Chapter 72: Duel

"This sword force?!" Ji Pingtian’s standing figure shook violently. He roared, and the jin condensed within his body erupted; a terrifying force, which was significantly stronger than that of an ordinary martial paragon, radiated from his body.

This did not mean his physique was stronger than a standard martial paragon. Rather, his powerful psychic will allowed him to release more power than standard martial paragons within the same timeframe!

For a moment, a phantom of a giant elephant seemed to manifest above him, standing tall enough to crush the void. Its trunk lashed at the heavens as it let out a furious roar.

Terrifying momentum and pressure that exceeded human limits were continuously released from Ji Pingtian. Even Zong Yan and Fang Lu, who were standing close by, as well as grandmasters like Zhang Tianji and Yue Xingzhou, further away, could not help but look on in horror.

Further out, the ordinary martial artists of Yaoguang’s logistics team, such as Lei Yun, Ai Li, and Bai Ya, turned pale from the shock. It felt as if the terrifying elephant trumpeting at the sky would leap through the void in the next instant and trample them all to dust with the weight of a mountain.

"Psychic will!?"

"Unity of psyche and jin! The president... is actually using his full strength!?"

What happened to having the victory well in hand? What happened to not needing gloves or a battle suit? How could he have resorted to using psychic will the moment the fight began?

The two had not yet physically clashed, but the psychic-will confrontation formed first, creating thunderous ripples in the void. Even just the rumbling caused by the psychic wills clashing was enough to shake the psychic minds of the other cultivators.

The sword in Yaoguang’s hand was like a shooting star, resolutely slashing into the terrifying elephant formed by Ji Pingtian’s psychic will. At the moment of impact, the sharp sword light instantly tore through the elephant, which had almost manifested into a physical entity. The sharpness pierced the heavens with unstoppable momentum.

"Such powerful explosive force..." Ji Pingtian could clearly see that Yaoguang had not reached the psychic-will realm. Although the young man seemed to have grasped the mysteries of psychic will, that power felt more like an innate talent—purer, yet weaker. It lacked the patience of long-term nurturing.

Furthermore, Yaoguang’s blood renewal and marrow cleansing seemed to have only just begun; his physique was noticeably inferior to Ji Pingtian’s own.

However, despite his psychic will and physique being inferior, Yaoguang’s ultimate execution of physical power was not the least bit below that of a psychic-will martial paragon! It was as if he were a natural-born prodigy of the Martial Dao, someone who had already trained the circulation of jin and the eruption of blood and qi into a biological instinct.

With a single thought, blood and qi rose like a flame. With a single thought, blood and qi vanished like smoke. This startling combat talent was...

"Mountain-River Stomp!" Even as his thoughts raced, Ji Pingtian’s movements did not slow in the slightest. A terrifying brilliance burst from his eyes. The moment Yaoguang’s sword tore through the elephant, which slightly hindered the sword strike, Ji Pingtian seized the opportunity. He struck out boldly, his fist jin tearing through the air and transforming into a towering elephant that could crush mountains and rivers as it crashed down.

As the punch jin and the sword light collided, a thunderous explosion rang out in the void. The air within a radius of dozens of meters collapsed instantly, forming a visible vortex as new air rushed in to fill that void. This vortex lasted only a moment before exploding outward in the next second.

It was like the shockwave of an explosion. A visible white wave of air swept in all directions from the point of impact. The nearest flowers and grass were instantly torn to shreds by the erupting jin.

In the dead center of the exchange, the treasured sword in Yaoguang’s hand, which he had just borrowed and was not of premium quality, was actually shattered by Ji Pingtian’s violent fist jin. The broken blade fragments exploded outward, cutting through the surroundings and tearing several meter-long gashes into the ground. Even the solid floor tiles were cracked and severed.

However, although Ji Pingtian had used his flesh and blood to shatter Yaoguang’s sword, he did not emerge unscathed. The clash between fist jin and cold steel, and the collision between the blade and his augmented fist qi, caused blood to spray from his right hand on the spot.

It was true that a martial paragon had surpassed human limits and possessed a physique that was difficult to injure with a simple weapon like a sword, but that depended on who was wielding the sword.

As a fellow martial paragon, even if Ji Pingtian’s cultivation was a tier higher, his overconfidence in using his bare hand to strike Yaoguang’s sharp blade resulted in him suffering a significant loss during the first exchange. And this was not the end.

Immediately after Ji Pingtian’s violent jin shattered his sword, Yaoguang’s figure surged forward. He formed a sword using his left hand, piercing forward like a streak of flowing light.

Jin surged continuously from his internal organs, creating a high-frequency vibration. It was clearly just a hand-sword strike, but if it were allowed to hit the body, the jin would penetrate the bone. The vibrations would be strong enough to grind the internal organs of any practitioner below the martial paragon realm into powder. Even a martial paragon with a superhuman physique would suffer a massive shock to their vitals, resulting in severe injury and loss of combat capability.

"Crap!" Facing such a palm and such penetrative jin, Ji Pingtian did not dare to block it head-on. He was forced to immediately pull back and retreat.

