Chương 19

The crowd went silent. Cultivators who packed the intersection moments ago now moved away from Lodin and Akiyama Shin, pressed themselves against walls and doorways, left a wide circle of empty street around the two of them. Shin stood at its center like a statue forged for war, the morning sun bright on his metallic skin, his burning eyes fixed on Lodin without a flicker of doubt as to his feelings of superiority. Lodin checked the Jianghu Registry.

– Akiyama Shin Realm: God-Body Forging, 5th Stage Affiliation: Steel Serpent Sect Rank: Inner Disciple, 4th Band – God-Body Forging. A Realm above Perfect Core, adjacent to Principle Comprehension. This one would be tough. Strong. Durable. The God-Body of a cultivator always had some sort of special quality to it, sometimes those qualities could be quite exotic. He grinned and settled into his stance, as the challenge prompt came to him.

– FORMAL CHALLENGE Akiyama Shin (Steel Serpent Sect) challenges Lodin Lundgren (Unaffiliated) to sanctioned combat. Victory Conditions: Submission, Incapacity, Death Special Wager: None Accept? [Y/N] –"I'm gonna make this quick," Lodin said.

"Stuff to do today."

"If you seek a swift defeat, come and claim it," said Shin. Lodin shot forward, closed the distance in a single stride and threw out a right cross, left hook, left uppercut. Shin stood his ground and met each punch with a stiff, precise block. His head stayed still, his feet planted. The blows clanged against Shin's forearms, a rapid staccato that echoed off the surrounding buildings. Lodin followed it with a left hook, right overhand, both deflected.

Shin's arms moved in tight arcs, efficient, minimal, and turned aside everything Lodin threw. He dug to the body with a left hook to the ribs, then another and another. Each one rang against soulsteel and Shin's elbows dropped to cover his ribs, his forearms a metal-on-metal shield. Lodin's uppercut came from below, and this one found its mark. His fist rose through Shin's guard and caught him flush on the jaw. The impact snapped his head back.

Metal rang, a cleaner note than the blocked shots, the sound of a punch that landed true. A faint glow bloomed where Lodin's knuckles had struck him, red-orange like embers in a dying fire. The glowing spot pulsed once, then it faded. Shin's head came back down, his burning eyes fixed on Lodin, his stance unchanged. He shoved Lodin back with a palm strike to the chest. A side kick followed, crisp and fast, and caught Lodin on the hip before he could reset. Then came the roundhouse.

Shin's shin connected flush across Lodin's middle. The crack echoed off the surrounding buildings, loud enough to be heard blocks away. Lodin felt the impact shudder through his ribs and into his spine. Shin aimed a sweeping sword-hand at Lodin's neck and he ducked it by an inch. A spear hand thrust at his throat and he slipped left. Another flurry of punches came, fast and tight. He slipped right, slipped left, kept his head off the centerline, evaded the salvo of strikes by a hair's breadth each.

As Lodin dipped his head down and to the left, he dropped a bomb with his right hand. The overhead right came from his hip and crashed against the side of Shin's head. The clang of it sounded across the intersection like a struck bell. The glow was brighter this time. In the space of a heartbeat, it raced down Shin's neck, across his shoulder, gathered in his left hand. His hand flattened into a spear shape and blazed like a billet fresh from the forge. Lodin spun away at the last second.

The spear-hand thrust missed the center of his chest by inches. Heat washed over his skin as it passed. Shin returned to his flawless stance.

"You have trained in Nemean Boxing," Shin said.

"That's right." Lodin rolled his shoulder.

"You know your Arts, huh?"

"But you are not Nemean. You are from Joguo."

