Chapter 155: Yang, WIN! (Patreon)

The coin hit the ground. The clink of metal on pavement hadn't even faded when both figures vanished from where they stood.

Azure Flame swept outward. Iori Yagami's body dropped toward the ground and, in that instant, became an afterimage.

Like a beast, Iori didn't charge in a straight line. With a whistling tear of air he came in from the side, his figure drifting as unpredictably as a ghost.

Yang said nothing. As Iori closed in, he stomped down hard, and cracks spread across the ground. Iori, already almost in front of him, jerked sideways as if he'd sensed something. Yang rode the rebound of the stomp and fired off a straight punch, like a powerful crossbow bolt, that grazed Iori's face and left a white mark across it.

Iori's right hand swung up from below like a hammer, curling around Yang's fist and landing squarely under his ribs.

Five fingers clenched. That slightly gaunt hand, wrapped in blue-purple Azure Flame—Ge-Shiki: Yumebiki.

The ceiling of versatility in the game, a staple part of Yagami's combos. Because of its range it was rarely used for zoning, but a game was only a game. Like now, after rushing into close quarters, it could be used as a situational dodge-and-counter.

The instant it landed, the cold Azure Flame erupted from Iori's knuckles and thundered into Yang's body as raw force.

But just as Iori's flame-driven force burst out with the punch, Yang, who had clearly taken the hit, stopped for less than the snap of a finger.

The next moment, force exploded through Yang's spine and shoulder, and he slammed a heavy, crushing elbow down at Iori's skull.

Sensing the shocking speed of Yang's counter, Iori's eyes flashed with gravity.

Yumebiki looked like a plain, unadorned hook, but the instant it connected, the burst of Azure Flame could deliver violent blows to the body, the mind and the nerves all at once.

That stacked, instantaneous damage was exactly why the Yagami clan chose to worship Orochi as a god. With the Crimson Flame clearly no match for the Kusanagi clan, only by taking such a dangerous side road could the Yagami turn defeat into victory!

But now, before the flame could even detonate, Yang had already counterattacked. He was like some super-armor bastard with no hit-stun at all. Iori hadn't even finished unleashing his force and pulling back the residual momentum when Yang's elbow shot at his head, forcing Iori to raise his other hand in an instant defense.

Even in that rush, Iori still bled off as much force as he could. After all, Yang's attack was an improvised one, not a premeditated strike. In Iori's estimate, even if he took some damage, it would be only a harmless flesh wound.

But as Yang's elbow came down with a thud, Iori quickly realized how badly he had miscalculated.

He had clearly dispersed the force, yet that elbow came down like a siege hammer, utterly unreasonable. On impact, Iori's forearm was smashed flat against his own face. No matter how his legs and waist drove, no matter how he dispersed the force, the next moment his center of gravity still shifted uncontrollably to one side, and his upper-body stance was brutally smashed apart!

Without hesitation, Yang instinctively tried to throw a follow-up punch. But right then, a cold shock detonated under his ribs. The skin burst, blood threads flew, and in a seven-centimeter radius around the impact point the muscle lost all feeling, as if it had been scraped away out of thin air. Only the flesh at the edges remained, sending up a nerve-searing pain so fierce that even Yang, with all his resilience, could only call it terrifying.

His mind went blank. For an instant Yang's eyes lost focus, and Iori seized the chance to swing up his right leg—Ge-Shiki: Gofu In "Shinigami"!

But the moment Iori's right leg left the ground, the familiar Golden Flame surged again. Veins bulged across Yang's forehead, and he rode the shock from his ribs, twisting his body sharply and driving an uppercut upward.

Sensing something wrong, Iori cut the axe kick short and turned it into an intercepting stomp, driving his foot up-to-down onto Yang's fist. But when fist and sole collided, what Iori felt under his foot wasn't a fist. It was a bomb about to go off—or rather, one that had already started going off!

A staggering force kept pouring out from Yang's knuckles. The Golden Flame raged, and his muscles and vital energy let out a tearing hum. Yang forced the punch all the way through, and Iori, who'd wanted to use the Azure Flame's corrosion to launch a combo, had no choice but to vault backward off Yang's fist, riding the shock to put distance between them.

Iori landed and felt the bottom of his foot, swollen, bruised and numb, as if he'd stepped on a giant firecracker, and his ankle, stiff and sore from absorbing too much force. He fell silent for a moment, then steadied his breath, looked at Yang, and said:

"Are you… really human?"

