Speed. Pure, focused, unadulterated speed. Shen didn't know what Law the pig used, but it made her much faster than him.

He could move at Mach 51 when he used his every advantage other than speed-focused short moves.

Yinhu Lanfen was at least twice as fast.

She approached without a weapon other than her fists. Shen didn't let go of his weapon to match against her. He wasn't his spear, but he also wasn't a brawler. He had only learned the basic drow fist fighting technique to use when his primary weapon wasn't available.

Her every movement was preceded by lightning that just materialized out of nowhere. Also, whenever her body went through, a trail of lightning followed.

Yinhu Lanfen was indeed a Law of Lightning incarnate.

Shen was soon bathed in lightning bolts. They felt natural to his every sense, including his tact; they didn't hurt when they struck him. Yet he couldn't quell any bolt with his aura.

They were just... on a higher level.

He had no time to worry about the currently harmless bolts, though. Yinhu Lanfen threw a hook with her left fist, aiming at his... throat?

Shen doubted himself when he noticed her form was atrocious. Was it a gimmick, or had she just attacked without even aiming? Did she think just being much faster than he would be enough?

He stepped back easily, twisting his body and pushing his qi into the ground.

They stood in a vast grassland. Shen had believed it would let him see any approaching enemy. Now, he vibrated his feet just barely to weaken the soil and pushed enough qi to ensure the effect when deep. Meanwhile, he also used his aura to prepare the terrain just the right way he needed it.

Yinhu Lanfen widened her eyes in surprise at his dodge. Or maybe she was astonished that he was gaining distance on her while she completed her swing instead of adapting to his dodge.

Alas, she recovered and reacted, stepping closer and twisting her body. A roundhouse kick so fast Shen had some trouble following came at him. He stepped back again, avoided it, and kept pushing qi into the soil.

The Yinhu Clan hadn't been known for their fist techniques back in his time, and it seemed that still held true.

It was predominantly a matter of effectiveness. Yinhu Lanfen had moved fast, but her moves were so imprecise and wide that she lost at least a fourth of her speed while attacking. She also telegraphed her attacks so clearly that she might as well be telling him what she would do next. Not that the latter was her fault. The Drow Maiden had taught Shen how to recognize the smallest hints, and his Path...

No. Not his entire Path.

Combat.

The Concept of Combat, which had almost Ruptured previously, now completed the process just like that.

His Combat had agreed with the Drow Maiden's every assessment. In fact, the original meaning behind the Concept had changed for him. It was now fully focused on effectiveness. He didn't doubt she had done it on purpose.

Even mastered Concepts could go further and "specialize" with the "footnotes" on the Concept's "page." Now, Shen realized the footnotes were actually entirely new pages with different perspectives on the same Concept. Specializing in one of them didn't make the Concept stronger but added versatility to it. In his case, the new paradigm had overwhelmed the original one he had mastered.

The Drow Maiden's teachings had even touched his War. It was still about fighting many enemies on his own but also connected him with the world around him now for strategic decisions, greatly aided by his aura. Shen felt Yinhu Lanfen's every step, every molecule of air she displaced—Zephyr helped with that too—and could calculate how much power she was using, letting him predict her subsequent attacks.

Yinhu Lanfen punched, kicked, and struck with her knees. She became a blur and got behind him. She jumped, flew, and even roared once.

Shen countered the roar with a simple application of qi, vibration, and magnetism to make the air particles before him nullify any sound. More than anything, that had surprised her.

Did she think it was a special attack or something?

All the while, he kept pushing qi into the ground. He was dodging but not counter-attacking. Although her moves left her wide open sometimes, he had learned patience. He was bidding his time, waiting for the best moment to strike her with his all for a hopefully decisive single attack.

Not long after, Yinhu Lanfen got tired of not connecting her attacks. When Shen dodged her next punch, it simply exploded as soon as it reached the place he had been standing at.

The shockwave was easily ignored with a trick similar to the one that nullified sound. However, the explosion had been just a front with enough qi to hide the actual attack from his aura.

A Law-filled lightning bolt came from inside the blast. When Shen saw it, it was already piercing his anti-shockwave barrier and coming for him.

Finite Avoidance was his new fastest dodging move. He compressed a lot of qi from his reserves to push his body to its very limits, reaching Mach 54 for an instant. He twisted while pushing more qi outside, aiding it with his aura, vibration, magnetism, and even what modern humans would describe as a quantum jammer to deflect the bolt.

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But Yinhu Lanfen's Law wouldn't be denied.

It did lose some strength as it melted his qi, ignored the other defenses, and pierced his aura, but not much. It had also been too close for him to dodge.

It struck his shoulder and pierced all the way through.

| Health Points: 277 / 300 | -23

The damage wasn't terrible, but the issue was what that attack implied—that she could do it again. When the explosion cleared, she didn't look like she had exerted herself. Quite the opposite; she smiled and attacked again.

Shen's wound hurt, but the worst part was that the attack had left what he could only understand as Law fragments inside him. Shen simply could not get rid of them. They weren't invading his Path or anything, but—

"Wait, what the hell?" Shen complained.

Yinhu Lanfen laughed and got closer once again.

There had been no qi in her attack, only pure Law-filled lightning. She had thus bypassed his soul resistance. Shen had been operating under the assumption that metaphysical energy was needed to move a Law beyond one's body, but the latest attack overhauled his understanding. Even the Drow Maiden hadn't talked about it.

Cultivators could just do that?!

