Zhao Qian looked toward the man, but hanging there, he no longer had the strength to speak. His lips moved, but only a hoarse rasp escaped, accompanied by seeping blood.
The man waved a dismissive hand. "All right, all right, save your breath. I get what you mean. Don't worry. Now that I'm here, whether you live or die, I'll see your commission through. At worst, I'll make sure your corpse gets delivered back."
Chen Chuan glanced at him. The man showed not the slightest intention of stopping him, making it obvious he had zero respect for his employer.
He didn't know what was going through the man's mind, but since the fellow had made it clear he intended to fight, Chen Chuan wasn't about to ignore him.
Chen Chuan withdrew his saber, letting Zhao Qian drop to the ground. Stepping forward, he grabbed Zhao Qian by the collar and dragged him toward the sedan.
The man simply remained perched on the guardrail, watching with keen interest.
After walking a short distance, Chen Chuan flicked the top of his foot upward, kicking the dropped two-handed sword into the air, and caught it in his hand. Arriving at the car, he tossed Zhao Qian onto the trunk lid, raised the sword, and thrust it down into his chest with a metallic clang, pinning him firmly in place.
Zhao Qian merely convulsed once, offering no further reaction.
He was so severely injured that he had virtually lost all mobility; there was no way he could pull the sword out on his own. However, third limit fighters possessed immense vitality, so he wouldn't die anytime soon.
Gripping the Xuejun Saber, Chen Chuan walked back to where he had been and faced the man.
"Oho."
The man looked at Chen Chuan, clacking the arm blades on his wrists together. "With no one to interrupt us, we can have some real fun. I hope you won't disappoint me. It wasn't easy making the trip out here. You know how it is—at our stage, it's hard to find a worthy opponent to fight to the death."
Chen Chuan looked at him. "How should I address you?"
"Toad Blade!" the man replied.
It was obviously just a codename, much like Youxing, but on the platform, such a name clearly carried far more value.
Chen Chuan raised his saber horizontally before his eyes and turned slightly sideways, a gleam of reflected light flashing across the blade. "Chen Chuan."
Lying atop the car, Zhao Qian struggled to turn his head to glare at Chen Chuan. In his mind, Chen Chuan must have taken medicine in advance. That might have worked against someone half-crippled like himself, but now Chen Chuan was facing a bona fide third limit fighter. Once the medicine wore off, his true level would be exposed.
*I can still live. I can make it back alive!*
Toad Blade spread his arm blades and slowly sank into a squat. The muscles in his thighs bulged and pulled taut, threatening to burst through his trousers. Reaching the peak of tension, he leaped—exploding off the guardrail in an instant, hurtling across more than twenty meters in a single bound.
Chen Chuan spun on the spot and drove his saber sharply upward. Toad Blade crossed both arm blades downward while arching his spine like a shrimp.
*Clang!*
The arm blades locked against the spine of the saber, bearing straight down with heavy jin that carried not only his entire body weight, but also the momentum of his hurtling leap.
Chen Chuan assessed the situation instantly: if his saber was forced down, his opponent could slide right along the blade's spine straight into him. What's more, that arched back seemed to be coiling power, bound to unleash it in a fierce, explosive burst.
Thus, he neither pulled back his saber nor changed techniques. Relying on his robust sinews and bones, he withstood the force directly. Stamping a foot down, he channeled power through his waist and abdomen, flicking the long saber slightly upward!
Feeling his power blocked from driving home, Toad Blade used the upward thrust to flip into the air. As he sailed over Chen Chuan's head, he even grinned down at him mid-flight.
Completing a somersault, he landed lightly on the ground on the other side. But he didn't hold still; the instant his feet touched down, he broke into a rapid sprint circling Chen Chuan. The twin blades extending from his arms trailed along the ground, sparks flying from their tips as he ran.
After training under Instructor Zheng over the past few days, Chen Chuan had developed a good grasp of various fighting styles. He immediately recognized that his opponent was searching for a rhythm; following his movements would only pull Chen Chuan into the man's pace.
Though circling like this cost more stamina, for fighters of their caliber, such expenditure was virtually negligible.
Instructor Zheng had told him never to mind another person's rhythm—he only needed to attack according to his own rhythm and his own intentions.
So he refused to be led along. Standing motionless, he held the hilt with both hands, saber raised high, carefully tuning his senses to every shift in his opponent's breathing and presence.
Seeing that Chen Chuan remained unmoved and utterly focused, Toad Blade gave up circling. After two laps, he lunged in fiercely from Chen Chuan's rear flank.
Sensing the approach, Chen Chuan instantly spun with a slash. But in that split second, he noticed something amiss and shifted mid-stroke to bring his saber across in a block. With a sharp clang, he parried a long, mutated tongue that had shot from Toad Blade's mouth—stopped barely a palm's breadth from his face.
Toad Blade seized that exact opening to burst inside the Xuejun Saber's reach, scissoring both arm blades toward Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan slid one hand forward from the hilt to grip the mid-rear section of the blade, parrying left and right to knock the incoming arm blades aside just in time, retreating as he did so.
Having seized the initiative, Toad Blade pressed his advantage, ramping up the tempo of his assault. His torso leaned forward, legs churning behind him as he kept both arm blades out front, raining down tight, rapid slashes and chops.
The advantage of dual weapons lay in alternating strikes—equally adept at offense and defense. Once past the outer guard, they were swift, fierce, and relentless.
