Chapter 397: The Strong Are Ultimately the Strong

Seeing this, Sun Rao immediately raised her gun and fired in Su Mei’s direction.

BANG! BANG!

As the gunshots rang out, Su Mei remained perfectly calm. With a sudden wave of her hand, the bullets rebounded off her palm and whizzed right past Sun Rao’s ear.

“Sun Rao, get back!” Yang Xun shouted, pulling her behind him to shield her.

Sun Rao was normally extremely confident in her marksmanship, but after nearly getting her own head blown off, her mind went completely blank.

Seeing Yang Xun protect the other woman, Su Mei’s beautiful eyes darkened, glinting with cold hostility. She already considered Yang Xun to be her personal property. How could she stomach watching him act so intimately with another woman?

Yang Xun looked up, his gaze landing on Su Mei’s bewitching face. His breathing was slightly ragged, and a fine layer of sweat had beaded on his forehead, yet his eyes remained exceptionally calm.

“You’re right. I’m really not in the best condition right now,” he said, his voice a notch lower than before, yet carrying a certainty that made Su Mei frown slightly. “But it seems you miscalculated one thing.”

Su Mei’s brow twitched imperceptibly as a chill rose in her chest. “What is it?”

Yang Xun did not answer. He simply closed his eyes.

Instinctively sensing that something was wrong, Su Mei shifted her right foot half a step back, ready to react at a moment’s notice. A second later, she felt the shift.

The air around Yang Xun seemed to be stirred by some invisible force, beginning to swirl sluggishly. Debris on the ground was swept up by an unseen current, spiraling around his feet.

Yang Xun snapped his eyes open, a distinct golden gleam flashing in his pupils, and abruptly thrust out a palm. The strike was incredibly fast—so fast that Su Mei only had time to register a blurred afterimage. The palm wind, wrapping around a surge of True Qi several times more robust than before, exploded outward. Like a tornado rising from the ground, it crashed straight toward Su Mei’s chest.

Su Mei’s expression finally changed. Confined within the small secret room, she had nowhere to dodge. She instinctively raised her arms to block, but the force far exceeded her predictions.

The gale from the strike tore right through her hastily erected defenses, slamming into her chest like an invisible iron hammer. Su Mei was sent flying backward. Her back slammed heavily against the rust-mottled iron pillar behind her with a dull thud. Flakes of rust peeled off the pillar, and the adjacent wall fractured into a web of cracks.

She slid down the wall to rest on one knee as a trickle of bright red blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.

“You…” Su Mei looked up at him. For the first time, utter shock replaced the usual leisurely smile in her eyes. “You were hiding your true strength?”

Yang Xun lowered his hand and slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

That single blow had nearly drained all the True Qi from his body, and the piercing pain deep within his meridians flared up far more sharply than before. Yet he maintained his composed demeanor. His voice was far too tranquil for someone who had just endured a fierce battle. “You forgot that I am far more than just a little bit stronger than you. The Array can indeed suppress my power, but in the end, the strong remain strong.”

Su Mei leaned against the iron pillar, trying to stand, but a sharp agony in her chest forced her back down to her knees. She could feel her meridians trembling violently. The sheer force of the impact was still running rampant inside her, making it entirely impossible to gather her True Qi in the short term.

She stared at Yang Xun for several seconds before her lips curled into a bloodthirsty smirk. “Interesting. I really did underestimate you.”

Yang Xun didn’t reply; he simply walked toward her.

Watching his approaching figure, Su Mei gave up trying to stand. Her fingertips, braced against the wall, tightened slightly. Then, she abruptly raised her hand and smashed whatever she had been secretly clutching against the ground.

With a muffled BANG, a thick cloud of black mist erupted between them—an exact repeat of the trick she had used to rescue Scarface last time.

Yang Xun reacted instantly, slicing a palm strike right through the center of the black mist. The gale tore a gap in the fog, but the space on the other side was completely empty. Where Su Mei had knelt moments ago, there was nothing left but a dark stain of blood and a few torn fragments of burgundy fabric. The woman herself had vanished without a trace.

Yang Xun stood firmly in place and slowly lowered his hand. The burning pain in his chest surged anew, feeling like a dull blade dragging back and forth between his ribs. He looked down at his palm. His fingertips were trembling slightly, and the tearing sensation deep within his meridians was slowly spreading.

“Ah Xun!” Sun Rao sprinted over to his side. Seeing his pale face and the cold sweat glistening on his forehead, her brows furrowed deeply.

“Help me over to break the Array,” Yang Xun ground out through clenched teeth, his steps visibly unsteady.

“Are you going to be okay? How about I get you out of here first, and we can come back tomorrow to break the Array?” Sun Rao asked softly, her heart aching for him.

“We can’t wait until tomorrow. I have to do it now while I still have the strength. Otherwise, Su Mei will definitely take advantage of my weakened state to finish me off.”

Seeing his unwavering resolve, Sun Rao supported his weight and helped him walk to the eye of the Array.

Once he steadied himself, Yang Xun took a deep breath and channeled the True Qi in his Dantian with everything he had left. Power surged from his Dantian, flowing through his meridians into his right arm and pooling in his palm. He could feel his hand warming up as an incredibly faint, golden shimmer coated the skin of his palm.

Without hesitation, he slammed his palm into the base of the iron pillar.

BOOM!

A deafening boom echoed through the secret room, and the ground beneath their feet violently shuddered. More flakes of rust peeled off the pillar, revealing the grayish-black metal beneath. A hairline crack in the concrete floor at the base of the pillar began to extend outward, spiderwebbing in all directions.

Yang Xun didn’t stop. A second palm strike immediately followed.

This strike carried even more force than the last. The blast, infused with vigorous True Qi, crashed into the crack at the pillar’s base, instantly widening the fissure several times over. Chunks of concrete splintered apart, revealing a fist-sized depression underneath.

Buried within the hollow was a palm-sized black stone. Its surface was carved with runes identical to the ones drawn on the floor. Under the bombardment of True Qi, the stone quivered faintly, as if it were alive.

Locking his gaze onto the black stone, Yang Xun brought down a third strike.

CRACK!

A crisp fracturing sound rang through the air. A vertical crack split the black stone right down the middle. In the instant it fractured, the runes flared brightly before rapidly dimming into nothing.

Within seconds, the solid stone crumbled into several jagged, uneven fragments, and the dull sheen on its surface completely vanished.

At the same time, the dark red symbols painted across the floor began to fade, as if they had lost their foundational support. The lines shifted from crimson to pale pink, then to a dusty gray, until they dissolved into an indistinct blur. The sinister, icy aura tethered to the runes dissipated just as swiftly, and the temperature within the secret room seemed to instantly climb a few degrees.