Infinite Fighting

Chapter 56: Chapter 51: I Am This Era

WHUMMM! SHIIING!

Zhang Ji braced himself, gathering power. He whipped out a claw in a rapid swipe across the chest of one of the Spirit Soldiers.

The blue claw of Essence Qi, however, only managed to leave a shallow mark.

His Leopard Form was only at a rudimentary level. Even when combined with the other four forms, its power was still lacking.

Slicing through this thing like a tree stump was no simple task.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Zhang Ji sidestepped, dodging bullets and a downward slash as his muscles suddenly bulged.

Five Forms as One, Tiger Stance.

In that instant, he felt his strength increase by at least thirty percent.

BOOM!

He unleashed a Dragon Form Fist, and the Spirit Soldier’s chest caved in slightly from the impact.

On the other side, Zheng Chengze was also fighting a Spirit Soldier. His armor took two hits, the slashes shearing off the outer plating and leaving two gashes on his body. His Alloy Long Staff was also severed in two, forcing Zheng Chengze to toss it aside.

Faced with such a powerful foe, Zheng Chengze showed no intention of retreating or evading.

’The Tiger Form must be ferocious, its presence overwhelming.’

’To retreat is to lose!’

He struck out with a rapid series of palm strikes, landing powerful blows on the Spirit Soldier’s joints. His Essence Qi disrupted the soldier’s energy transfer, preventing its mechanical structure from deploying its full strength.

The Spirit Soldier staggered back under Zheng Chengze’s assault, the heat-ray gun on its shoulder taking aim at him.

With a shove of his broad, tiger-like palm, Zheng Chengze knocked the barrel aside. The beam sliced a massive tree in half, leaving the stump charred black.

THWACK!

Zheng Chengze landed a punch on the Spirit Soldier’s chest, right where its heart would be. The surge of Essence Qi finally caused it to freeze for a moment.

"The heart!" Zheng Chengze shouted.

Zhang Ji heard him and shifted into the Spirit Crane Stance. His movements grew far more nimble, allowing him to evade an attack and rapidly close in on another Spirit Soldier.

As he raised his palm, a massive amount of Essence Qi gathered, erupting in a pale blue light.

BOOM!

A fist-sized blast of dragon-shaped Essence Qi shot out and punched clean through the Spirit Soldier’s chest, leaving a hole from front to back.

The Spirit Soldier instantly ceased all movement.

....

Sun Xinye watched this scene unfold, a flicker of shock in his eyes.

The Spirit Soldier’s core was located there. All of its systems relied on the chip in that location to function.

If it was damaged, the entire unit would be paralyzed.

This was a weakness known to everyone on the inside.

’But is it really a weakness?’

After all, that spot was the most heavily protected part of a Spirit Soldier’s body.

Normally, it couldn’t be breached even by a direct hit from a cannon.

Yet now, the Spirit Soldier’s defenses had been easily shattered.

He suddenly felt that his superiors had been truly farsighted. Sending twenty Spirit Soldiers wasn’t too many—in fact, it might have been too few. After all, there were supposedly two Grandmasters still on the mountain.

.....

"It works!"

Zhang Ji was overjoyed. ’The feeling of being unable to break through their defenses for so long was awful.’

The Divine Dragon Stance’s attack consumed a great deal of Essence Qi, so he was hesitant to use it lightly.

But now that he could disable them with a single strike, everything was different.

Five Forms as One, Spiritual Crane!

Zhang Ji’s body blurred, leaving behind what looked like afterimages. While dodging an attack, he swiped his claws with unimaginable speed.

A blue light flashed from his claws.

Five Forms as One, Raging Leopard!

SHIIING! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The Spirit Soldier was driven back.

The next moment, Zhang Ji’s right palm was fully charged, glowing with condensed blue light.

BOOM!

A blast of dragon-shaped Essence Qi erupted, punching through the heart of the Spirit Soldier before him as if there were no resistance at all, leaving behind a fist-sized hole.

As it tried to move again, Zhang Ji followed up with another punch, reached inside, and ripped out a handful of tangled wires and a shattered motherboard. The machine went completely still.

The two remaining Spirit Soldiers were no longer a threat to Zhang Ji.

