Wait, is everyone in the Skeleton Gang here? Who exactly is this kid? Scorching Blood Monarch cried out inwardly. He then called out to his men, "Retreat for now. We will settle this another time."

The group he had brought was enough to deal with Xiang Shaoyun and Earth Skeleton, but with Celestial Skeleton and the others present, they stood no chance. If he did not leave now and allowed Celestial Skeleton and the others to surround him, it would be too late.

"Stay if you have the guts. I will kill you all!" Celestial Skeleton shouted.

Scorching Blood Monarch and the others started fleeing even faster, but Celestial Skeleton's group did not bother giving chase. Rather, they converged around Xiang Shaoyun and guarded him as they returned to their headquarters.

The people in the area witnessed everything that had happened. None of them had expected that a tiny organization like the Skeleton Gang would be related to Xiang Shaoyun. After all, the Skeleton Gang had a terrible reputation while Xiang Shaoyun himself was a Super King who also looked like a proper gentleman. He shouldn't have any relationship with the likes of them.

Now that they saw him getting mixed up with those nasty criminals, they started wondering if Xiang Shaoyun was merely a hypocrite pretending to be a gentleman.

If Xiang Shaoyun knew what those people were thinking, he would probably cry out furiously, saying something like "I am a handsome, graceful, honest, and pure young man. How can I be a hypocrite? You must all be blind!"

With Celestial Skeleton, Earth Skeleton, and the others escorting him, Xiang Shaoyun quickly returned to the Skeleton Gang's headquarters. There, he immediately entered seclusion to recuperate from his injuries. The 10 battles had exhausted him in both body and mind. His energy exhaustion was rather large as well. 

After completing one major energy circulation and absorbing over 10,000 mid-grade spirit crystals, he found that his nine stars now had more energy within. He was also no longer an early third-stage King. Instead, he had advanced to the mid third-stage Skysoar Realm.

At the King Realm, a massive accumulation of energy was required for any advancement. Xiang Shaoyun had been in the third stage for about half a year, but he had been consolidating his foundations all this while. Today, his cultivation base had finally advanced yet again.

He had been advancing slowly not because he had a slow energy absorption rate but because he had nine stars within him that he had to simultaneously fill with energy. His energy requirement for any advancement was far higher than an ordinary King's. One should not overlook this slight growth in his cultivation base, as it had pushed his combat prowess to an even higher height.

Three days later, Xiang Shaoyun was back to his peak form. His injuries had more or less healed. He laughed and said, "Fighting is indeed the fastest way to grow. No wonder Devouring Ghost insisted I come here. But this is still not fast enough. I need to reach the fourth stage in two months. For now, I will meditate on the 10 battles I have just experienced. It will help me reduce the injuries I could possibly get when challenging the fifth arena." 

He utilized his gift of visualization and started replaying the 10 battles in his mind over and over again. What he did right, what he did wrong, he analyzed everything. He also studied the techniques used by the various races, preparing himself to better face their attacks if he were to encounter them again in the future. Through studying these techniques, even when encountering opponents with similar combat prowess to him, he would be able to better predict his opponents' attacks.

At this point, Xiang Shaoyun seemed to have a sort of inspiration. If he could predict his opponent's moves to counter their incoming attack, he would also be able to steal the initiative and kill them before they could attack. At that thought, he grew excited.

Accomplishing this would be equivalent to creating his very own battle technique, something completely new. Historically, every battle technique in existence was something created by a genius and eventually passed down to the later generations.

However, it was always difficult to achieve perfection when cultivating a technique created by someone else. Not even those high-grade battle techniques would let a cultivator fully unleash its true prowess. But if one was using a self-created battle technique, one would be able to use it as one wished, unleashing 100, or even 200, percent of that technique's prowess. That was the benefit of creating an original technique.

The seed of this new idea was thus sowed in Xiang Shaoyun's mind. After replaying the battles, summarizing his inefficiencies during the battles and studying the strengths and weaknesses of his opponents, he started considering ways in which he could start predicting their moves.

Anything related to prediction was extremely hard to cultivate. Even those godly divination techniques would only be able to give a slight glimpse of the future much earlier in advance. To predict the moves of an opponent in the midst of battle was almost impossible.

Xiang Shaoyun was simply courting trouble for himself for trying to accomplish it. However, he was a freakish genius, and he was not one to overestimate himself.

Through replaying the battles repeatedly and thinking back to all the battles he had experienced, he seemed to have caught on to something, "Before any opponent attacks in any shape or form...stabbing, hacking, and so on...there will be some minute clues one can observe on their body to determine what's coming. If I fight enough differing opponents, will I be able to get used to their habits and gain the ability to read the prelude of their attacks and counter them before they can even attack?"

He further expanded his train of thought and seemed to have understood something. However, his comprehension was not enough to create a brand new technique. It was merely a start of a new path he was treading. Perhaps when he had enough comprehension in the future, he would be able to finally create the technique.

...

The city hall was located at the center of Bloodsin City, not far from the Bloodsin Arenas. The building was an ancient, massive, extremely majestic castle. Strands of natural power of influence streamed out of the city hall, suppressing the entire city, granting the city hall an unshakable position in the city.

Presently, Zhang Sheng was respectfully presenting the recording crystal to a handsome middle-aged man seated on the throne in the main hall. The middle-aged man had a strict appearance capable of inviting reverence from anyone who laid eyes on him.

He was Tang Zhan, the governor of Bloodsin City. After becoming a Sovereign 2,000 years ago, he had fought 108 battles and had never been defeated. He had even managed to penetrate the fifth layer of the Devil Domain, entering and leaving seven times. He had contributed greatly to the surface world, and he was now known as Unrivaled Tang.

He was no longer a Sovereign. He had surpassed that realm. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to head one of the most powerful organizations in the Bloodsin City, standing toe to toe against the other organizations.

He stared deeply at the recording crystal. A look of astonishment surfaced briefly in his eyes as he said, "Have you investigated this child's background?"

"His name is Xiang Shaoyun, around 18 years old this year. He arrived at the city not long ago, and he has three Emperor followers. I don't know how he suddenly became an honored guest of the Skeleton Gang," said Zhang Sheng.

"Um. Send some people to watch over him. Keep him safe. I will personally meet him after leaving the Devil Domain," said Tang Zhan before he slowly vanished.