Chapter 85: Payback

"Why does he look so familiar?" I wondered out loud, staring at Qin Lie and his garish attire. I was pretty sure I saw him somewhere before. In a Chinese animation (or dongman). One that had six seasons but for some reason the last season was a spinoff. This guy was identical to the protagonist there. Maybe he was a cosplayer?

Not that it mattered. His lightning was real. I could feel the intensity of his Heavenly Thunder Eradication as he threw a punch at Han Sha. The hooded demonic cultivator countered with his whips, but Qin Lie merely sent them flying away with a burst of lightning.

"You just had to choose now to show up!" Han Sha growled, lashing out with his whips again. However, Qin Lie knocked them aside with his tempered body before unleashing bolts of lightning upon his opponent. Several of the lightning bolts merged together to form a dragon before exploding when they collided against Han Sha.

"Ugh!"

The hooded fella was sent hurtling away, his cloak smoking. He managed to land on the ground, brushing the soot from the scorched fabric of his cloak, and rose to his feet. Snarling, he struck with his whips, trying to tear the web of lightning bolts apart.

Qin Lie refused to give Han Sha a breather, already attacking. His fist crackled with lightning, the lethal electricity enveloping Han Sha as he slammed it into his midriff. The electric currents kept the whips at bay, and the hooded enemy crashed backward with a spurt of blood from his mouth.

"As expected of Qin Lie!" Zhang Ping gasped. "He's so brutal!"

"The difference between someone at level 8 of Yellowed Lands realm and us is really too great! No wonder he is ranked number one." Liu Yu Feng sounded just as awestruck. "He can even fight someone who has reached the Blackened Skies realm!"

"Han Sha!" Pang Bai Shan leaped forward to help, but I scrambled forward to intercept him. Swinging my dragon sword, I tried to cut him apart, but he jumped back. The traitor glared at me. "Do you really think you can stop me in your current condition? You're too badly hurt."

"No harm trying," I replied. Unlike most cultivation protagonists, I wasn't arrogant enough to declare that I could defeat him while injured or only needed a hand to defeat him or whatever. I couldn't afford to underestimate my opponent. Even though I had beaten him earlier, I wasn't as severely injured back then as I was right now.

The pain persistently throbbed throughout my body, but I resisted it, as long as the agony wasn't debilitating, I should be able to continue fighting. I wasn't at my best condition, but I would fight as hard as I could. Raising my sword, I lunged forward again.

Pang Bai Shan immediately flung a bunch of white orbs at me, but I cut through them. Even so, I was forced to a halt so that I could calmly avoid and intercept the deadly projectiles. I didn't bother to use my enhanced sixth sense this time. With my current strength, I could destroy the orbs even if I didn't trace along their weakest qi lines.

I didn't have to use my enhanced sixth sense for everything. Given how it overloaded my brain and was a double-edged sword that could end up hurting me if I wasn't careful, I had to be cautious about when to use it.

Yelling, I managed to get through the bombardment and descended upon an evading Pang Bai Shan. He dove to the side, just narrowly avoiding my sword. Even though I had anticipated his dodge with Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths, he was still able to escape. My injuries had made me slightly slower. Damn it.

Landing on the ground, I twisted around and slashed with my sword. Once again, I relied on Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths to read my opponent's moves and predict where he would flee to. This time, I was rewarded with a stream of blood as I left a cut on his shoulder.

Cursing, Pang Bai Shan retreated, but not before he tossed another few white orbs at me. I carved a devastating path through them and closed in on him. I wasn't able to finish him off yet, but I was pressuring him. Just a few more minutes and I would finally defeat him.

"How is this possible?!" Pang Bai Shan growled as he furiously back wheeled. "You're only at the early stages of Heaven realm at best, and I'm at the peak of Heaven realm! How are you able to overwhelm me to such an extent?"

I didn't reply. Most likely it was because of the Heaven and Earth Formula I practiced. As expected of the ultimate cultivation technique, it allowed me to make up for the gap between our cultivation realms. I honestly didn't know how it worked, but as I expected, cultivation realms didn't decide everything. The quality of one's cultivation techniques and skills mattered too. No matter how much stronger my opponent was than me, or how much more qi he possessed, if he couldn't make full use of his advantages against me, I could make up for the difference with skills, techniques and intelligence.

