Zhou Shengyang straightened up, visibly stung that he'd failed to gauge his opponent's abilities even remotely. His gaze sharpened. The tiger stripes on his cheekbones flared brighter.
Purple light flashed beneath his feet as the first ring ignited.
"First Spirit Skill: Royal Stride!"
An invisible wave of willpower surged from his body, crashing down on both his opponent's body and mind at once. This wasn't an illusion, nor was it pressure from spirit power — it was pure force of will: those with weaker resolve would lose the ability to move, gripped by instinctive fear. Against someone of equal willpower, the effect was weaker — instead of paralysis, only a brief stun.
Hao Ming didn't so much as flinch.
Rather than disappointment, Zhou Shengyang gave a short nod to himself.
<
In truth, Royal Stride was rarely used purely for suppression — Zhou Shengyang used it to gauge whether an opponent was worth his time and effort.
He was already about to step forward when Hui Mi, seizing the pause, beat him to it.
"First Spirit Skill: Lightning Flail!"
A thin, rapid bolt shot from his fingers, splitting the air with a dry crack — a fast, precise strike aimed straight at Hao Ming's chest.
Hao Ming raised his hand. He didn't dodge, didn't deflect it aside. He simply closed his fist around the bolt mid-flight, catching the lightning the way one catches a thrown stone.
The blue threads crackled between his fingers for a moment, straining to push further. Then his fist tightened, and the lightning died with a short, almost offended hiss, scattering into useless sparks.
Hui Mi stared at his hand, mouth hanging open.
"You caught... the Lightning Flail?!"
He was genuinely stunned. Never in his life had he seen someone his age extinguish a Lightning Flail bare-handed with such ease — even opponents of far higher rank usually chose to block or counter; no one dared catch the bolt outright.
Though Spirit Masters at Hu Cheng's level were simply in a league of their own.
Hao Ming unclenched his fist, examining his palm. No burn, no mark. But he himself was still caught in a certain confusion.
<
Hu Cheng, watching from the side, tilted his head slightly — the spectacle seemed to be amusing him more and more. He knew Hao Ming's true level perfectly well: physically, the boy's stats sat at Titled rank on the offensive scale. And it pleasantly surprised him just how well Hao Ming was controlling his own strength.
Hao Ming brushed the thought aside and moved again.
His speed this time was noticeably lower than before — as though something invisible were holding him back, refusing to let him accelerate the way he had at the very start. Slow enough that both opponents managed to react, but still fast enough that both came within a hair's breadth of taking a full hit.
"Second Spirit Skill: Predator's Eye!" Zhou Shengyang shouted.
His pupils flared brighter for an instant. His perception sharpened sharply, catching the faintest shift in his opponent's center of gravity, the barest tension before a lunge — not foresight into the future, but an acute, razor-sharp reading of the present. Hao Ming's movements grew noticeably clearer in his eyes.
He twisted aside — but couldn't fully avoid the strike. It caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder.
Hui Mi reacted almost in sync, his third black ring flaring to life.
"Third Spirit Skill: Cloak of Lightning!"
Lightning surged beneath his skin, wrapping around every organ, every nerve, every muscle from within. His hair stood on end with static, his eyes flashed white-blue. His reaction speed accelerated to the point that the usual chain — nerve, brain, command to muscle — ceased to exist entirely: his body moved on its own, bypassing thought.
Hao Ming paused, tilting his head slightly. He seemed to be assessing exactly what had changed in his opponent in that one second.
Zhou Shengyang didn't wait, seizing the moment he'd bought. His body surged forward in a sharp, predatory lunge.
"Third Spirit Skill: Ignition!"
His fist slammed into Hao Ming's side. Not the hardest blow he'd ever taken in his life, but far from trivial — his ribs ached with the impact. A faint shiver of satisfaction ran down Zhou Shengyang's arm: part of the damage from Hao Ming's earlier strike, still unhealed and accumulated, instantly flowed into this very blow, adding to its force. The worse his own condition grew, the stronger he became.
Hui Mi didn't fall behind — a second Lightning Flail, gathered denser and more precisely than the last, struck Hao Ming's shoulder in the exact instant he hadn't yet recovered his balance from Zhou Shengyang's blow.
This time the lightning didn't dissipate in his fist. Hao Ming didn't manage to react in time — it passed straight through, leaving a thin, smoking wound, blood immediately welling up from it.
In that moment, Hao Ming went still. He looked down at his own shoulder, at the scarlet line trickling down his skin, and froze for a moment — as though studying something long forgotten, yet recognizable at first glance.
Hu Cheng, who had been calmly watching from the sidelines, tensed slightly. For the first time in the entire fight, something like wariness flickered across his posture.
<
He sensed something was off with Hao Ming, but wasn't yet ready to call off the fight.
Hao Ming moved forward again. But differently now than in the fight's opening seconds.
He no longer tried to settle things with a single decisive rush. Each movement grew shorter, more economical — not a display of overwhelming force, but a series of precise, calculated strikes. As though he'd stopped wasting strength and was instead searching for the most efficient path to a result.
Caught in the center of the fight as he was, he had no way to properly check on his own condition right now.