When a martial artist takes a hit, the impact disrupts the circulation of vital energy in the body. So even if they manage a timely counter, they often get little out of it, since they can't reinforce it with qi. Following the existing flow of vital energy and turning the attack into an internal defense, bleeding off the force, becomes the best option.

The theory sounded a little hackneyed, but it had survived precisely because it was the conclusion drawn from a mountain of real combat data.

Now, though, Yang had forcibly burst out at the instant of impact and blasted through that chaotic circulation. It was like being in the middle of sex, discovering your partner is wearing a chastity lock, and instead of looking for the key, just ramming straight through and breaking the lock open…

Whether you can break through is already a minor matter. The real question is whether the flesh turns to a pulp while you do it.

The same applied to meridians and muscles. But… judging by the look of this, Yang wasn't affected by the impact at all? His vital energy circulation was completely unaffected?!

Yang didn't answer. He only rolled his body a couple of times, and then, under everyone's gaze, that thing of his shot up several inches.

Watching Yang's muscles swell, Iori's eyes first flickered with bewilderment, then with a fear he couldn't hide.

That fear was strong enough to briefly suppress even the madness and bestial rage surging from the curse of his blood. It took him a good while to force it down, and then his gaze filled with firm fighting spirit.

He could not lose.

Meanwhile, Yang was using his healing effect to forcibly dissolve the damaged muscle fibers, liquefy them and store them in his bladder to be expelled after the fight. He had some inkling that Iori must have gotten the wrong idea about something.

But feeling the ever-fiercer look in Iori's eyes, the one that seemed to say "I have a reason I can never lose," Yang ultimately chose to stay silent.

The process was a little off, but as long as he could fight with everything he had, it was a good thing.

With that thought, Yang reset his stance.

The forced surge had caused some slight damage under his ribs, but the injured muscle had already regenerated under the Golden Flame, and in just half a minute it would be catalyzed to the strength healthy muscle should have.

Even so, recalling how he'd felt when the Azure Flame hit him, Yang couldn't help narrowing his eyes slightly.

Besides the plain physical blow, that eerie flame also damaged consciousness and the nerves. Once it landed, unless you had the same kind of energy conversion or your body stats were tough enough, you were in for a serious beating.

The blood of Orochi really did have something to it. After the enchantment it had gained plenty of DEBUFFs, but in return it had given the purely physical Crimson Flame school two extra modes of damage. For people who valued victory more than life, it was certainly worth paying everything.

On the other side, Iori felt Yang's gaze and a genuine pressure weighed on him.

Yang's tremendous physical stats were one thing. The golden flame, on the other hand, was a real headache for Iori.

All-around reinforcement of the body, the ability to ignore hit-stun and counter with a qi burst into super armor, and, though he couldn't be sure…

The parts hurt by the Azure Flame seemed to have already recovered as good as new? Was his recovery speed enhanced too? That meant no long fight. Either end it fast, or be ground down bit by bit—

No, not ground down.

Iori quickly realized the flaw in his reasoning.

He recalled that elbow, a mere improvised counter that had shattered his entire stance and nearly knocked him flying. Iori understood that this kind of instant, out-of-spec reinforcement meant that the moment his condition dropped even slightly below Yang's baseline, this guy could multiply his strength several times over, ignore his defense in an instant, and crush him outright.

Super armor the whole time, automatic counters, immune to status effects, high attack, high defense, agile and fast, auto-regen, and once your condition drops to about eighty percent you enter execute range, where a single hit ignores defense and finishes you…

Realizing Yang's many abilities, Iori felt the headache grow… no, it was more than a headache. Iori actually felt a strange kind of relief.

At the same time, Iori was certain that this golden flame was no ordinary fire, and that his ancestors had absolutely, absolutely, absolutely never seen it.

Iori had every reason to believe that if his ancestors had seen it even once, they would never have forgotten to record it.

Even more so, once anyone had seen it, they could never have kept obsessing over the Kusanagi clan.

No wonder this guy had mastered the Crimson Flame and never used it… Iori asked himself honestly: if the choice were his, even if the Azure Flame carried no curse of mad blood, he would choose the Golden Flame without hesitation.

Even as he thought, Iori's movements didn't pause.

Locking his eyes on Yang, Iori let the Azure Flame surge around him, his crimson eyes filled with gravity.

Defeating Yang in a short time was, for Iori now, nothing but a fool's dream.

Unless…

Realizing the situation, Iori's eyes narrowed slightly, but he quickly made his decision and drew a deep breath.

The next moment, he loosened both fists. As his slender fingers spread, the Azure Flame around him went out in that instant, but it hadn't stopped burning. Perhaps it had simply stopped burning on the surface, and now burned from deep within his flesh, from the depths of his soul.

