Blood seeped from the corner of Emperor Qing's mouth, yet he wore the savage grin of a victor.
He seized the hand Zhou Cheng had planted against his chest.
His iron-clamp fingers locked around Zhou Cheng's wrist, the knuckles sinking deep into his flesh.
Zhou Cheng's expression shifted slightly, and he instinctively reached over with his other hand to free himself.
Emperor Qing ignored Zhou Cheng's struggle. He simply thrust out a finger, striking as swiftly as an afterimage, straight at the Shanzhong acupoint in Zhou Cheng's chest.
After fighting this long, Emperor Qing understood that overpowering him in a frontal clash and winning through brute force would be far too difficult.
They were both Grandmasters. How could deciding the victor be so simple?
Against the properties of Zhou Cheng's three kinds of True Qi, his sole advantage lay in the total amount of True Qi he had accumulated.
His attacks struggled to achieve anything, and his True Qi recovered more slowly than Zhou Cheng's. If this battle of attrition continued, even his vast reserves would eventually run dry.
He therefore had to exploit the sheer abundance of his True Qi to secure victory in one stroke.
Only thirty percent of his True Qi remained.
Yet even that thirty percent far exceeded Zhou Cheng's total reserves at his peak.
Thus, he intended to use his advantage to recreate the scene on Great Eastern Mountain when he had crippled Ku He.
He divided his True Qi into two portions, gathering one in his chest and relying on that immense protective True Qi to take the punch head-on.
The other portion surged along his finger and blasted straight into Zhou Cheng's Shanzhong acupoint.
This finger strike was neither slaughter, destruction, nor resistance. It was a gift.
A vast torrent of True Qi,