God's Hand, Logic's Edge

At sunset the next day, at the third training ground behind the mountain.

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong appeared on time once more.

Unlike yesterday's solemnity, their eyes burned with fierce fighting spirit today. A night of thought had allowed them to rise from their shattered confidence. Huo Yuhao had even taken the initiative to seek Xuan Zi's guidance, temporarily grasping several small techniques for combining Spiritual Power and Soul Power.

They were ready to face a true hard battle.

Yet when they saw Ji Juechen, they froze again.

Today's Ji Juechen was completely different from yesterday's.

He still stood there, and he still had not drawn his sword. But the very "aura" around him had changed. If yesterday he had been like a precise, emotionless machine, then today, that machine had been infused with a "soul."

He possessed a contradictory temperament that fused ultimate calmness with ultimate sharpness, as if he himself were a drawn sword.

"You're here," Huo Yuhao said in a low voice. His Spirit Detection had long since activated, completely locking onto Ji Juechen.

"Mm." Ji Juechen nodded, looking at him calmly. "Today, I won't show you the 'blueprints' again."

Before his words had even faded, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong attacked simultaneously!

Having learned from yesterday's lesson, they chose to strike with the most violent force possible, giving Ji Juechen no opportunity to analyze or calculate!

"Second Soul Skill, Butterfly Goddess's Light!"

"Fourth Soul Skill, Soul Impact!"

Ultimate light and pure spiritual impact came crashing down on Ji Juechen from both sides like two Heavy Hammers! This was the strongest combined strike they had planned together!

Faced with power enough to level a mountaintop, Ji Juechen finally moved.

He slowly drew his sword.

There was no earth-shaking Soul Power Fluctuation, no dazzling display of light and shadows.

He merely drew his sword, stepped forward, and thrust.

This sword strike was utterly ordinary.

Yet through Huo Yuhao's Spirit Detection, he saw a sight that made his scalp go numb!

Ji Juechen's sword tip did not meet the two attacks at once. Instead, it precisely stabbed at the nearly nonexistent "energy singularity" between them!

That was the "energy fault line" spontaneously formed by the Power of Light and spiritual impact—two entirely different energies—in order to avoid interfering with one another!

System, activate Clear Sword Heart. Fuse the Coordinate of the 'energy fault line' analyzed by the Eye of Insight with my sword intent.

[Clear Sword Heart activated. Data and sword intent fusion rate: 17%.]

"Buzz—"

There was no radiance on Ji Juechen's sword tip, yet it seemed to form a miniature "black hole." It was not devouring, but a higher-dimensional form of "interference."

His sword did not "block" the attack. It dismantled the attack's "structure"!

"Boom—!"

Light and spiritual impact collided explosively just one meter from Ji Juechen, but the explosion was seventy percent weaker than expected! The moment they collided, most of the energy had dissipated into nothingness because their structure had been destroyed.

The aftershock made Ji Juechen's robe snap in the wind, yet he did not budge in the slightest.

"Wh... what?!" Wang Dong's eyes were full of disbelief. She could not understand why the attack she was so proud of had been neutralized so easily.

Huo Yuhao's heart sank to the bottom.

He understood.

Ji Juechen's strike had seemed simple, but it contained a profound understanding of the nature of energy. He was not fighting them—he was "disassembling" their attacks!

"It isn't over yet!" Huo Yuhao roared as his second martial soul emerged!

"Ice Empress's Claw!"

Ultimate chill covered both his arms, and he charged at Ji Juechen like a cannonball, determined to settle the matter through the purest physical attack!

Wang Dong reacted at once as well. Her figure flashed as she circled around from the other direction, forming a pincer attack.

Faced with this attack from both sides, Ji Juechen's eyes showed a flicker of emotion for the first time.

It was not tension, but something... akin to the excitement of a Chess Player discovering a brilliant move.

Here it comes. A dual pincer attack of physical force and spirit. System, calculate the Optimal Solution and infuse the power of Spellbreaker into my sword path.

[Calculating... Optimal Solution generated. Sword path planning complete.]

Rather than retreat, Ji Juechen advanced, charging directly toward Huo Yuhao.

His sword moved.

This time, it was no longer a simple thrust.

His Sword Light turned into a series of seemingly chaotic afterimages. Through Huo Yuhao's Spirit Detection, every landing point of those afterimages happened to fall upon the "nodes" of his next burst of force, turn, and even breath!

This was not prediction. This was "guidance"!

Ji Juechen's sword seemed to be silently directing him, forcing him to move according to the "script" it had set!

"Not good!" Huo Yuhao forcibly twisted his body, trying to break free from this rhythm.

But at the very instant he changed his move, Ji Juechen's Sword Light suddenly condensed. All the afterimages vanished, becoming a plain and unadorned thrust aimed directly at his brow!

At the same time, Ji Juechen raised his left hand, pressing two fingers together like a sword, and swept them backward. They precisely struck the blade of light from Wang Dong's incoming Butterfly Goddess's Slash.

"Cling!"

With a light sound, Wang Dong felt a strange vibrating force travel through her. The light blade shattered instantly, and she was knocked three steps back, her arm numb.

Meanwhile, Huo Yuhao had nowhere left to evade. He could only cross his arms, covered in Extreme Ice, before his body and take the strike head-on!

Ji Juechen's sword tip did not stab down.

It stopped before Huo Yuhao's ice armor, less than an inch away.

The ultimate chill and the sharp, Spellbreaker aura on the sword tip confronted each other, producing a sizzling sound.

"You lost," Ji Juechen said calmly.

Huo Yuhao looked at the sword tip inches from him, then at those eyes that seemed capable of piercing through everything, and slowly lowered his arms.

He accepted his defeat wholeheartedly.

If yesterday he had been defeated by the power of the "unknown," filled with fear and incomprehension—

Then today, he had been crushed by a kind of "wisdom" he could not understand. He could clearly see that every one of Ji Juechen's strikes was like the move of a top Chess Player, predicting every path he could take before checkmating him in the simplest, most elegant way.

This was no longer a gap in combat technique. It was... a gap in dimensions.

"Is this... your sword path?" Huo Yuhao asked hoarsely.

Ji Juechen slowly sheathed his sword.

He looked at Huo Yuhao, then at Wang Dong in the distance, whose face was full of shock. In an unprecedented tone carrying a trace of a seeker's fervor, he spoke the final—and weightiest—words of the day.

"My sword path is to turn all things in the world into solvable 'chess games.'"

"And you are the most interesting 'Chess Players' I have ever encountered."