"Huh?!" The scene before them caused Zong Yan, Fang Lu, and the many members of the World-Saving Society who had followed them to look on with utter disbelief.

"The president retreated first!?"

In a life-and-death struggle at the martial paragon tier, if either side retreated first, they wouldn't only lose their momentum but also surrender the initiative, turning from the attacker into the defender.

In this confrontation, the one to retreat first was not Yaoguang, who had just been a young grandmaster who hadn't even applied for the status of a Harbinger until a few days earlier; instead, it was Ji Pingtian, a man famous for decades and a psychic-will martial paragon who was among the absolute elites of the Eastern Continent!

Never mind the spectators; even Ji Pingtian himself looked cold and grim as he retreated. As the president of the World-Saving Society and a psychic-will martial paragon, he had actually been forced back by a nineteen-year-old boy!

When he recalled how he had repeatedly called Yaoguang arrogant and overbearing, claiming he would teach him a lesson, those words felt like massive slaps to his own face. If he could not turn the situation around, the sound of those slaps would be incredibly loud.

Ji Pingtian took a deep breath. "You possess a powerful secret technique to stimulate your potential, and your swordmanship is exquisite. It is no wonder you are so arrogant, but... it is useless!"

In the next moment, a secret technique to stimulate potential seemed to circulate within Ji Pingtian. Under the boost from this technique, his blood and qi seemed to ignite, becoming a blazing flame that rose toward the heavens with immense heat. Around his body, the air appeared to distort, as if a furnace had been lit inside him, providing endless power to his physical body.

"Dragon-Elephant World-Suppression!" His retreating figure came to a sudden halt. Carrying the violent jin stimulated by the secret technique and driven by his fiercely burning battle will, he unleashed an earth-shattering punch that seemed capable of sweeping through the world!

This punch was not particularly swift. However, it seemed to contain the power of an overwhelming tide. As the punch was thrown, the surrounding space and light appeared to twist and contract around his fist, as if sealing off space and making it unavoidable. It felt as if he had not thrown a punch, but had instead hurled a great mountain, an entire world. Everything standing in the way of this strike would be crushed into powder by the destructive force within the fist jin. These characteristics...

"A fist art at the heavenly being level?" Yaoguang saw through the essence of this technique. The so-called sealing of space that made it unavoidable was actually another manifestation of the heaven-and-earth furnace. It blended the illusory with the real, messing with the opponents' perception at the level of heaven and earth. This was even more exquisite than simple psychic-will interference.

As he pondered, his palm turned into a fist. As his fist jin vibrated and his psychic will erupted, a mystical aura, which felt similar to replacing the will of heaven with one's own, rippled out from him.

"This is the Dragon-Elephant World-Suppression Fist, one of the three supreme martial techniques of our World-Saving Society! It's supposed to be used only in life-and-death struggles, as an ultimate killing move! This is clearly just a spar. Why would the president use such a lethal strike?!" Zong Yan looked on in horror. He lunged forward and shouted, "President, stay your hand..."

As he moved, Fang Lu, who had been waiting for an opportunity to kick him while he was down, suddenly dashed forward. "Zong Yan, be careful! Do not interfere with their performance..."

Just as Zong Yan and Fang Lu both moved, Yaoguang's and Ji Pingtian's fully powered attacks finally collided. It was like two massive celestial bodies capable of distorting their surroundings converging and crashing into each other. On a cosmic scale, the movements of the celestial bodies might appear extremely slow, but when they truly meet, the resulting impact, especially for the creatures living upon them, is a true apocalypse.

The floor tiles beneath their feet shattered under a violent tremor. The ground within a three-meter radius cracked and collapsed. Compressed air, mixed with dust from the shattered stone slabs, lashed out in all directions, affecting an area of dozens of meters. Small trees nearby were snapped by flying stone chips, sending wood splinters flying.

The strike was a pure, head-on clash between the two, with no trickery involved!

Although Yaoguang's ability to replace the heavenly will with one's own was a far cry from that of a true heavenly being, Ji Pingtian’s fist art could also only manifest a mere fraction of the heaven-and-earth furnace. Consequently, Yaoguang's punch almost instantly broke through Ji Pingtian's Dragon-Elephant World-Suppression.

The violent recoil surged through their punching arms, sweeping through their bodies layer by layer, making their flesh, bones, and internal organs vibrate frantically. Even though both were martial paragons with physiques exceeding human limits, they still felt the intense force crushing their bodies. Every corner of their beings let out an overwhelmed groan of pain, as if their physical forms might completely collapse under this extreme state in the next second.

It was at this very moment that a cry of alarm and fury suddenly erupted from Yaoguang's side. "Fang Lu! How dare you!"

From the corner of his eye, Yaoguang saw Fang Lu's figure erupt with incredible speed. Taking advantage of the stalemate between him and Ji Pingtian, she pounced like a bolt of lightning. A cold glint emerged from the dagger in her hand, piercing toward Yaoguang's throat.