Inside the bus, Teacher Bai wore a grave expression. Noticing that Wei Wusheng was deliberately moving in their direction, he reached up and loosened his collar.
Apprehending Wei Wusheng was not his responsibility, and he had no desire to interfere. But for Wei Wusheng to approach like this—did the man hold him in such little regard?
Just then, he sensed something and looked outside. Atop a streetlight stood a man with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, exuding an air of unruly thuggery. Meeting Teacher Bai's eyes, the man smiled faintly, then vanished without a trace.
Teacher Bai's gaze narrowed. Clearly, this was yet another...
Under these circumstances, he could not act rashly. He immediately addressed the trainees inside the bus. "This bus has been retrofitted. Everyone stay inside, within my line of sight."
Meanwhile, the rolling path of destruction approached the vehicle. Just when it was roughly ten meters away, a thunderous boom erupted. Accompanied by an expanding ring of dust and the sharp clatter of saber clashing against hammer, the violent momentum was brought to an abrupt halt.
As the dust gradually spread and settled, two figures became clearly visible. Chen Chuan and Wei Wusheng stood facing each other, the Xuejun Saber and the hammer face locked together in a contest of strength.
Moments later, the contact point between hammer and blade let out the screech of grinding metal, followed by a slight tremor. Driven by the opposing forces, both men shoved off simultaneously and sprang backward, each taking several more paces upon landing to shed the residual momentum.
Though it appeared to be an ordinary separation to open distance, the tremendous force and velocity propelled both of them seventeen or eighteen meters apart in a single bound.
At that very moment, a harsh groaning creak sounded from the spot they had just traversed. The upper half of a box truck slid slowly downward and crashed onto the pavement with a loud thud, revealing a smooth, clean cross-section along the cut.
Further behind, a passenger bus with two blown tires slowly toppled onto its side. With a deafening crash, it kicked up a massive cloud of dust while countless shards of shattered glass and debris bounced and scattered across the street.
Chen Chuan and Wei Wusheng locked eyes, simultaneously steadying their breathing.
Though the clash had lasted merely twenty seconds or so, the rapid maneuvering, the collisions of raw force, and the deflecting and unleashing of jin had pushed their respective mutated tissues into extreme overdrive. Like tightly wound strings, both seized this brief pause to readjust.
Inside the bus, the trainees watched with dry mouths and racing hearts. They were not far from the two combatants, but as seasoned fighters, they managed to observe the pair barely ten meters away with relative composure.
Owing to his actions over this recent period, every single one of them had heard of Wei Wusheng. But the other... Trainee Chen... was someone who rarely spoke on the academy platform. In their impression, aside from being good-looking, there was nothing particularly remarkable about him.
None of them could have imagined that a trainee who normally maintained such a low profile was actually one as well...
Tan Zhi was even more stunned. Suddenly, a swelling ache surged through his head, and he instinctively pressed a hand to his brow as fragmented scenes from the cruise ship surfaced in his mind one after another.
He abruptly understood something... Could it be that back then, it was...?
Holding the saber with both hands, its blade aligned along his centerline, Chen Chuan fixed his gaze upon Wei Wusheng. In terms of pure strength, he could not overpower the man in his current state; in fact, he fell considerably short. The earlier attacks had relied primarily on the momentum granted by high-speed movement; ordinary horizontal slashes would never possess such devastating force.
As for speed, while they had seemed evenly matched at first, Chen Chuan noticed that throughout the exchange, Wei Wusheng's speed appeared to continuously increase with his attacks.
No, that had likely been his strength all along, merely adapting and waking up under pressure.
This was understandable. Those who trained in external conditioning jin were typically slow to reach peak form, yet their endurance and adaptability were astonishing.
In his current physical state, Chen Chuan was no longer equipped to counter the opponent before him, and he would eventually be suppressed as the battle dragged on.
If that was the case, then...
A glint flickered in his eyes. Guided by his conscious will, he released the restrictions on his physical state.
In an instant, everything around him sharpened dramatically. Every shift of light and shadow, every speck of dust drifting through the air, every sound, and every subtle change in his surroundings were captured with crystalline clarity. And as his consciousness concentrated, the movement of the entire world slowed to a crawl.
With a turn of his hands, he unhurriedly raised the long saber beside his head.
As he made this move, the surrounding world seemed frozen in place. Fixing his gaze on Wei Wusheng, Chen Chuan stepped forward, surged ahead, and swept the saber diagonally upward from the front!
Teacher Bai had been watching the two combatants while staying alert to potential threats, but at that moment his vision blurred, and the sharp sound of rapid impacts seemed to ring in his ears. By the time he saw clearly again, the scene before him made his eyes widen in disbelief.
Chen Chuan stood angled sideways, the hilt gripped at his waist, while the blade was buried deep inside Wei Wusheng's abdomen, a segment of the steel protruding from the man's back!
"What?!"
Teacher Bai's heart trembled violently at the sight. What on earth had occurred in that split second? He had failed to catch any of Chen Chuan's movements at all!
