He barely managed to block it, but it burned his hand painfully. When he turned around, he found Cha Ji standing behind him, and stranger still, his hand was there too.
Cha Ji's gaze was strange and distant, lingering for a moment even as Luo's expression shifted, his features breaking into joy as he ran toward him.
Then his eyes returned to normal.
Luo shouted with joy:
"Cha Ji! You're alive! You bastard, why'd you attack me?"
Cha Ji's expression shifted, and he smiled.
"Barely... thanks to the hawk. He healed me and helped me out. What did I name him again? Ah, Wenru Deng."
The hawk, with its bright, imposing blue eyes, appeared, flapping its wings until it landed on Cha Ji's shoulder.
As for Luo, shock remained the dominant expression on his face. This was the very same hawk that had been hunting them, and now... it had helped them.
A few months earlier...
Shen Zuo, twenty years old now, arrived at one of the once-peaceful forests, or one that had been peaceful before it got burned down for some reason.
'Screw you... you deranged old bastard, screw you!'
Amid the raging firestorm, a figure emerged, hideous in appearance, half his face burned, his upper clothing already melted into his body, though he didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest. He reset his dislocated left shoulder while cursing Bai Ren furiously.
His caution never wavered, his eyes staying sharp and focused. The blazing young man waved his left hand, and every bit of fire and smoke around him vanished completely. He'd clearly used a Phantom to disperse the smoke and flame, clearing his vision, and the instant everything cleared, he used his free hand to activate another offensive Phantom, firing a barrage of hardened spikes in every direction, piercing through every suspicious tree and corner.
'Not around me, then... damn it.'
He immediately activated the first Phantom he'd ever used, the Wind Gust Phantom, and pushed himself away from his current spot at high speed.
Shen Zuo dodged Bai Ren's descending strike by some miracle, his foot driving into the ground with force, cracking the earth in a chaotic spiderweb pattern and triggering a violent tremor.
"Heeh."
Bai Ren let out an excited breath of admiration. He was genuinely pleased Shen Zuo had dodged that attack. This way, the fight would last a little longer.
At that moment, Shen Zuo was still pulling away from the strike. He turned his head back to see Bai Ren already closing in on him, his right fist aimed straight at him.
Shen Zuo gritted his teeth with tension, raising his right hand a beat too late to block the oncoming strike to his back, but...
a stone spike suddenly grew beneath Bai Ren, aiming for his chin from below.
'If this is a trick...'
The instant he caught onto Shen Zuo's scheme, Bai Ren quickly twisted right in the air to dodge the stone spike, but was caught off guard by stone thorns waiting in front of him. Bai Ren dodged some of the thorns with quick head movements, while others, aimed at the rest of his body, forced him to use a Phantom from the Wind path to deflect them. Of course, Shen Zuo had no way of knowing whether Bai Ren would dodge right or left, so he'd fired thorns in both directions. Bai Ren wasn't hit, but several thorns had clearly torn through his yellow robe.
Despite dodging, Bai Ren didn't slow down at all, firing stone thorns back at Shen Zuo, who...
'What?'
Shen Zuo rushed toward Bai Ren at high speed using the Wind Gust Phantom. While Bai Ren was busy dodging the thorns, Shen Zuo had already adjusted his position to face him, and now, the instant he saw Bai Ren's incoming thorn attack, he closed the distance quickly and let the thorns hit him.
The thorns struck Shen Zuo, piercing his belly, but he didn't care, and Bai Ren wasn't idle either, adjusting his own stance at least partially. The young Shen Zuo aimed a quick right hook, but Bai Ren caught his hand, forcing Shen Zuo to redirect into a front kick toward his stomach instead, which Bai Ren blocked with his knee, making Shen Zuo scowl sharply.
Bai Ren's free right hand moved toward Shen Zuo, who tried to escape, but his hand was stuck, and his body's positioning after the kick left him unable to flee quickly, killing any thought of escape entirely.
