At last, amid the astonished, mocking, and cruel gazes of the crowd, Gu Han assumed his stance. With a stomp, he instantly shattered countless stone slabs beneath his feet. Then, all the strength in his body passed through his waist, hips, spine, arms, and every muscle and bone, gathering upon his fist before he threw a punch at the airborne Barbarian King, A Yanda.
Boom!
With a deafening sonic boom, Gu Han's fist finally met A Yanda's. At that instant, the void before them seemed to explode apart. The air currents around them surged wildly, as though a tornado had risen from flat ground, whipping up endless gales. The Barbarian Chieftains could not help narrowing their eyes, while vessels filled with food and wine were blown to the floor, clattering and smashing one after another.
"Ha ha! What Barbarian King A Yanda? His reputation may have been enormous in the past, but seeing him today, he was nothing more than this. Take another punch from Gu!"
After receiving that blow, Gu Han felt that Barbarian King A Yanda was even weaker than he had imagined. A Yanda could not gain the slightest advantage against him, and Gu Han was immediately overjoyed. Before A Yanda could even catch his breath, he launched another punch.
"Courting death!"
Though Barbarian King A Yanda could not understand Gu Han's words, he could roughly guess their meaning from his expression. Seeing this black-robed monk look down on him so contemptuously and dare to swing another fist at him, he flew into a rage and met the attack head-on with a punch of his own.
Boom!
Their furious fists collided once more, producing a heaven-shaking blast throughout the great hall. Dust sifted down from the beams overhead, which seemed on the verge of collapse. Even the thick crimson wooden pillars supporting the building trembled, as though a minor earthquake had struck.
"Ha ha! Again!"
After their exchange, Gu Han saw the shock and fury on A Yanda's face and burst into laughter. His qi and blood erupted around him, seeming ready to condense into a wolf-smoke column. His feet pressed against the earth, and he resembled one of the ancient dragon-elephants of legend, filled with terrifying explosive force. Every punch and kick seemed capable of shattering heaven and splitting earth.
Now that Gu Han had achieved minor success in both Blood Tempering and Organ Refining, the complementary nature of the martial arts from the two worlds seemed to have finally revealed its true terror. They granted him not only peerless speed and strength, but also incomparably frightening endurance.
A martial artist's Inner Qi might be exhausted after one or two hours of fierce combat. Even a warrior like A Yanda, who had surpassed the peak of the Internal Qi Realm and reached the level of half-step legend, could not endure much longer. At most, he could fight a few more quarters of an hour than an ordinary peak Internal Qi Realm martial artist before his Inner Qi ran dry, leaving him at the mercy of others!
But for Gu Han, with the endurance of his fleshly body, let alone fighting for one or two hours, even if he fought continuously for an entire day and night, he would still be as lively as a dragon and vigorous as a tiger, his physical strength unending.
"Die!"
With a thought, Gu Han threw another punch. The move was exceedingly simple, like that of a child who had only just begun learning martial arts, yet it contained terrifying power capable of smashing everything apart.
At his level of strength, martial techniques created by ordinary Blood Tempering and even Internal Qi Realm martial artists could no longer provide him with any enhancement.
What Blood Tempering Realm martial techniques? What Internal Qi Realm fighting styles? None could compare to a casual strike from him!
Thus, although his Blood Tempering Realm martial technique, the Seventy-Two Demon Subduing Palms, had long since reached great mastery, he rarely used it. Those complicated moves not only could not improve his strength in the slightest, but would instead hinder him from unleashing it further.
The same was clearly true for Barbarian King A Yanda.
Thus, to the onlookers, Gu Han and A Yanda now appeared like children who had never learned martial arts, fighting without any fixed form. Legs, elbows, knees, and shoulders all seemed capable of becoming weapons, used however they pleased.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
As time passed, earth-shaking explosions rang out through the vast hall. Gu Han and Barbarian King A Yanda exchanged blows without pause, trading more than a dozen moves in the span of a breath. The ground throughout the hall cracked apart, while shattered stones and debris flew in all directions like hidden weapons, frightening the Barbarian Chieftains into scattering like chickens and dogs as they fled outside.
The two men before them were simply too terrifying. Although most of these Barbarian Chieftains were Internal Qi Realm martial artists, and two of them had even reached the peak of the Internal Qi Realm—virtually invincible outside—they still could not interfere in the battle between them.
After all, given the strength of those two, even an ordinary peak Internal Qi Realm expert would suffer grave injuries from a single punch. If they were grazed by a kick, they might lose their lives!
"Alaichi, Guduo, the enemy is fierce. We truly cannot defeat him, and the mere few hundred soldiers outside the residence are far too few. To kill this bald donkey, we must have thousands upon thousands of troops besiege him. I order you two to take my military tally and swiftly gather the Barbarian Tribe's army outside to aid the king and capture this thief!"
Once the many Barbarian Chieftains had fled outside the residence, one of them, seemingly the highest-ranking among them, pulled a token from his robes. It was carved entirely from ivory, then painted red, and sculpted with lifelike detail into a phoenix that appeared ready to soar into the heavens. He issued his command to two brawny Barbarian Chieftains of the Internal Qi Realm.
Among the Barbarian Tribe's hundred clans, every clan had a totem it worshipped as a god. Since Barbarian King A Yanda unified the hundred clans, the Fire Phoenix worshipped by his tribe had been revered by all of them. Naturally, the military tally used to mobilize soldiers had also taken the shape of a Fire Phoenix.
"Yes, Chieftain Sijia!"
The Barbarian Chieftain holding the Fire Phoenix military tally clearly possessed immense prestige. At his command, the two chieftains immediately lowered their heads in obedience, took the tally, and sprinted away.
"Ahhh! Die, die, die!"
Within the great hall, Barbarian King A Yanda's eyes reddened when he saw that he still could not defeat the black-robed, bald monk before him. The beastly nature of the Barbarians within him could no longer be suppressed and erupted completely. Punch after punch, kick after kick, he attacked in a relentless stream.
Yet in stark contrast to A Yanda, Gu Han grew more excited the longer he fought. Through this battle, he had finally learned that, without realizing it, he had truly reached the pinnacle of this world. Even against an expert like A Yanda, who was close to the second-rate level of the main world, he was not inferior in the slightest. In the real world, he had finally gained a trace of the ability to protect himself.
After all, although the Yue Kingdom in the main world was powerful, experts capable of True Qi Projection were not as common as cabbages. Even in a commandery spanning a thousand li and housing several million people, there generally would not be more than a few. A half-step second-rate expert was already exceedingly powerful.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Thinking of this, Gu Han's heart surged, his qi and blood boiling as he continuously exchanged blows with the seemingly crazed Barbarian King A Yanda. They fought across all directions, swiftly smashing the enormous hall to pieces before moving into other chambers. Nearly every place they reached was rapidly reduced to ruins.
Only after nearly two quarters of an hour did the situation finally take a turn.
Before you continue