Absolute Victory, Demonic Heart
Seven days later, the battle stage holds its biggest crowd in a long while for Ju Kai Bei against Fang Zheng. Strength path Gu Masters call it their path’s resurrection battle, veteran against rising star, and Shang Chi Wen, who runs the stage, profits handsomely from the excitement. Most in the crowd doubt Fang Zheng can win, since his cultivation, rank three middle stage on the surface, sits well below even Bai Ning Bing’s, let alone Ju Kai Bei’s rank four, and talk circulates that he must fight all out or risk losing his all-out effort Gu to Ju Kai Bei outright. ch. 316
Fang Yuan walks in calmly to a black stone pillar forest terrain, the largest audience he has drawn in two years of battling, Shang Xin Ci, Wei Yang, a disguised Bai Ning Bing, and even some Shang clan young masters among them. It recalls his very first match, when almost nobody watched. With the three kings inheritance approaching and no travel time to spare for anything else, he treats this as his last fight in Shang clan city, one he must win before he can finish placing Shang Xin Ci as a young master and leave. He alone knows Ju Kai Bei and Yan Tu hold a secret identity behind their public rivalry, and he wants no part of the external elder title that dominating the stage would bring him, or of the clan leadership either, calling such positions chains of fame and wealth that bind whoever wears them. ch. 316
Ju Kai Bei arrives with a tower like frame and a steel like expression, the aura of rank four already pressing on Fang Yuan before the bell even rings. Fang Yuan recalls him from a previous life, a capable general of Shang Yan Fei’s who killed many demonic Gu Masters at the great righteous demonic battle of Yi Tian mountain. His own recent success refining a Gu has raised his odds to sixty percent, and he faces the fight with what narration calls a demonic heart: not overconfidence, but an attitude that holds even should his true chance fall below ten percent, or vanish to none at all, since a demonic Gu Master who fails courts disaster and cannot afford an if. Where Bai Ning Bing carries a heart that pursues victory, narration says, Fang Yuan carries one of absolute victory that nothing, not even death, can shake. ch. 316
Neither man talks. The bell rings, and Fang Yuan opens with all-out effort Gu, a horse phantom driving him forward at a gallop before it swaps to a boar phantom for impact, a swap he can now make at will. Ju Kai Bei grows tusks from his own mouth and drives them into his chest, raising pure white ivory armor with no blood at the wound, then meets the charge head on rather than dodging. Their shoulders collide; Fang Yuan is pushed back five steps while Ju Kai Bei is sent flying, and many in the crowd, stunned, notice his rank three peak stage cultivation exposed the moment the breath concealment Gu’s effect breaks under the attack. Ju Kai Bei rises largely unhurt, his cracked shoulder armor already regrowing, while Fang Yuan’s own shoulder aches from a hit he took using only bronze skin, iron bones, and steel tendons, not yet his golden shield Gu, and he calls the exchange no more than a first test. ch. 316
Fang Yuan judges Ju Kai Bei the strongest opponent he has faced since his rebirth and presses the attack, breaking the growing ivory armor again and again with his fists before it can fully form. Ju Kai Bei’s own strength keeps rising to match him, drawn from a rank four habitual strength Gu built to replace the extinct all-out effort Gu; its own lower rank, store strength Gu, freezes its user in place while charging, a weakness the rank four version removes, letting him accumulate power while moving freely. A trade of blows, fist to chest and palm to shoulder, ends in a draw, both men stepping back six steps, but Fang Yuan’s fist goes numb against the armor while only cracks show on Ju Kai Bei’s chest. As the fight continues, the ivory armor thickens further, and by itself it now matches Fang Yuan’s own bronze skin, iron bones, and steel tendons, backed as Ju Kai Bei is by rank four primeval essence and rank four Gu. ch. 316
