A forceful challenge on Shang clan city's battle stage: Li Hao's mountain back toad and position swap Gu against Fang Yuan's newly bought all-out effort Gu, with the winner's Gu the stake.
After Fang Yuan’s seventeenth straight win in Shang clan city’s fifth inner city battle stage, spectators report that Li Hao, a veteran with twenty-nine net victories, one win from rising to fourth inner city, will forcefully challenge him in five days for the all-out effort Gu that has carried his win streak. Li Hao pairs a rank three mountain back toad, a slow but powerful Gu whose swollen rocky back looks like a small hill, with position swap Gu, which can trade his position with the toad or with an opponent and erases the toad’s one weakness. ch. 289
What each side committed
Wei Yang tells Fang Yuan that Li Hao rebuilt his fortune around the mountain back toad and position swap Gu after falling from a strength-path bottleneck at fourth inner city. The match is fought on a swamp stage that favors the toad’s weight over Fang Yuan’s charging Gu. Fang Yuan commits all-out effort Gu’s boar, brown bear and crocodile phantoms together with horizontal charge and vertical crash Gu for reach; position swap Gu is what lets Li Hao trade himself clear of a charge at need. The toad itself enters on a green signal light shot into the sky, descending onto the stage. Fang Yuan turns his beast phantoms directly on the toad rather than on Li Hao, driving it toward collapse under what spectators call an unstoppable assault. ch. 290
What decided it
Fang Yuan’s strategy is to attack the toad rather than Li Hao, a target no earlier opponent had chosen, and it decides the match on primeval essence: his strength-path attacks cost him little, while every healing attempt and position swap drains a reserve Li Hao cannot spare, and Li Hao eventually strips the beast phantoms from his own body just to keep affording the swaps. ch. 291
Outcome
Fang Yuan beats the mountain back toad to death and kills Li Hao with a horizontal charge and vertical crash Gu that sends him into the mud; narration calls it the price of the contempt Li Hao showed him. ch. 291
Standing afterwards
News of the kill spreads through the battle zone, and many later opponents surrender to Fang Yuan without a fight; narration names Li Hao the strongest fighter fifth inner city had. Shang Yan Fei and Wei Yang discuss the fight, with Wei Yang naming Li Hao the opponent Fang Yuan judged too weak to take seriously. ch. 292
Chronicle
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