Furthermore, Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths was basically a cheat skill that allowed me to read the currents of my opponent's qi and predict his movements. As long as he wasn't absolutely stronger and faster than me to the point where my body and reflexes couldn't keep up with my mind, I should be able to at least gain an advantage over him.

Absolute strength would make my vaunted Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths look like a joke, after all.

Additionally, there was a psychological factor in this battle. Earlier, I had already defeated Pang Bai Shan and he had lost his confidence when fighting against me. That was already a mental block. Truthfully, I wasn't that much stronger than him and I shouldn't be dominating him to his extent, especially when I was injured badly by Han Sha earlier. The reason why I wasn't having that much trouble was because Pang Bai Shan had already been psychologically intimidated by me. And when he saw me coming at him ferociously, confident despite my injuries (mind you, there was a very big difference between confidence and arrogance), he got…scared, to put it simply.

That was why he was currently being overwhelmed by me. Not because he really was weaker or less skilled, but because of his current mental block and fear.

There was another explosion of lightning, and Han Sha leaped out of the smoke and jagged bolts of deadly electricity. He glanced at Pang Bai Shan and me, and clicked his tongue.

"Useless!" He swore under his breath. He whipped out one of his whips, catching my sword. I had read his movements with Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths, but I still couldn't react in time. As a Blackened Skies realm cultivator, Han Sha was so much faster and stronger than me. There was nothing I could do even though I knew the attack was coming. Also, my attention was focused on finishing off Pang Bai Shan as quickly as possible, so my reflexes were a split second slower.

With a single jerk of his arm, Han Sha yanked my dragon sword out of my hands and hurled it away. With his other hand, he tossed a spirit pill at Pang Bai Shan, who caught it easily.

"That's…!"

"Ha ha ha! With this spirit pill, I can breakthrough to Yellowed Lands! I'll be able to crush you!"

Pang Bai Shan swallowed the pill. I was wondering how stupid he was to eat a medicine right in the middle of a battle, and rushed forward with a Soul Crushing Strike to hit him before he got his guard up, but a sudden burst of qi blew me back.

"You really have the luxury to be doing something else while fighting me, huh?"

Qin Lie hammered Han Sha, who raised his other arm – bound and reinforced by his metallic whip – to parry the blow. Lightning exploded and Han Sha skidded away, but he didn't take too much damage. Instead, he was grinning.

"You should be more worried about your comrades."

"I'll take care of my schoolmates after I kill you!"

While the two powerhouses dueled, I straightened myself and watched Pang Bai Shan. He really made a breakthrough from peak Heaven realm to the second level of Yellowed Lands realm. However, there was something wrong with the spirit pill he had just consumed.

The qi inside him was raging violently, rampaging uncontrollably, corroding his meridians and eating away at his insides.

Then I understood. This spirit pill was a steroid. The idiot was doping. Of course there was no such thing as miraculous spirit pills that would instantly raise one's cultivation, otherwise everybody would be taking them. Indeed, there was no reason for Han Sha to wait until now before giving the medicine to his lackey. He would have the idiot level up before the battle, not in the middle of it.

The reason why he only waited until the middle of battle before finally giving Pang Bai Shan the steroid was because it was a last resort. Doping had terrible side effects. even though it would grant Pang Bai Shan a temporary boost in power right now (I gathered the effects would only last an hour, maybe two, before his cultivation realm dropped back to normal), but it would cause near irreparable damage to his internal organs and damage his cultivation. It would be unlikely for Pang Bai Shan to progress much in future because of his corroded meridians.

I suspected Pang Bai Shan didn't care. Right now, he only wanted to kill me, and he was willing to sacrifice his life in order to achieve his goal.

"Ha ha ha! This power! This strength! You're dead, Shu Cong! DIE!"

He launched a bombardment of white orbs at me, each of them vastly more powerful than before. As I suspected, the difference between two different cultivation realms – Heaven and Yellowed Lands – was massive. It was going to be difficult for me to dodge.

Closing my eyes, I used Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths, inserting myself into the wildly rampaging currents of the heavy bombardment. Rather than go against the flow, I swam with it, using whatever gaps I could find to evade the powerful orbs.

However, the speed and power behind which they were being thrown at me was far too much for me to simply evade. I couldn't possibly avoid all of them. Not only that, my friends were behind me. A few stray shots might land and hurt them badly.

