Chapter 291

A beast phantom roars and the mountain back toad, heavy and slow, slams toward Fang Yuan, who dodges it with ease; it keeps trying and cannot even touch his clothes, while he alternates horizontal charge and vertical crash Gu to keep landing hits of his own, and the audience watches, stunned to see a beast they had pictured as immovable crying out under him. Worried, Li Hao sends the toad leaping to crush him, but its shadow falls over Li Hao’s own position rather than Fang Yuan’s, a trap meant to let Li Hao swap places with Fang Yuan at the right instant so Fang Yuan lands under the toad instead. Only Wei Yang and a few others read the trick in time. The moment the toad leaps, Fang Yuan charges straight at Li Hao rather than waiting for the strike, closing the distance so fast that Li Hao has no safe moment left to swap: swap too soon and Fang Yuan escapes, swap too late and Li Hao is crushed alongside him. Forced into it, Li Hao trades places with Fang Yuan anyway, and when the toad lands, Fang Yuan dodges clear as expected. ^{ch. 291}

Fang Yuan keeps a careful count of both movement Gu’s cooldowns, three breaths between them, timing every charge so one is always ready; the narration credits his flawless handling to the rich combat experience carried over from his past life. He turns on the toad again, and beast phantoms flash one after another as it staggers toward collapse. Li Hao is startled that Fang Yuan keeps attacking the toad instead of switching to him the way past challengers did, since felling Li Hao alone would have ended the match cleanly, and he is left standing aside while Fang Yuan ignores him entirely. ^{ch. 291}

Alarmed when the toad starts coughing blood, Li Hao swaps beside it and tries to heal it with his hands, startled by wounds worse than any he has seen in all his matches, and doubt that he might actually lose rises in him for the first time. Fang Yuan charges in each time to break the healing, and after several failed attempts Li Hao gives it up, his complexion turning poor. Sharper spectators work out why: position swap Gu costs more primeval essence the further it travels and the stronger its target, and against a man carrying the strength of two boars, a bear, and a crocodile, on top of the cost of healing, even a rank three’s reserves cannot keep pace. Li Hao realizes the same thing and has little primeval essence left; his past opponents never drained him this way, but Fang Yuan, though also rank three, already holds the greater primeval essence of the two of them. ^{ch. 291}

Fang Yuan charges in again; low on primeval essence, Li Hao hesitates but has no choice but to stand his ground, and Fang Yuan abandons the toad to turn his fists on him directly. Having stripped his own beast phantoms out to cut position swap Gu’s cost, Li Hao can only fall back on an old strength cultivator’s frame to weather a few blows before swapping with the toad once more. Fang Yuan lets him go and returns to the toad, which spits mouthfuls of blood and counterattacks in a frenzy, its blows made to look clumsy by Fang Yuan’s alternating charges. Watching a match unlike any Li Hao has fought since he left the strength path, the crowd judges his combination of position swap Gu and the toad genuinely brilliant, and the narration adds that even Fang Yuan cannot crack it, though he does not need to: he simply keeps swinging at whoever stands in front of him. One spectator suggests copying the approach against Li Hao someday, and is mocked for it, since a fire path cultivator attacking the toad would burn through primeval essence in a way Fang Yuan’s cost-free beast phantoms do not, leaving the crowd to conclude that every path carries its own edge. ^{ch. 291}

Driven back step by step, Li Hao and the toad keep losing ground as Fang Yuan’s momentum only builds the longer the fight runs: the all-out effort Gu itself costs very little primeval essence, and the beast phantoms carrying his real attacking power, the narration notes as the most absurd part of it, cost none at all, where another Gu Master would have tired after dozens of exchanges. Years of caution since his rebirth have kept his feelings pent up, and the fight lets them pour out at last, clearing a gloom he has carried until now. Where he once had to scrape by in constant danger, unsure of his next meal, the all-out effort Gu has given him standing enough to settle matters with his fists instead, and he does exactly that here rather than trying to out-think Li Hao’s tactic. He shouts out a declaration of ambition that echoes across the battle stage, vowing to walk the path of supremacy and defy heaven, fate, and the world itself. A last punch collapses the small mountain on the toad’s back and kills it, and horizontal charge and vertical crash Gu together send Li Hao flying for a dozen steps into the mud, where he does not move again, killed, the narration says, for his own contempt. Fang Yuan stands alone on the stage, his declaration still ringing in the air, and no one in the crowd speaks. ^{ch. 291}