Seeing how seriously he was taking it, the disciples had no idea what he was looking at. Curious, they crowded around to watch.
There was a pattern on the smooth cross section sliced open by his sword. They could not say what sort of pattern it was, only that it was a large patch of fine cracks. Everyone could tell at a glance that Martial Uncle's palm strike had made it. Near the point where the strike began, the cracks were still rather coarse and sparse, but the farther they extended, the denser they became.
The damage from the cracks lay roughly in the center, while most of the surrounding stone remained intact.
As they watched, the pattern of cracks illuminated by the sandalwood gold flame aura blurred. A strong wind swept in, blowing a tiny grain out of a crack, and then the entire cracked surface rapidly peeled away beyond recognition. In the end, the whole pattern became a hollow.
What did that mean? The disciples all turned to stare at their Martial Uncle, the sandalwood gold flame aura revealing the blood at the corner of his mouth.
Li Hongjiu reached out to feel the hollow in the cross section, his expression thoughtful. Only he truly understood what that palm strike meant.
It had not actually been formed by his own palm force, but by the force Shi Chun had left inside his body.
He had named the cultivation method he had devised himself "Borrowed Realm." Its essence lay in the word "borrow": he excelled at borrowing an opponent's force to strike back. That was why Shi Chun had mistakenly thought he also knew the Demon-Bathing Art.
The truth was that he had merely taken the force of Shi Chun's Demon-Undoing Hand, circled it around, and sent it back.