12
"Love! Is there anyone you love?" Xun Uchiha shouted.
"There is... but I just used up all the love I had!" Blood covered Boren Lee's face. He mustered his last strength to block another crushing punch and roared in agony.
"Then find someone else!" Xun Uchiha was almost hysterical. "Besides her, who else is worth protecting?"
"No one! Only her!" Boren Lee screamed, his body driven back under the relentless blows.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Despair spread like a rising tide. Black currents spilled uncontrollably from his body, surging outward like floodwater through a broken dam.
Xun Uchiha's gaze sharpened as he seized on one last hope. "What about children? Do you have any?"
"I do!"
"Then fight for your child!"
Those words were like a beam of holy light, instantly illuminating Boren Lee's bleak world. His movements stopped abruptly.
Facing Gexinke's lethal punch as it whistled toward him, Boren Lee neither dodged nor defended. He thrust out both hands and caught that iron fist, powerful enough to shatter metal and stone, with his bare hands.
For an instant, the air froze.
Boren Lee raised his head. An unprecedented fire burned in his eyes as he stared into Gexinke's indifferent gaze and asked coldly, "What about you? Do you have children?"
Gexinke frowned slightly and withdrew his fist, his tone as flat as though he were stating a simple fact. "I have never loved anyone. Naturally, I have no offspring."
At that answer, Boren Lee's lips curled into a crazed smile.
"Then I'm certain to win."
Before his words had faded, terrifying energy unlike anything before erupted from his pores. This was no simple burst of strength, but the strongest resonance of his instinct to live. Around him, the seawater parted as though pushed aside by invisible hands, forming an