Chapter 203 – As it turns out
[TL: Hey guys, some stuff came up, and I had to take off. Sorry about that, but I’m back now.
Heads up; long chapter ahead.]
“So my senior wishes to bully me? Well, in that case, I request that we greet each other for a fight!” the innate arrogance of Hai Chen Feng took control of his better judgement, and he thought to himself, since you know that you’re stronger than me, you think you can just bully me around by using sheer force? I would rather die at your hands before I let you intimidate me! Whatever the outcome, Hai Chen Feng is also the disciple of one of the ‘Eight Great Masters’! You really think you can frighten me that easily?
It must be mentioned that the Blue Master, Meng Hong Chen was a rather reclusive and odd character, and never talked to his disciples about the outside world. He had defeated the Solitary Falcon several years ago in a rather secluded battlefield, and therefore Hai Chen Feng naturally didn’t see the fight; in fact, he hadn’t even heard too many rumors about it. So much so, that Hai Chen Feng actually hadn’t been able to recognize the man he was confronted with, and had no idea that this man was as renowned as his own master, and was another one of the ‘Eight Great Master’, The Solitary Falcon!
“Ha ha, there’s no need for such formalities, this battle was predestined by the heavens!” the Solitary Falcon laughed loudly and then suddenly dashed downwards as swiftly as the clouds, and extended his palm to strike his enemy.
Hai Chen Feng grunted angrily, and then unsheathed his Azure-blue sword speedily with a ‘whoosh’.
Bang! The Solitary Falcon’s right hand collided with Hai Chen Feng’s sword, and the collision gave rise to a loud noise.
Hai Chen Feng’s heart was left amazed since he had barely ever come across someone as amazing as this man he was confronted with; although the collision was equally matched. He could sense that the man in front was much stronger than him since even though the collision was equally matched, it was still a bare hand against a sword, which obviously meant that in case he tried to use fist techniques to fight against this enemy, he’d have no chance of winning the battle. A storm of doubts started emerging within his heart as he began comprehending the enormity of his situation.
He could clearly tell that he was no match for the man in front, but still had no idea why his opponent wasn’t taking the initiative to take the upper hand.
There was a special reason as to why the Solitary Falcon had been roaming around, looking for someone to fight with. Over these last few years, he had mostly spent his entire time training atop snow cladded mountain peaks, having chosen Eagles and Falcons as his opponents, and had been slowly learning from their flight trajectories, their fighting styles, their hunting tactics, their attacking postures, owing to which he had been able to evolve his original ‘The Nine Eagles’ style into a more profound and much more powerful set of strokes: ‘The Seventeen Eagles’!
This set of strokes was potentially were powerful, but since this style was still in the early phases of its development, it was far from being a proper style and the linkage between different strokes had been giving the Solitary Falcon a headache like no other. Hence, the Solitary Falcon decided to seek out worthy opponents since it would help him in understanding the deficiencies of his style, and moreover would pave the way to making the necessary improvements to his style; however, he hadn’t been able to achieve his objective so far.
He was well aware that the other Great Masters weren’t sitting idly either, which is why he knew that they wouldn’t assist him with his idea; or perhaps he just didn’t want them to see the tail of this emerging dragon…..
Therefore, he naturally wasn’t left with many known options…..
Moreover, the other Great Masters were all slightly stronger than the Solitary Falcon, and when it came to a real battle, he’d have to use his tried and testing moves rather than these experimental ones which made the thought of provoking them on intention a completely meaningless suggestion.
All this had rendered the Solitary Falcon completely helpless in his current venture.
The possibility of using Feng Juan Yun for his experiments was still a more plausible alternative, but any encounter between these two mortal enemies was bound be a battle between life and death! In such a situation, the Solitary Falcon would obviously find it very difficult to practice his new styles since it would mean only one of two things; He’d either get bullied, or he’d end up courting his death…..
