76 MUP: Chapter 75. Confrontation

However, the expected shout didn't come.

Facing Danny's menacing blow, the Asian man dodged the elbow strike with a deft side step, followed by a swift kick to Danny's unsuspecting knee, which sent him straight to the ground.

"Ugh!"

Faced with the man's unexpectedly sharp counterattack, Danny was momentarily confused and fell heavily to the ground with a painful look on his face.

"Young man, are you all right?"

Looking at Danny, who had fallen to the ground, the Asian man asked with a bland expression.

"I'm okay," Danny replied as he rubbed his aching chest, struggling to get up from the ground.

"You're okay? Then, let's continue."

Hearing that, the man gestured, with one hand behind his back and the other stretched out in invitation.

Looking at the man's pose, Danny subconsciously frowned. As a matter of fact, as far as the present situation was concerned, there was actually no reason for them to continue fighting. But after a hard fall, Danny wasn't in a good mood. He raised both fists in a standard martial arts pose.

"Watch yourself!"

Then, with a warning from Danny, he took a step forward and swung his fist at the Asian man.

The man's expression wasn't the least bit flustered by the swift attack from Danny.

He first dodged the fist and then grabbed Danny's wrist with his hand. With a pull and a sharp side kick, Danny was thrown down.

Bang --

With a dull thud, Danny fell to the ground with a slightly dazed expression on his face.

"Want to try again?"

The man asked him with a nonchalant tone.

"Again."

After repeated defeats, Danny got a little angry and got up from the ground again. He looked at the Asian man in the Tang suit and raised both fists. They started to glow with a golden light, "This time, I'm going all out."

Noticing Danny's glowing hands, the Asian man revealed a look of surprise but still maintained his calm tone, "You can try."

Wielding the power of Iron Fist, Danny confidently charged toward the man.

However, the punch in his face was like a tornado, swift and violent.

Faced with a powerful attack as the Iron Fist's power, the man didn't give him the opportunity to land a hit. He lightly retreated, avoiding the attack. Then, he bent down and grabbed Danny's leg and pulled it upwards. With a familiar 'thud!', the legendary Iron Fist from K'un-Lun, once again, came into close contact with the ground.

Looking down at Danny, who fell to the ground, the man continued to say, "If your lower body isn't stable, your fists will lose power. Hitting people with it would be useless."

When Danny heard that, he got up from the ground with a gloomy look on his face. He took a look at himself and brushed the dust off before opening his mouth and asking, "Who the hell are you?"

To that, the man smiled and immediately replied, "Ip Man from Peng Lai."

　　...

[Reputation points from Danny Rand +50]

[Reputation points from Danny Rand +70]

[Reputation points from Danny Rand +150]

[Reputation points from Danny Rand +175]

'Finally made a connection!'

In the antique shop, controlling the [Ip Man] clone to tell Iron Fist where he came from, Ryan couldn't help feeling a little relieved.

Ryan worked hard to make [Ip Man]'s debut go smoothly.

Initially, he intended to have [Ip Man] appear directly in front of Matt and the others to complete the debut in a simple and crude manner. However, after thinking for a moment, he felt that such an appearance lacked impact. Coincidentally, he learned from Wells that a curly-haired white guy, waving a pair of glowing fists, had appeared in Hell's Kitchen. The guy had been asking around for news about the Hand.

And that's how the scene just now happened.

He successfully made a connection between [Ip Man] and Iron Fist.

While Ryan was secretly relieved, his eyes couldn't help but look toward the progress bar on the system's data panel.

This progress bar was the upgrade information that popped up from the system's data panel right after he opened the C-level [The Beast] card earlier.

The reason for the upgrade wasn't complicated. It was because Ryan was holding over ten cards in his hand.

Although the system upgrade process didn't affect Ryan's use of cards, Ryan still felt great pressure when looking at the progress bar that only moved a little bit every day.

Fortunately, as the clock counts down, the upgrade of the system was approaching its end.

Watching the last bit of the progress bar at the top of the system filling up, a prompt for the completion of the upgrade popped up.

Ryan blinked and reopened the data panel. However, the image in front of him wasn't any different from what he had seen in the past.

'What is this? Where's the system upgrade stuff? Did it fail!?'

'It shouldn't be, the prompt clearly said it was successful.'

After looking in the data panel for a while, Ryan finally found the part of the system that had changed after the upgrade.

This time, there were two new functions in the upgraded system. The first was the addition of a new card slot.

This was undoubtedly a happy event for Ryan.

In the past, because he only had one card slot, he needed to change the card every time he used it temporarily.

Although, under normal circumstances, such a replacement wouldn't affect Ryan too much, however, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't encounter any dangerous situations afterwards. For example, the time he faced Purple Man, if it wasn't for his luck that [Wesley]'s ability happened to resist his opponent's mind control ability, the consequences might have been unthinkable.

Especially with the appearance of the [Mizuki] card.

The [Three Body Techniques] as the most central component of his plan, although it successfully helped Ryan carry out the plan, it also forced him to keep the [Mizuki] card on his body. It somewhat limited Ryan's arrangements.

Especially with more and more characters appearing on stage, if there were only two clones, they wouldn't be enough for Ryan's future plans. And he himself, because of the restriction of the [Mizuki] card, couldn't come out in person and participate in the battle to share the role.

Because of this miserable situation, Ryan had started to think about letting [Wesley] exit when necessary to make room for another clone to play the role of [The Beast].

With all that, the appearance of the new card slot was undoubtedly the essential flexibility needed for Ryan's plans.