"Are you looking for a chance to hold your ground, then use those three strikes?" Pei Ye recalled the terrifying power of the second strike. "Could you show me what the third strike looks like?"
"..."
"What is it? You can use it on me. I'll see if I can block it," Pei Ye suggested earnestly.
"No. There are four strikes."
Pei Ye froze for a moment, tilting his head to reassess the companion he had been sparring with for so long.
There was a fourth strike?
"I can only get as far as the fourth strike right now." Zhang Junxue motioned for Pei Ye to keep attacking, speaking as she struggled to resist him. "These strikes demand too much physical strength."
So that was why. No wonder she trained her body so intensely every day.
Pei Ye nodded, then suddenly frowned. "So, are you planning to take revenge on Shang Huaitong at the Martial Competition?"
To his surprise, Zhang Junxue nodded silently.
"...Are you allowed to kill people at the Martial Competition?"
"No."
"..."
Pei Ye remembered the Instructor saying that the Martial Competition strictly forbade taking lives.
At least, that was the case in Bowang.
Severed limbs and permanent disabilities were permitted, because they were sometimes unavoidable when neither side held back. Once matters reached that point, however, victory and defeat were already decided. There was no need to fight to the death.
True, there were vicious martial arts in which every move sought a life, and accidental killings during fierce combat. But the law would not lower its standards for such exceptional circumstances.
Because once that opening existed, some things that were not accidents would become "accidents" too.
Before the law forbidding the taking of lives was promulgated, every Martial Competition had claimed four or five lives,