Time Slot Showdown

The ten-meter distance now looked like an impassable chasm, yet also like something that could be crossed in a single step.

The assassin's heart that had never wavered in a thousand years finally cracked today.

Chen Feng still stood where he was, a faint smile on his lips, as if waiting for something—or simply quietly becoming one with this ancient starry sky.

"Then let me see," Hit's voice suddenly turned cold, like an icy blade slicing through the air. "Just how great this 'gap' you speak of really is."

Before he had even finished speaking, he moved.

He did not sprint. He simply took an ordinary step forward.

The overhead lights cast a cold glow. Every speck of dust kicked up by his step hung clearly in the air.

But the moment that step landed, Chen Feng's expression abruptly changed.

His entire body seemed to freeze, because he could clearly feel it—the flowing time around him had been severed.

Time-Skip. This was Hit's unique forbidden technique.

To Hit, time was not a river endlessly flowing forward, but a series of motionless frames pieced together.

He could slip into the gaps between those frames and move as he pleased, while everything outside came to a halt in his eyes.

Now, within Hit's "time gap," the world held nothing but gray-white stillness and deathly silence.

Dust hung suspended in midair. The light seemed to have solidified into pillars, and even the air was utterly motionless.

Only Hit still retained his colors. Only he was alive.

Like a ghost, he made no sound. The instant his foot touched the ground, his figure vanished like smoke, and in the next second, he appeared silently behind Chen Feng.

He held the fingers of his right hand together like a blade, his muscles taut as steel wire, his fingertips concealing an edge sharp enough to pierce alloy.

Without a sound, the hand blade struck straight for the vital point at the back of Chen Feng's neck.

He had used seventy percent of his strength in this strike.

The force was just right—enough to sever the nerves and knock a person unconscious instantly, but not enough to kill. The client had been very clear: they wanted him alive.

The hand blade sliced through the air, only a hair's breadth from Chen Feng's skin.

At that instant, so fast that even a thought could not flash through one's mind, Chen Feng's body—moved.

He did not evade with any large motion. The muscles around his shoulder and neck merely twitched lightly, carrying his upper body slightly to the side.

That single inch caused the hand blade that should have landed to merely graze past his collar, slicing off a few strands of flying hair.

Hit's pupils suddenly contracted, and an icy fear surged up from his spine.

Impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

He was still within the Time-Skip domain. Time had long since stopped.

Chen Feng should have been like a statue, completely unable to move.

Yet that slight shift had been precise and calm, without the slightest error—it was not a coincidence, but perfect anticipation and response.

Hit did not hesitate. His combat instincts made him instantly shift into a more intense "time-gap leap."

His figure turned into afterimages within frozen time, as though he were attacking from all directions at once.

A left fist hammered toward the ribs, a right elbow drove toward the heart from behind, a knee struck at the lumbar spine, a low sweeping kick sealed off any retreat... More than a dozen attacks capable of shattering rocks and splitting stone tablets erupted almost simultaneously, weaving into a net of death that completely locked down Chen Feng's space.

Under this silent offensive, even the air seemed to be stirred into a vortex.

Yet Chen Feng's figure was as light as a feather in the wind.

He neither blocked head-on nor retreated swiftly. He did not even make any large movements.

He merely shifted slightly to the side in a manner that seemed almost rhythmic, leaned back a little, and occasionally turned lightly.

Every step was precise to the extreme, evading with the smallest possible movement at the exact moment Hit's fists, hand blades, and knee strikes were about to touch the corner of his clothes.

His clothes fluttered, yet every movement carried the ease of a leisurely stroll.

This was not a contest of speed at all. It was as though they existed on entirely different levels—he seemed able to "sense" the trajectories of attacks that had not yet happened, even "hear" the sound of time being cut apart.

"Impossible..." Hit's heart kept sinking, and a chill he had never felt before crept up his fingertips.

His Time-Skip had never failed.

Even legendary warriors among the stars could only await slaughter once time stopped.

But this man had not only reacted, he had done so with such ease, as if following a dance routine that had long been rehearsed.

Whoosh!

Hit abruptly pulled back, the soles of his shoes scraping against the ground with a short, sharp screech that sounded especially piercing in the empty training ground.

Back ten meters away, his chest rose and fell slightly. His eyes held nothing but intense focus and confusion as they remained fixed on Chen Feng.

Under the cold overhead light, dust slowly drifted down between them.

"You..." Hit's voice tightened before he even realized it. "Can you see my movements?"

Chen Feng slowly turned around, still as relaxed as ever, his hands casually clasped behind his back, as though the dangerous exchange just now had never happened.

His expression was calm, yet a faint glimmer seemed hidden in his eyes.

"I can't see it clearly," he said evenly. "But I can feel it."

"Feel it?" Hit frowned deeply. The word was too vague. He could neither understand it nor accept it.

The time technique that had made his name was, in the other man's eyes, merely some disturbance in the airflow that could be "felt"?

Chen Feng nodded, his gaze steady. "Your Time-Skip is indeed formidable. You can move through the gaps in time, completely beyond the reach of an ordinary person's five senses."

He paused, and a barely perceptible smile appeared at the corner of his lips. "But for me, there's no need to look with my eyes, nor do I need to deliberately sense it."

He shifted slightly, the hem of his clothes fluttering gently in the silent current of air.

"My body knows how to react on its own."

Hit's expression immediately turned grave.

He remembered hearing, throughout those passing years, of a realm that was nearly legendary—one that required neither thought nor the will to command it, where every nerve and muscle in the body could make its own judgment and respond with the greatest precision and speed.

It was a technique from the realm of the gods, called Ultra Instinct.

"You... have mastered Ultra Instinct?" Hit's voice was dry, as though the words had been forced from his throat.

Chen Feng did not answer. The smile on his lips merely deepened slightly.

That smile was as faint as the wind, yet it had already explained everything.

Hit closed his eyes, drew in a harsh breath of cold air, then slowly exhaled.

A thousand years of fighting through life and death had been carved into his bones. He would not retreat simply because his opponent was strong.

When he opened his eyes again, his gaze had returned to its icy sharpness.

"Even if you know Ultra Instinct," Hit said in a low voice, every word like an iron hammer falling on ice, "that doesn't mean I have no chance."

The moment his words fell, his figure blurred once more.

Time split open again.

Hit became a fleeting dark shadow, darting rapidly through the frozen space.

He did not rush to attack. Instead, like a hunter, he circled Chen Feng. Each appearance left behind only a faint afterimage.

He was searching for an opening—even Ultra Instinct had to have limits.

Every technique had flaws.

Ultra Instinct relied on the body's instinctive reactions at their utmost limit. If he could create chaos that the body simply could not handle...

Hit's thoughts raced as his figure suddenly accelerated!

In an instant, more than a dozen phantom images of Hit seemed to appear simultaneously within the gaps of time.

Some bent their knees to kick, some twisted their waists and drew back their fists, some reached out with clawed hands—every afterimage held a different stance, impossible to distinguish as real or false. They tightly encircled Chen Feng at the center, like a silent, dazzling phantom dance.

The airflow churned, dust motes floated in the air, and it seemed as if the entire world had stopped at this moment.

Then, all the phantoms converged at once!

It was not a single attack, but lethal moves striking from three different directions in the same instant—the left fist shot toward his temple like lightning, the right elbow slammed into his waist like an iron spike, and a low sweeping kick lashed toward the back of his knee like a steel whip.