Chapter [B4] 31 — Fourth Law
I reached for Harmony and found it descended upon me like a tide of power. I moved first, Stepping as I arrived in front of Yang Shen and let Qi and Gu collide with my strike, a miniature void bomb exploding in my palm. Yang Shen was shot backward, the entire castle shook but I knew that had not been even close to enough. I was still just testing things.
Yang Shen took the impact, skid backwards and then noted the damage. Whatever guide of friendliness had been there was lost now, he was calculating how to fight me, there would be no holding back. This was life or death.
“Let me teach you a few things. You don’t live as long as I have without learning a few tricks,” he said, as fire manifested around his hands. I saw the flames, golden red flames that burned with a divine power in then. And then I saw their color change, cycling from green to yellow to purple and then to black. I realized what he was doing, he mixing metal in it, directly into the aspect of the flame and changing it. And so the flames changed, eventually becoming a silver color, as metal and fire found a balance between the Gu and Qi, and Chi was, however briefly, formed within.
Yang Shen stepped, but he did not move through the world when he did, the world seemed to move around him instead. There was no delay, no pause as I was caught off guard when his strike landed, sending me flying, as pain wracked my body.
I recovered quickly though, harmony thrummed in my soul, the power of two divine beasts burned in my body, and I’d been changed, I was not damaged so easily. Whatever his flames had done had already been healed and as I fell off the wall I’d crashed onto, I landed on my feet.
Both of us had taken test shots, to see where our strength measured up and how we fought against each other. Now was the real fight.
I rushed in, stepping into the air, and Yang Shen came after me. Silver flames burned around me, as I used my palms to continue making void strikes. Void palm, I named it as I fought, realizing that would be a fitting name for the attack.
I continued to move, stepping through the world both of us traded blows. I could tell that Yang Shen was not holding back, but I knew that he was using this time to study me, and I was doing the same.
He was certainly more skilled than me. By an amount that was not possible for me to judge. I was not a fighter. I’d never been keen on fighting, but I understood how to do it, mostly out of necessity. Being in the body I was in, with the powers I had, fighting became something I could do at a really high level but there was a fluidity to movements that I did not naturally have. I had to correct little details, spend conscious thought on my movements.