Behind him, the trainees let out sharp gasps and cries of shock.
Chen Chuan kept his body slightly angled, staring intently at Wei Wusheng's massive frame. Blood trickled down the man's neck, and across his chest ran a long, diagonal gash that sliced through skin and flesh.
In that bare fraction of a second, Chen Chuan had unleashed six strikes in total, intending to use the sudden burst of speed to decapitate Wei Wusheng outright.
That way, no matter how formidable the opponent's external conditioning was, he wouldn't be able to bring it to bear.
Yet just as the blade was about to sever his head, Wei Wusheng had suddenly exploded with reflexes and speed far surpassing his previous display. He had parried the decapitating slash in the nick of time with his hammer, then blocked the subsequent flurry, failing to evade only the final thrust.
Or rather... this had been deliberate on his part.
Chen Chuan could feel the blade trapped inside the man's body, constricted by a resilient, viscous force, seemingly locked tight by muscles and mutated tissue within.
Right then, Wei Wusheng abruptly raised both arms high. The movement looked unhurried yet immensely powerful, clear enough that even the second-limit trainees behind could track every detail. In truth, however, in merely a heartbeat, he had hoisted the hammer above his head.
In that moment, his towering frame completely blocked the sunlight streaming from behind, and the hammer seemed to absorb every ounce of his power.
After what seemed like a momentary pause, the hammer slammed down viciously!
Looking at the hammer face descending toward his head, Chen Chuan knew that if he did not abandon his saber and evade, the blow would crush his head and body. This scene was almost a replay of what had occurred on the cruise ship.
Yet just as the hammer dropped halfway, before its full force could peak, Chen Chuan twisted his waist and back, thrusting an upturned palm to meet it. Releasing a supremely resilient jin, his palm caught the hammer head, arresting its descent.
In halting it, he inevitably bore the downward crushing momentum capable of shattering nearly anything, yet the mutated tissues inside his body guided and circulated the impact through layer after layer, steadily dispersing and dissipating it.
One could tell that this had been a blow packing Wei Wusheng's entire strength, yet Chen Chuan had leveraged finesse against brute force, flawlessly diffusing the power—the fruit of several months of technical cultivation.
All he needed to do now was seize the internal void left by Wei Wusheng's exhausted strike, mobilize the unused mutated tissues in his body, and launch a counterattack. Whether drawing the blade to strike again or widening the wound, either would suffice.
Yet before he could act, another surge of supple jin swept through the hammer!
The transition between these two currents of jin was remarkably seamless; almost before the first had ended, the second arrived.
Pressed suddenly by this force, Chen Chuan immediately mobilized the other set of mutated tissues intended for offense to dissipate the impact.
Although his body remained unharmed, his posture sank lower, both feet sinking continuously into the ground.
He instantly realized something was wrong. Wei Wusheng wanted to pin him in place. If he didn't resolve this, he would be driven into the earth alive, suffering the same plight as Youxing had back then.
His eyes remained calm. The hand gripping the Xuejun Saber gave a gentle jolt, and in response, the blade of the Xuejun Saber vibrated in kind.
Wei Wusheng immediately felt as though the saber had sprung to life in an instant. The mutated tissues inside his body nearly failed to clamp down on it; it seemed that the slightest lapse would allow it to break free.
His gaze darkened. At that moment, he made a startling move: suddenly releasing his grip on the downward-pressing hammer handle, he abandoned the weapon altogether. Spreading both hands wide, he lunged to seize Chen Chuan's shoulders.
A glint flashed in Chen Chuan's eyes as a warning bell sounded in his heart. Instead of forcefully wresting the Xuejun Saber free, he also let go with both hands, leaned backward, and snatched Wei Wusheng's hammer along with him. His figure seemed barely to flicker, posture hardly altering, before he was ten meters away.
He glanced at Wei Wusheng, who stood there without pursuing, then looked at the hammer in his hand. Unfamiliar with how to wield such a weapon, he tossed it aside.
Wei Wusheng reached down, took hold of the blade, and slowly drew it out. With a final tug, he pulled the entire weapon free from his body. With a flick of his arm, he tossed the saber aside as well.
Meanwhile, the piercing wound in his abdomen rapidly closed up. Apart from residual smears of blood, the wounds across his neck and forehead showed virtually no sign of having been cut open.
Chen Chuan realized by now that compared to their last encounter, Wei Wusheng was not only stronger, but also possessed an extra current of jin within his body—one at complete polar opposites from before.
It did not look like a fighter applying technique to operate mutated tissues in different parts of the body separately. Rather, he genuinely possessed an entirely separate set of tissues, wielding power no less formidable than his own, almost as if two people inhabited the same body.
Yet these two forces appeared distinct under ordinary circumstances; only just now, when his life was threatened, had they completely fused together.
Chen Chuan took off his peaked cap, set it on the hood of a nearby car, and reached up to unbutton his collar.
Since weapons were temporarily off the table,
fists and feet would do just fine.
Chapter 341