On either side of the main thoroughfare, quite a few people watched the fight from the tall buildings. Moments earlier, they had seen Puppet and the Ackerman brothers closing in on each other.
Yet in the blink of an eye, the two brothers were suddenly standing where they had started, followed by a deafening, dizzying boom.
Immediately after, a blast of air sweeping dense clouds of dust rolled across the street toward both sides, mingled with the shattering of windowpanes. Even up where the spectators stood, an updraft seemed to rise against them, drawing gasps of shock.
Having sent Puppet flying with a single blow, the younger brother, Gau, did not pursue immediately. He had put tremendous force into the strike, yet it felt as though it hadn't achieved the intended effect.
That the two brothers had survived this long was due not just to their strength, but to their prudence. Furthermore, their greatest power came from working in tandem, so whenever possible, he would never charge ahead alone.
Once Josh steadied his footing, he rotated his shoulder—which had nearly dislocated moments before—and turned back to face forward with a grim expression.
Throughout his long history of combat, he had certainly met opponents stronger than himself. But this time, it was not merely immense strength—the opponent's application of jin was exceptionally sophisticated as well. Otherwise, he never would have suffered a disadvantage right from the start.
Just then, a flare of light flashed ahead. They saw Puppet emerge in front of the smashed building, cloaked from head to toe in brilliant, blazing golden spiritual fire.
Gau deliberately checked the spot his hammers had struck. Sure enough, there wasn't a scratch; the spiritual fire alone had parried his blow.
The two exchanged an imperceptible glance. Both realized that this adversary was not only remarkably powerful but also extraordinarily tough. Only a concentrated, truly solid strike would stand a chance of piercing that defense.
Josh gripped the axe handle with his other hand, shifting to a two-handed hold. If one hand wasn't enough, he would swing with two, enhancing his frontal breakthrough power.
Gau brought his two hammers face-to-face; with a twist of the heads, they clicked together to form a single two-headed hammer, which he gripped with both hands as well.
This followed the same logic: his earlier strike had failed to breach the outer barrier because the force had been divided between two weapons. Only by focusing on a single point could he guarantee enough lethality.
Once ready, Josh let out a roar. Expanding his chest to project the bellow, the shockwave shattered surrounding car windows and glassware. Bystanders felt their ears buzz violently; some bled from their ears and dropped to their knees in agony, while others stiffened suddenly and plunged straight down from the tall buildings.
Only a few figures clad in protective suits and hoods watched with blank expressions. These were personnel from the Operations Directorate, monitoring the battle closely to relay an accurate report back.
Amid the roar, Josh charged again as before, swinging his axe in a wide arc on a diagonal slash. Gau trailed half a pace behind.
Their coordination typically involved one pressing from the front while the other flanked. Once their assault commenced, they gave no one room to breathe.
Though Puppet favored head-on clashes, that did not mean he lacked finesse—especially against coordinated tactics. Against a single opponent, an overwhelming burst of power might suffice, but facing two compelled him to employ tactical skill.
Even though neither brother might match him individually, if he failed to break their encirclement, the interference from his internal balance point could see him brought down in just an exchange or two, closing off any chance of victory.
Thus, he sidestepped. He possessed not just immense strength but blazing speed, and the angle of his sidestep neatly used Josh's body to block Gau on the other side.
Yet at that very instant, Josh used the momentum of his swing to spin on his heel, turning his back and clearing the path. The stocky Gau darted out almost skimming the pavement, sweeping his hammer horizontally toward Puppet's ankles.
Puppet leapt. With a sharp whoosh, the explosive force tore through the air. But no sooner had his feet touched the ground—
—than Josh circled back around to the front. He had clearly used some bursting technique, his speed surging abruptly as he swung the axe upward in mid-pivot and brought it crashing down, cloaked in spiritual fire!
This blow was both ferocious and swift. With the balance point interfering once again, Puppet had to make a slight adjustment, leaving him no time to dodge. He parried directly with his cane. At the moment of impact, both froze for a fraction of a second.
Gau seized the opening, flicking his hammer upward toward Puppet's cane-bearing arm. Puppet flipped his elbow up, deflecting the hammer outward with a mere twist of his wrist, but Josh was already cleaving downward with another fully charged axe strike.
The brothers linked their attacks with virtually no gap. Unable to recover his cane in time, Puppet had no choice but to retreat. The moment he stepped back, Gau stuck close, swinging his hammer backhanded toward Puppet's knee.
Facing this combination, Puppet might ordinarily have tanked a hit to force an opening. But the balance point within him was shifting erratically under the intense strain, forcing him not only to hold back from an all-out burst, but to slow his rhythm instead.
