The opportunity Baishi was waiting for arrived almost immediately. Chen Chuan had, after all, been slightly snagged by the adhesive force on the spiritual visage's fist, making his initial burst a beat too slow. Meanwhile, Baishi had unleashed his speed to its utmost limit, closing the distance in the very next instant to secure the ideal striking range.
The arm he had been coiling snapped forward like a spring, spearing directly toward Chen Chuan's throat. In both angle and power generation, the strike was nothing short of perfection, releasing every ounce of force his body was meant to deliver at precisely the right moment, all while flawlessly maintaining his center of gravity and balance without a trace of waste or excess.
Had Chen Chuan been watching from a spectator's stand, he would have readily offered the blow the praise it deserved, for his opponent had truly pushed his capabilities to their absolute limit.
Facing such an assault, however, his response was exceedingly simple. Having tilted his torso slightly just moments before, his shoulder naturally carried his arm into motion. The hand that had previously risen to deflect the fist now whipped downward like a lash—executing the Whipping Hand of Orthodox Sanshou!
It was a move of ultimate simplicity: nothing more than an explosion of pure strength combined with blistering speed!
Baishi possessed keen eyesight and vast experience. In truth, he had already anticipated Chen Chuan's potential follow-up actions; especially after a side turn, there were only a handful of viable counters one could reasonably make. In combat, anticipating your opponent's move a step ahead granted greater room to maneuver, more initiative, and far more possibilities.
Yet the one thing he had never anticipated was just how fast this strike would be. It came so swiftly that he could barely react. Still, his experience and technique were genuinely formidable. The moment he sensed it, his body made an instinctive, timely adjustment: his other arm snapped up in a backhanded guard, the back of his hand shielding his face, positioning itself squarely in the path of the Whipping Hand.
Even as he made that defensive shift, his astonishing coordination and balance ensured that the hand spearing toward Chen Chuan never wavered in momentum or drifted off course by even a hair. It was an exhibition of sheer, exquisite control and technique.
Under normal circumstances, the moment Chen Chuan's whip hand came down, Baishi's fingertips would have pierced the other man's throat simultaneously.
Yet he had still misjudged his opponent's power and speed. The instant the blow clashed with his blocking hand, the fire of spirituality detonated. His palm could not begin to withstand that force. Chen Chuan's hand drove straight through his guard, smashing his own hand into his cheek. Not only did the bones of his hand shatter, but his face twisted and caved in, his lower jaw nearly torn clean off.
Because physical force relies on holistic bodily cohesion, his posture collapsed in an instant, rendering his own attack completely aborted. Having landed the whip strike, Chen Chuan did not pull back his momentum. Instead, his palm pressed forward, clamping down over Baishi's skull, dragging him bodily down from midair and slamming him into the ground below with a thunderous crash!
And because both bodies were still moving at high speed, Baishi's skull plowed a long, deep furrow across the earth!
Only after sliding over a hundred meters did Chen Chuan arrest his backward momentum, his feet still hovering faintly above the earth, his body locked in that downward-crushing posture.
Only then did the rolling thunder of the impact truly erupt. The earth trembled, and displaced air rolled outward in violent shockwaves carrying immense plumes of dust and grit.
Sensing something above, Chen Chuan shifted his gaze upward. A looming shadow descended as Baishi's spiritual visage threw another punch at him, the colossal fist expanding rapidly before his eyes.
Without the slightest urge to retreat, Chen Chuan met it head-on. His right fist punched directly into the titanic knuckle, their fires of spirituality erupting in bursts of light, before his left fist swung out to meet the visage's following fist. In an instant, the two traded over a dozen thunderous blows. With every collision, the spiritual visage shuddered violently, its colossal frame growing fainter and more translucent.
By the end, it had been reduced to something resembling a drifting mist of light, barely maintaining a rough outline, its spiritual radiance drained away completely.
Yet even at this point, the spiritual visage seemed unwilling to surrender. Maintaining its original punching cadence, it threw yet another blow toward him.
Seeing this, Chen Chuan turned slightly to gather his strength. Waiting until the fist was practically in front of his face, he suddenly drove a punch forward!
This time, he used no fire of spirituality. It was an exceedingly pure, simple punch!
Upon impact, the remnant spiritual visage shattered instantly, dissolving into wisps of vapor that dispersed in all directions. Yet the tremendous, condensed force of the punch remained unabated, propelling a shockwave of air that surged outward across the distance, roaring straight toward the hunting cavalry!
Several ordinary members of the hunting troop happened to be directly in its path. Before they could even register what was happening, the airborne fist force tore straight through them, blasting riders and horses alike into a shower of gore!
