On White Wax Island, Lane was forced back seven steps by Damian.
He recalled the same rhythm he used when he punched driftwood; as soon as he broke one piece, another would drift by, and he could always find new wood.
He lowered his head and wiped away the mixture of blood and sweat that clung to the corners of his eyes with his fingers; his crooked nose looked even more unsightly in the moonlight.
He began to change his playing style.
The alternating straight punches and hooks were still fierce, but after each punch missed, he no longer rushed to continue the offensive. Instead, he used the force of the blocked punch to bounce backward and create distance.
Intermittently, the distinctive heavy and steady thuds of his bare feet landing on the wooden planks echoed across the boardwalk. Then he stood still, his body slightly arched, his five fingers slowly thickening, his nails turning from pink to black hooks, his knuckles bulging, and golden mane extending downwards from the tips of his knuckles as if wriggling. His canine teeth lengthened visibly beneath his lips, overlapping the shape of his first roar on the ice years ago.
The moon hides behind the clouds, and the lion Awakening.
Lane's transformation into a beast was not instantaneous.
He stood there, his crimson coat ripped open by the bulging muscles inside, revealing several seams, and his shoulders transformed from those of a "strongman" to those of a "beast."
Golden mane spreads upwards from the collarbone, around the neck, forming a thick, stiff ring around the chin and behind the ears.
His five fingers grew thicker and shorter, his nails curved into black hooks, and his toes also became beast-like. His bare feet stepped on the wooden planks of the boardwalk, and the planks made a dull thud as if they were being crushed by a heavy object. The hooks on his toes carved shallow grooves in the wood grain.
A thick lion's tail extends from its tailbone, the pom-pom at the end swaying gently in the night breeze, and its mane-covered chest rises and falls dramatically with its breath.
In beastman form, he retained the power of a wild beast and the combat wisdom of a human. His amber eyes shone brightly in the shadow of his mane, and his pupils narrowed from circles to vertical slits, locking firmly onto Damian.
He moved.
The half-beast form's sprint speed was at least twice as fast as its human form. Its bare feet made a muffled, explosive sound as it kicked off the boardwalk, and its entire body turned into a golden-brown afterimage.
Damian's Sharingan caught his trajectory. He charged straight at him from the front, his right claw retracted to his waist, while his left claw spread its five fingers to grab the hilt of his sword.
He wanted to surrender the knife.
Damian dodged to the side at the last second, the hilt of his knife slipping between Lane's left claws, the blade slicing across his ribs.
The blade struck the lion's mane-covered ribs, but the sensation of cutting into it felt less like striking flesh and blood and more like slicing into a piece of hardwood wrapped in thick cowhide. The blade penetrated less than half an inch before being entangled by the dense muscle fibers and mane, making it difficult to advance any further.
Lane glanced down at the blade wedged in his ribs, then shoved Damian, knife and all, away.
This shoulder strike didn't use a fist; it used the weight of the entire upper body.
Damian was sent flying backward and crashed into a pile of cargo crates beside the pier; the sound of the crates shattering drowned out the sound of the waves.
As he rolled over and stood up from the splinters, he clutched his chest with his left hand, a trickle of blood escaping from the corner of his mouth. His clothes on his right shoulder were torn by splinters, and a large, still-bleeding gash appeared below his collarbone.
He was still clutching the knife handle, but his hand was trembling. The seemingly rough shoulder bump had caused him excruciating pain; his shoulder blade might be fractured.
Lane did not pursue the matter further.
He stood in the middle of the walkway, looking down at the shallow cut on his ribs. He wiped a streak of blood from his golden mane with the back of his claws and smeared it on the back of his hand wrapped in canvas.
"Your swordsmanship is sharper Dean's, but not thick enough; it can't cut into bone."
Damian struggled to his feet from the broken wooden crate, his right hand gripping the knife and his left hand supporting his right elbow, his breathing heavy and rapid.
He looked at his hand holding the knife, his fingers, which had trembled four times, stopped. Then he loosened the leather cord wrapped around the handle twice, slowly tightened his grip again, and raised the knife horizontally with his right hand.
He took a deep breath, and the blood-red color of his Sharingan dimmed for a moment in the shadows among the broken wood before stabilizing and slowly rotating again.
Damian readjusted his grip on the White Wax Wood hilt, looked at Lane, whose body was almost completely covered in golden mane, and suddenly spoke, "You are strong, but I will not let you tarnish the reputation of the Uchiha."
Lane laughed heartily, his lion mane trembling, his tiger teeth gleaming like ivory in the moonlight.
"Then let's use the entire Uchiha."
Damian's blade suddenly burst into flames.
Flames emanated from the Chakra convergence point at the Root the blade, swirling around the edge and climbing upwards along the spine of the blade, condensing into a straight, narrow streak of flame at the tip.
