What happened?
What exactly had happened in that instant?
Just a second ago, he had clearly felt himself improving at a tremendous pace, gaining ever more effortless control over the Asura Armor.
He had thought he was gradually discovering how to contend with, even stand against, his opponent!
For a moment, he had even harbored the hope that I can keep up with him, I'm getting stronger, this battle isn't beyond reach.
But why had everything changed in the blink of an eye?
That punch—that utterly ordinary punch, yet one so fast it surpassed thought itself—had so easily shattered the seemingly indestructible Asura Armor on his body?
It had so easily knocked him down from the clouds into the dust?
Could all those fierce exchanges just now, all those seemingly perilous clashes, have been nothing but a dream?
No, it was not a dream.
It was a reality crueler than any dream.
A cold, brutal answer stabbed into his mind:
His opponent had been playing with him all along, toying with him all along.
Like a cat that had caught a mouse, in no hurry to kill its prey, instead savoring the prey's futile struggles beneath its claws—watching it believe it had found hope again and again, only to be beaten back into its original form time after time.
What he had believed was an "evenly matched battle."
What he had believed was "equal strength."
What he had believed was "constant adaptation" and "rapid improvement."
It had all been nothing more than his own wishful delusion!
A false image deliberately crafted by the other man to satisfy some twisted amusement!
From the beginning until now, even from the moment he donned the Asura Armor, the gap between them had not narrowed by even the slightest bit!
His opponent had merely