Chen Chuan focused intently on deflecting the strikes, stepping back to create space and keep the man from staying glued to him, striving to turn the disadvantage around. As steel clashed against steel, a dense flurry of metallic clangs rang out across the road.
Fierce and rapid as the onslaught was, Chen Chuan's defense held firm. The fruits of his training with Instructor Zheng were fully on display: no matter how tricky the jin behind those arm blades or how swiftly the forms shifted, the two separate systems of mutated tissue within him alternated smoothly to absorb and neutralize each blow, keeping pace with every transition.
As long as his mutated tissue remained resilient enough, even if he failed to detect something immediately, he could swiftly adjust and shore up any opening once it appeared.
Furthermore, because his mutated tissue was so well-rounded, he still had portions lying completely dormant, waiting for the right moment.
Now, he calmly felt the force vibrating through his saber and the shifting flow of the opponent's jin. Even a third limit fighter had gaps between breaths—moments when their mutated tissue had to readjust. That transitional window was an opening.
Despite a relentless series of lunges and strikes, Toad Blade failed to breach Chen Chuan's steadfast guard. A few times it looked as though a blade would land, only to be parried by a hair's breadth. Through steady maneuvering and footwork, Chen Chuan was gradually prying open the distance between them.
Toad Blade was astonished by Chen Chuan's tenacity, but that only stoked his excitement. Following another ferocious lunge that forced Chen Chuan to parry with all his might, Toad Blade drew a sharp breath, his heart pumping blood with violent force to grant him even greater strength and speed.
Chen Chuan immediately sensed him coiling power.
*The opening!*
In that very instant, Chen Chuan mobilized the mutated tissue he had kept held in reserve. Deflecting one arm blade aside, he snapped his saber forward in a diagonal slash, cutting swiftly through the gap between Toad Blade's twin weapons!
One of Toad Blade's arm blades had just been batted away while the other was still coming around, but Chen Chuan's strike was faster—fast enough to cleave into the man's torso before the oncoming blade could pierce Chen Chuan's chest or abdomen.
Toad Blade recoiled in shock. Chen Chuan's sudden explosion completely shattered his rhythm, catching him right as he was adjusting and building momentum.
He had thought that after his initial flurry, he had seen through Chen Chuan's capabilities from top to bottom and that nothing could possibly go wrong. Yet something had gone wrong.
It was like hurling a basin of water, only to be forced to catch every drop before it hit the ground. Strained to the limit, he could only violently yank his mutated tissue back into a defensive posture. Yet doing so not only inflicted internal strain, but also ruined the fluidity of his movements.
Chen Chuan saw the unnatural contortion rippling through the man's body and limbs. He knew the feeling all too well; in the past, he had done the exact same thing relying on his own solid foundation.
The difference was that Chen Chuan had his Second Self as a safety net, allowing him to push himself without reserve when it counted most. Toad Blade possessed no such luxury; his breathing and the coordination of his mutated tissue were thrown completely into disarray.
Chen Chuan followed up immediately with a second strike. The aim wasn't to wound, but to cement his advantage while taking the chance to regulate his own breathing and mutated tissue.
By the time his third slash burst forth, the power throughout his body was fully engaged, his momentum surging. Yet this alone was not enough; if he failed to kill his opponent in one continuous surge and let him recover, the fight would devolve into a grueling back-and-forth.
The man across from him was, after all, superior in both experience and technique. A drawn-out engagement favored the opponent, so Chen Chuan had to seal victory right here, in this very sequence.
And so, he released his suppression over his mutated tissue. Countless turbulent emotions surged up instantly, but beneath his cold, steady will, they were transmuted into even greater power and blinding speed.
Toad Blade realized something was desperately wrong—Chen Chuan's rhythm and power had suddenly vaulted to an entirely different level.
This style of fast, heavy offense required no elaborate shifts in jin; simple, direct slashes were enough to force Toad Blade to exert every ounce of his strength. After merely seven or eight exchanges, he felt his mutated tissue struggling to absorb and dissipate the impacts.
If things continued without change, he knew he would inevitably be cut down. He immediately acted to save himself: keeping his upper body still, he engaged the mutated tissue in his legs, toes curling up, heels driving down, and surged backward in an instant, attempting to spring clear of their clash.
As long as he reached the outer ring, he could regroup and launch another offensive.
Yet the moment he launched himself, Chen Chuan's breathing turned scorchingly hot. Stepping forward, he seemed to leave an afterimage in his wake as his long saber cleaved downward from above. A flash of blade-light swept clean across Toad Blade.
Toad Blade froze instantly in place.
He wore blue-violet protective goggles that concealed his eyes, but Chen Chuan's reflection showed starkly across them. A moment later, a sharp crack sounded, and a fissure split the lens; shattered fragments popped out and clattered onto the pavement.
A line of blood appeared down the center of his face, starting between his brows and running straight down to his chest and abdomen. As the fissure widened, blood welled out uncontrollably. On the surface, the wound didn't seem catastrophic, but in truth, his skull had been split right down the middle halfway through his head.
Toad Blade dropped to one knee, then pitched forward, slamming heavily into the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.
Chen Chuan rolled his wrist, snapped the saber to flick off the blood, and looked at him with an apologetic expression. "My apologies. You were formidable—I couldn't afford to hold back."
Toad Blade twitched once, then fell utterly still.
Chapter 307