Chapter 2003 — The Fourth Stance of Raging Fire Fist!

Thinking of all this, Wei Zhao was so furious that flames all but started from his eyes; and in a strange, fey moment, he actually went on to summon the fourth stance of Raging Fire Fist... This was a stance he had tried to unleash many times without success, yet for some reason, in these straits, he gritted his teeth and tried once more...

In the past, **, when the third stance had ended and he wished to unleash the fourth, Wei Zhao had always felt a helpless insufficiency, his strength failing him at the crucial moment, so that ** forcibly scattered the true qi and momentum he had gathered into one, and it ended in failure...

But this time, Wei Zhao's face was incomparably grave. Once more he summoned the fourth stance, and before the Earth-Rank man in black, he took a single step forward!

Then the true qi within his body surged toward his right fist in an utterly frenzied manner, and in that instant the spiritual qi of heaven and earth around him seemed to be stirred as well, wheeling above his head and about his body...

His hands flew through hand seals, forming a most peculiar posture, and beneath the Earth-Rank man in black's utterly astounded gaze, he threw out a single punch—Raging Fire Fist, fourth stance!

After the incomparably mighty spiritual qi of heaven and earth around him had been drawn in by the first three stances of Raging Fire Fist and gathered into an eruption, Wei Zhao at last crossed that final step—the fourth stance! And all of it seemed to flow as one breath, without the slightest obstruction.

When in the past he had practiced the first three stances of Raging Fire Fist and sought to unleash the fourth, he had always fallen short at the very last moment.

Nor was this for want of effort on Wei Zhao's part, or any such thing; it was simply that his cultivation was insufficient.

True, the momentum that piled up from beginning with the first stance could bring him infinitely close to the minimum requirement for performing the fourth stance, but infinitely close was not the same as fully meeting it, and so it still would not do.

But this time was different. When he had performed the third stance of Raging Fire Fist, that sense of extremity became his greatest aid.

His body seemed to become a ball of flame in that moment, converting all his momentum into extremity, and he succeeded in unleashing the fourth stance of Raging Fire Fist!

In that very instant, a thick dread welled up in the eyes of the Earth-Rank man in black; as Wei Zhao's fist was about to imprint itself upon him, he once more unleashed the fourth stance of Frigid Ice-Snow Spike and met Wei Zhao head-on!

He wanted to dodge again, but his back was already against the foot of the wall; there was nowhere to dodge, nowhere to hide. In utter helplessness he could only meet it head-on... But the next moment, a look of profound shock swept across his eyes: "The fifth stance... how is that possible..."

But before the Earth-Rank man in black could finish his words (fastest updates at Shushuwu), a tremendous force smote him and sent him flying—though the distance was quite short, for Wei Zhao drove him straight into the concrete wall behind, and his body smashed into it, collapsing the wall with a thunderous crash. His left hand and the left side of his chest now bore a great gaping hole, blasted through by Wei Zhao's fourth stance of Raging Fire Fist...

That broken, halting sentence had been the Earth-Rank man in black's last words in this world...

He died with his eyes wide open! Even in death, he could not understand how he had died, why Wei Zhao had suddenly unleashed the "fifth stance," what principle lay behind it—when Wei Zhao was plainly no more than an early Earth-Rank fighter...

But all of that no longer mattered, for he was already dead...

The death of the Earth-Rank man in black brought Wei Zhao little joy; on the contrary, his expression was now incomparably grave, while the spiritual qi of heaven and earth around him grew ever denser, for Wei Zhao could sense that he was about to break through!

At the instant he unleashed the fourth stance of Raging Fire Fist, Wei Zhao had felt that he was about to break through; but he forced himself to hold back—he neither drew in the spiritual qi of heaven and earth nor entered the jade pendant space, instead carefully governing the rhythm of his body as he brought out the fourth stance of Raging Fire Fist...

Beneath the overwhelming might of the fourth stance of Raging Fire Fist, the fourth stance of the Earth-Rank man in black's Frigid Ice-Snow Spike was broken without the slightest power of resistance. Such a victory was pure luck, and a narrow one at that! Had the Earth-Rank man in black not, at the final moment, lacked the nerve to meet force with force, had he not failed to meet Wei Zhao's third stance of Raging Fire Fist head-on and so left that third stance without a point of contact to fully erupt and discharge, Wei Zhao could never have turned so smoothly into the fourth stance.

Yet if the Earth-Rank man in black had known that it was his own evasion that let Wei Zhao unleash the fourth stance and make a breakthrough in strength, he would surely have died a second time of sheer chagrin.

As for how the fifth stance of Raging Fire Fist could be unleashed—the earlier reasons counted for something, but the most important was that in such a crisis Wei Zhao had roused his latent potential; and beyond that, because he was on the verge of breaking through at the same time, he had succeeded in unleashing the fourth stance.

Not one of these conditions could be lacking.

After striking the Earth-Rank man in black dead, Wei Zhao did not even check whether he was alive or dead; he simply sat down cross-legged on the ground, circulated the second layer of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art, and entered the jade pendant space...

In that moment the spiritual qi of heaven and earth above Wei Zhao's head grew ever denser. Of course, such a marvel of heaven and earth could be sensed only by **; Xu Shilan and Cheng Yiyi felt merely that some strange current of air had arisen nearby, and would not have thought anything else amiss.

"Could it be that he is about to break through?" Feng Sanhuang had not expected that Wei Zhao, with the strength of an early Earth-Rank, would slay a mid Earth-Rank expert—and more than that, by the look of it, he had pushed the limits of his body's potential in battle and was about to advance a level!

At that thought, Feng Sanhuang quickly said to Xu Shilan and Cheng Yiyi, "Do not move about. Stand behind me. Brother Lin is about to break through, and I must ** for him!"

"Ah... all right..." Xu Shilan did not understand what this "breakthrough" Feng Sanhuang spoke of actually was, but she could see the situation clearly enough now: Wei Zhao's enemy had been defeated, a great bloody hole in his body, dead beyond any doubt.

Wei Zhao was plainly in no danger now, and that let Xu Shilan breathe a sigh of relief while filling her heart with admiration for him—even a kind of worship. It was plain to see, and plain from the Earth-Rank man in black's words as well, that between the two, Wei Zhao had held the disadvantage; yet even at a disadvantage, Wei Zhao could rise again and again from every fall, and at the last turn defeat into victory and work a miracle!

Cheng Yiyi's eyes, however, were full of terror; looking at Wei Zhao not far off and the dead man at the foot of the wall, she could not speak a word...