Zhou Shengyang met him head-on, relying on his own raw physical power. But every time their blows collided, Hao Ming came out a fraction of a second faster, striking not where Zhou Shengyang held his guard, but where there simply was no guard at all. Not force against force. Calculation against brute momentum.
"You fight like—" Zhou Shengyang bit out, staggering back after yet another blow slipped past his ribs, "—a machine."
Hao Ming said nothing. He didn't understand why they were wasting time talking — their lives were on the line, after all.
Hui Mi, seizing the moment of their clash, raised his hand skyward — white-blue lightning already coiling around his palm in a dense, living ring.
"Second Spirit Skill: Divine Judgment!"
He snapped his hand down sharply. The lightning vanished as if it had never existed. In the next instant, the bolt struck Hao Ming square in the chest.
This time, the damage didn't go unnoticed. Hao Ming was thrown back several steps, his breath catching, a dark, scorched mark spreading across his chest — not lethal, but serious enough to make his lungs seize with pain.
Zhou Shengyang didn't waste the opening. His strike landed square on Hao Ming's nose.
Hao Ming staggered but didn't fall. He held his footing, though his body now carried three distinct wounds: a burned chest, a bleeding shoulder, and fresh blood streaming from his nose. He straightened slowly, as if weighing the accumulated damage not as pain, but as dry, useful data — proof that both opponents were, in fact, capable of hurting him, and that this was worth accounting for going forward.
Hu Cheng watched from the side, brow furrowing slightly — not from concern, but from focused attention, as though trying to make out something in the scene that kept slipping past a casual glance.
<
The fight began to pick up pace.
Zhou Shengyang and Hui Mi, who had gotten in each other's way at every turn just yesterday, now moved differently. They'd already built a working rhythm with each other back in the fight against Hu Cheng, but this time it happened without a word, almost by instinct — they began splitting the space around Hao Ming in half. Hui Mi held the left side, Zhou Shengyang the right.
The first exchange came fast.
Hui Mi came in low with a sweep — Hao Ming leapt over it, landing already mid-turn, ready to meet Zhou Shengyang's attack from above. Zhou Shengyang's fist passed within a couple of centimeters of his temple — Hao Ming pulled back exactly as far as needed, not a centimeter more, and immediately answered with a short, direct strike to the ribs.
Zhou Shengyang grunted, reeling back. Hui Mi, seizing the opening, unleashed a third Lightning Flail — Hao Ming deflected it with the back of his hand, redirecting the energy past himself rather than trying to extinguish it entirely.
What followed was a rapid, almost dance-like series of exchanges: strike — dodge — counter — dodge again. Every one of Hao Ming's movements was calibrated down to the centimeter — not a single wasted step, not a single blow thrown harder than the situation called for. He didn't scramble between the two opponents; it was as though he already saw, half a second ahead, where each of them would step next, and simply arrived exactly where it mattered most.
Hu Cheng watched this with a growing squint.
<
He recognized his own motions. The shoulder-lean into the pivot, the exact same footwork, the identical strikes that only ever caused internal damage — Hao Ming had absorbed all of it down to the smallest detail, not like a student who'd learned it from scratch, but like someone who had internalized the very essence of the movement.
<
Even Hu Cheng found it genuinely astonishing. He'd fought every kind of opponent imaginable, but he'd never seen anything like this before. In a way, it was even unsettling.
Every one of Hao Ming's movements was flawlessly calibrated — pure calculation, economy, and impeccable command of his own body, honed over years of survival where a single mistake cost a life, all of it now layered over a framework built from Hu Cheng's own movements.
Hui Mi closed the distance again, channeling the speed of Cloak of Lightning into a simple, rapid punch from the left. Zhou Shengyang struck almost in sync from the right, aiming for the exposed flank.
Hao Ming caught both — one hand seizing Hui Mi's left fist, stopping it dead in its tracks. In the same motion, he pivoted, meeting Zhou Shengyang's right fist with his own forearm.
A dull, double impact rang out. Both of them froze, locked in place by their own fists, unable to advance another centimeter.
"What— he caught both of us?" Hui Mi gasped.
Hao Ming didn't answer. He simply yanked both arms outward, spreading them wider than a simple block required. That alone was enough to throw off their rhythm for a moment.
Both immediately tried to capitalize on it in their own way: Zhou Shengyang tried to wrench his arm free for a new swing, Hui Mi tried to twist his torso for a follow-up elbow strike. But their movements crossed each other again, and for a split second both hesitated, getting in each other's way more than in Hao Ming's.
"Don't shove me!" Hui Mi snapped.
"Stay out from underfoot," Zhou Shengyang shot back.
Hao Ming, seizing their hesitation, released both arms at once and stepped back. A bead of sweat was already sliding down his forehead, followed by another.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand, staring at the damp streak with genuine bewilderment.
<
Across ten years in the Rocky Mountains, his body had grown accustomed to working at its limit without the faintest hint of fatigue — even things like thirst, hunger, and pain had, at some point, faded into the background. For him, after everything he'd lived through, ordinary human exhaustion felt foreign, as though he were borrowing someone else's body.
Even in his fight against Hu Cheng, he'd never felt tired.