Chapter 434: The Duel of Martial Artists
Himuro Ryo watched from a distance, his brow furrowing as he studied Ren
Shiroki's movements.
Something wasn't adding up.
On the surface, Ren had simply dropped into a low combat stance. Yet the air
around him hissed as if he were already in the middle of a vicious exchange of
punches and kicks. The heavyweights of the Three Wolves sector hadn't even
crossed the perimeter line yet, but Ren had already begun fighting—locked in
battle with an opponent no one else could see.
Fusui Kure sat perched atop a low concrete barrier, her combat boots swinging
lazily as the heels tapped against the brick in a light, rhythmic clack-clack.
She blinked her black-and-white sclera, a knowing smirk playing on her lips.
"Here we go again..."
Himuro glanced back. "Again?"
"Yup," Fusui said cheerfully. "That's Ren-chin's personal 'mental realm' when
he's dialed in."
Himuro still didn't quite get it. He turned his gaze back to the blood-stained
clearing where Ren stood.
Ren's focus was absolute. He was projecting his entire spirit into the empty
space directly in front of him.
He wasn't throwing random strikes. Yet Himuro's veteran instincts told him that
Ren was actively mounting an offense and executing frame-perfect parries. Or
rather... Ren was prepared to unleash either at a microsecond's notice.
Himuro tried to lock onto that invisible frequency, refusing to miss a single
twitch of Ren's muscles.
Just as opening a fan naturally invites the wind... Just as watching a blade
slice skin triggers sympathetic pain...
Himuro's sharp eyes began to pick up the contours.
Within the micro-adjustments of Ren's guard lay the kinetic blueprints for a
dozen different strikes. Slowly, the silhouette of that "invisible" opponent
took shape in the dust.
A towering, muscular Pankration champion standing well over two meters tall!
"Well, I'll be damned..." Himuro exhaled softly.
Was fighting an army of street-hardened killers not enough? Did he really need
to conjure a fantasy sparring partner inside his head to push the difficulty
even higher?
"Is that... shadowboxing?" Himuro shook his head, a mixture of disbelief and
amusement in his voice. "High-intensity visual simulation against his own
Master... right before an ambush?"
Fusui rolled her eyes playfully. "I don't get all the theory either, but yeah,
pretty much!"
Whether in reality or inside his own skull, Himuro realized, this guy is running
his engine at redline 24/7.
"This is bad news," Himuro muttered, his gaze shifting to the outlaws closing
in.
Several faces in the incoming crowd were infamous names in the underground.
An Iai swordsman with a nodachi strapped to his back, a bare-knuckle infighter,
an Olympic-caliber freestyle wrestler, an outlaw karateka, a brutal Judoka, a
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist...
They refused to let an outsider stomp across the Three Wolves sector and conquer
their gate unchallenged. Decades ago, a monster named Gaoh Mukaku had attempted
to crush the Ward through pure physical violence, only to be ground down by the
endless resistance of the locals.
Individually, these men couldn't match the crushing pressure of the phantom
Master Ren saw in his mind. But they had numbers, lethal weapons, and a
collective level of technical refinement vastly superior to the mob of street
trash Ren had slaughtered earlier.
Himuro swallowed hard. Do tournament fighters really train like this every
single day?!
The first challenger closed the distance—a specialist wielding a pair of heavy
Filipino Kali fighting sticks.
Both men fired simultaneously!
SWOOSH!
[RYU: SOKUTO KERI]!
Ren snapped a high side-blade kick outward. His startup was a fraction faster
than the stick-fighter's entry, forcing the man to cross his reinforced rattan
sticks in a desperate high guard.
BAM!
The kick detonated against the sticks. The fighter absorbed the shock, but the
sheer kinetic mass shoved him backward, his boots sliding through the gravel.
Himuro tracked the frame. He blocked it. A kick that would have decapitated a
regular thug was absorbed.
The moment Ren lunged forward to capitalize, a cold gleam of steel sliced
downward! A swordsman flanking from the right brought a heavy machete down
toward Ren's planting leg!
Zip!
Ren aborted his recovery, executing a backward hop that cleared the blade's
biting edge by an inch.
Before his feet could settle, two bare-handed grapplers surged in from his
flanks, attempting a synchronized double-tackle. The first missed, but the
second lunged immediately to close the gap.
Tap-tap-tap!
