Chapter 102: Chapter 102
“A match of fists?”
Ji Yuande sneered, flicked his wrist, and his three-foot blade blossomed into a whirl of steel petals. He leveled the sword, its tip pointing across the gap at the bandits.
“Who steps into the ring first? Come — let this young master have a go!”
The brazen posture instantly sent a wave of fury across Tu Xiaotian’s features.
The tower of a man strode forward. His qi-blood erupted in a full-body detonation — a savage tiger locking onto prey.
He was enormous, his black short-jacket bulging with muscle. Veins coiled like serpents up bare arms, and with every step, the blue-stone ground gave a faint tremor.
“Wet-behind-the-ears little bastard! Who the hell are you? Today your Grandpa Tu’s going to teach you — on your elders’ behalf — what the rivers and lakes really mean!”
Before the last word landed —
Tu Xiaotian’s massive frame shot forward like an arrow from a bow, dragging a gust of foul wind in his wake.
Seeing the bandit bearing down, Ji Yuande’s eyes flashed with sharp focus.
‘If you’re still at Bone Tempering, this Flowing Cloud Sword will keep me undefeated. Even if you’ve broken through to Sinew Tempering, I can hold you for dozens of exchanges and still pull back in one piece.’
Before coming to Yunyi Island, Ji Yuande had received from Ji Wen a treasured clan heirloom technique —
The Flowing Cloud Sword!
This method was derived from Bixia Mountain Estate’s supreme sword art — the Flowing Cloud Thousand-Illusion Sword Dao True Revelation.
Though it captured only a portion of the original’s essence, it was still a bona fide top-tier sword path.
Mastered to its peak, it could even condense Flowing Cloud sword-qi — blade-paths shifting like clouds, finding openings where none existed.
It was precisely this sword art that had given Ji Yuande the confidence to step into the ring himself.
In his reckoning, with the Hidden Strength chiefs staying out of the fight, no one else on the field could threaten his life — even if they outmatched him.
“Kill!”
Ji Yuande angled his blade upward. The sword-path unfurled like clouds drifting from a mountain crest — elusive, unpredictable.
Feet tracing a precise pattern, he advanced rather than retreated. The sword tip trailed a chain of afterimages, thrusting straight for Tu Xiaotian’s face.
Tu Xiaotian’s steps were heavy, brutal. He didn’t so much as flinch from the blade’s edge. In a few powerful strides, he crashed inside Ji Yuande’s sword-circle.
A pair of bare palms — soaked in who knew how many baths of toxic iron-sand — swelled a full size larger under the surge of qi-blood, turning a sickening blue-black.
Fingers splayed, force gathered at the palm’s center. A grinding, millstone roar accompanied the strike as it slammed toward the flat of Ji Yuande’s blade.
Overturning Heaven Palm — Sea-Overturning, River-Flipping!
Ji Yuande changed techniques in a flash. The sword slid sideways, its path curving like a cloud turning a corner.
Flowing Cloud Sword — Parting Clouds to Reveal the Sun!
He aimed to slice across the opponent’s wrist — softness overcoming hardness, deflecting that savage force.
CLANG!
The steel edge scraped against Tu Xiaotian’s blue-black palm and it was like striking cast iron — a spray of blinding sparks erupted.
Ji Yuande felt a dense, crushing wave of force travel through the sword’s spine and into his body. His tiger’s mouth screamed with tearing pain. The sword nearly flew from his grip.
He grunted, stumbled back four or five steps — barely managing to shed the terrifying palm-force. His entire right arm had gone numb and useless.
‘Sinew Tempering… and he’s probably brought that palm art to Perfection!’
Ji Yuande’s pupils contracted. Every alarm in his body was screaming. He didn’t dare underestimate his opponent for another instant.
“That limp little flower-show — and you thought you could play hero?”
Tu Xiaotian’s face split in a ferocious grin. Pressing his advantage without mercy, he closed the distance.
His palms shifted between great sweeping arcs and darting, unpredictable strikes. Palm-wind howled like thunder, blanketing every vital point on Ji Yuande’s body.
The essence of the Overturning Heaven Palm lay in a single word: crush.
Tyrannically overbearing, smothering the enemy with sheer momentum.
In moments, palm-shadows multiplied. The air rang with deep, muffled concussions — boom after boom, like heaven splitting and earth cracking — pressing Ji Yuande’s sword-work into stagnation, unable to extend.
Ji Yuande had little real combat experience, but the Flowing Cloud Sword was a genuinely superior martial art — its sword-paths were dense, supple, resilient.
