Crack-
Thunderbolts streaked across the sea of clouds pressing overhead, countless writhing serpents of lightning spreading toward the horizon.
Raindrops the size of soybeans battered the gigantic black monument. The two figures standing on either side were as small as grains of rice against the thousand-zhang platform, yet at that moment, they became the focus of the entire world.
Tens of thousands of martial artists watched the two supreme saber masters before the monument with unwavering attention. None scoffed when they heard the words, "My saber is faster than Mad Fangzi's."
After all, that was the martial way: standing on the shoulders of predecessors, generation after generation of indigo surpassing the blue from which it came, elevating martial principles to their utmost limits. There was no fastest, only faster; no highest, only higher. There had never been any eternally unrivaled technique.
But although everyone in the martial world understood this, putting it into practice was no easy task.
Martial techniques were like chess manuals. Though "No Two Games Alike in a Thousand Ages," after a thousand years of inheritance, generations of martial prodigies had already refined the strongest approaches to the point where one extra piece was a burden, and one fewer left them lacking.
Never mind creating a peerless martial art from nothing-even bringing something new out of the old, slightly improving a predecessor's approach by the tiniest fraction, was harder than climbing to heaven.
Everyone present focused on Ye Jingtang, making his "first" appearance in the martial world. They felt he would not dare make such a wild claim on this occasion unless he had innovated upon and surpassed Mad Fangzi's techniques.
But Ye Jingtang really did look a little too young.
Although nine out of ten of the current One Immortal, Two Saints, Eight Chiefs had reached