Chen Chuan could tell that although Youxing's breathing was fairly steady, it was slightly uneven. For a fighter, such a tell indicated that his injuries were more severe than they appeared, and his internal mutated tissue had likely suffered damage as well.
Based on his experience, he could deduce that the injury had occurred within the last half hour at most. Yet there were no signs of a struggle here. Unless the man had a penchant for self-mutilation, it was almost certainly connected to the urban legend.
It seemed his own successful resistance had caused this trouble for the man.
Next, however, he could help relieve him of it all.
Looking at the staff aimed at him, Chen Chuan planted the sheathed Xuejun Saber into the ground, gripped the hilt, and strode forward, slowly drawing the blade with a rasp of friction.
Youxing didn't wait for him to fully unsheathe the blade. Kicking off with his supporting leg, his body surged forward. Driven by his rear hand, the staff thrust ahead, its tip darting straight toward Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan guided his blade across in a horizontal block. With a sharp clang, he instantly felt a fierce force shove against him. What was more, the jin carried within it stacked in layered waves—first surging down the blade, then seeping up his sword arm and into his body, leaving him feeling pinned in place and unable to mobilize himself.
Had he not previously mastered force-dispelling techniques and instinctively used his mutated tissue to dissipate the impact, the saber might have been knocked from his grip with that single strike without the aid of his Second Self.
A technical opponent?
He could not help recalling what Instructor Zheng had said: this was the type of opponent he hated most, and if you ever ran into one, you had to beat them to death as quickly as possible.
Youxing held the tail of the staff with one hand, maintaining a rock-steady forward thrust posture. In a raspy voice, he said, "So you really did take drugs."
That strike had only been a probe. If the kid hadn't taken drugs, a fighter below the third limit couldn't possibly have kept up with his movement just now and would have been speared to death in a single thrust.
Although the effects of such stimulants rarely lasted long and it seemed he could easily take him down with minimal effort once they wore off, he didn't dare stall right now.
Since the other party had come alone, he had surely prepared. Perhaps reinforcements would follow shortly behind him. Furthermore, this hideout was clearly compromised. He needed to kill him as quickly as possible so he could make a swift retreat.
Chen Chuan stared ahead. While Instructor Zheng's advice was sound, he lacked Instructor Zheng's level of finesse. Besides, this was a rare opponent; he had to use this man to hone his saber technique no matter what.
Previously, the heightened state granted by overlapping with his Second Self had carried a strict time limit. Now, however, his physical body could reach this state on its own, while his Second Self could absorb all manner of harm, so there was no need to rush for a quick resolution.
After all, a good sparring partner was hard to come by.
Applying a slight force with his hand, the Xuejun Saber was fully drawn with a crisp chime. He slowly raised the blade, leveling it forward.
Across the intervening space, the tips of the two weapons crept toward each other. Both men held their stances, maintaining even, measured breaths. At the exact instant the two weapons were about to touch, both moved in unison!
The two weapons clashed with a sharp clang. On Youxing's side, the moment he deflected the blade with his staff, the tip of the shaft tilted slightly outward.
Without moving his upper arms, he merely sank his center of gravity and lifted it back up, twisting his wrists simultaneously. A spiral jin was coaxed up from below, converging in layered waves before transferring into the staff.
In that instant, the staff that had bowed slightly outward snapped rigid. Taking another half-step and thrusting forward, all his force swiftly gathered at the head of the staff, stabbing once more toward Chen Chuan's head.
Chen Chuan dissipated the concussive jin that had seeped into his blade during the collision and raised the saber, placing it directly along the staff's trajectory. Although he managed to parry the staff aside, the force behind it made the blade vibrate violently. Minute threads of force continuously drilled into his body, leaving a stinging, numb sensation even as he tried to neutralize them.
The thrusting tip of the staff punctured the curtain of rain, exposed to the drifting downpour behind it. The raindrops there burst outward as if exploding, a testament to the sheer ferocity of the strike.
With another flick of his rear hand, Youxing shifted from a thrust to a horizontal sweep. Chen Chuan ducked to evade. He had intended to step inside with a slash, but seeing signs that the staff was sweeping back on a return arc, he took another step back. A gust of wind rushed past the front of his cheek with a dull whoosh, whipping the tips of the hair across his forehead.
By now he was pressed against the curtain of rain, so he simply took several large steps back, retreating onto the open ground beyond the eaves.
Youxing pursued him as if marching to a beat, consistently keeping just enough distance for the tip of his staff to reach Chen Chuan. Stepping through the doorway with rapid strides, his staff swept in a diagonal downward chop. Taking advantage of the narrow doorway that impeded Youxing's swings, Chen Chuan seized the initiative with a forward leap, parrying the staff aside with his blade in an attempt to breach the inner circle and unleash his saber forms.
Yet the moment their jin clashed, the staff gave a shudder. It neutralized the incoming force while sticking downward, instantly pinning Chen Chuan's raised blade. It carried a sticky, adhering jin that Chen Chuan could not immediately shed. Caught by the staff, the saber was twirled twice before the staff snapped outward with a sudden flick.
Originally, after building momentum with those two maneuvers, the release of jin would have disarmed the saber and yanked the opponent off balance. However, Youxing's mutated tissue was damaged, preventing him from exerting full force, so he failed to deliver the complete surge.
Chen Chuan felt a tremendous force transmit into his hands, as if someone had grabbed the blade and yanked it sideways with all their might. Planting his rear foot, he dropped his center of gravity. His two sets of mutated tissue simultaneously exerted a grounding downward force, firmly holding onto the saber while keeping his body completely rock-steady.
