Great Li Martial God

”Get out, get out, get out. This is my territory. I am not having you old thing wandering around in here. Get back down where you came from right now, or I will pound you.”

The heavily muscled man’s broad face was full of aggression as he raised a fist the size of a wok lid, looking as though he intended to send a punch straight at the stooped Black Moon Yin Elder.

The Black Moon Yin Elder’s weathered eyelid twitched sharply, but since he had come all the way up here, there was naturally no way he was going to be scared off this easily.

The man was not cooperating, and there was no other option but to come to blows and see what happened.

With that thought, the Black Moon Yin Elder’s eyes darkened, but his face showed nothing, looking as though he had been intimidated, and he turned as if to leave.

But the very instant he turned, he struck without warning with sudden ferocity, fierce yin chill surging into both fingers, his figure flashing to the large man’s side as he drove a vicious strike directly at the man’s eyes.

The Black Moon Yin Elder was genuinely underhanded. The large man had honestly thought, just as before, that the elder had been frightened and was going to slink away defeated.

And so faced with the Black Moon Yin Elder’s attack he could only respond hastily, clenching his eyes shut and circulating his body-hardening art to withstand the ice-cold finger strike that had concentrated the true qi of heaven and earth.

Clang.

A dull metallic ringing rang out as the Black Moon Yin Elder’s sudden attack drove both fingers into the man’s eyelids.But they were stopped by threads of golden light that had risen there, and the withered fingers struck something like solid iron, unable to cause even the slightest damage, unable to advance a single fraction.

What was more, the Black Moon Yin Elder felt a painful shock run back through his fingertips, the rebound of the man’s astonishing body-hardening art working against his own attack.

”You old thing. You have this little strength and you dare pick a fight with me? You are just looking to die.”

The large man’s eyes snapped open, and his fierce gaze fixed on the Black Moon Yin Elder in front of him. Then he suddenly swung a fist directly into the elder’s abdomen.

He held nothing back, the vast martial true qi within him surging entirely into the blow, combined with the terrifying physical force accumulated through years of body refinement cultivation.

By his estimation, this single punch would outright kill the Black Moon Yin Elder, shattering bone and flesh and leaving nothing but a smear on the floor.

The Black Moon Yin Elder naturally sensed the terror of the man’s power, and in the same moment he was shocked to find his underhanded strike had been useless against the man’s body refinement arts.

He poured his martial true qi out in front of his body, condensing a freezing vortex of yin energy in an instant to block the punch coming for him.

But it was still of almost no use. The large man’s strength exceeded the Black Moon Yin Elder’s by considerably more than a little.

The freezing vortex only slowed the blow for an instant before the punch came through unimpeded and drove into the Black Moon Yin Elder’s abdomen, sending him flying hard into the iron-cast walls.

The Black Moon Yin Elder’s soul nearly left his body. The entire stooped old frame slammed into the iron wall and left a human-shaped dent in it.

The man’s punch was too terrifyingly powerful. He knew he could not have stopped it, and had expected to be sent flying in a shower of blood.

The terror that flooded through him made him feel as though he were a sandbag that had been hammered into a wall, his whole body seemingly devoid of sensation.

But after a moment, the Black Moon Yin Elder found he still had awareness, and instinctively looked down.

He wanted to see if the large man had actually punched clean through his stomach.

But to his enormous surprise, his abdomen was completely unharmed. Not even the slightest pain.

A flash of shocked disbelief crossed the Black Moon Yin Elder’s eyes. He immediately circulated the true qi within him and pulled himself free from the human-shaped depression in the wall.

Seeing this, the large man standing in the middle of the hall stared.

He looked at the deep human-shaped indentation in the iron wall, then looked at the Black Moon Yin Elder, and seeing the elder had apparently suffered no ill effects from his full-power punch, he was clearly taken aback.

He fixed his wide, fierce eyes on the Black Moon Yin Elder and stared for a good long while, then said, ”You old thing are pretty tough. Have you been training in secret down there?”

With those words, the large man let out a cold laugh, and his powerfully built figure vanished from the spot.

In the next instant, the man reappeared directly in front of the Black Moon Yin Elder, and another punch came crashing out, space shaking and an explosive boom like thunder, aimed straight at the elder’s head.

”I will just pound your head until it pops, then see if you can survive that.”

The large man’s shouted roar rang in the Black Moon Yin Elder’s ears.

The elder had still been examining his own body, trying to figure out what had happened just now.

After all, he knew his own strength, and faced with the large man’s terrifying punch he could absolutely not have stopped it, let alone come out of it unscathed.

But before he could work out what had happened, the next punch came crashing down.

The Black Moon Yin Elder still did not react in time and could not dodge, and was again sent flying directly into the surrounding iron walls, leaving another matching small human-shaped dent.

This time, with prior experience, the Black Moon Yin Elder immediately pulled himself free and felt the spot the man had just hit on his head.

”What? Nothing wrong?”

The Black Moon Yin Elder was both startled and delighted.

He genuinely had not expected these old bones of his to be this resilient. Taking two full punches from the large man and coming away without the slightest problem.

But very quickly, the Black Moon Yin Elder realized this was absolutely not some exceptional natural endowment of his own. There had to be another explanation.

He immediately let his clouded gaze shift inward and reached to sense the thread of martial aura Li Musheng had left within him.

Before long, the Black Moon Yin Elder’s expression shifted rapidly through several phases.

He found that within the thread of martial aura Li Musheng had left behind, a strange and peculiar martial force had begun to quietly and steadily emanate from it.

He had not noticed this force before, and it was clearly triggered by the large man’s near-lethal punch.

And it was precisely this force that had protected his body, letting him absorb the large man’s two punches without a scratch.

”So that is it. The young man really does have something after all.”

The Black Moon Yin Elder had of course already grasped the remarkable nature of the thread of martial aura Li Musheng had left inside him.

But even so, that force did not seem to grant him the same level of martial cultivation as Li Musheng himself. It only appeared to protect him from being harmed by attacks from others.

This meant that while the large man could not kill him, he could not beat the large man either.

At that point, the large man, having seen that two full-powered punches had still failed to cause any harm to the Black Moon Yin Elder, furrowed his brows and fixed his gaze hard on the elder without launching another attack.

He had realized that this old man had somehow become impossibly resilient, and even if he kept punching, he probably could not so much as scratch the surface.

”Old thing, what body-hardening martial art are you practicing? It feels like it might even be harder than mine.”

The large man could not detect anything unusual about the Black Moon Yin Elder.

And so he assumed the elder must have been secretly training some body-hardening art on the side, one that might even be superior to his own Mountain-Rock Golden Dragon Mantle.