Liangyu, Jian, Qinyue and Mei immediately dispersed, running away from the battlefield as fast as their legs could carry them. The first three didn't have much strength left in their bodies due to sharing their qi with me, but they had just enough energy to start carrying the defeated soldiers out of the battlefield to safety. Mei helped coordinate the evacuation, directing the three.
It was just me and Feichen now. One on one. The way it should be.
The both of us stood there for a moment, just staring at each other. Then, without any warning or dramatic countdown, we charged at each other simultaneously.
Our fists collided in the middle with a shockwave that cracked the ground beneath us.
Feichen then threw a punch aimed at my face. I dodged it by tilting my head just slightly to the left, just enough to avoid it by millimeters. His eyes widened in surprise. I immediately countered with an uppercut to his jaw that connected cleanly. His head snapped back.
He spat blood.
He came at me again, this time with a rush of hits. I dodged every single one of them, my body moving almost on instinct. I could see his movements before he even completed them, reading his body language, his weight distribution, his breathing patterns.
I ducked under his high kick and swept his supporting leg. He stumbled but recovered quickly, rolling backwards. I didn't give him time to breathe. I closed the distance and delivered a devastating kick to his ribs. I heard something crack.
He screamed in pain.
"What's wrong? Thought you were a Supreme Being?" I taunted. Yeah, I know, probably not smart to piss him off more, but I couldn't help it.
Feichen's face twisted with rage. He started moving faster and more aggressively. But here's the thing, anger makes you sloppy. He was throwing powerful strikes, sure, but they were predictable. I could counter every single one.
He threw a qi-enhanced punch. I caught his wrist, twisted it, and used his own momentum to flip him over my shoulder. He crashed into the ground hard. Before he could get up, I stomped on his chest and he coughed up blood.
"Stay down," I said.
He grabbed my leg and tried to use a pressure point technique on me. I felt the strike but my body was so enhanced with qi that it barely affected me. I kicked him in the face with my other leg and jumped back.
He was stunned to see me unaffected by his little trick.
We circled each other like predators. He was breathing heavily now, clearly exhausted from fighting the Royal Guard and now me. Meanwhile, I felt like I could go for hours.
"How?" he asked between breaths. "You're just a kid."
I didn't answer that. Just smiled.
He growled in frustration.
We clashed again. This time I was the aggressor. I threw a combination, jab, hook, knee strike. Each one connected. He tried blocking but I was too fast. I could see the pain building in his eyes.
He attempted his precision strike technique again but I deflected his hand and struck three pressure points on his arm in rapid succession. His arm went limp.
"Learned that from watching you," I said with a grin. "Not that hard, really."
"You little shit!" he roared.
The fight continued. And continued. And continued. We must have been fighting for hours. The night was slowly giving way to dawn. I could see the horizon starting to lighten.
But here's something I didn't account for, the asshole's stamina. I thought it'd be done quick but he just kept going and the qi my friends gave me was slowly depleting. I could feel myself getting slightly slower, slightly weaker. Not by much, but enough that Feichen started to notice.
"Running out of steam?" he smirked, blood covering half his face.
"I've got plenty left," I lied.
He came at me again. This time, one of his strikes actually landed, a solid punch to my stomach. I doubled over, gasping. He followed up with a kick that sent me flying backwards. I crashed into a pillar.
That hurt.
I got back up quickly and we continued fighting. I was still winning, landing more hits than he was, but the gap was closing. He was adapting to my style, and I was getting tired.
The sky was getting brighter. It was almost sunrise. Just a little longer and maybe reinforcements would arrive. Maybe Qinyue would come back with an army. Maybe something would happen.
That's when I saw it, the change in Feichen's expression. He'd gone from angry to desperate to... calm. That terrified me more than anything.
He let out a breath and seemingly activated his own trump card.
He began chanting something in a language I didn't recognize. His remaining qi started gathering around him in a visible aura. The air pressure changed dramatically. I could feel something very wrong happening.
"Ji Mie Ling Yu," he whispered.
Suddenly, the world changed.
It's hard to explain what happened next. Imagine everything around you just... stopping. Not in a physical sense, but in every sense. The wind stopped moving. The dust particles in the air froze. Even the sound seemed to die.
A circular domain expanded from Feichen with him at the center. It was maybe fifty meters in radius. And I was right in the middle of it with him.
My body felt incredibly heavy. Not like gravity increased, but like space itself was pressing down on me. I tried to move my arm. It moved, but so slowly it was like I was underwater. Actually, even slower than underwater. Like I was moving through solid concrete.
I tried to breathe but it was difficult. Each breath took enormous effort. My lungs moved in slow motion.
Even my thoughts felt sluggish. It was taking me several seconds to process simple ideas. 'What the fuck is this technique?' I thought to myself.
Feichen, meanwhile, moved normally within his domain. Well, not normally, he was still injured and tired. But compared to me, he might as well have been at full speed.
"Ji Mie Ling Yu," he said, walking slowly towards me. "The Annihilation Spirit Domain. Within this radius, I control everything. Space, motion, breath... even time itself slows to a crawl. Everything is paralyzed."
He wouldn't have explained it to me if he wasn't a hundred percent confident that I was going to die. I tried to speak but my mouth moved too slowly. It was terrifying.
He raised his fist and I could see it coming. I could see exactly where it was going to hit. But I couldn't move fast enough to dodge. My body was trapped in this frozen space.
His fist moved towards my face in slow motion from my perspective. But from his perspective, I realized, I must look completely frozen.
This was it. This was how it ended. After everything, after all that fighting, after proving everyone wrong, I was going to die because of some bullshit technique that literally cheats physics.
The fist got closer. Closer. Closer.
My mind raced, well, as much as it could while being slowed down. There had to be something. Some way out.
All of a sudden, I could hear it. The sound of robes fluttering in the wind behind me, seemingly coming from the sky.
That's when it striked me. Master Juechen had finally arrived.