Xu Wuyi's punch slid along Void Ripper's palm toward the outside of his wrist, then was dismantled in midair into fine remnants of energy.
Void Ripper's body slid back about two steps, his feet carving two shallow furrows into the grass, but he remained steady.
He caught Xu Wuyi's punch head-on with his left hand. Though he had retreated two steps, he had not fallen.
Xu Wuyi withdrew his fist. His gaze fell on Void Ripper's left palm. There was a faint mark in its center, similar to the white mark on his own knuckles, and it too was rapidly fading. That punch had not shattered anything.
Void Ripper lowered his head to look at his palm, then raised it again. Something had appeared in his dark purple eyes. It was neither anger nor surprise, but more like the faint glimmer of confirmation after verifying a suspicion.
"You really are different," he said. "You absorbed part of what was inside François's core fragment. But not all of it. Being able to force me back two steps already makes you stronger than over ninety percent of those at Tier Three, First Step. But this is as far as you can go."
His right hand rose again. This time, he did not push. Instead, he brought his five fingers together into a palm and slashed sideways at Xu Wuyi. As the edge of his palm tore through space, the grass before him was sliced down the middle by an extremely thin black fissure. It extended from the tip of his palm all the way to the old oak's roots before stopping.
Xu Wuyi twisted aside to evade it. The black fissure swept past roughly ten centimeters in front of him, and the sensation of spatial tearing radiating from its edges made every