The force of the swing caused the air around the two fighters to tremble.
Wang Dong's eyes swam wildly as his mind tried to process the attack coming right at him.
Every cell in his body screamed that he would die if he took this attack, his mind also roared at him to dodge, even his spirit was shaken by the oppressive force given off by this single strike.
Yet his fighting spirit prevailed.
In the wake of such an unstoppable force, Wang Dong's will to fight bursted forward. He chose the worst option he could've possible chosen in such a situation.
He chose to see what was superior, his fist or Lou Lan's staff.
Raising up the deadly weapon that was his own hand, Wang Dong stretched his arm out in a powerful punch.
This was something no one expected him to do.
Not the crowd, not Lou Lan, and certainly not Xue Chang.
And in an even more shocking scene, that seemingly normal punch of Wang Dong actually made contact with the staff... and stopped it!
It was unbelievable. From the outside perspective, it seemed like Wang Dong had just stopped a natural disaster using his own fist.
But only six people there knew the truth.
Xue Chang, Tian Hai, Tian Kai, and even Lou Ning all turned to face Lou Lan's predicament at the same time.
And of course Lou Lan himself knew of how serious this situation was.
Those five all knew the truth about Lou Lan's attack.
And the sixth person?
Who else would it be if not Wang Dong?
Wang Dong couldn't believe how unbelievably weak Lou Lan seemed. He was easily able to knock away the attack with ease, almost effortlessly.
His mind worked to understand what was happening and quickly came to a conclusion.
Lou Lan had been bluffing this entire time!
Now he wasn't faking his strength as he undoubtedly had a similar cultivation to Wang Dong himself, but his battle sense... couldn't be compared!
With this revelation in mind, Wang Dong knew what he must do next. Counterattack!
Knowing that his facade had been discovered, Lou Lan felt his chest constrict in fear.
The entire time things had been going as he and Xue Chang had planned.
For several days, he had been learning extremely confusing set of staff techniques.
He wasn't sure where this set of martial arts had come from, but he gave up on questioning Xue Chang's actions long ago.
All he knew was that he had to focus in practicing it well.
The art itself had little to no attack power, but instead it specialized in something no one would expect.
It specialized in enlarging the user's presence.
Unlike most martial arts where one would unleash a strong attack to dominate others, this set of techniques allowed Lou Lan to emanate a feeling of an all powerful expert.
Along with its its complicated yet threatening skill set, it was the epitome of "all show but no substance".
Xue Chang's plan was to use this type of technique to scare off Wang Dong. After all, as the greedy and selfish young master of a prominent family, they thought he was a coward who cared too much about his own life.
Who would expect that instead he was actually a battle maniac. He loved a good challenge no matter the issue.
This was the only type of person who could completely disrupted their plan. There was a one in a thousand chance of him being a fighting addict, yet luck was not on their side.
Wang Dong realized that the entire fight had been one huge scam and felt a burning hatred build up in his heart.
He never thought anyone would disregard him like such!
In his anger, he gave up on even defending. He now knew that he didn't need to.
He instead put all of his focus on his offense.
A flurry of hits and strikes shot out of him and constantly smashed into Lou Lan.
Painful screams of agony rang within the air as Lou Lan's face received a merciless pummeling.
Lou Ning, who was standing in the sidelines, was about to move up to stop the battle. But Xue Chang stopped her.
"What are you doing!? We have to go save him!"
Yet Xue Chang firmly shook his head, "Not just yet, he's almost there..."
Confused by his words, Lou Ning noticed something strange. Xue Chang had his eyes closed.
When she thought of it, even when talking to others or making comments about the fight, he always had his eyes closed.
But now they were wide open. And the sensation that those seemingly omnipotent eyes gave her was frightening yet familiar.
While that happened, Wang Dong had continued to just release all of his aggression on Lou Lan. Yet no matter how many times he attacked, nor how much strength he used, Lou Lan never faltered or fell.
It wasn't a coincidence either, he could tell that Lou Lan was somehow twisting his body along the path of his punches to remove some of the force in the first before contact.
Although it looked like he was getting some good hits off, most of his attacks didn't even have a tenth of his true power.
Even Lou Ning started to notice this strange occurrence. She couldn't believe her cousin, who couldn't even catch a rabbit properly, was able to survive such an intense flurry.
"How is he doing that?"
Lou Ning wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, but someone still answered her.
"Back then Tian Hai and I helped Lou Lan increase his sense for battles. But lone the way Tian Kai also assisted me in having serious sparring matches with him. We didn't do this just for fun. The two of us have a lot of combat experience, and while Tian Hai can say what Lou Lan needed to improve in attack wise, we SHOWED what he needed defense wise."
