One Punch

He laughed so hard he bent forward and backward, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. Slapping his thigh as he laughed, he said the little brat sure knew how to talk. He would have believed those words from anyone, but coming from a tiny kid still wearing a penguin outfit, they were the joke of the year.

The audience was also swept up in a sea of laughter, the sound nearly lifting off the dome.

Only Jiang Lan did not laugh.

"Match start!" the host finally announced.

Zhao Tiezhu was still laughing.

He did not take any defensive stance. He had not even fully released his Martial Soul; only a faint iron-gray glow covered his arms.

Zhao Tiezhu stood lazily where he was and beckoned to Jiang Lan. "Come on, kid. Let Uncle see just how—"

He did not get to finish.

Jiang Lan moved. A crack exploded across the stone slabs beneath his feet, and he turned into a black-and-white blur, instantly appearing before Zhao Tiezhu.

That chubby little fist carried no Soul Power, no flashy effects. It simply struck Zhao Tiezhu's stomach—straightforwardly, ordinarily.

Zhao Tiezhu's voice caught in his throat like a rooster being strangled.

He lowered his head to look at that tiny fist, and then his body folded into a shrimp.

The mocking grin on his face remained frozen there, mingling with his twisted expression of pain to create an utterly bizarre sight.

His body flew backward out of control, his feet leaving the ground. He streaked through the air in a straight line, over half the arena, over the ropes, over the referee's table, before crashing into the wall behind the stage with a boom.

The wall cracked.

Zhao Tiezhu was embedded in a pile of rubble, his tongue hanging out, his eyes rolled white, foam spilling from his mouth.

The laughter in the audience vanished.

The burly man who had just shouted for them to go easy stood with his mouth agape. The peanuts in his hand scattered all over the ground, and though his lips moved several times, he could not force out a sound.

The spectators who had prepared their sunflower seeds and waited to enjoy the show all wore expressions as if the same hand had pinched their chins shut—their mouths open, their eyes wide. Their minds were clearly still processing what they had just seen, and the processing had failed.

The host nearly dropped the Soul Tool amplifier in his hand.

He had worked in this profession for more than a decade and hosted thousands of matches. He had seen instant defeats and one-punch KOs.

But he had never seen a six-year-old send a level-twenty-five adult flying with one punch and embed him so deeply in a wall that he could not even be pulled out.

The host took a deep breath and announced the result at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking.

The audience remained deathly silent. Only the faint sound of Doro eating an orange came from a corner.

The silence lasted only three seconds.

Then the dome of the Vast Sea Great Soul Arena was nearly blown off by the roar of the crowd.

"My god! Did you see that?! One punch! Just one punch!" A lanky man sprang out of his seat, his trembling finger pointing at the chubby penguin-suited child on the stage, who was still dusting off his hands.

"That Zhao Tiezhu is level twenty-five! His Martial Soul is the Iron-Arm Bear! His defense is among the best at his level! And a six-year-old sent him flying with one punch?!" The person beside him clutched his hair, his eyes screaming, Did I not wake up today?

"What Iron-Arm Bear? More like a paper bear!" A bald, burly man in the back row laughed until tears came out. He slapped his thigh and shouted toward the stage, "Well done, little guy! I lost every coin I bet, but that punch was worth it!"

In the last row of the audience, a young man leaned over the railing, his open mouth large enough to fit a fist.

He mechanically turned to look at his equally petrified companion. "What did I tell you? I said he was a monster, didn't I? Do you believe me now?"

His companion's Adam's apple bobbed several times before he managed to squeeze out a sentence. "...What I want to know now is what kind of formula Sea God Island's milk uses."

Beside the arena, the host's professional composure shone through at that moment.

He pinched his own thigh hard enough to make himself grimace in pain, then rushed to Jiang Lan at top speed. He grabbed his right hand and raised it high, shouting the most heartfelt words he had ever shouted in his life.

"The win—ner! Jiang Lan!"

That shout was like a spark dropped into a barrel of oil, and the audience completely erupted.

Cheers, whistles, stomping, and the pounding of hands against railings blended together, making the entire Soul Arena hum. Some people stood and applauded, some threw their hats into the air, and even more people wildly shouted one name.

"Little Guga! Little Guga! Little Guga!"

"Doro! I won!" Jiang Lan waved at her, the sleeves of his penguin outfit flapping with sharp slaps.

Doro swallowed the orange in her mouth and calmly let out a "Doro."

The tone roughly translated to: As expected. Nothing to make a fuss about.

The supervisor stood in the shadows beside the arena, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly beneath his goatee.

He lowered his head and looked at the registration form in his hand. The round red fingerprint stamped on it by a tiny finger had already blurred slightly from sweat.

"Xiao Yue." The supervisor beckoned to the female staff member beside him and instructed in a low voice, "Make three copies of this registration form. Send them to the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, Spirit Hall, and the City Lord's Manor."

Xiao Yue froze for a moment, then said hesitantly, "Supervisor, isn't... isn't that a bit exaggerated?"

"Exaggerated?" The supervisor turned and pointed with his chin at the penguin-suited child on the stage, who was sharing an orange with a white little ball. "Six years old, level eighteen, and he sent a level-twenty-five Iron-Arm Bear Soul Master flying with one punch. He did not even activate his Martial Soul throughout the entire fight. Do you think that falls within the range of an ordinary genius?"

Xiao Yue opened her mouth and realized she had nothing to say.

"This is a freak," the supervisor said, emphasizing each word. "And if a freak of this caliber appears in our Vast Sea City and we fail to report it, neither you nor I will be able to bear the consequences when the higher-ups investigate."

Xiao Yue's expression turned serious, and she hurriedly left.

On the stage, Jiang Lan stuffed the half orange Doro handed him into his mouth, puffing out his cheeks like a hamster's. He walked to the edge of the stage, stood on tiptoe, and looked toward the wall with Zhao Tiezhu embedded in it. Worriedly, he asked, "Uncle, is he still alive?"

The host's eye twitched. Isn't it a little late to think of that after beating him up?

Still, he maintained his professional smile and waved to the medical team at the side of the arena.

Several healing-type Soul Masters in white robes had been waiting there all along. Upon receiving the signal, they immediately rushed to the pile of rubble behind the stage and began pulling Zhao Tiezhu out of the wall with many hands.

When Zhao Tiezhu's body was dragged free, he was still curled into a shrimp-like posture, unconsciously foaming at the mouth, his eyelids rolled back until only the whites showed.

The medical team leader crouched beside Zhao Tiezhu and pressed his fingers against the man's sunken abdomen, wearing an expression as though he had seen a ghost.

"His ribs aren't broken."

He muttered to himself and pressed harder.

"His internal organs aren't ruptured."

He shifted to another spot and pressed again.

"It doesn't even count as a muscle strain... It was just pure impact force. The shock knocked him unconscious."