Only now did the mist sprayed by that initial staff thrust finish dispersing through the air. Chilled droplets, carried by a gust of wind, spattered across both men, while surrounding branches and the curtain of rain swayed in unison.
His strike spent, Youxing pulled his staff back with both hands to catch his breath.
Chen Chuan ripped off his outer duster, revealing the casual black attire beneath. As raindrops fell against him, faint wisps of white vapor rose from his body, glowing under the light by the doorway as if he were wrapped in a halo of white radiance.
Reversing his grip to hold the blade, one hand supporting the saber's spine, he gazed intently ahead. This was precisely the kind of opponent he had hoped for; through real combat, he could grasp and comprehend so much more.
Youxing fixed bloodshot eyes upon him. With an urban legend breathing down his neck, he wanted nothing more than to end the fight quickly and resolve the looming crisis. After a brief recalibration, without wasting words, he charged forward several steps, shifted his grip, tucked the staff behind his back, and spun violently. Harnessing the centrifugal rotational jin, he whipped the staff out; the rain before him seemed sliced open like a blade, creating a semicircular shockwave.
Chen Chuan stepped back to avoid it. Seeing the wide reach of Youxing's technique, he immediately positioned his saber to seal off that flank as the staff swung aside, then lunged forward with a bounding stride. The paving stones beneath his feet shattered with a boom. Before the flying fragments around him even touched the ground, he swept forward, carrying them along in his charge.
Yet Youxing laid his front hand along the shaft and levered it down using his rear hand as a fulcrum. The deliberately exposed rear end of the staff popped upward, striking the front of the blade with pinpoint accuracy. Deflecting the saber, his front hand pressed down again, rolling the staff along its momentum to come crashing down upon Chen Chuan.
Guided by Youxing's deft leverage, Chen Chuan's blade was forced upward, leaving him wide open. Yet instead of fighting to suppress it, he rode the momentum and raised his hands. In the face of the incoming blow, he advanced another step and jerked the hilt upward, meeting the falling staff with a resonant clang.
The instant they clashed, a heavy force poured down from the staff, shattering a wide patch of ground beneath his feet and nearly burying his ankles.
He did not rely entirely on his mutated tissue to absorb this strike. While he would have done so during practice, right now he chose to bear it with his muscles and bones, keeping his mutated tissue fully primed and ready for deployment.
He could not match his foe in skill, but he could overpower him with pure brute force. This hard parry was precisely the opportunity he had been waiting for. Drawing a breath, he engaged every piece of mutated tissue throughout his body, unleashing an overwhelming surge of jin where the saber and staff met.
Youxing immediately felt the shift in jin. Normally, he could have dispersed it smoothly, but his damaged mutated tissue prevented such swift, subtle adjustments. The staff was battered upward, and the sheer power carried by the blow forced him back two paces.
Having seized the opening, Chen Chuan would never let it slip. Bringing the already raised saber down in a savage chop, he cleaved toward the man. As Youxing stumbled backward, he spun the staff in both hands and raised it horizontally to block.
Clang! The downward jin bore down heavily. Youxing's knees buckled, and his footing sank—not only crushing through the flooring, but driving his ankles into the mud below, as though he had been hammered into the earth.
He instantly knew things had gone terribly wrong; without his body's momentum behind them, the power of his staff techniques would be cut by more than half.
Chen Chuan wanted nothing more than to force him into a head-on contest of strength. With Youxing pinned in place, Chen Chuan immediately locked into the rhythm of his training drills.
Pressing downward with the momentum, Chen Chuan dragged the blade back, snapped his wrists, and slashed upward in a reverse sweep. Youxing's eyes narrowed. Gripping the staff with both hands, he shoved violently to the side, intending to deflect the saber and use the leverage to push himself free. Yet the force coming from the blade felt as light as a feather, completely devoid of the crushing jin from before.
Because Youxing also possessed the skill to apportion and mobilize mutated tissue, this misjudgment wasn't enough to make him overextend his jin. Still, his internal injuries shattered any hope of breaking free. Chen Chuan transitioned his momentum seamlessly into another downward slash, forcing him to raise the staff once more in defense.
Chen Chuan unleashed more than a dozen slashes in rapid succession. Although pinned and unable to move, Youxing parried each one by a hairsbreadth, relying on his rock-solid fundamentals to avoid mistakes or defensive lapses.
Because their exchanges were blazingly fast and their ferocious power stirred howling currents of air, the rain blowing in was scattered before it could touch them. Even the flying splinters of brick and wood were blasted away. Overhead, the lamp swayed violently, as though an expanding vortex centered on the two men had formed.
Yet Youxing had reached his absolute limit. Robbed of mobility, many of his techniques were impossible to execute. Meanwhile, the power behind Chen Chuan's strikes was brutal and unrelenting. Even though Youxing dissipated a fraction of each impact with his mutated tissue, every clash drove him deeper into the earth, until the mud nearly reached his calves.
Moreover, having lost the initiative, his damaged mutated tissue had no chance to catch its breath and recover. When the twenty-first strike came crashing down, his strength gave way. The staff was knocked out of one hand and swung wide, leaving his chest completely unguarded. Then came a flash of cold light—and by the time his vision cleared, the long blade had already pierced through his heart.
He looked up into Chen Chuan's calm eyes. Knowing full well what was to follow, sheer terror surfaced in his gaze. "Wait... wait, I—"
Chen Chuan said apologetically, "Pardon the intrusion. Have a safe journey."
Placing his other hand on the spine of the blade, Chen Chuan stepped back, cleanly withdrew the saber, spun around with a sweeping arc, and whipped the edge around from behind. With a wet slice, Youxing's head flew through the air, rolling across the ground until it bumped against the civet stone carving, bounced back slightly, and finally came to rest.
Chapter 290