A snap of two fingers struck behind then as Tian Hai who heard Xue Chang's words came to an understanding, "All of that time you spent beating the crap out of him allowed his body to remember what parts he needed to defend. Even though you and Wang Dong have a different set of skills, Lou Lan will always have the same weaknesses."
"That's right, as such he can take virtually all of Wang Dong's attacks without issue. And with time he would be able to find a chance to counterattack."
Lou Ning also nodded in understanding as she turned to face everyone and took a quick bow in thanks. She never expected that these three people had thought so far ahead when training her cousin.
Glancing over at Xue Chang and his brother, Tian Hai let off a sigh of amazement.
"So that's why you guys beat him up so much. It wasn't just because you liked hitting people."
But while Xue Chang nodded confidently, Tian Kai stood there with a blank expression on his face.
Lookin completely lost, he just slowly nodded and said, "Yes! Training! That was what we were doing..."
Tian Hai and Lou Ning did not buy that at all.
Sensing the awkwardness in the air, Xue Chang clapped his hands together as he exclaimed, "Nevertheless, we have more pressing matters. You see Wang Dong is no fool. He will undoubtedly see he trick to Lou Lan's strength. The question is, what will he do to counter it..."
The exchange of strikes didn't last long. After every couple of hits, Wang Dong would find his body get beaten back by Lou Lan's staff.
While the injuries weren't great, but more and more accumulated over time. Unable to hurt his opponent but being hurt all the while, such a situation injured his pride more than anything.
"Enough!" Screeching out this single word, Wang Dong swung his arms around and caused a field of flames to burst from his arms.
Cries of surprise could be heard from the spectators. Wang Dong had a magic artifact!
There were two main ways for a cultivator to display their battle prowess, through their own abilities and spells, and through magic artifacts.
Cultivators at high level had the unique ability to release the energy stored within themselves to create wondrous magics, but usually only the people who had reached a higher level of cultivation could do this.
Magic artifacts were different though.
A magic artifact was anything that one could insert their energy into to achieve a certain effect. They held a similar position to spells but were typically not as versatile.
In fact, after its transformation, Xue Chang's saber could be said to be a magic artifact.
It was just one that he could not use.
Unexpectedly, Wang Dong also held his own artifact. Needless to say that such treasures were incredibly rare.
The price he would need to pay to obtain one was astronomical. Yet here he was using them in battle. Clearly Xue Chang had to elevate the importance the Wang Family placed upon Wang Dong.
For once, Xue Chang felt that the situation was too precarious.
Yet something had caused him to stop himself from interrupting the match.
Within the writhing twister of flames, a figure could be seen spinning his staff around.
Lou Lan stepped out of the wall of flames without a single scratch on his body, much to the surprise of Wang Dong.
The affluent young man stared down at Lou Lan while gnashing his teeth together.
"Impossible!"
He rushed head first toward Lou Lan without regard for his surroundings, yet before he could even get within range of attack, the butt of a staff collided with his face.
And unlike the previous strikes, this one was precise and contained a lot of force behind it.
This simple attack immediately broke Wang Dong's nose and forced him to crash into the ground with a thud, knocking the air out of his lungs.
Wang Song, the spectators, even Tian Hai and the others couldn't believe what they were seeing. It was almost as if Lou Lan had went from a punching bag to an expert.
Although his thrust seemed simple, in the heat of the moment it was something almost impossible to calmly do. It was so accurate and smooth in its endeavor that it almost seemed as if Lou Lan and Wang Dong were giving off a performance.
Yet to everyone's surprise, he did not follow up with a second attack.
Lou Ning was befuddled by her cousin's actions and turned to the on,h person who must've known what was going on.
"What is wrong with Lou Lan?"
She didn't notice that when she asked this question, she used a respective tone of voice. After everything she had experience, she no longer saw Xue Chang as just a child but something more instead.
Xue Chang stared at the stage with a glistening shin in his eyes as he whispered excitedly, "His eyes are unfocused and look at the way he is swaying in the stage. It's like his bones had become gelatin. He is moving smoothly and fluidly, only responding to threats with the most simple and minimal movements needed to deal with the situation."
letting off a sigh of admiration, he turned to Tian Hai and said, "In this state he might be even stronger than you."
The group returned to silence for a few seconds until finally Tian Kai couldn't help but speak up, "But what is this state?"
Xue Chang sniggered as he said, "Lou Lan is receiving enlightment."