The collision persisted for a long three breaths.
Within those three breaths, a field of contesting laws formed between the silver-white giant hammer and the flaming divine bird's wings, constantly tearing apart and healing again.
Within that field, every color was swallowed into blinding white heat and deep gray.
Two ultimate radiances clashed again and again, like day and night alternating thousands upon thousands of times within a space no larger than a square inch.
Then, with a thunderous boom.
Both forces collapsed at once.
The flaming divine bird phantom began to fracture from the point where its wings met.
The fragments turned into a skyful of pale cyan-white fire rain that poured down.
A spiderweb crack also appeared at the center of the silver-white giant hammer's head.
The crack rapidly spread across the hammerhead and handle. In Iron Hammer's hand, the entire weapon shattered into more than ten fragments of varying sizes, spraying in every direction.
Iron Hammer was hurled backward by the backlash, his entire body slamming heavily into the arena barrier wall.
He spat out a mouthful of murky gray blood and slid down the barrier wall to the ground.
As he dropped to one knee, the remaining broken section of the hammer handle still trembled faintly in his palm.
Zhurong was likewise blasted back more than ten steps, each step leaving a scorched flame mark on the ground.
The Phoenix mark on his chest split down the middle, pale cyan-white essence of fire laws seeping from the crack.
The fire patterns on his skin had dimmed by more than half, and a thread of flaming blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
Even as that blood dripped onto the ground, fine sparks still burned within it.
The two stared at one another across the devastated