He clenched his jaw to cracking. His blade wove a sphere of silver-white light, sword-momentum rolling and swirling. One moment a Clouds Gather, Clouds Part to deflect a palm-blast; the next, a Mist Shrouds, Fog Veils to guard his vitals.
BANG BANG BANG!
SWISH SWISH SWISH!
Sword-light and palm-shadow tangled. Dense, pounding impacts hammered like rain, sparks flying in every direction.
Yet the chasm between their martial realms was not something a single exquisite sword art could bridge.
Tu Xiaotian had been in Sinew Tempering for two years. Of the five major sinews, he had fully tempered two and a half.
His qi-blood circulation was seamless and fluid. In strength, in reflexes — he outclassed the newly-advanced Ji Yuande across the board.
After blocking seven or eight thunderous palm-strikes in succession, Ji Yuande’s chest heaved. His qi-blood hitched, failing to connect, and his sword-momentum stuttered — an unavoidable split-second of hesitation.
Against an ordinary fighter, such an opening might have gone unpunished. But to a veteran like Tu Xiaotian, it was a gate flung wide.
“Die!!”
Killing light exploded in Tu Xiaotian’s eyes.
His body dropped low, ducking beneath Ji Yuande’s panicked thrust. His left foot forced its way into the open flank. His right palm curled, fingers slightly bent, palm hollowed — like a monstrous, heaven-overturning seal — and he drove it upward with a devastating boom.
This was the Overturning Heaven Palm’s most tyrannical killing move.
Solitary Hand Overturns Heaven!
Palm-wind slammed into Ji Yuande’s face. There was nowhere to dodge.
He could even feel his brocade robes flattened against his skin, snapping wildly.
“No!”
Ji Yuande’s soul nearly left his body. By the time he tried to bring his sword back to block, it was already a luxury he couldn’t afford.
BANG!
A muffled detonation. The palm-strike hammered into Ji Yuande’s chest, force boring clean through bone.
A rapid-fire string of CRACK-CRACK-CRACK rang out — ribs shattering in sequence. Ji Yuande sprayed a mist of blood and flew backward like a burst sack.
“Young master!”
Wang Jindao’s eyes nearly split.
He roared, qi-blood surging, legs driving off the stone steps — about to launch himself through the air to catch the falling body.
But a grey blur at his side was faster.
SWISH!
The blur shot along the ground and caught Ji Yuande’s plummeting form cleanly in mid-air.
Every eye focused.
The one who had moved was a square-faced young guard, no older than twenty.
Strapped across his back was a war saber wrapped in black cloth. Between the gaps in the wrapping, two dark-red characters were barely visible on the hilt —
Blood Shadow!
“That’s… Luo Feng?!”
“The new kid in Squad C? He’s… he’s already broken through to Blood Tempering?!”
Several nearby guards gaped in disbelief.
But the astonishment lasted only a heartbeat before it was swallowed by despair.
The main family’s Bone Tempering young master had been beaten until he coughed blood and crumpled. What good was a single Blood Tempering guard against a dead end like this?
Morale collapsed. Some men’s faces were already white as corpses.
Shen Xiuhan, however, had narrowed his eyes and was watching intently — fixed on Luo Feng, who was crouched at the water’s edge, cradling Ji Yuande.
Luo Feng seemed to sense the gaze. He lifted his head slightly and met Shen Xiuhan’s eyes.
Then he smiled. A flicker — there and gone — as though it might have been imagined.
In the next instant, the hand Luo Feng had braced against Ji Yuande’s back turned over, silently.
Qi-blood stirred without a sound.
Then, with precise, deliberate pressure, he pressed down — right against the great dragon of Ji Yuande’s spinal column.
SHUNK!
Ji Yuande’s eyes bulged open. His head snapped back and he vomited another great gush of black blood laced with fragments of organ.
Then his upper body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, crumpling limp into Luo Feng’s arms. He didn’t move again.
“P-Patrol Envoy, sir!”
Luo Feng raised his head. His square, honest face was a mask of horror and panic. His voice shook as he cried out.
“The young master’s… the young master’s spine — it’s broken!”
His spine was broken.
The words hit like a physical blow. Those closest sucked in sharp breaths, scalps tingling.
On the martial path, the great dragon of the spine was the axis of all force, the hub of all qi-blood circulation — the ridgepole of a house, the keel of a ship.
Even the slightest damage could cripple half a fighter’s power.
And for Ji Yuande, whose spine had shattered completely…
He was finished.