Moreover, even if he was capable of assuring his safety, he still didn’t wish to leak out this new and secret style to Feng Juan Yun. The Solitary Falcon wanted to prove his superiority to Feng Juan Yun, and was rather hoping that this new style would help him in achieving his objective one day!
Apart from these options, there weren’t too many people left in the world who could possibly qualify to contend against him.
The Solitary Falcon did contemplate the idea of going into the Tian Fa forest to polish his style but the thought of the power that watches over the Tian Fa forest was enough to make him reconsider, and he had eventually decided against going there: I’d end up into a Xuan Beast’s shit if I go there…..
At the end of his tether, the Solitary Falcon decided to follow the only remaining workaround: casually fight whoever he could find! No matter who the person was, as long as the man was a famed expert, the Solitary Falcon would try to seek the said-person out in order to combat against them; even if the man was a disciple of the Great Masters….. since these men in particular would be better trained and would have superior knowledge of their skills, they would only help him in polishing his new style better.
As a result, the Solitary Falcon had been travelling north and south, constantly seeking out known experts. However, he had been very disheartened in the recent past upon realizing one thing: after fighting these so-called hundred or so ‘experts’, not only had he not been able to enhance his skills, his expertise with this new style had actually seen a decline!
The reason behind this unwanted result obviously wasn’t very difficult to analyze…..
It is just as it happens in a game of chess; when one plays a weaker opponent repeatedly, one eventually tends to decline from their prime……
In this state of gloom, the Solitary Falcon accidentally came across the rumor surrounding the Xuan Core, and then immediately decided to travel all the way to the Tian Xiang City to catch up with this entire situation in time. However, just when he was finally able to find exactly what his heart had been craving for, two extremely powerful Xuan Beasts came out of nowhere and stole the Xuan Core in front of his eyes.
It was needless to say that this incident was greatly detrimental to both Shi Chang Xiao and the Solitary Falcon’s interests!
Shi Chang Xiao’s trip to the Tian Xiang City hadn’t been a long one, but the strenuous effort that the Solitary Falcon had taken to cover this long road had completely gone down the drain. The Solitary Falcon’s mind was completely imbalanced even the next day, and he eventually decided to go up to Shi Chang Xiao’s doorstep, looking for trouble. However, upon reaching the man’s camp, he was made aware that the Great Master had already left the previous night…….
Extremely dejected by the way things had turned out, the Solitary Falcon decided to leave as well. As for his original plan of using the Jin Yang Bang Gang – if there’s no decent expert in this city anymore, then what’s the point of using that Jin Yang Bang gang now? All that useless-gang was supposed to do for me was to locate high quality experts I could fight against…. But now that the Xuan Core is gone, what good would they be able to do for me!
However, he had never expected that he would actually receive a ‘war challenge’ from the Jin Yang Bang gang’s hired hand!
The initially dejected Solitary Falcon had finally found an outlet to vent out his frustration! He charged towards this Maple Forest animatedly to vent out his grief, and was in-turn left overjoyed. He could clearly see that the man in front was a disciple of none other than the Blue Master himself! Moreover, this man had already reached the Peak of the Sky Xuan realm!
It was almost as if the heavens had listened to his prayers!
Moreover, it was rather obvious that this man didn’t seem to recognize the Solitary Falcon!
The initially frustrated master was left thanking his stars!
Therefore, the Solitary Falcon naturally decided against rashly exposing his true identity for the fear that this man may kneel down to his knees screaming ‘Master!’, which would obviously be detrimental to his personal agenda!
Hence, he withheld this key information since he wanted to fight this man.
This person clearly seems to be a disciple of the Blue Master, and since he’s already reached the peak of the Sky Xuan realm, it could be presumed that he’s one of the best disciples Meng Hong Chen has ever trained. If I can have a good and hearty battle with this man, then I believe that I’ll be able to find the inspiration I’ve been seeking all along.
Therefore, he deliberately decided to suppress his real strength even though the opposition was fighting in full swing, and soon the two of them had exchanged at least a dozen blows.
At this moment, an uninvited guest arrived at the scene!
This uninvited guest was obviously the young master Jun!
