Hao Qi had already arrived at Black Street. A short distance ahead was the bar where Xu Wen was. The tips of Hao Qi's fists were stained with blood, and he looked disheveled—his hair was messy, and his face was dirty. Seven or eight out of ten people around him stared at him, but he paid them no mind. Instead, the further he walked, the more a surging, passionate emotion welled up in his chest. He could not quite put it into words, but it made him want to sing, to cry, and to roar. No longer holding back, he raised his voice and sang right there amidst the vast sea of humanity.
"Ten years spent sharpening a single sword,"
"Its frost-like blade has never been tried."
"Today I show it to you, my lord,"
"Are there any injustices you can bide?"
Hao Qi strode toward the bar. Around a dozen people stood outside the entrance. As Hao Qi walked and sang, six or seven of them closed in. Two or three frowned the moment they looked at him, clearly recognizing his face.
At the same time, Hao Qi caught sight of a woman named Xiao Qian in the distant street corner, covering her mouth in a daze as she watched him from amidst a crowd. Giving her just a single glance, Hao Qi shifted his gaze to the men surrounding him.
"Right here... is an injustice!"
No sooner had Hao Qi muttered these words than one of the men burst out laughing. "Could this lunatic have been scared out of his wits? I reckon—"
Before he could finish the word "reckon," Hao Qi met him with a single slap that drove the man's head straight down into his neck, killing him instantly. The surrounding men froze for a fraction of a second, then shrieked and attacked Hao Qi. But by now, Hao Qi had channeled Inner Force into his body, and his cognitive reflexes were astonishingly fast. To him, these men's movements were practically indistinguishable from slow motion. Amplified by his Inner Force, his own speed surpassed theirs by an incalculable margin. Without using any particular stance or technique, he flashed through the group, delivering a flurry of slaps with crisp *pa-pa-pa* sounds. A touch meant death, a brush meant injury. The onlookers saw only a streak of black shadow flash past as the men attacking him suffered twisted heads, broken necks, and spurting blood, each dying a thoroughly dead death.
Only then did Hao Qi look at the remaining few, particularly the two or three who had frowned upon seeing him. "You recognize me, don't you?"
Cold sweat poured down the faces of these two or three men. They dared not say yes, nor did they dare say no. The next instant, they felt themselves collapse to the ground as excruciating pain wracked their hands, feet, and spines. Their screams never even left their throats before they passed out cold. As for the rest, they were not so fortunate—every single one of them died on the spot.
Having slaughtered these men, Hao Qi felt neither nausea nor hesitation. He pushed open the bar's heavy doors and stepped inside. The scene within was not the chaotic mess he had imagined. Inside were exclusively men. A dozen blood-soaked figures, whether dead or alive was impossible to tell, lay sprawled on the floor, accompanied by several bloody children. Aside from them, dozens of tall men filled the establishment. Near the counter, a handsome young man sat drinking.
The moment Hao Qi crossed the threshold, the handsome youth's gaze snapped onto him. With a violent flick, the youth hurled his wine glass, stomped down hard enough to shatter the wooden floorboards, and lunged with blistering speed toward the inner wall of the bar. The speed was so incredible that ordinary people would not even have had time to react before the youth crashed straight into the wall.
Yet Hao Qi was no ordinary person. He was gradually coming to understand the true significance of the Inner Force Realm, but that did not prevent him from knowing his own strength. Without the slightest hesitation, he too stamped down hard, charging forward at a velocity far exceeding the youth's. At the same time, he curled his hand into a fist and unleashed a frontal strike of Arhat Fist.
Before his fist arrived, its force had already preceded it. The immense pressure carved a visible trail of rushing wind through the air. Though the youth was still at least half a meter away, his stomach caved inward directly opposite the oncoming fist. As he slammed into the wall, a mouthful of blood erupted from his lips. Yet his reflexes were quick, and his innate speed and strength were sufficient; this impact actually managed to shatter the wall, sending him tumbling out into the street. He slapped his palms against the ground, flipped back to his feet in a single fluid motion, and dived straight into the crowd.
Before he could plunge into the thick of the people, however, a hand caught him by the collar from behind. The sheer, overwhelming force left him utterly incapable of resistance. With a deafening crash, he was hurled back through another shattered wall and straight into the interior of the bar. Nor did the momentum stop there—the power not only threw the youth into the bar but punched clean through the wall on the opposite side, flinging him back out onto the street once more.
