Seeing Lian Youming meet him with sword fingers, Zhikong felt delight rather than alarm.
His One-Finger Zen had cultivated peerless finger strength. With his formidable body, harder than metal and stone, as its foundation and his mighty inner strength reinforcing it, how could a sword-finger strike from Lian Youming possibly withstand it?
Wind and waves surged. Thunder exploded.
One stood above, the other below; one stood on a reef, while the other seemed to rise upon the surging waves.
Yet just as Lian Youming sprang up and struck with his fingers, Zhikong's eyes suddenly changed, as though he had seen something incomprehensible. His eyes widened, his pupils contracting and expanding, expanding and contracting.
Beneath Lian Youming's spray-soaked clothes, ridges and furrows suddenly crisscrossed his body. These were the changes produced by his muscles contracting and relaxing-his muscle trajectory. But inner strength was, by its very name, strength generated within. All force had always traveled from the inside out.
Yet this force of Lian Youming's seemed to descend from heaven, traveling from the outside in. His muscle trajectory resembled countless rivers flowing into the sea, converging upon a single point.
And there was more than one force.
Both legs of Lian Youming's trousers suddenly billowed outward. Like ripples of great waves, a force surged up from beneath his feet, likewise traveling from the outside in, passing through both legs as though to join the force descending from above.
And what of Lian Youming himself?
He neither inhaled nor exhaled now. His internal breath had drained away, his muscles were relaxed, and there was not the slightest force within his body. He looked just like an ordinary person.
Not only his force-even his qi dynamics seemed to have vanished. His vigorous heart and lungs seemed to have fallen silent as well.
All