Iori tilted his head back, the madness in his eyes spreading. His outward appearance hadn't changed, but the subtle shifts in his torso muscles and posture were enough to show clearly that his state was entirely different from before.

To be precise, it wasn't a posture a normal human being would show.

Then a roar that sounded nothing like a human's tore from deep in Iori's throat. The cold afterglow of Azure Flame seeped from the corners of his eyes, the corners of his mouth and the gaps between his fingers, as if he were being devoured from the inside out by his own fire.

Then he lifted his eyes to Yang, his cold, rational gaze fixed on Yang's figure. The instant his center of gravity dropped, a layer of blood-red burst from his body, and he closed on Yang as if sliding sideways, in the blink of an eye. In a trail of heavy afterimages, the cold Azure Flame left a conspicuous wake.

Kin 1211 Shiki: Yaotome.

The instant Iori showed his abnormal state, a ring of veins bulged around Yang's eyes amid the surging Golden Flame. A dense healing effect forcibly activated redundant nerves that should have stayed dormant. The enormous load made the capillaries in his eyes burst under the overload, but as the red spread, his dynamic vision and awareness were pushed to their peak in that moment.

Looking at Iori, who still flickered like an afterimage even through his awakened eyes, Yang calmed his mind, steadied his breath, and sank into a horse stance.

The next moment Iori was upon him, ten fingers swinging like hooks. At first Yang could keep up with Iori's rhythm and block the claw strikes one after another. But as the Azure Flame surged, flame left in the path of each claw began to detonate with a delay, and with the continuous attacks, a rain of fire drawn by ten fingers took shape.

Left cut, right sweep, upward chop, downward slash, straight thrust, horizontal rend—streaks of fire grew out of the remaining momentum of the flame. Every claw came at an angle completely different from the last. The Azure Flame claw marks piled layer upon layer in the air, new afterimages pressing down before the old ones faded, countless blue-purple arcs of light interwoven by Iori's hands into an airtight net. And inside it, Yang could clearly feel that the net was closing.

A star-strike?

No. Yang could clearly feel that as the unbroken Azure Flame tore through his flesh with every claw, it was also eroding his consciousness and nerves. Even with the Golden Flame forcing instant regeneration the moment he was hit, this airtight combo still denied him any chance to twist his essence, qi and spirit into a single strand.

As he thought, Yang made his decision. His pupils shrank to pinpoints, red spread in an instant, and two bright red lines ran from the corners of his eyes.

With his focus fully concentrated, flame coiled around Yang's body as well. He forcibly drove his flesh and nerves to push himself flickering through the dense rain of fire, his hands turning to afterimages. At the moment of each of Iori's claw strikes, he slapped with the edges of his palms, intercepting Iori's wrists, elbows and forearms.

At the last instant before fingertips touched his skin, he slapped each claw aside and shattered the fire trails lingering in the air.

Even so, as the Azure Flame detonated, the deflected claw tips still left long, thin wounds as they grazed Yang's arms, shoulders and ribs.

Then, as if sensing something, Iori suddenly seized both of Yang's arms and clenched hard. Before Yang could react, he clearly felt the fire marks that had stayed on his skin seep a sinister chill, like the hellfire of the underworld soaking through the skin into the bone.

The next moment, the flames condensed in Yang's arms erupted. The instantaneous blast sent his body flying backward.

But the moment Yang's feet left the ground, he looked at Iori, who had dropped low again and was rushing in to end the fight for good, and there wasn't a trace of panic in his eyes.

Just as the shockwave was about to flip him completely, Yang's legs shot out like two steel whips and crossed in midair, locking around Iori's head and neck.

The inner thigh muscles and the shin bones formed a closed lock. Yang drove with his upper body and twisted at the waist, and riding the momentum of being blasted away, he swung like a steel whip. He spun a hundred and eighty degrees in midair and ripped Iori's body off the ground, flinging him skyward with the centrifugal force of the rotation, then slammed him down hard into the ground with the weight of his own fall!!!

Taboo Form: Serpent Bite Takedown.

Iori's back hit the concrete, and a dull, heavy boom rang out over the old street in Old City. Azure Flame scattered in the impact and for a moment became a dark purple fire lotus, but the next moment it dissolved like fireworks.

Yang pushed himself up from the ground. The flesh on both his hands was split open, and blood dripped in a string of beads from his fingertips.

Behind him lay the crater his slam had made, nearly two meters across, its cracked edges stretching out past the reach of the streetlights.

Slumped inside it, Iori's eyes had already gone glassy.

Yang, WIN!