Even so, the youth managed to crawl to his feet within seconds. His vitality was formidable, sitting just a hair's breadth away from a Quasi-Inner Force Expert; his body had been tempered almost to the absolute limit. Though battered, he was far from dead. Driven by the primal instinct to survive, he tried to stagger forward once more. But once again, the moment he stood up, a sharp, agonizing pain lanced through both his knees, snapping his legs right through. He collapsed into a roll upon the pavement, utterly unable to stand again.
"No, don't kill me! I am Xu Wen! I am the legitimate heir of the Xu Family!" The youth shrieked at the top of his lungs, rolling desperately on the ground to put some distance between himself and the terrifying Inner Force Realm expert before him.
Hao Qi ceased his attack and slowly approached Xu Wen. "Mm, I know you're Xu Wen. If you weren't Xu Wen, I'd be the one with a headache. Besides, you know who I am, right?"
"Who are you!?" Xu Wen genuinely failed to recognize Hao Qi. In truth, he had no idea who Hao Qi was—or rather, he had never cared to know the identity of the person he had intended to drag in and interrogate about the missing shipment. To him, such people were mere insects.
Hao Qi chuckled, walked right up to Xu Wen, and pointed at himself. "I am Hao Qi. To put it simply, my brother—a sworn brother who shared life and death with me—was killed by you. Word has it that because a shipment of yours was stolen and you couldn't find any clues, you decided that rather than let anyone slip through the net, you'd kill my brother. A petty punk utterly incapable of robbing your cargo. And since I am his brother, and I'd been to this street before, you were planning to drag me in and kill me too, weren't you?"
"No, I didn't! I didn't!" Xu Wen denied it instantly. With life and death hanging in the balance, he had no room to argue with Hao Qi. No matter how grand anything else might be, nothing surpassed the value of his own life. His mind was entirely consumed by how to survive.
"If I want to kill you, your word naturally counts for nothing. However, I imagine there is someone here whose word does count. Right?"
Without sparing Xu Wen another glance, Hao Qi turned his head to look at a middle-aged man standing on the street not far away. The man wore an ordinary long robe, but despite the plain attire, he carried an unprovoked dignity that gave off an unmistakably extraordinary aura.
The mutual resonance of their Inner Force made concealment impossible. Choosing not to hide any longer, the middle-aged man lowered the claws he had been holding behind his back and walked over with an easy, unhurried stride. "Young man, you've gone too far."
Hao Qi let out a cold laugh. "How have I gone too far? Please, enlighten me."
The middle-aged man pointed toward the distant bar. "You just killed eleven people. That is going too far. To slaughter eleven people in broad daylight—do you not know that carries the death penalty?"
A bizarre expression crossed Hao Qi's face. "Is he your son? Even if he isn't your son, he's surely your blood relative and junior, isn't he? Then let me ask you: I killed eleven people, but how many did *he* kill? Hundreds? Thousands? How do we settle that ledger?"
With a stern expression, the middle-aged man replied, "He holds a post in the Internal Affairs Department. Managing gang members who disrupt social stability is his duty. Furthermore, whether someone has killed or not is not a matter of your mere words; it requires evidence. Do you have proof of what crimes he committed? If not, let him go. Young man, you are breaking the law. Do not walk any further down this path, or no one will be able to save you."
"A post? Duty? Evidence? Breaking the law? Hahahahaha..."
Hearing what sounded like a supreme joke, Hao Qi laughed so hard tears nearly welled in his eyes. After laughing for a moment, he said, "I'm reminded of a joke: when I talk to you about the law, you talk to me about strength; when I talk to you about strength, you talk to me about the law... Are you out of your mind? Isn't the so-called law merely a tool for the ruling class to protect themselves? To use your own logic: I am now an Inner Force Expert, which makes me part of the ruling class. Therefore, the law should protect *me*. Otherwise... what use is this law, hmm?"
The middle-aged man's face turned livid with anger. "Absurd! It seems your very soul is corrupted and beyond redemption. It appears I must kill you here and now to prevent you from harming good people."
"Good people... Heh. Remember those words. Good people. Don't forget them."
As the words left his mouth, Hao Qi stamped his foot and lunged straight at the middle-aged man. Refusing to show weakness, the middle-aged man brought his hands up, forming eagle claws. As he swept them through the air, faint white trails of torn airflow were visible. In the blink of an eye, the two collided, exchanging at least twenty or thirty blows in the span of a heartbeat.
"Brat! You're still too green! You've only just burst forth with Inner Force, and already you dare come kill a scion of the Xu Family? You truly are too bold for your own good! Today, I'll see that you come, but never leave! Second brother, join me!"
