As Knight spoke, he bent his knees slightly, shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, and clenched his fists in front of him, ready to fight at any moment.
Xilin raised a leg and stepped sideways, spreading his arms and letting them hang casually at his sides. He looked full of openings.
When he said, "Begin," the emotions in Xilin's eyes gradually settled until not a trace of fluctuation remained, a stark contrast to the fierce battle intent in Knight's eyes.
An Instructor had once said that you could judge an opponent's next move by watching their eyes. But all Knight saw in Xilin's eyes was calm—a calm as deep as an abyss. Knight had seen calm eyes in many people, but they had all been veteran Instructors or men like his own father. He had never encountered anyone like that among his peers!
Xilin gave Knight a very strange feeling, like a quiet Hunter waiting for his prey to walk into a trap.
Prey? Knight found his own thought amusing. Who was the Hunter and who was the prey? They'd find out once they started fighting!
Bang—
Taking the initiative, Knight's figure vanished from where he stood in an instant. The air there let out a bang as it compressed and collided in a split second.
Knight charged in. As his fist reached Xilin, it tensed in an instant, moving several times faster than before, its force peaking. Just as Knight thought he was about to hit Xilin, he felt his elbow sink, as though he'd entered a whirlpool and been dragged off course. At the same time, Xilin's other hand slipped through the opening and struck toward Knight's neck.
Knight raised a hand to block it. Instead of retreating, he pressed forward another step and threw a punch at Xilin's face. This time, his fist was even faster. Xilin could hear it scraping against the air, the friction crackling sharply.
Xilin dodged, shifting aside and pulling back. He pivoted on his feet to gather force, then twisted and moved in.
A head-on clash of strength?
No, not at all!
That strange, whirlpool-like force appeared again, drawing Knight's fist in, "sticking" to it and pulling it away from its original line of attack. This time, Knight saw clearly that the strange force came from the spiral of air formed by Xilin's palm—and the movement of his entire arm.
Using softness to overcome hardness?
During training, Knight's Instructors and father had given examples of "using softness to overcome hardness." The Fegler Family was almost entirely made up of fighters who relied on brute force, so Knight had studied many ways to deal with such opponents to avoid being disadvantaged in the future. But his favorite was to meet force with even greater force—absolute hardness.
Though he had his thoughts, his hands were never slow. He thrust a knife-hand toward Xilin's throat. The next moment, the hand that had been blocked didn't fully retract. Instead, he swiftly turned his palm downward and struck toward Xilin's chest.
Without a moment's pause, he kept getting faster.
Eyes, behind the ears, neck, throat, ribs, stomach, shins, tailbone... Every strike aimed for a precise target, but each time, that swirling force "stuck" to his attack and pulled it off course, sending it into the walls, floor, or ceiling...
And so far, Xilin had barely attacked at all. He was mostly defending. Whenever he fought someone new, he first took stock of their fundamentals and fighting style. As he deflected their attacks, he worked to improve his own weaknesses and learn their techniques.
Xilin had never seen Knight's boxing style before. He could handle it for now, but he knew Knight was changing with every exchange. At first, Xilin could guide Knight's fists off to one side, but gradually, their strikes grew fiercer and faster. The swirling force could no longer control the attacks; all it could do was fling them away. That meant Knight was beginning to reach the limit of that swirling force.
The Training Room rang nonstop with thuds. Dents began to appear in the walls, floor, and ceiling. The fact that they could dent the Training Room's specially reinforced surfaces showed just how fierce those punches were.
Ci Jincheng and Long felt the Training Room trembling from the isolation area and couldn't help marveling.
"That's insanely fierce! Jincheng, is Xilin's Gene Type really only B-class?"
Ci Jincheng nodded.
Xilin's enrollment file listed his Gene Type as B-class, but Knight had a genuine A-class gene. For someone with an A-class gene to come at someone with a B-class gene so fiercely right from the start? And Xilin was still holding out against Knight's attacks. More precisely, Xilin was going with the force and redirecting it, leading Knight's attacks into empty space.
Watching the Training Room shake nonstop, Long sighed. "The people in the Administration Department are probably starting to notice."