Taking a deep breath, I gathered whatever qi I could and began moving. If I couldn't fully avoid them, then I would disrupt them.

"Tai Ji, the ultimate of heaven and earth."

Moving my hands in an almost circular motion, I spun and whirled around, deflecting the orbs and sending them back at my assailant. A gigantic yin-yang symbol materialized behind me as I moved, almost as if it was a shield. Glowing brightly, its twin arcs of black and white almost seemed like they were revolving around each other. The unending flow of the cosmos and the duality nature of the universe – they were embodied within my movements.

Rather than block the orbs head-on, using strength against strength, I used soft to counter hard. My hands would strike the incoming orbs from a different direction, altering their trajectory and deflecting them away from me and my friends. At times, I would spin them around to send them flying back at a stunned Pang Bai Shan.

"What the hell is this?!" he shouted. "Just what the hell is this?!"

I didn't reply. I continued to deflect and reflect more of the orbs, standing my ground unyieldingly yet gracefully and flexibly spinning around in my territory. My opponent dove to the ground, forced to evade several of his own ferocious orbs.

Gritting his teeth, he charged at me, gathering a titanic amount of qi to create that immense mountain once more.

"White Mountain Strike!"

His qi hardened into that gigantic mountain and he punched me with all of his Yellowed Lands realm strength.

The yin-yang symbol continued to revolve calmly behind me, even as I shifted my hands to intercept his attack. I couldn't block his powerful punch head-on, and I didn't have a blade with which I could cut through his White Mountain Strike. Even if I was still holding my dragon sword, I suspected I would fail to cut through his attack – so fast and furious it was that I would hardly be able to slide my blade through the weak qi lines and stab the origin point before it got obliterated.

But I had to be more flexible in my way of thinking. I couldn't always try and destroy my opponent directly.

That was where Heavenly Flow and Earthly Paths came in.

Black and white qi swirled in my hands, and the yin-yang symbol behind me glowed brighter. I caught Pang Bai Shan's arm from the sides, rather than facing his fist directly, and then spun him around. Disrupting the flow of his qi, I then deflected the mountain of his attack to the side.

But it was too huge for me to simply deflect away. Even if I altered the trajectory of his White Mountain Strike, it would still obliterate the entire area – and me with it.

That was fine. I just needed to rotate the White Mountain Strike in the opposite direction and return it to him.

"Gah?! My qi?! What are you doing with it?!"

Pang Bai Shan realized that something was amiss, but he was unable to control the flow of qi. Rather, I was directing his qi currents and dictating his movements, manipulating his body.

Yet it wasn't enough. His White Mountain Strike was too big, too powerful. Simply returning back to him would only result in mutual destruction, something that Pang Bai Shan was more than happy with.

"Ha ha ha! As long as I kill you, I don't mind dying with you!"

My opponent recognized my intentions and he laughed. I scowled.

"Unfortunately, I have no intention of dying together with you. I very much prefer women."

Closing my eyes, I directed the violent swirl of energies away, feeding the yin-yang symbol behind me. It was growing exponentially larger, gorging on the flow of qi that I siphoned away from Pang Bai Shan. But it wasn't fast enough. I could sense cracks running through the yin-yang symbol. It was on the verge of falling apart.

If only I could…

At that moment, I saw a solution. I finally understood.

"Amalgamating yin and yang elements."

No wonder I had failed to combine yin and yang elements while practicing Yin Yang Swordsmanship. There were a few misconceptions, the foremost of which was that Yin Yang Amalgamation Strike was purely a sword move.

No. it was a sword technique, yes, but it worked on a much simpler concept – the amalgamation of yin and yang elements. As long as I could combine yin and yang together, I could apply that concept to anything, not just the sword.

The second misconception was that I had been trying to brute-force my way through when merging the yin and yang elements. I had thought that as long as I forcibly put them together, I would eventually succeed.

Unfortunately, that was just me banging my head against the wall and hoping the concrete would give way eventually before my skull.

What a fool I was. The whole concept of Tai Ji, the ultimate of Heaven and Earth (Formula), was soft countering the hard and flexibility. Not brute force.

With this epiphany, I took a deep breath, combined yin and yang, and then unleashed the merged energies in a single flash.