The middle-aged man roared with laughter, still finding the breath to speak amidst their rapid-fire exchange. Hearing those words, a thought instantly flashed through Hao Qi's mind: he had been betrayed by the Li Family. After all, the only people who knew he had awakened Inner Force and could rush here immediately seemed to be them.
Yet upon a second thought, the Li Family had no motive to betray him. Even if he sustained injuries taking a blow head-on right now, he was fully capable of escaping—it was merely a question of how severe the wounds would be. But if the Li Family did that, they would instantly forge a deadly blood feud with him; how could they possibly commit such a foolish act?
If the Li Family had not betrayed him, then it meant the Xu Family, eager to recover their stolen cargo, had deliberately used Xu Wen as bait on the streets to flush out the mastermind behind the scenes. Consequently, the Xu Family's Inner Force experts—perhaps their only two Inner Force experts—were both right here, and he had simply stumbled right into them.
Realizing this, he ignored everything behind him. Instead, his striking power followed his momentum as he pressed fiercely forward, every single punch trading heavy blows with the middle-aged man.
Hao Qi possessed a glaring weakness. First, he had only just awakened his Inner Force; though he had spent the journey here deducing its usage and combat applications, his understanding was far from complete. Knowing how to use it and being able to use it skillfully were two entirely different things. Right now, he was simply relying on the boosts to speed, strength, recovery, and cognitive reflexes granted by the Inner Force Realm. He was utterly clueless about the true combat methods of an Inner Force Realm expert. His earlier ease in thrashing Xu Wen had been nothing more than a suppression of tiers. Once he actually faced a genuine Inner Force expert without the absolute advantages of speed, strength, and reflexes, his shortcomings would become painfully obvious.
His greatest vulnerability, however, lay in his fist techniques. A complete set of external martial arts encompasses training methods to temper various parts of the body, combat applications involving diverse techniques and power-generation methods, and offensive power. Then comes footwork—in fact, what is commonly called *qinggong* is inherently part of external martial arts. Otherwise, did people expect enemies to stand like wooden posts waiting to be hit? Any complete set of external martial arts must include footwork, and specifically the footwork best suited for generating power and executing attacks within that style.
Hao Qi's Arhat Fist was, after all, a low-tier martial art of the lowest grade. Setting aside its training methods, its combat postures were at a distinct disadvantage, to say nothing of its footwork. If he did not rely on overwhelming speed, his mobility and shifts would be entirely locked down by his opponent—unless... his opponent voluntarily surrendered their footwork advantage to engage him in a slugfest.
And that was precisely the crux of his opponent's strategy. The middle-aged man clearly intended to coordinate with the other Inner Force expert in a pincer attack, meaning he would do whatever it took to block Hao Qi. In doing so, he effectively forfeited his footwork advantage. As for the advantage in techniques...
When Hao Qi had originally chosen the combination of Arhat Fist and the Muscle-Tendon Changing Classic, apart from it being the fastest route to acquiring Inner Force, there was another purpose behind it. Within the System, specific external martial arts paired with specific internal arts produced unique special effects!
Arhat Fist was indeed the weakest boxing style, but once paired with the Muscle-Tendon Changing Classic, a qualitative change would occur!
Back when he played the game, Hao Qi had tested this. A normal Arhat Fist dealt twenty or thirty damage to NPCs, and on a bad roll, perhaps only ten or twenty. By comparison, a single strike of the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms would strip an NPC of three or four hundred HP—the gap in offensive power was astronomical.
However, when Arhat Fist and the Muscle-Tendon Changing Classic were used in tandem, a special effect triggered: there was a certain probability that Arhat Fist would transform into the Bana Palm. The effect of the Bana Palm was to ignore all of the enemy's defenses and deal fifty points of true damage. Combined with the damage inherent to Arhat Fist itself, it made Arhat Fist a far from pathetic choice even within the game.
Though HP meant squat in this real world—no matter his physical condition, his character template always maintained a fixed health pool, which defied the logic of a genuine reality—as a measure of sheer offensive power, a Bana Palm triggered by Arhat Fist was no longer just an ordinary bottom-tier boxing technique... True damage. Just thinking about it made his blood rush.
"Die!"
Amidst Hao Qi's furious roar, his Arhat Fist smashed forward in a frenzy, completely disregarding the middle-aged man's intricate and incoming eagle claws. By all appearances, it was a suicidal, do-or-die charge. But the middle-aged man held an overwhelming advantage; why would he throw his life away in a mutual destruction pact? Naturally, he used his eagle claws to parry, not even bothering to counterattack, intending simply to stall until the pincer maneuver closed in.
