Pan Long had used saber techniques until now, so his sudden switch to fists and feet caught Zeng Yingqi completely off guard.
An inch longer meant an inch stronger; an inch shorter meant an inch more perilous. Pan Long had been using a longsword, his strikes broad and sweeping, and Zeng Yingqi had grown accustomed to that rhythm.
Then Pan Long put away his sword and rushed straight at Zeng Yingqi. In a flash, they were almost chest to chest.
At that distance, Zeng Yingqi could barely maneuver his blood-wreathed cane.
Experienced as he was, he immediately released the cane and turned his hand into a blade, meeting Pan Long's Iron Palm head-on.
It was Divine Edge in the Palm, the same martial art one of the six Zeng Family Innate Masters had used earlier.
When that old man used Divine Edge in the Palm, his hand seemed to become a sharp blade, whistling through the air with every movement. In Zeng Yingqi's hands, it looked like nothing more than a shriveled, wrinkled hand, limp and utterly devoid of strength.
Yet Pan Long had severed that old man's seemingly steel-hard arm with True Qi alone, while Zeng Yingqi's unremarkable-looking hand-blade struck his palm and sent him stumbling back several steps.
Worse, the instant their palms met, a sharp rush of wind erupted, carving dozens of gashes of varying depth into the ground around them. The deepest was a black slit with no visible bottom; there was no telling how far it ran underground.
And that was only the aftershock of the strike.
Those in the True Person Realm controlled their power with exquisite precision. If they wished, they could avoid wasting even the slightest trace of it.
This hand-blade looked powerless, but all its strength was concealed, revealing itself only