her. She instantly linked this indiscriminate blinding strong light to Cheng Tian's Sun Fist and Sun Mask.
And as a Windwalker, a branch of the archer profession, with super strong eyesight, Irene, while her eyes were tearing up from being flashed, also directly imprinted the scene of Kyo Kusanagi unleashing the strong light into her mind.
On the gauntlets Kyo Kusanagi wore, there were Kusanagi family's iconic sun markings. Irene clearly captured that in the center of those two sun markings, there was a red gem, each very similar in shape and size!
That color was exactly the same as the one embedded on the forehead of the Sun Mask!
Now was clearly not the time to collect blood.
Irene, whose eyes were still a blur of white, immediately made a decision. She instantly pulled out a flip phone provided by the authorities from the bag at her waist, which could be used to contact teammates or the organizers at any time. Then, she blindly dialed Cheng Tian's number.
"I found the gem shards!"
Irene, who went straight to the point the moment the call connected, startled Cheng Tian, who was also attracted by the erupting purple flames. It took him a few seconds for his mind to immediately connect to the biggest possibility.
"Is it Kyo Kusanagi?"
"Yes! He threw a Sun Fist in broad daylight, and now he might have disappeared to who knows where!"
Although she didn't know how Cheng Tian guessed it, Irene still provided the crucial information immediately.
"I probably know where he'll go… Are you safe now?"
"The wind can temporarily replace my eyes, and—"
"And?"
"I feel like his Sun Fist isn't as pure as yours; this mass blinding effect probably won't last too long."
"Okay, be careful. Contact me anytime if there's a problem."
"OK~"
Cheng Tian, after hanging up the phone, immediately set off. Amidst the exclamations of passersby, he leaped up and began to dart across the rooftops of tall and short buildings, heading directly for the location where Iori's purple flames erupted.
However, at this moment, a question also arose in Cheng Tian's mind.
He had seen Kyo Kusanagi at the previous seed team gathering, but at that time, there wasn't that intense mutual desire to compete and plunder between himself and Kyo Kusanagi, which he had felt when he first met Prince Allen.
But no matter what, he was determined to get this Sun God Gem Shard!