With all that noise, how could they not? The four of them had turned off every surveillance camera in the Training Room before entering, but there was no way the Administration Department had no backup measures...
Ci Jincheng said nothing. He took out a finger-sized device and pressed a button. Small probes and pinhole cameras appeared on the floor, walls, and ceiling of the Training Room. In a few places, surveillance equipment blended into the walls so well that it looked completely unremarkable at a glance. At the same time, every display in the Administration Department showing anything about this Training Room turned to static, and even the recordings were erased.
"Find out who swiped into that Training Room," someone in the Administration Department said.
"We found it. He didn't erase the swipe record. The person who swiped in was... Ci Jincheng!"
"Ci?" The man thought for a moment. "Forget it. Leave that Training Room alone. As long as they don't wreck the place, let them do what they want."
The commotion in Xilin and the others' Training Room was so loud that the people training in the nearby rooms came out to see what was going on. Who was strong enough to make that kind of racket? The vibrations were clearly felt in several nearby rooms.
A crowd followed the noise to the Training Room. Its door was shut, and it was set to "No Spectators." They couldn't get in, so they gathered outside to talk. More people gradually joined them.
Xilin and Knight had no time to think about the reaction outside.
They fought faster and faster. At first, they could still see afterimages, but now even those were impossible to catch. Streaks of lightning began to appear, vanishing almost as soon as they showed.
"The Fegler Family's Thunderstorm Fist," Ci Jincheng said, watching the flashes of lightning.
"I've heard plenty about it, but I've never seen it in person," Long said. He had only seen it in videos on Electronic Publications, and those images had been blurry. Publications generally didn't dare analyze anything related to the military in too much detail.
In the middle of the Training Room, Xilin was resisting Knight's attacks. He could clearly feel the air around them growing restless, as some of the particles began to split and release energy. All of these changes were being caused by Knight.
Like a torrential downpour, his attacks carried the force of thunder. Every punch Knight threw brought flashes of lightning, and sharp crackles rang out without pause.
This wasn't for show. It was real lightning. Xilin could already feel the numbness of the charged particles against his skin, as if he were standing in an electric field. The field was growing stronger, the number of fissioning particles increasing, and with every movement, the numbness grew more intense.
Xilin could even smell the stink of burning clothes. He wouldn't be able to hold out much longer if this continued. The veins bulging on Knight's arms and the rate at which his punches were speeding up were beginning to level off, showing that his strength was nearing its peak.
Bang—
Xilin let the force carry him back several steps.
Knight pressed forward, only to see Xilin's arms jolt and scatter the swirling force. In its place came an aura utterly different from before—unfathomable, immeasurable, and so oppressive it was suffocating.
At that moment, the restless particles around Xilin gradually settled.
So this is the real you... While Knight was still considering this, he pushed off the floor again and charged, his momentum building to its peak. Crackling lightning seemed ready to tear through space...
Xilin didn't dodge Knight's incoming strike. He didn't use the technique of redirecting the force into empty space, either. Instead, he faced it head-on. Standing his ground, he extended his fist to meet it.
Boom! Boom!
The two impacts rang out almost simultaneously. The recoil from their fists colliding sent Xilin and Knight flying toward opposite walls.
The students outside the Training Room had been talking excitedly, but now they fell silent. They had seen the walls bulge outward in the shape of a person.
The students knew the walls' resistance well from all the time they'd spent training in the Training Room. They couldn't even leave a footprint by kicking one; they'd probably break a bone before making so much as a dent. So what on earth were they looking at?!
Ci Jincheng and Long's eyelids twitched. Thankfully, the two had been flung in directions away from the isolation area. Otherwise, they would have smashed through the partition, too.
Knight was strong. Ci Jincheng and Long had known that for a long time. They were the same age, and even though they worked in different fields, they often heard their elders praise Knight.
But what about Xilin? When had the Daongs produced a monster like him? How could someone who could fight Knight to a standstill be unknown?
He was like a star buried in darkness, quietly watching the world before revealing his astonishing brilliance somewhere no one knew.
But whatever happened, this star would soon appear before everyone's eyes. Now that he had emerged from the darkness, his dazzling light could no longer be hidden.
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