The leader of the hunting troop, being a martial artist, had instinctively wrenched his horse aside in a desperate leap the moment he sensed danger. His fire of spirituality flared up instantly to shield his whole body, narrowly evading the strike. Yet he failed to notice a faint flash of purple luminescence flickering through the air before vanishing.
His breathing was ragged, his gaze toward Chen Chuan filled with sheer terror. Truth be told, he had not been able to see what had just happened at all; he only knew that Master Baishi, upon whom he had placed such high hopes, had been struck down in a single exchange.
He was not the only one. The spectators on Great Shun's side saw it too. In what felt like the blink of an eye, Chen Chuan was left hovering alone in the open space, while the other man had completely vanished from sight.
Gui Zihan could not help tightening his grip on his sword, shock welling in his eyes. Though he hadn't been able to make out the precise details of the battle, his honed instincts allowed him to faintly sense what had just transpired.
It was an unadorned, pure crushing of the weak by the strong—an absolute, one-sided slaughter.
Chen Chuan looked down at his feet. Noah Baishi's presence had weakened to the point of being nearly undetectable, though faint wisps of platinum-colored luminescence could be seen seeping up from beneath the dirt.
In reality, the downward slam just now had shattered the man's skull, inflicting catastrophic damage on the brain tissue within. If one were to push aside the dirt right now, they would see that his head had mostly been reduced to a mangled pulp.
Yet the tenacious vitality of the Longevity View kept Baishi's consciousness intact, and since his life energy had hardly been depleted, the spiritual visage had continued attacking Chen Chuan under the impetus of his will.
Even now, though he lay on the brink of death, looking as if the flame of his life might gutter out at any moment, the mutated tissue within his body remained alive. Under normal circumstances, so long as the foreign fire of spirituality invading his body was purged in time, he could have recovered after a while—a process that might take less than an hour.
Yet that was under normal circumstances.
The platinum spiritual light clung tenaciously to his body, utterly impossible to dislodge, preventing the mutated tissue around his wounds from repairing itself. Worse still, another power had permeated the fire of spirituality—a strand of Pure Spiritual Light.
Once this spiritual light entered his body, it ceaselessly eroded the mutated tissue of his brain, treating it like kindling. As more and more mutated tissue melted away, the light grew increasingly brilliant, spreading swiftly through his entire body.
Stimulated by this onslaught, the mutated tissue throughout Baishi's body desperately overdrew his vitality to regenerate in a bid to save him. Even so, it could not keep pace with the rate of dissolution, let alone reconstruct the missing parts.
As more and more mutated tissue was consumed by the Pure Spiritual Light, the frantic struggles gradually subsided into stillness, until at last only faint wisps of luminescence drifted up from beneath the dirt.
The cavalry leader now knew something was terribly wrong. Caring for nothing else, he yanked on the reins, wheeled his mount around, and fled back the way he had come.
If not even a Secret Palace martial artist could survive a single clash, stepping forward himself would be sheer suicide. The surviving cavalrymen panicked and fled right behind him.
Chen Chuan touched down on the ground. Paying no heed to the fleeing riders, he stepped forward, picked up the Xuejun Saber, and walked toward the cavern behind him.
From the initial clash to the final resolution, the entire fight had lasted a mere seven or eight seconds—so astonishingly fast that no one had time to comprehend it before Master Baishi of the Mind Intent School was crushed to death on the spot.
This was an absolute disparity in strength and speed, against which all technique was useless. In truth, had Chen Chuan taken the initiative instead of Baishi striking first, Baishi wouldn't have even had the chance to attack.
As steady footsteps gradually receded into the distance, Chen Chuan's silhouette melted into the cavern's mist.
About ten minutes after his departure, faint ripples disturbed the air, and a vigorous, tall figure materialized in that spot.
The figure wore rust-colored external implants, a beak-shaped mask over his face, and wings folded against his back like a mantle.
Notably, behind the head of this external implant hung thick, jet-black braids, each writhing slightly as if endowed with a life of its own.
He approached the spot where Master Baishi had just been killed. A red glow shone from the eyeholes of his mask, and beneath his gaze, the dirt below seemed pushed aside by an invisible hand, parting in all directions.
Once the earth covering it was fully cleared away, a desiccated corpse clinging tightly to bone was revealed beneath.
Under the scan of his right eye, more than ninety percent of the mutated tissue on this corpse had vanished.
Most fighters relied on mutated tissue to possess their various abilities, formidable vitality, and combat prowess. Once all of that was gone, life naturally could not be sustained; even if one still clung to breath, it would be meaningless.
Searching through the database carried within his external implant, he quickly found an esoteric lore that matched this horrifying outcome.
Pure Spiritual Light.
A secret transmission of the Purist Faction!
He raised his head toward the mist-wreathed cavern ahead. Just as he was about to take a step forward, a voice spoke from behind him:
"If I were you, I wouldn't go in right now."
Chapter 1079