"My teacher was well-rounded." Shin threw a crisp front kick. Lodin swayed back and it passed his chin. A snappy round kick whipped toward his face. He pulled his head back and felt it whoosh by. Shin pivoted into a two-touch turning side kick. The first touch forced Lodin to check, the second drove him backward. A wheel kick followed, which became a turning wheel kick combination. Shin's long legs carved arcs through the air, one after another, and Lodin gave ground with each rotation.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. At the end of the turn Shin jumped. His hip opened to power a spinning round kick aimed at Lodin's head, which he ducked by inches, close enough to feel the awesome force of it whoosh by. Shin landed and threw two front kicks, left right, with a forward hop between them. His heels snapped out fast and sharp. Lodin smirked. Those legs were long.

They kept him out of punching range, came fast enough to shut down any attempt to close the distance. Shin was successfully deploying a pattern of kicks that let him control the space between them. Lodin understood what he was doing. So he evaded. Slipped and ducked and pulled back, waited for something. He wasn't sure yet what it would be, but an opening would come. Shin threw another big roundhouse to the head. The kick was wide, dramatic, meant to end things. Lodin saw it.

He dropped low and blasted the inside of Shin's knee with a left uppercut from the basement. The clang echoed across the intersection and a shockwave rippled through Shin's leg. He staggered back a step, but the counter came with blinding speed. Shin fired a turning side kick, fast as lightning. Lodin caught his ankle and calf, lifted him off the ground, leapt high into the air and slammed Shin bodily onto the cobblestones from thirty feet up. Shin struck the ground like a fallen meteor.

A shockwave blew back from the point of impact, followed by a flechette of pulverized cobblestones that cracked against walls and shattered windows. The front rank of spectators took a step back, shielded their eyes as a cloud of dust billowed out afterwards. A silhouette rose in the haze, broad and still, the shape of a man forged from metal. Shin stood at the center of the crater. His whole body glowed red-orange, every inch of soulsteel lit from within, bright enough to cast shadows through the dust.

The glow pulsed once, twice, like a furnace breathing. Then it faded. The dust cloud ripped open like gauze as Shin whooshed out of it. One instant he stood in the crater. The next, his fist filled Lodin's vision. Lodin got his guard up and the punch drove him back three steps. A knee came for his liver and he twisted and caught it on his hip. An elbow whipped at his skull and he ducked it, felt it scrape across the top of his head. Shin pressed forward and threw punches, kicks, elbows, knees, sword hands, sweeps.

His limbs blurred, one strike flowed into the next, and the rhythm was relentless. Lodin did his best to keep up, but here and there Shin's assault found success. An inside leg kick found his thigh. A palm strike caught his sternum. An elbow clipped his jaw and snapped his head to the side. Lodin planted his feet. He stopped retreating. It felt like the more he hit this guy, the stronger and faster he got. But how else do you win a fight than by hitting the other guy? Nothing sprang to mind, so he continued.

He stepped forward and threw a salvo of jabs, too fast to see, his fist a flicker in the air. Shin blocked them all. A second salvo came just as fast, and Shin met each one with a stiff, precise block. Lodin threw a body shot. Shin's elbow dropped to intercept. Lodin feinted low, went high with a quick shot and Shin picked it off. They stood in the pocket now, head to head, Lodin on offense, Shin on defense. Lodin again noticed how clean Shin's form was.

His economy of motion was impressive, as was the uniformity of his technique. Shin's blocks, whether they were inward blocks, upward, downward or reverse-handed, always came out the same. It was like he was an incarnation of his style's training manuals. Lodin decided it was time to show this guy the quality of his own training. He turned up the speed. His feet carried him to the outside, then the inside, then back again.

His fists became a blur, a storm of knuckles that hammered against Shin's guard like hail on a metal roof. Shin stood in the center of the storm, calm as a statue. His burning eyes tracked every punch. He blocked, parried, slipped what he needed to slip. A counter flicked out here and there to test Lodin's defense. But he held his ground and let Lodin work, patient, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world. Lodin saw an opening.