The flame color was not the usual orange-yellow, but a high-temperature white scorching with a halo-like pale blue edge, like a line of light cut by the dawning sun through the clouds.
Uchiha Style: Sun Halo Dance.
This is not simply Fire Release to a sword. The fundamental principle of the Sun Halo Dance is to use Chakra to simulate the ring-shaped burning wave of a solar flare. At the moment of swinging the sword, the flames spiral and surge rapidly along the blade, generating a cutting temperature much higher than that of ordinary sword fire. Moreover, the afterflame of each strike will linger in the air for a brief moment, forming an incomplete arc of sunlight. Multiple strikes can create multiple layers of afterimages of sunlight to obscure the opponent's vision.
It took Damian a whole month to get the first flame to stick steadily to the blade. He didn't even dare to use the move when Barlow was around. Barlow said that the technique was not meant to be used on the actual battlefield, but tonight he didn't have his brother by his side to back him up.
The first strike. Flames enveloped the blade as it slashed upwards at an angle. As Lane raised his right claw to block, the high-temperature flames shaved off a layer of hair from the back of his hand, accompanied by a hissing sound and the smell of burning.
He quickly leaped to the side, Damian's blade left a trail of shimmering orange-blue light where he had just stood.
The second cut was a horizontal slash. As the blade sliced through the air, the trail of flame drew an arc from left to right, overlapping with the afterimage of the first cut to create a skewed cross-shaped afterimage.
Lane dodged the scorching edge by tilting his head, but the embers from the slashing motion burned a corner of his golden mane on his left shoulder. Flames briefly burned along the oil at the tip of his mane before he swatted them out with his claws.
The third strike was a straight slash. Damian's fractured shoulder blade had already slowed the blade considerably. Lane seized the opportunity and met the attack with his left claw, gripping the red-hot blade tightly in his left palm.
The thick calluses and scabs on his palms sizzled as the flames burned, and the acrid smell of roasting meat and charcoal wafted on the sea breeze, but he caught it.
The canvas wrapped around his hands had burned away, and his palms were sticking directly to the hot blade, smoking.
Lane gritted his teeth, his cheeks puffed out like two iron balls, and a very low groan escaped from between his canine teeth.
He didn't loosen his grip; he even used his grip to hold the blade in place, preventing Damian from pulling it back or launching a second attack.
Lane clenched his right fist and swung his massive, beast-like elbow toward Damian's chest like a hammer.
This punch was straightforward and left no room for error. Damian took it head-on with his left forearm, which couldn't withstand the impact of the lion's forelimb. His forearm cracked with a soft, shattering sound, and he was sent flying five or six steps away, crashing heavily into the collapsed wooden wall of the guardhouse.
The wooden plank was dented into a shallow, human-shaped crater. When he freed himself from between the splinters of wood and his ribs, his left hand was covered in wood shards and his own blood, while his right hand was still tightly gripping the knife that Lane had held, with four deep scorch marks on the spine of the blade.
Lane looked down at his left hand, which was almost burned to the bone. His fingers were still smoking, and a deep, charred groove ran across the center of his palm.
He tried to bend his fingers, but he couldn't.
The tendons were probably burned and stuck together. He bit down on that area with his teeth, tore off a small piece of charred skin, spat it on the ground, then clenched his left fist with his right hand, and once again bent over and growled.
Damian stood up from the ruins of the wooden wall, hunched over and panting heavily.
His left arm hung limply under his shoulder, unable to exert any strength. Blood seeped from an old wound on his right shoulder, dripping down his sleeve. Scattered around him were fragments of overturned cargo boxes and nails that had been flung from the fierce fight.
He looked at the four deep scorch marks from his knuckles etched into the spine of his blade, remained silent for a moment, and then gripped the hilt again.
This time, he didn't use one hand. He also brought his left hand, which he could barely hold, and pinched the end of the hilt with his five fingers to keep the blade steady. Then he raised the blade to shoulder level again.
Lane stared at him for a long time; his amber vertical pupils, hidden in the shadow of the lion's mane, held no mockery, only assessment.
"You're the fifth person who's managed to fight me hand-to-hand until now."
What about the first four?
"They fought until the very end."
Lane placed his burned left fist and healed right fist on either side of his waist, his lion tail swaying behind him, his mane undulating slightly in the sea breeze, covering his old scars. He grinned slightly, his canine teeth flashing for a moment in the moonlight.
"They're in the same boat as you are now, so badly injured they can barely stand, but their eyes haven't changed."
Damian did not answer; he simply held the burning blade even more steadily under the lion's gaze.
Lane stepped forward, his bare feet landing on the broken planks without him stumbling.
His eyes narrowed slowly in the darkness, framing Damian's entire silhouette from collarbone to the tip of his blade within his most familiar attack path.
Then the two pounced on each other simultaneously. The moment the fire blade and the lion's claw collided again, the entire dock was illuminated by alternating white and dark gold light.