Chương 147: Qi VS Rouqi

"You know," I said, wiping the blood off my split lip, "the best lessons leave bruises." Zhang Ruiyang smiled at that, "a good philosophy, shall we continue your education?" Before he could move forward, I activated Hawk's Eye and everything slowed down in a way that was hard to describe to someone who hadn't experienced it.

I could see the shifts in his stance and the tiny tensions moving through his muscles that told me what he was about to do before he did it, and more importantly, I could read the flow of his rouqi and see how he was channeling it to enhance his strikes. But Hawk's Eye had a limited duration and that meant I needed to end this fast. The next exchange was the most intense one yet. Through Hawk's Eye, I watched him gathering rouqi for a complex combination.

A punch that was going to flow into an elbow strike which would transition to a knee before finishing with a spinning kick. Each individual movement was designed to set up the next one in the sequence, a continuous flow that would have been almost impossible to defend against under circumstances. But I could see it all before any of it happened. I let his initial punch graze my shoulder on purpose because drawing him in was worth the minor hit.

As his elbow came around, I was already moving and slipped past the strike with room to spare. The knee followed but went through empty air. I shifted my weight and read the tension in his hips that told me the spinning kick was coming next. As his leg came around, I was already inside his guard, and his eyes went wide because this wasn't quick learning anymore and he knew it. My counter strike caught him in the solar plexus backed by Titan's Crest enhanced strength.

For the first time in the fight, it was Zhang Ruiyang who had to stumble backward.

"Very good," he said, but he was breathing harder than before now, and his eyes narrowed as he studied me with a new kind of intensity, "those movements, you're reading my attacks somehow, but—" He lunged forward with his hands wrapped in fire rouqi again. Through Hawk's Eye, I could see him preparing another complex sequence but there was something different about his energy flow this time, he was adapting and learning from each exchange just like I was, which meant this wasn't going to stay one sided for long.

That was when the idea hit me. I launched another Leaf Storm, but this time I wasn't trying to get through his defenses with it. Instead, I watched carefully as he was forced to abandon his attack and create his flame barrier, I studied how he shaped the fire rouqi when he did it.

"Is that the best you can do?" he asked and he sounded disappointed, "I thought you were different from the others."

"I am," I said, "I needed to see something first." Then I activated Explosive Seed, but instead of throwing a seed at him, I scattered dozens of them in a wide arc around both of us. They buried themselves in the ground, in the decorative plants, and even in the boulder I had used for cover earlier. Zhang Ruiyang's eyes widened slightly as he understood what I had done, "clever, but do you think—" Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I detonated all of them at once.

The explosion itself wasn't powerful because I had kept each individual seed's charge minimal and that wasn't the point anyway. The point was what happened when all that displaced air rushed back in toward the vacuum that was created by multiple simultaneous detonations going off at the same time around him. Zhang Ruiyang's controlled flames, cut off from their air flow, went wild. For a moment, his fire control faltered as the disrupted air currents turned his own technique back against him.

It wasn't a large window, a second of disorientation, but that was all that was needed. Yggy shot forward from my sleeve. Zhang Ruiyang's combat instincts were still impressive even in that moment. He managed to partially deflect the initial strike with his sword, but Yggy wasn't a simple vine construct, it adapted, wrapping around his blade and using his own defensive movement to slip past his guard.

"What in the—" he started to say but then Yggy constricted tight around his sword arm and locked it down. I saw the opening. Blink Step put me in front of him and Titan's Crest activated flooding my system with enhanced strength as I threw the Phantom Strike. It wasn't rouqi that powered this technique at all, it was pure qi, something this world had never encountered before, and I could see the moment Zhang Ruiyang sensed it because his eyes went wide.

This was an energy so foreign to his experience that he had no framework for what he was feeling or what was about to happen. My fist connected with his chest. The impact sent him flying backward, his body carved a trench through the scorched earth before slamming into one of Zhou Shentong's imported trees. When the dust settled, there was a circular hole where his heart had been. But what I noticed was his face.

As his life started to fade, Zhang Ruiyang was smiling and it wasn't a pained smile or a resigned one, it was the expression of someone who had gotten an answer to a question they had been carrying around for a long time.

"So that's what it was," he whispered with blood at the corner of his mouth, "all this time, there was something more..." He died with that smile still on his face. I took a moment to breathe and looked at the state of the garden around us. The once well-maintained space was now destroyed, scorched earth and shattered trees everywhere.

"That was..." Han Renyi's mental voice was somewhere between awe and horror, "I have never seen anything like that in my life."

"Neither had he," I said quietly, looking at Zhang Ruiyang's body, "that's probably why he was smiling at the end, he got to experience something that proved the world was bigger than he believed it was."

"That energy you used at the end," Han Renyi continued, "what was that, it felt different from rouqi."

"A story for another time," I said, "right now, we have bigger problems to deal with." That fight had been more spectacular than I had intended and the element of surprise was gone now, but there wasn't anything to be done about that.

"Azure," I said, "how are our energy reserves?"

"Red sun energy at 35% capacity," he reported back, "spiritual essence stable but depleted from the Phantom Strike, physical essence is enhanced from Titan's Crest but will normalize soon. Overall? Better than expected given how intense that battle was." That was something at least, but just because I had access to higher forms of energy, it didn't mean I should be wasteful with them.

Zhang Ruiyang's approach to efficiency in a power limited environment was going to be useful to keep in mind going forward, even if I had forced him to abandon it.

"Rest well," I whispered, taking one last look at him, "and thank you for the lessons." I turned away and headed toward the main building with Yggy settling back into its position around my arm. The entrance was a set of ornate double doors carved with three-leaf clover patterns, which was on brand for a sect elder. I pushed them open without ceremony and walked into a large reception hall that was lit by crystal lamps, revealing polished wooden floors and walls covered in expensive looking paintings.

At the far end of the room, seated in what could be described as a throne, was Zhou Shentong. He looked the way Han Renyi had described him, tall and imposing with long silver-streaked black hair, cold eyes, and dark robes embroidered with green patterns. But above him was something that made Han Renyi's consciousness recoil so hard I felt it. Suspended from thick wooden roots that had pushed through the ceiling was Han Renyi's father, the man looked battered, but he was alive.

His clothes were torn and dirty, but his eyes were still defiant when they met mine. Zhou Shentong's expression showed only mild surprise as he recognized the face he was looking at, which was Han Renyi's face.

"Well," he said, "this is unexpected, I didn't think young master Han had this kind of potential in him. To defeat Zhang Ruiyang? Very impressive." Han Renyi's father looked down from where he was suspended and his face crumpled, "foolish boy, you shouldn't have come here, get out, run!" I could feel Han Renyi's need to respond and reassure his father, but I held control because this was not the moment for that.

Zhou Shentong seemed amused by the family moment, "oh, let him stay Han Zhongwei, after all," the roots tightened their grip around Han Renyi's father and drew a pained gasp out of him, "we were in the middle of discussing your family's future." I stepped into the room and took my time gauging the distances and angles between everything in it.

"So, young master Han," Zhou Shentong smiled at me, "shall we negotiate?"