He loaded up a hard right hand to center mass, dropped his weight, and shot in like a comet. At the last second before impact, his eyes went wide. Shin's guard opened, just a fraction, but enough. He had let it in. The punch crashed home and the glow blazed across Shin's chest. Lodin's mind raced backward through the fight. The uppercut to the jaw. The overhead right. The body slam. Every big shot he had thrown, Shin had taken clean. He was using them to power up.

If Shin wanted to eat power shots, Lodin would feed him. He would see how many the man could handle. He planted himself right in front of Shin and threw nothing but heavy hands. The first punch snapped Shin's head back. The second drove him a step sideways. The third, fourth, fifth landed flush, one after another, a barrage of bone-crushing blows that echoed across the intersection like thunder. People in the crowd covered their ears. Shin looked like a leaf in a gale. His head whipped left, right, left.

His body shuddered with each impact. He staggered, stumbled, reeled. But each punch that landed made his metal skin glow brighter. The red-orange light spread and deepened until his whole torso and head blazed like iron in a forge. Shin's blazing palm strike caught Lodin in the chest. The force was immense. His feet left the ground and he skidded backward across the intersection, boots scraping stone, arms pinwheeling for balance. He looked up. The glow on Shin's body began to move.

It flowed upward, across his shoulders, up his neck, funneled into his throat until the metal there blazed white-hot. Shin's jaw dropped open. For a heartbeat the light gathered at the back of his throat. Then a beam of white-gold fire roared from Shin's mouth, a lance of concentrated heat the width of a man's fist. The air split apart where it passed. Cobblestones exploded into molten spray along its path. Lodin shot to the left and the beam carved a trench through everything behind him.

He planted his foot and reversed direction and the beam swept after him, too slow, always a half-second behind. He ran along a wall, three steps, four, horizontal to the ground. The beam tracked him and gouged a burning line through the masonry. Chunks of stone exploded outward. He kicked off the wall and somersaulted through the air as the beam passed beneath him, close enough to singe the soles of his boots.

The beam swept across the intersection and struck a building on the far side and the roof sheared clean off. Tiles and timber exploded outward and rained down into the street. Lodin began to worry that it wasn't going to lose power. He hurtled through the air to get clear of any more collateral damage, and still the lance of blazing fire qi followed after him. But near the apex of Lodin's leap, it waned and flickered out. Lodin landed on the far side of the intersection. Shin stood where he had stood before.

His soulsteel skin gleamed in the morning light, unmarked, unscratched. His stance was perfect, weight centered, guard ready. The glow had faded from his body but the fire in his eyes was undimmed. Around them, the intersection lay in ruins. Molten trenches scarred the cobblestones. A stone pillar had been sheared in half.

The roof of a building gaped open to the sky, its timbers charred and scattered across the street below, its stunned proprietor behind his counter staring up at the morning clouds where his ceiling used to be. He looked at Shin across the devastation and felt a suspicion take shape in his mind. The way Shin absorbed punishment. The way his body converted force into power. This was either a bad matchup for him or a perfect one. Both, actually. Akiyama Shin was the kind of opponent he could fight for hours. Days.

The two of them were perhaps equal in their durability. The more he hit him, the more power he absorbed, and the more equal they became. But how equal? Could he hit Akiyama Shin hard enough for Shin to surpass him? If Shin could spar with him at his level, could his own Seals grow even stronger? These were exciting questions, but the answers were certain to be time consuming.

"Can I get a rain check on this?" Lodin called out.

"I really have to handle something." Shin's brow creased.

"What could be more important than a duel of honor."

"A family matter." The crease deepened. Shin's eyes narrowed to slits of burning orange. He stood in silence for a long moment, his gaze fixed on Lodin's face as if he could read the truth written there.

"You intend to finish this fight afterward?" Lodin grinned and gave him a nod.

"Oh hell yeah." Shin folded his arms. His chin lifted a fraction.

"Then I will accompany you on your errand," he said.

"To ensure this is not some trick." Lodin shrugged.

"Suit yourself."