The golden fists fell like rain upon him.

Sage used the Path of Fate’s Direction to disperse all the strength from Venerable Surari’s waist and lower body. Surari’s sixteen arms were just too many for Sage to neutralize at the same time. It wasn’t a matter of his predictive, perceptive ability, or even processing ability, but a limitation of his control over the array. While the Plate Cannons let him place the nodes rapidly to form the array, and they were custom carved to fit the situation, they were still less effective than a complete Formation Array. Without modifying the landscape and confining the array symbols to such small plates, the effects of the formation were limited. The amount of force that could be redirected was based upon the power consumption, but the number of specific targets at one time was limited.

While the power of each punch was much lower than when Surari was at his peak, the monk was using quantity to make up for the quality. Sage needed to keep Surari within the formation, so he couldn’t just flee from the area at top speed. This array wasn’t really specialized at trapping someone within, but if he combined its powers with his own interference it would be possible to stop the monk from escaping. Unfortunately, the limited area of the array meant he had to remain within the range of the monk’s attacks. The flurry of punches weren’t strong enough to shatter his bones and burst his organs like they might have been earlier, but they were more than enough to tenderize his flesh.

The earlier exchange of their powerful body cultivator techniques had not only destroyed the first fighting arena, it had also broken most of his Jade Mantle. It shattered apart, wasting the rest of his concentrated Poison Qi. He recreated the Jade Mantle using the Qi created by Life Nebula, his main Cultivation technique. The power from the Inner World was a constant flow of unending energy, but the actual volume and quality of that energy was not the greatest. His Poison Qi was much higher in purity, like a higher density material, which made the Jade Mantle formed from his normal Qi much weaker. The boost it provided to his strength and defenses was much less than the Poison Qi version.

Sage was able to dodge more than half of Surari’s punches, due to redirecting the monk’s force and also using Foresight. Sixteen fists was just too many for him to completely avoid. They came in waves, striking from multiple directions at the same time. Surari had many different attack patterns that ensured Sage got hit over and over again. The Jade Mantle shattered and the fists rained upon his flesh, covering him in bruises and pulverizing his skin and muscle, but such damage came so rapidly because Sage changed his tactics in order to grab hold of Surari’s fists. With every wave of punches he’d single one of the fists out and instead of avoiding it, he focused on blocking and grabbing hold of it.

That classic scene of stopping a person’s punch by grasping their fist was only something that could be accomplished by being much stronger and faster than one’s opponent. You would have to identify the incoming attack and not just intercept it, but also be strong enough to not just block it, but control their motion. The only way to practically do such a thing was to strike first and attack the opponent’s fist, grabbing hold before they could fully commit to the attack. As such, it was only something that worked on those much weaker than oneself. So, for Sage to grab the fist of Surari, someone who wasn’t inexperienced, it meant he had to suffer some damage in return. The Jade Mantle was bashed apart in just a few moments and he then took many hits before he could accomplish his goal.

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There was no time to rebuild the Jade Mantle again, as he was focused upon not only controlling the array, but also making contact with Surari’s fists to work on his counter to Venerable Surari’s sixteen arms. The monk’s face slowly twisted with each punch that he threw. The man’s mouth was open to allow him to continue his chant, but he realized what was going on as it occurred, but had no way to stop it. Each time that Sage grabbed Surari’s fists, he attached a line of silk to it. Then he’d connect the end of the line as well as a new one to one of Surari’s other fists.

Sage was covered in bruises and had a bit of blood dripping out of his mouth from his bleeding gums, but Surari’s sixteen fists were now tangled up into a web. The complicated patterns and arrangements of punch combinations were no longer possible with his hands strung together. It was already difficult enough for a martial practitioner to use two weapons at the same time without just swinging them together one after the other. While it might seem more deadly, if two weapons were constantly following each other, they would become easy to defend against. True masters of two weapons had to make them move independently of each other so that it would feel like fighting two people at the same time.

Surari was only using his fists rather than weapons, but similar principles still applied. If he swung all the fists on the right side of his body at the same time with the same motion, then it wasn’t that much more difficult to defend against then just one really large fist. Cultivators often fought against huge Demonic Beasts, so dealing with large bodies was nothing new. Now that his limbs were chained together with so many lines of powerful spider silk, most of the variations were blocked off. What was even more troubling for Surari was that with all his arms connected together, the Path of Fate’s Direction became even more powerful. Now Sage could target the muscles of just a few of the arms, and they would drag down the performance of the others.

Sage retreated, stepping back from Surari’s furious assault and getting a little breathing room. The two of them glared at each other. Surari’s face was twisted, yet he continued to chant. Sage had taken quite a bit of damage to his physical body, but it had been to set up this result. Without allowing Surari a chance at a comeback, Sage started to circle around the monk. As he moved to the side he reached down to the small of his back and then threw his hand forward. He took a silk line and then used the Fluid Power Lines in his body to channel a burst of air through his palms. This jet of air launched the sticky bead at the end of the line of webbing like a projectile. The line of webbing shot through the air, aiming for Surari’s body. If it missed he quickly shot the other end of the line in a different direction so the thin line would wrap around Surari’s body. The monk could step out of this simple restraint quite easily, but the time he spent untangling himself was more than enough for Sage to throw another line out.

Circling around Surari, Sage just kept throwing out more web lines. He had to spend a bit more energy to avoid a mass of fists thrown his way every so often, but Surari’s strength was now hindered enough that Sage could focus on the offense instead of having to give everything he had just to match the monk. Most of the silk lines that Sage threw missed, which was quite an accomplishment because Surari had to completely avoid them. He couldn’t just slap them away or they’d stick to his hands and if he tried to redirect them he’d have to do it without making contact. It might have been easy earlier using his wind vortex technique, but now that Sage had interrupted that move, Surari was merely dodging them using his physical body. Venerable Surari didn’t have Foresight like Sage, and the web lines were being launched at extremely high speed using the high compressed bursts of air, yet he was still able to dodge the majority of the web lines.

Sage was quite impressed at the battle instincts and reflexes of the monk who’d spent so many years training this impressive physical body. Yet, no matter how powerful the monk’s body was it was getting slower and slower as it was being tied down. When one of the web lines stuck to the monk, Sage ran a quarter circle before attaching the other end of the line to the ground with a wide web. Surari’s eyes bulged with desperation and he smashed his fists against his chest, causing a loud ringing sound to break up the constant chant. A golden mist rose from his back, but this time it coalesced around his head and suddenly, the monk had sprouted two extra heads.