As his words fell, Wang Ping immediately threw a punch.
The punch was weak. He used none of the Immortal Dao's profound arts, only an incomplete power of [Primordial]. Yet Lian Ruzhao looked thoroughly pleased.
Then she answered with a punch of her own.
Boom!
Their fists collided. Wang Ping instantly felt a terrifying force strike his body, only for his Divine Intent to stabilize it and reduce it to nothing.
[Great Victory Golden Body]!
At the sight, delight flashed across Lian Ruzhao's face. She had not gone all out, using only a portion of Mind-Only Self's power.
Yet Wang Ping had taken her punch head-on. Neither the matchless strength behind it nor the Divine Intent that extinguished the extraordinary had shaken his body. Though his path remained incomplete, she believed it would, given time, become one distinct from her own.
At that thought, Lian Ruzhao immediately withdrew all her strength.
"Ah! I've been defeated~~"
She went flying backward as though a giant beast of the primordial wilds had struck her head-on, spinning a full three hundred and sixty degrees in midair.
Wang Ping: ...
Too stiff, Master. Way too stiff!
Elsewhere, [Nurturing], who had watched the fight from the shadows throughout, could not help twitching at the corner of his eye. "These two know each other... And that Qi Refiner knows Martial Dao too?"
Despite his words, the mighty cultivator felt no anger at their staged fight. Instead, he stroked his chin with interest. A proper Qi Refiner who had cultivated another tradition—such a man harbored disloyal intentions. It reminded him of cultivators from long ago, when the Immortal Dao had undergone its upheaval.
It had been much the same back then.
The Breath-Consuming Cultivators had originally been Qi-Nurturing Cultivators themselves. To the Qi-Nurturing Cultivators of that era, the