The ice crystals frozen onto the bluestone pavement shattered beneath Su Hao's feet, producing a faint yet grating sound. His burly figure paced back and forth along the edge of the martial arena, the bulging muscles beneath his dark training clothes tensing and relaxing with every step, like a fierce tiger about to pounce on its prey, openly displaying his strength.
Every squat, every twist of his waist and turn of his hips, every punch thrown into the air brought with it a sharp whistle and visible white currents of cold air. He deliberately made his movements broad and forceful. The frigid True Qi circulated across his body, causing the surrounding temperature to plummet and drawing wave after wave of muffled cheers from the Main Branch viewing stands.
"Brother Hao is mighty!"
"Let that Branch family girl see what a true Cold Jade Palm is!"
"One move! Brother Hao only needs one move!"
Listening to the flattery, Su Hao spread his lips into a grin filled with undisguised arrogance and cruelty. He suddenly spun around and chopped his right palm through the air. A concentrated blast of icy palm force howled toward a hitching stone post as thick as a bowl at the edge of the arena!
Crack!
The stone post snapped in response, its broken surface covered in thick white frost!
"Good!" The cheers from the Main Branch grew even louder.
Su Hao withdrew his palm and breathed slightly harder, but his face was full of smug satisfaction. He cast a provocative look toward Su Qingxue, who still stood motionless like an ice sculpture across from him, as though he were looking at a block of ice he was about to crush.
Lin Xiao hid in the shadows of the corridor, his hat brim pulled extremely low, revealing only a pair of eyes bloodshot yet sharp as an eagle's. His back pressed tightly against a freezing corridor pillar. Every breath tugged at the excruciating depletion deep in his soul brought by -1.3, as well as the cold, dormant sensation of the Viper's Kiss remnant core in his right leg. Su Hao's arrogant warm-up and his confident gaze were like red-hot brands searing his nerves.
I can't let him have it so easy!
Lin Xiao's eyes instantly turned as fierce and composed as those of a lone wolf. He needed a spark—an extremely tiny spark, yet one powerful enough to start a prairie fire—to bury in Su Hao's seemingly perfect condition ahead of time! The target was his warm-up rhythm! At the moment his opponent was most relaxed and pleased with himself, when his muscle memory was most deeply ingrained, he would create the tiniest trace of "disharmony"!
His intent was like a red-hot steel needle, carrying ruthless determination as it stabbed fiercely into the dusky-blue screen in his mind!
Target locked: Su Hao... Current status: Warm-up concluding... Muscle memory activity: Peak... Scanning target muscle-group movement trajectory... Right posterior deltoid and trapezius junction locked... Interference plan: Slightly adjust fatigue accumulation rate in target area, amplify lactic-acid buildup perception for 0.3 seconds (physiological level)... Source Energy Points required: 0.1! Warning! Current Source Energy Points: -1.3! Executing this operation will increase core depletion risk and Viper's Kiss contamination activity!
0.1 points! Lin Xiao stared at that glaring number, his heart clutched as if by an icy hand! This insignificant 0.1 points now weighed as heavily as a thousand jun! Every use of Source Energy Points meant overdrawing his already precarious life!
But... it had to be done!
"Execute!" Lin Xiao's intent let out a soundless roar from within the abyss of depletion!
Command confirmed! Source Energy Points deducted: 0.1! Source Energy Points: -1.3 - 0.1 = -1.4! Interference initiated!
Buzz—!
A soul-rending sensation far more intense than he had imagined swept over him in an instant! It was like a ceramic vessel already covered in cracks being struck hard once more! His vision suddenly went black, and thick, bloody blurs instantly covered the edges of his sight! A heavy, bloody sweetness surged from deep in his throat, but he forcibly suppressed it! Deep in his right leg, the dark-green Viper's Kiss core seemed like a venomous snake suddenly awakened, sending over a burst of icy pulsations laced with greed!
Warning! Core depletion worsening! Viper's Kiss contamination activity increased by 0.1%! Contamination corrosion rate: 0.0002%...
The icy prompt sounded like a merciless declaration!
In the real world, just as Su Hao completed that beautiful empty-air palm strike, adjusted his breathing slightly, and prepared to perform one final symbolic finishing stance—a smooth movement in which he steadily lowered his center of gravity like a fierce tiger returning to its mountain.
Behind his right shoulder, at the junction of the posterior deltoid and trapezius that Lin Xiao had locked onto, an extremely faint yet incomparably clear... sense of lag appeared without warning!
The sensation was like a nearly imperceptible grain of sand suddenly jamming a gear. It was also like a taut bowstring acquiring an inappropriate trace of stickiness at the instant it was released!
0.3 seconds! Only 0.3 seconds!
To an ordinary person, it might have gone completely unnoticed. But to a peak One-Star martial artist at the height of his warm-up, whose bodily perception had been magnified to the extreme, that 0.3-second delay in muscular feedback was like touching an abrupt rough spot while running one's hand across smooth silk!
Su Hao's originally seamless, fluid, and powerfully beautiful motion of lowering his center of gravity developed an almost imperceptible pause under the influence of that minuscule lag! The trajectory of his descent deviated by a hair from the absolutely stable golden-ratio line he had envisioned!
"Hm?" Su Hao's brows drew together almost imperceptibly. The movement finished in an instant, and he stood firmly in place. That faint sense of disharmony vanished like an illusion, so quickly that he had no time to grasp it. He instinctively rolled his right shoulder and felt that it seemed... a little heavy? Or perhaps not?
Had he pushed his warm-up too hard? Or had he exerted too much force on that empty-air palm strike?
A trace of the faintest doubt and irritation, like a stone tossed into a lake of his mind, sent a ripple across his smug state of mind. He shook his head, trying to dispel the "illusion," and his gaze once again grew fierce and sharp as it locked firmly onto Su Qingxue.
"Putting on an act! Let's see how long you can keep it up!" he muttered, forcibly suppressing that fleeting discomfort and blaming it on the psychological interference caused by his opponent's damnable calm.
At the edge of the arena, Su Qingxue stood as still as a stone carving. Deep in her eyes, clear as an icy spring, an almost imperceptible ripple seemed to spread. She had clearly "seen" that nearly undetectable pause in Su Hao's final finishing motion! That was absolutely not a flaw a martial artist of Su Hao's level should have!
Had he been careless? Or...?
Her gaze, like an invisible thread, swept extremely discreetly across the shifting heads in the viewing corridor, finally pausing for 0.1 seconds in an inconspicuous shadowed corner where a hat brim had been pulled extremely low.
Lin Xiao!
A complicated emotion beyond words seized her in an instant. Was it relief? Concern? Or... an icy chill from having her fate manipulated by an invisible hand?
Leaning against the freezing corridor pillar, Lin Xiao panted violently like a fish out of water. Cold sweat soaked through his undershirt and clung to the hideous wounds across his back, bringing waves of numb, prickling pain. The -1.4 in his mind was like a red-hot brand, scorching his soul with every flicker. The pulse of the dark-green core deep in his right leg carried an icy mockery.
The price was tremendous! But... the seed had already been planted!
He raised his pale, bloodless face. Through the shadows beneath his hat brim, his bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at Su Hao in the arena, who had grown even more agitated and vicious because of that trace of "illusion." The corners of his mouth slowly pulled into a cold, exhausted, yet lone-wolf-fierce curve.
Su Hao, I hope you enjoy this little "greeting gift" during the life-or-death struggle soon...!
Before you continue