But surprisingly, Shen Zuo dodged Bai Ren's punch to the right, and the instant he did, a thorn shot forward toward Bai Ren. He dodged it, but Shen Zuo's left hand was already close to his face, and it was too late to avoid it.
Shen Zuo's left hand landed on Bai Ren's face, striking him with force.
'Finally.'
Shen Zuo muttered, thrilled to have hit Bai Ren for the first time, watching him stagger backward.
Shen Zuo felt genuine happiness at finally landing a hit on this old bastard, but unfortunately, he didn't get to enjoy the high of victory for long, as several spikes surrounded his head, grazing his neck and drawing a few drops of blood.
Bai Ren released Shen Zuo's hand and pulled back slightly, turning his back to him.
Even though he'd effectively lost, he saw it as finally winning against Bai Ren, having landed a punch on him for the first time.
And even though the other had been hit for the first time, he wasn't angry or shocked. This was just training, after all, so he didn't get angry, and he'd expected Shen Zuo would grow stronger eventually, so he wasn't shocked either, he was actually... happy.
He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been careless. He still saw Shen Zuo as an overgrown kid whose balls had barely dropped, so his treatment of him hadn't changed. It hadn't changed even now. Even in tough situations, it was nearly impossible for Bai Ren to get hit, so the reason Bai Ren had gotten hit was Bai Ren himself, and maybe that was the one thing that actually annoyed him: making a trivial mistake he shouldn't have made at all.
But if Bai Ren put all the blame on his own carelessness, that wouldn't be honest either. He'd also been genuinely tricked by Shen Zuo.
At first, after dodging the downward kick and pulling away from it, and after seeing Bai Ren closing in, he'd faked his own tension to lower Bai Ren's guard toward him, raising his right hand while setting up the spike trap. And the second time, when his hand got caught and Bai Ren blocked his escape, he'd faked panic and fear to deceive him, making him believe he had no tricks left at all. This deceptive, dirty style reminded him of someone.
'Ling Li, you pervert, are you sending me a punch indirectly? Just wait, you bastard.'
Bai Ren cursed the person who'd taught Shen Zuo these things.
Bai Ren rubbed his jaw with his left hand.
'But this bastard doesn't even know how to punch properly.'
In his view, it would've been better if he'd coated his hand in stone before hitting him, but never mind that for now, there was something more urgent to address.
All Shen Zuo could think about was hitting Bai Ren, while the other had been thinking about how to kill him the entire time. True, Bai Ren was happy, but he was even more annoyed by how foolish that line of thinking was.
The stone thorns surrounding Shen Zuo broke apart, and Bai Ren turned around after lighting his usual pipe.
Bai Ren stepped forward, pointing out Shen Zuo's mistake:
"Your thinking and instincts in a fight are good, remind me of that bastard Ling Li. I liked your planning, but it's nothing if it doesn't produce a result."
Bai Ren paused to take a drag from his pipe for a moment.
"Your plan did nothing but land one pitiful punch, while look at me... you would've died if it'd been anyone else fighting you."
"..."
What he said wasn't wrong, as far as Shen Zuo was concerned, so he didn't argue. He'd let his emotions take over, carried away by his own desire.
"Wait a second... speaking of Ling Li, didn't he teach you how to control your emotions? What were you even doing with him this whole time, then?"
Bai Ren wondered curiously why Shen Zuo had let himself get swept up in the desire to hit him.
Shen Zuo now realized his mistake, he hadn't controlled his emotions.
"This whole time you've been training to control your emotions, but at the decisive moment, you threw all that away? For what? A fleeting, pitiful moment of fake victory? I'll hide this from Ling Li and let it slide for now since you made noticeable, if trivial, progress, but there won't be any more exceptions after this..."
"No need, I already know."
As Bai Ren was turning away, Ling Li cut him off.
Bai Ren looked back to see him standing behind Shen Zuo, a faint smile appearing on his face.
Ling Li placed a hand on Shen Zuo's shoulder and looked at him seriously:
"I'm glad you threw the training and all those years out the window... I'll finally stop holding back on you from now on."