The moment the flame giant's pitch-black arm moved, Xia Xuan's pupils contracted sharply.
For when his all-out fist of light met Lin Ming's flame giant's grip, the giant did not budge.
The ten-thousand-zhang flame giant stood like a mountain unmoved since ancient times, its feet planted firmly on the earth. No matter how the thousand-zhang Heavenly King Fist struck, it could not shake the giant in the slightest.
Instead, his mighty fist of light began to tremble violently.
The dark-gold light across the thousand-zhang fist flickered wildly, like a man seized by the throat making his final struggle. The majestic kingly face on the fist twisted, its features cracking inch by inch beneath the black flames.
Then everyone saw Xia Xuan's Heavenly King Fist shrink rapidly within the pitch-black hand.
Like a punctured wineskin, the thousand-zhang fist shriveled from a thousand zhang to several hundred, then to a few dozen. The dark-gold light on its surface dissipated strand by strand, as though threads were being pulled away.
Cracks spread across it, running from the face of the fist to its back, then onward to its knuckles. Dense as a spiderweb, they covered the entire fist of light.
When the cracks reached their limit, the blow that held all of Xia Xuan's strength was crushed apart with a thunderous boom.
The hand of black flame snapped shut. In its palm, the thousand-zhang fist was crushed like a fragile egg, bursting into countless motes of spiritual energy.
Those dark-gold motes exploded across the sky like a grand display of fireworks, then drifted down and shrouded the entire stone platform in golden rain.
The motes danced. In the distance, the many powerhouses could only gape, frozen in place as though a spell had rooted them there.
They stared at the falling golden light,