He knew his Concepts couldn't. He had tried before and tried again just now, just in case. No matter how much he tried, his Concepts wouldn't just materialize without aura or energy—

Ah, that was it. She had no aura, but she could use her Laws like one somehow. Probably something related to the Ethereal Harmonization realm.

Yinhu Lanfen launched another explosive punch, and Shen blocked the shockwave again. He paid less attention to his aura this time and more to the whispers of Zephyr, Combat, and War. He was ready to eat a new lightning bolt in exchange for information.

Fortunately, she didn't hide a lightning bolt in the explosion this time, so he now knew what to expect from her moves when it was just a feint.

She kept attempting new feints, both with and without explosions. In the latter, she surrounded her arm or hands with lightning or even mimicked body-sized flashbangs to blind him. A simple qi technique kept his vision protected.

She didn't use the lightning bolt again for a while. Not even once did Shen expect it when it wasn't coming and slowed down, which would've given her an edge. Those attacks had felt too similar to the first feint, and the extra data points she kept giving made him even better at predicting her moves.

Yinhu Lanfen didn't hide the surprise on her face.

Instead of feeling elated by his temporary victory, Shen used her slight hesitation to analyze the battle until now. He guessed she either couldn't use the Law lighting bolt in quick succession or felt too humiliated by needing to use that attack to deal with a Fate Origin cultivator.

Still, he kept fighting like she could bring down a lethal storm at him at any time; that was the only way to be a little readier for it if it came.

Eventually, Yinhu Lanfen punched again without an explosion. By now, Shen could even tell if a blast was coming—by the shift of her clothes, of all things. Her body moved in specific patterns to create the explosions, but while he couldn't feel her with his aura, he could feel how her body caused her clothes to shift in a unique fashion.

So, Shen knew there would be no explosion, but there were signs of something else. She put slightly more pressure on the ground on her step and twisted her waist almost imperceptibly more. He hadn't seen her do that before.

Unfortunately, he hadn't paid that much attention to her movements during her lightning attack. Therefore, these changes could mean anything. Yet, he bet on a lightning bolt and dodged preemptively.

He was right.

The bolt pierced all his defenses but missed him by almost a foot.

Yinhu Lanfen's face was filled with shock, and it must have really awed her to no end because she simply stopped attacking. She just stood there, astonished, and opened her mouth to say something.

That was the opportunity Shen had been waiting for.

He stepped ahead with all the power of his legs, leaping at a speed slightly below Mach 45. He couldn't jump as fast as he ran without perpendicular support, which he didn't have. However, he needed to jump because instantly after, he used his aura to turn the ground for a mile around him into dust, then pulled everything into the air as fast as he could.

All the micro-lacerations he had created were used to ground the earth and grass like that. He couldn't elevate the dust very fast, but when he was midway to his enemy, it was already above their heads.

Yinhu Lanfen just widened her eyes more instead of reacting to it.

As soon as Shen was out of sight, he sent twelve qi pockets all around her, including straight ahead. He abruptly stopped his leap with his aura and qi and moved below her. His aura didn't let him see her body in detail, but he could tell she was still in the same place he had last seen her, using qi to float.

He had molded the qi pockets to have his silhouette. They surrounded her, but she still did nothing. Then, he pushed them all toward her in different tempos while moving upwards to strike from below.

At the same time, he pulled all the earth and grass fragments toward her and used his aura to make them vibrate in the frequency he knew could disrupt qi outside one's body. He obviously made sure not to affect his own qi pockets with it.

He was utterly surprised to feel the lightning bolts around her get destroyed by the frequency.

He had felt no willpower-filled qi in them! That they hadn't started an energy-will battle when they touched his qi pockets was further evidence of it!

Anything that wasn't made of mana was made of qi as far as he had felt, but the frequency was supposed to only affect willpower-filled qi, not natural phenomena or elements. For instance, the very dust he was using to go against the qi wasn't affected by its own vibration. Yet, he was clearly ignorant about a few things.

It seemed qi and cultivators had their own rules, and the drow race's knowledge about them was limited indeed.

Yinhu Lanfen felt the closest qi pocket approach her from behind and turned to strike it down. It didn't resist, but she got struck by another qi pocket that Shen let go of as soon as it touched her clothes. He didn't want to risk his qi touching hers and getting caught in a willpower battle.

Getting her robe touched was enough for her to turn quickly as if she hadn't detected or expected it. More pockets approached. She destroyed some and got struck by others.

It looked like a ruse to Shen, so he let go of his own scheme at the last second to give his all instead.

He cut Sharp before him a dozen times in an instant just as he was about to reach her. The infinitesimally sharp qi blades traveled ahead of him, and he let go of it a hair's breadth from her. That close, the blades could keep moving for dozens of yards before losing potency.

As he expected, she was not surprised by the attacks despite being mid-swing at the qi pocket on the opposite side. She twisted her body quick and punched each qi blade with ease—

Blood poured as each invisible edge bit deeply into her hand before dissipating.

It amazed Shen, but he wouldn't let the emotion slow him down. As the cuts distracted her, he got close enough and swung his spear vertically as devastatingly as possible. The qi-filled spear Flowed as fast as he could, and the spearhead's edge was as Sharp as he had ever made it. The entirety of his Path supported both Concepts.

Yinhu Lanfen had learned from her hurt hands and now knew better than to face the weapon. She dodged—or tried to.

Shen was too close

Most of her body got out of the way, but she left an arm behind.