Ren executed an explosive backward roll, clearing several meters of distance in
a split second. The agility of his footwork completely severed the grapplers'
flanking coordination.
"Tsk..." Cold sweat beaded on Himuro's forehead.
These men weren't an undisciplined mob. They were veterans of urban combat. They
couldn't coordinate like a military squad, but their individual lethality was
leagues above a hundred panicking syndicate pawns!
THUD!
Ren drove his foot into the earth, his hips coiling like a loaded spring as he
launched forward into an airborne knee-strike!
"SHAA!!"
[SAGAT: TIGER KNEE]!
CRUNCH!
The knee smashed directly into the forehead of the lead grappler, splitting the
bone and spraying blood as the man stumbled back, clutching his shattered face.
Yet the moment Ren landed, three more killers closed the pocket.
Ren engaged his boxing footwork, executing a rapid-fire sequence of tactical
slips to keep the perimeter open.
[ED: KILL-STEP]!
He created space, but his retreat abruptly halted. His heel met solid
concrete—he had backed straight into the perimeter wall.
Himuro's heart skipped a beat. A corner!
Ren had the power to punch through the wall, but these men were fast enough to
pursue him through the breach, where a confined warehouse would favor weapons
over footwork.
Did they actually pin him?!
"SHAA!!"
Ren roared, throwing a devastating cross into the lead attacker's chest while
his left palm batted aside a descending lead pipe, using the captured weapon's
momentum to deflect a thrusting combat knife!
Clang! Thud! Crack!
In the space of a single breath, he parried four lethal angles at once!
Himuro watched with his fists clenched tight.
It was pure madness.
If Ren had stayed in the ring, he could easily pick these men apart one by one
in sanctioned 1v1 bouts, basking in prize money and glory. Everything would be
clean. Everything would be simple.
Instead, Ren had chosen the most punishing, unglamorous crucible imaginable.
THWACK!
A heavyweight boxer's overhand right clipped Ren across the cheek, drawing a
fresh spray of blood from his nose.
Ren didn't flinch. He rolled his neck to shed the residual torque, stepped
inside the pocket, and drove his fist downward in a crushing overhead hammer!
BOOM!
The blow broke the boxer's guard and drove him face-first into the dirt, his
skull rebounding off the ground in a spray of teeth and blood.
"HYAAAH!!"
Slowly, Ren's movements shed the clean lines of formal martial arts. He wasn't
even using the refined forms of Pankration anymore—he was brawling in the
rawest, dirtiest sense of the word!
Shoulder tackles, knife-hands, open palm-slams, headbutts, stomps, leaping
knees, and primal roars!
Every strike drew from the deep well of the styles he had absorbed. The phantoms
of his Masters blurred behind him, their techniques stripped of aesthetic grace
and boiled down to pure biological violence.
BAM! CRACK!
Heavy punches combined with brutal low kicks, scattering blood like rain across
the sand.
And miraculously, the moment Ren shed the pretense of "Form," the messy,
cluttered battlefield cleared. The tangled swarm began to untangle under the
weight of pure, unadulterated force.
SWOOSH!
Ren whipped out a devastating high roundhouse kick.
Its timing and velocity were flawless—a strike guaranteed to take out one, if
not two men in its arc.
Yet the kick hit nothing but empty air.
"—?!"
Before Ren could recover his balance, a colossal brawler ducked beneath the
sweep, driving his massive shoulder directly into Ren's exposed ribs with the
force of a battering ram!
BOOM—!!
Ren was launched laterally through the air, slamming violently into the
brickwork of the adjoining wall. The masonry imploded on impact, burying him up
to his shoulders in concrete rubble!
"Cough... hack...!"
Ren coughed up a thick glob of crimson. He took a violent, ragged breath,
expanding his diaphragm to shatter the debris pinning him down.
CRASH!
Concrete chunks clattered to the dirt as Ren pulled himself free from the
crater, his eyes locking onto the circle of killers once more.
From the sidelines, Himuro's expression turned grim.
The worst-case scenario had arrived.
The fundamental difference between common thugs and genuine martial artists lay
in their psychology: true fighters could detach themselves from panic and fight
with cold, calculating intent.
They were learning his rhythm. They were adapting to his counters.
With every passing second, the hunters were becoming sharper.
Himuro murmured into the wind, "This isn't a slaughter anymore... This is a war
of attrition between martial artists."
☆☆☆
-> 30 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you