Pan Long thought it over again and again for a long time. Like drawing silk from a cocoon, he teased apart every possibility that might arise from that strike, working through every variation until he understood them all. Only then did he nod.
"All right. That's how I'll do it."
Then he prepared himself and returned to the Nine Provinces World.
Light and shadow shifted before his eyes, becoming the night sky once more.
Behind him, the golden Buddha shattered into a wash of radiant light. Ahead of him, the white-haired, white-bearded old monk stared in astonishment.
Pan Long had expected this. In the middle of a fierce battle, no one could watch an enemy suddenly vanish without being startled.
And his response was to swing his saber.
The Cicada-Wing Saber traced an arc of brilliant white light toward the old monk's neck.
The Reclining Buddha had expected one palm strike to kill the rough-looking young man. Instead, the young man not only survived the blow but abruptly vanished, leaving him momentarily stunned.
It was in that brief moment of stunned stillness that Pan Long reappeared and swung his saber.
The gap between those events was too short even to call an instant, yet it struck precisely at the limit of the monk's reaction time.
At that point, even a Martial World veteran like him, who had lived for more than two hundred years and fought countless battles, could not react at once.
Pan Long, however, had prepared in advance. The moment the light and shadows changed, he had barely judged where the monk stood—before he was even certain—when his saber was already cutting toward him.
This was truly a case of the blade moving before the thought.
So when the monk shook off his astonishment and instinctively struck back,