Chapter 1354: On Strike... Price of Arrogance (2)

That confidence was not empty.

Yuzuki had earned it.

She had fought enemies above her Realm and won. She had broken sword prodigies who thought raw cultivation could overwhelm technique. She had faced multiple Half-Divines simultaneously and bullied them through superior skill, timing and precision.

In the world she understood, a newly advanced Sky Sovereign should not have been able to threaten her seriously.

Phei had stopped living in that world months ago.

He remembered all the Demigod beasts, Divine Being beast, Saint and Divine Lord beast too whose fists had caved his organs inward despite his tempered body. He could still remember spiritual pressure crushing space until True Void Steps itself became difficult, crystalline weapons exploding against his skin and still launching him through mountains, old wounds healing only for new ones to arrive before his regeneration finished.

How could he forget the hallowing horrors hunting him in numbers and hundreds of times stronger than himself, surviving because anything slower than perfection meant death, fighting two World Transcendents for almost an hour until their barriers finally weakened enough for him and his little sister to kill them and learning that an enemy being stronger simply meant he needed to become nastier.

After that year; he’d survived all that and killed them all in thousands and he’d killed them despite their number and being stronger than him and now he was back standing home while another Sky Sovereign had the audacity to offer generously offered to make things easy for him felt.... it felt so insulting.

Phei exhaled slowly.

Maybe he really had forgotten what ordinary cultivators considered powerful.

Yuzuki raised her sword a fraction higher while Essence began circulating through her body. The change was immediate and impressive. Air bent around her blade, the ground beneath her feet gave a quiet groan and an enormous pressure gathered behind her deceptively relaxed posture. She had not attacked yet, but several invisible sword energy had already begun filling the distance between them in currents, subtle enough that a weaker cultivator might not notice them until moving into one; even a single touch could slice steel.

Phei noticed every single one.

He inhaled and the world changed:

Yuzuki’s breathing, the movement of Essence through her meridians, every minute adjustment of her fingers around the hilt and even the tiny shifts of weight preparing her first movement became painfully clear. Phei could see the entire space, reality and spatial hollows around her, the space she could use to dodge, the angles her sword could cover and the places where her defense would become strongest once the attack started.

There she stood so arrogant yet so exposed as far as Phei was concerned.

Very exposed.

He had spent months reading monsters faster than her.

World Transcendents had taught him what speed actually meant.

Yuzuki’s lips curved slightly when Phei still did nothing.

"If you’re waiting for me to attack first, you’ll be waiting for a while."

There it was again; that gentle little superiority in her voice.

Phei smiled. "All right."

Yuzuki saw him standing there and her in that very instant; her world darkened!

Before that moment every instinct Yuzuki possessed had screamed at once because something impossible had entered the space directly above her.

She had even tried to move but even before she saw him do anything much less her sword rising, it was... too late.

But Phei had been gentle and he did not punch her since he didn’t know how much his punch or attack would be on a real human given how much physical mighty he possessed under that elegant and soft looking skin; so he’d simply appeared beside her and brought two knuckles lightly down against the crown of her head.

Lightly, according to Phei.

The instant his knuckles had touched her, the air around Yuzuki had collapsed with a concussiveroar. A circular burst of pressure blasted outward across the floor, flattening dust and loose debris in every direction while cracks raced beneath her feet.

Her sword released a violent metallic scream as the force travelled through her entire body, and Yuzuki’s carefully gathered Essence had shattered apart before she could convert it into defense.

Her eyes had lost focus immediately.

The ground beneath her feet cratered.

Then the portion of physical force Phei had failed to restrain properly launched her sideways.

Yuzuki crossed the training ground so quickly that her body became a streak before slamming into the floor far away, bouncing once and continuing another considerable distance while her sword spun through the air behind her. It struck point-first into the ground several dozen meters away and remained there vibrating furiously.

The pressure from Phei’s strike continued travelling long after Yuzuki stopped.

Several stone tiles farther from the impact lifted and cracked.

A nearby practice pillar shuddered.

The air itself seemed to boom a second time as the delayed shockwave reached the far edge of the grounds. Phei remained beside the small crater staring toward Yuzuki’s unconscious body.

He had genuinely tried to restrain himself.

His expression became complicated. "I really need to learn how normal people spar again."

Sienna stared at him for several long seconds before looking toward Yuzuki.

Phei followed her gaze and felt a little guilty because Yuzuki had never been weak.

That was almost what made the result unfair.

Among Sky Sovereigns, she was terrifying. Her swordsmanship, refined movement, battle experience, technique and control would probably humiliate most people standing at the same cultivation Realm. Her ability to fight Demigods and bully several Half-Divines simultaneously was genuine, and if this spar had been about exchanging sword techniques, limiting physical strength, and if he’d suppressed his physical power and his abilities and they only compared pure mastery of their skills, she might have possessed advantages Phei simply did not have.

Maybe she could even have won the skills combat if he were under enough restrictions.

That had not been the challenge she offered.

Yuzuki had looked at a young man who had only recently reached Sky Sovereign and since shed seen him awaken not even four months ago; she had decided the easiest way to end things was to challenge him to land a single attack on her.

She had been so certain of the difference between them that she had turned the entire spar into a bet.

Phei had spent the past year fighting enemies where successfully landing one in a single attack in an instant was sometimes the difference between living and dying.

World Transcendents had blocked his Void Steps by crushing the hollows around them, reacted to attacks that crossed space, endured weapons that would erase weaker cultivators and forced Phei to find openings measured in fractions of moments.

Compared with that, Yuzuki’s defense were nothing if not left her exposed to his mercy; mercy he didn’t have after her arrogant remark.

Her arrogance had not come from stupidity.

It had come from using the wrong scale.

She believed herself to be measuring one Sky Sovereign against another, when the Sky Sovereign standing in front of her had been forged by a year of fighting things that should never have been opponents for someone at his Realm where she could’ve died too.

Phei rubbed the back of his neck before looking at Sienna. "You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?"

Sienna’s expression remained calm enough that the answer was suspicious.

Phei sighed before lifting one hand toward her in farewell. "A deal’s a deal. She said one attack."

Behind him, space warped as the Void opened a dark passage toward Paradise Island. Phei could already feel Melissa more clearly through it, and that alone erased most of his interest in whatever lecture Sienna might have intended to give him about restraint.

He stepped backward toward the portal while Sienna looked between him and the unconscious Yuzuki lying far across the ruined portion of the training ground.

Phei gave her a small wave: "Tell her she almost had me."

Sienna’s eyes narrowed: "Who is arrogant now?"

Phei grinned and disappeared before she could answer.