Hao Qi unleashed a barrage of punches without a shred of defense. As his fists pounded furiously, he acutely felt his internal energy surging through his arms into his hands. Most of his Inner Force was consumed in the collision of their blows, but he sensed that a tiny wispy thread of energy was not dissipating; instead, it was condensing right in the center of his tightly clenched fists. With every successive punch, another fraction of energy gathered. After a continuous string of strikes, it felt as though he were gripping a pellet of intensely concentrated Inner Force in his palm.
*(I've thrown so many punches, yet there's no sign of the Bana Palm. Could it be... that once the martial arts from the System materialize in reality, so-called probabilities cease to exist, and instead transform into...)*
A suspicion formed in Hao Qi's mind. At that exact moment, a fierce, bone-chilling wind struck from behind. The incoming velocity was terrifyingly fast, leaving him no time for further thought. If he failed to break the current deadlock, fighting his way out while injured would be his best-case scenario. But how could he reconcile himself to that? Having finally shattered the chains of reality, how could he willingly sink back down?
*(If my guess is right, then this... must be the Bana Palm!)*
Hao Qi renewed his forward assault, driving straight into the middle-aged man's oncoming eagle claws. Yet midway through the strike, his fist morphed into an open palm. In a mere split second, the ball of Inner Force gripped in his palm detonated violently, surging madly through his outstretched fingers and palm. Quick as thought, the middle-aged man watched wide-eyed as Hao Qi shifted from a fist to a palm, slapping directly against his eagle claws. He expected nothing more than a standard variation, but before he could alter his stance, his eagle claws violently fractured—they could not withstand this single palm strike!
Glancing down at the hand, the middle-aged man saw it emitting a faint white glow. Expanding from small to large, a hazy yet undeniably visible pale-white Buddhist palm print broke away from Hao Qi's physical hand and smashed straight toward him.
"Inner Force condensing into visible qi! Ah, this is the Inner Qi Realm!"
Frightened out of his wits, the middle-aged man managed only a single terrified bellow before the hazy palm print engulfed his upper torso. The immense force drove straight through his body, sending him flying heavily backward into the side of a street building, shattering a two-story structure straight through. Without stopping, he was blasted another fifty meters away until he collided with a utility pole on the street behind the building, snapping the pole in half before he crumpled limply to the ground.
*(Next step...)*
Having transitioned from fist to palm and executed the strike, Hao Qi immediately felt his otherwise endlessly regenerating Inner Force plunge into exhaustion. A stabbing pain racked his entire body, and his striking hand, having unleashed the Bana Palm, felt so numb he could no longer feel pain at all. Yet the situation was critical, and he had no leisure to check his condition. With a fierce roar, he forced the footwork inherent to Arhat Fist: keeping his right foot planted, he twisted his left foot against the asphalt, grinding a trench an inch or two deep into the concrete. His shoe tore to shreds as his torso wrenched halfway around to face behind him.
Behind him, an elderly man with graying hair roared in fury, veins bulging as a single saber whirled into a churning sphere of silver light. This was no mere figure of speech; the elder's blade speed was so blindingly fast that it genuinely resembled a spinning silver orb to the naked eye. Anyone—whether an ordinary person or even a Quasi-Inner Force Expert—who stepped within range of that sphere would be hacked into mincemeat in less than a second.
"Heh."
Though the saber was barely a dozen centimeters from his body and closing rapidly, Hao Qi's expression remained completely unchanged. Gripping another concentration of Inner Force in his remaining palm, he unleashed another strike. Halfway through the motion, the fist transformed into palm. The immense power carried through from start to finish as the palm began to glow. From the pale-white radiance within his palm, an ethereal, ghostly Buddhist handprint—barely half the size of the previous one—greeted the incoming master of the single saber.
With a thunderous explosion, the Buddhist palm print and the silver-white saber collided. The immense shockwave erupted outward, causing the ground between them to shatter prematurely as chunks of cement and stone blasted into the air. The saber-wielding Inner Force expert was blown back several dozen meters. Twisting and tumbling mid-air, he managed to land and plant his stance firmly upon hitting the ground. But when he looked closely, the young man he had been fighting had vanished without a trace.
Yet upon a closer look, a mouthful of fresh blood gushed from the gray-haired elder's lips. For far away, beneath the snapped utility pole, the middle-aged man—who had suffered catastrophic injuries from taking a point-blank Bana Palm earlier—now lay with his head completely pulverized. Before his corpse, shallow indentations and fractured cracks scarred the pavement where feet had forcefully trodden.