Although the young master Jun was an expert beyond match when it came to tracking people, but he had been wracking his brain to no avail initially since the Solitary Falcon was no ordinary man either. However, it really didn’t take his expertise to locate the Solitary Falcon in the end since it wasn’t awfully difficult to spot a sky full of drifting red leaves.
The young master Jun quickly concealed himself nearby, and started gazing at the Solitary Falcon as if the man was bullying a young child. However, Jun Mo Xie’s simply couldn’t help but admire the man’s dedication: even though he is one of the ‘Eight Great Masters’, he really isn’t worried about taking the rogue road ah….
As he continued to watch the Solitary Falcon’s fight with this blue-robed man, he suddenly realized something really strange.
Even though the Solitary Falcon seemed to doing his utmost, he still seemed a bit overwhelmed. However, as Jun Mo Xie continued to watch the fight, he started to realize that the Solitary Falcon was repeating the same strokes again and again in a loop, and wasn’t making any attempts to use any variations at all.
On the other hand, the man in blue was using a plethora of skills and styles, and was basically going all-out.
It seemed to him as if this Great Master was actually just using this blue-robed man as a dummy for his personal practice!
The Solitary Falcon’s body didn’t seem to be moving much; in fact his legs were completely immobile. His hands on the other hand were moving in weird manners; he’d sometimes extend his arms wide, sometimes he’d stretch them forward… he was opening and closing his palms in very weird styles as well…..
Jun Mo Xie continued to watch for a long time, and a strange sense that something was amiss kept growing stronger and stronger in heart.
Suddenly a thought emerged inside his brain: this is clearly the Solitary Falcon’s homemade style! And this style has been inspired by the body of an Eagle or a Goshawk! This is a bit too obvious; but what’s even more obvious is that even though he has created this technique, he hasn’t yet perfected its system!
He could tell from the manner in which these strokes were designed, that each stroke of this style had a dedicated line of power in support, and even though these moves seemed very strange at first, but once perfected could produce a tremendous amount of power.
Jun Mo Xie silently counted thrice, and was finally able to determine that the style contained a total of seventeen strokes! The Solitary Falcon was using the entire style in a single sequence; hence it wasn’t very hard for him to determine the total count of moves in the style.
Although this style was capable of producing a large amount of power, but it seems that he has his heart set on not killing his opponent, which is why he is deliberately suppressing his strength to adjust his output to a mediocre level, but in case he was using this style to contest against a man of equal strength, he wouldn’t be able to keep up. However, coping up with someone much weaker than himself is much easier for him since even if the opponent occasionally tears a hole in his style, he can easily make up for the loss.
Moreover, the hitman could tell form his experience that in case the Solitary Falcon employed his complete strength in using this style, he could easily produce a much more powerful strike! But the Solitary Falcon wasn’t doing it on purpose! Even though he was using his true strength to defend himself, he didn’t seem to be using it to attack!
Jun Mo Xie suddenly realized why the Solitary Falcon wasn’t interested in the Xuan Core, but had still come all the way to the Tian Xiang City; why the Solitary Falcon was so eager to fight, but still wasn’t interested in fighting an expert of equal ability!
This is the reason behind all of it! Ha ha, why didn’t I see it earlier?…..
As he continued to watch the style which the Solitary Falcon was developing, he couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. Each move and action of the Solitary Falcon’s style seemed strange, but vaguely familiar.
Jerky….. too raw! It can be said that these moves can be turned into something very powerful, but at the moment these moves can only be best described as the ‘seventeen lose’ strokes! It lacks polishing, and cannot yet be called a proper martial style, but it’s already good enough to be brought into a prototype stage!
The Solitary Falcon’s moves seem very similar to the actions of an Eagle! The Wingspan stroke, the Soaring Eagle stroke, The Charging Eagle Stroke, the Rabbit-fighting Stroke…… and these I will work upon! And after a very systematic study, once I’m done tampering with all his strokes, I’ll make them far more powerful! Ha ha ha……