He could only dodge again. Shifting his footwork, he shot back over a hundred meters in a blur, the scenery on either side flashing past.
Like hounds refusing to release their grip once sunk into prey, the Ackerman brothers pressed in relentlessly.
When Puppet landed, he met another flurry of strikes. The two alternated their attacks like interlocking cogs of different sizes—seamlessly meshed, each driving the other forward.
After pressing the assault for a time, the Ackerman brothers could clearly tell that Puppet's defense was impeccable. More importantly, he was extraordinarily fast, managing to evade every burst they threw at him.
And yet, there seemed to be a defect or an unhealed injury in him. At certain critical junctures, his breathing would falter, causing him to miss golden opportunities.
Nor was this disruption entirely random. Through careful observation, they realized it consistently followed violent collisions. That meant they could step up their offensive at the exact moment his rhythm faltered.
After trading several more blows, the opportunity they awaited presented itself. Gau expended an explosive secret technique to force a direct clash with Puppet, and sure enough, the latter's aura hitched almost imperceptibly.
Josh seized the chance instantly. Muscles bulging along both arms, face contorted, he swung his axe down in a blaze of violent flame, clearly unleashing an explosive burst of jin.
At this pivotal moment, Puppet's eyes remained completely calm. Heavy clashes indeed threw his balance off, but not every single time. Aware of his own condition, why would he leave it so exposed without turning it to his advantage? This opening was, in truth, a trap he had laid for them.
He raised his cane on an upward slant to block, seemingly failing to hold the weight as if his power faltered. The axe forced his arm back toward his chest. But just as it was about to touch him, the mutated tissue across his body trembled, and he swept his arm outward—catapulting the axe back!
For this strike, he had first applied drawing-down jin to store the incoming force, before releasing it in an explosive surge, like a taut bow suddenly springing loose.
With a resounding crash, Josh was hurled far into the distance. But Gau seized this exact moment, slamming a hammer hard into Puppet's leg.
Having committed most of his power to dealing with Josh, the protective spiritual fire elsewhere was relatively thin. The explosive hammer blow shattered one of Puppet's legs. Yet Puppet leveraged that split-second cushion to snap his free hand down with blinding speed, clamping onto Gau's shoulder.
Gau had likewise channeled nearly all his power into that strike. As his shoulder was seized, a numbing shock coursed through him, and his spiritual fire instantly guttered out—Puppet had unleashed seizing jin.
On the other side, the moment Josh was knocked airborne, he knew something was wrong. Still in midair, he forcefully stabilized his body using his spiritual fire, torqued his waist, spun several times in midair using his core as an axis, and let go with both hands—
He hurled the axe whipping toward Puppet. Behind this throw lay not only his own strength, but the momentum Puppet had imparted into him as well.
Puppet watched the axe hurtling toward him like a mass of blazing fire. At this critical juncture, the balance point within him shifted once more.
Virtually all of his spiritual fire was currently committed to pinning Gau down. Dodging was practically impossible, and he could not even shield himself. The axe might pierce straight through his torso. Even if he could regenerate from such a wound, he would never be able to withstand the subsequent onslaught of the two brothers.
In this brush with death, the extreme peril focused his spirit as never before. In an instinct for self-preservation, the mutated tissue throughout his body surged to its utmost limit in an instant, unifying completely. This prompted even greater spiritual force to draw energy into his body—and within it, that once-faint trace of purple qi rose up like a blaze.
The next moment, the flaming axe slammed into Puppet's chest with a deafening boom, blasting him dozens of meters backward. Half the axe blade bit deep into his chest, yet it failed to pierce entirely through.
At the final threshold, that wisp of purple qi had generated a thread of spiritual fire within his body, halting the axe in its tracks.
Generating spiritual fire from within one's body was a feat usually achieved only by martial artists of the Longevity View. Furthermore, he had not devoted all of it to defense; he had even diverted a portion to stabilize the balance point.
Under the intense catalyst of the moment, he seemed to have grasped something—a sensation beyond words, like a tray supporting a rolling jade bead spinning of its own accord; no matter how it rotated, it remained in a state of dynamic balance.
Having entered this miraculous state, the balance between body and spirit was no longer an obstacle. Balancing on one leg, he kept his grip clamped on Gau's shoulder and unleashed grappling jin, hoisting Gau into the air before slamming him violently into the ground!
With a thunderous crash, a massive crater tore open in the pavement, the surrounding bricks and soil churning outward like rolling waves.
Stripped of his spiritual fire's defense under the grip of grappling jin, Gau had every bone in his body shattered by the impact, collapsing into the crater like a heap of soft mud.
Chapter 1268