Cao Kun Appears! An Ordinary Punch?!

The instant Tang Hao's blood-red Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring appeared, the land for hundreds of meters around was bathed in crimson!

Terrifying pressure surged outward from Tang Hao like a tidal wave!

The ground trembled. The trees groaned!

Flender grunted and dropped to one knee. Blood seeped from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, while his Soul Saint-level Soul Power flickered like a candle in the wind!

The phantom of his Cat Owl Martial Soul let out a mournful cry and scattered!

Zhao Wuji fared slightly better, but his knees shook and his bones cracked under the strain.

His level eighty-eight Soul Power was compressed to within three inches of his body as he struggled to hold on.

Gritting his teeth so hard his gums bled, he stared red-eyed at Tang Hao and that glaring Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring, shaken to his core.

So this was a Super Douluo!

And a Titled Douluo with a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring!

The gap between him and a Soul Douluo was like heaven and earth!

At full strength, his pressure alone could strip away most of my ability to fight!

Tang Hao watched the two men struggle beneath his pressure without a trace of pity.

He slowly raised his right hand.

He summoned no Martial Soul Avatar. He did not even use a Soul Skill.

He merely raised his clenched fist.

Within it gathered the raw power of a Titled Douluo and the indomitable force of the Clear Sky Hammer Martial Soul.

If that punch landed, Zhao Wuji would be injured even if he survived!

The fist descended slowly.

It was not fast, yet it carried an inescapable will to destroy.

The compressed air shrieked.

Zhao Wuji's eyes bulged. He wanted to fight back, to unleash a Soul Skill, but the pressure pinning him down made even circulating his Soul Power agonizingly difficult!

He could only watch the fist swell before his eyes. Never had death felt so close!

Flender closed his eyes in despair.

Just as Tang Hao's fist was about to strike Zhao Wuji's chest, something changed!

A figure moved faster than the eye could follow, stepping out of empty air to appear before Zhao Wuji!

He was not tall. In fact, he looked rather slight.

Dressed in white, he looked like an ordinary young man.

His timing was uncanny: Tang Hao's punch was committed, but had yet to land, leaving no chance to redirect its force!

More astonishing still, he had placed himself precisely between Zhao Wuji and the strongest point of the blow, as though he had calculated it all beforehand!

Faced with a punch that could kill a Soul Douluo, one imbued with the Clear Sky Hammer's overwhelming force, the young man did not even take a defensive stance.

He simply stood there and lifted his head slightly toward the approaching fist, which seemed capable of shattering the stars.

Then he raised his right hand.

His fingers curled into a fist. No Soul Power flared, no Martial Soul appeared, and his movement did not stir the slightest breeze.

With a perfectly ordinary motion,

he met Tang Hao's devastating punch

with one of his own.

The differences in size, strength, Soul Power Level, and even the nature of their power made for a contrast as stark as it was absurd.

On one side stood a Super Douluo famed for years, striking in anger with a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring.

On the other stood a young man who looked barely eighteen or nineteen, his Soul Power so faint it was almost imperceptible.

It looked like a mantis trying to stop a cart.

"You're asking for death!"

Tang Hao's eyes grew colder, and he drove his fist forward with even greater force!

He would grind this presumptuous brat to dust alongside Zhao Wuji!

"Cao Kun! Get out of the way!!!"

Zhao Wuji roared until his voice cracked. He tried to shove his disciple aside, but Tang Hao's pressure held him fast!

Flender shut his eyes, unable to bear the carnage he was sure would follow.

The next instant!

Thud!

The sound of impact was dull rather than thunderous, yet it rang through the silent night.

No bones shattered. No blood and flesh flew.

Nor was Cao Kun blasted away and reduced to a mist of blood.

At the instant their fists met, time seemed to stop.

Tang Hao's stone-shattering fist hung motionless in midair.

A pale, slender fist had stopped it head-on, steady as bedrock.

It did not budge.

There was no explosion of force, no burst of scattered Soul Power.

Only a strange, crushing stillness remained, as though two invisible mountains had collided.

In the moonlight, it was plain to see:

the Soul Power around Tang Hao's fist had grown so dense it was almost solid.

The moment it touched Cao Kun's fist, it melted away as silently as snow beneath the blazing sun.

It had not been broken!

It had not been canceled out!

It was as though it had encountered a deeper, more commanding law or will, and simply unraveled.

The cold disdain on Tang Hao's face

froze in place!

His expression faltered!

It was not merely that this young man had stopped his fist, shocking as that was.

When their fists met, he had felt something in that unremarkable punch.

A pure, concentrated force of unimaginable weight, as though it could destroy heaven and earth!

That force was not Soul Power, or at least not entirely.

It felt older and more fundamental, as though it came from the depths of the blood, from the dawn of life itself!

It was boundlessly commanding, yet restrained and deep.

The faintest trace of it made the Soul Power Tang Hao took pride in—Soul Power imbued with the Clear Sky Hammer's mastery of strength—recoil and unravel, like a subject before a king!

What shook Tang Hao even more was the whisper he faintly "heard" deep within that force.

No. He had not heard it. He had sensed it.

The voice seemed to come from the primordial past, crossing endless time and space to reach this place.

"The... pinnacle... of... strength..."

Those three faint words struck Tang Hao's mind like a hammer!

For an instant, even his will, hardened by countless battles, wavered. An indescribable tremor ran through him!

It was more powerful than what he had felt the first time he saw a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring.

It even stirred a strange hint of... reverence?

How is this possible?!

Turmoil surged through Tang Hao.

How could someone barely eighteen or nineteen possess such terrifying, fundamental power?!

How could he summon an echo of such ancient will?!

In the split second that Tang Hao's concentration slipped and his fist stalled,

Cao Kun moved.