BOOM!

BOOM!

A short while later, two waves of dragon-shaped Essence Qi blasted through their defenses, and they toppled to the ground for good.

Meanwhile, Zheng Chengze was still locked in a desperate struggle with his own Spirit Soldier.

He hadn’t mastered the Five Forms as One technique. While his moves were powerful, they clearly couldn’t penetrate the Spirit Soldier’s armor.

Zhang Ji pushed off, crossing a hundred meters in an instant, and slammed a palm glowing with blue light into the Spirit Soldier’s chest.

BOOM!

With that, all five Spirit Soldiers in their area were eliminated.

The entire battle had lasted less than four minutes.

Zhang Ji took a moment to steady his breathing. He had made it look easy, but he had already consumed nearly sixty percent of his Essence Qi.

The Five Forms as One technique was powerful, to be sure, but its mana cost was also incredibly high.

"Five Forms as One?" Zheng Chengze asked.

"Yes." Zhang Ji nodded. "More of those things are coming. We have to go, now!"

Armed drones streaked across the sky, and several more Spirit Soldiers from another group were rerouted to intercept them.

DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!

In an instant, a deluge of bullets rained down.

Zhang Ji and Zheng Chengze focused only on escaping, weaving through the mountain forest at high speed.

Several homing grenades flew toward them at over a hundred meters per second. Zhang Ji raised a hand, firing off several bolts of Essence Qi that detonated them in mid-air.

KABOOM!

KABOOM!

BANG!

A sniper round shot past, but Zhang Ji and Zheng Chengze had already dodged.

The hail of gunfire couldn’t slow them down.

This was the power of a Grandmaster!

In a less technologically advanced nation, they could single-handedly determine the outcome of a small-scale battle.

Just then, more Spirit Soldiers closed in.

They were flying, the flames from their thrusters visible in the air behind them.

"They’re catching up! Can you go any faster?" Zhang Ji asked Zheng Chengze.

Zhang Ji himself was far from his top speed.

The Spirit Crane Stance, when combined with the other forms, could boost his speed and reflexes by another forty percent.

"I’m at my limit!" Zheng Chengze’s voice was strained as he pushed his Essence Qi.

The capabilities of his armor were maxed out; this was his absolute top speed.

Running at over 150 kilometers per hour through this complex mountain terrain was already an incredible feat.

Zhang Ji’s expression shifted.

He was hesitating.

In the past, he would have abandoned Zheng Chengze without a second thought and saved himself.

But after everything he’d been through with the Five Elements Sect, and after the way Li Long had looked out for him...

...he felt an unexpected sense of belonging to the Five Elements Sect.

"I’ll hold them off!" Zhang Ji said.

"Just go on without me!" Zheng Chengze said.

They spoke at almost the exact same time.

The next moment, the distant Spirit Soldiers opened fire.

Muzzles flashed on anti-materiel rifles as bullets shot toward Zhang Ji and Zheng Chengze at several times the speed of sound.

Both sensed the threat ahead of time and dodged.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The trees beside them exploded on impact, huge craters gouged out of their trunks.

THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!

Spirit Soldiers appeared one after another until there were more than ten of them.

A swarm of armed drones circled overhead.

BANG!

THWUMP!

A bullet anticipated Zheng Chengze’s dodge and sent him flying.

Zhang Ji, too, used the Spirit Crane Stance to evade.

He was about to go help Zheng Chengze, but just then, his companion slapped the ground, pushed himself up, and charged toward the Spirit Soldiers.

"Go!" Zheng Chengze roared, his voice empowered by Essence Qi.

Zhang Ji considered the less than forty percent of Essence Qi he had left, then resolutely shot forward and grabbed Zheng Chengze.

"I’ll get us out of here!"

He activated the Spirit Crane Stance to its fullest. Energy flowed smoothly through him, and his movements became effortless. He could feel every detail of his feet as they pushed off the ground.

His body was nimble. Even while pulling Zheng Chengze along, he managed an incredible speed.

Zheng Chengze said no more, instead focusing all his strength on keeping up with Zhang Ji.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

Zhang Ji pushed off trees to dodge attacks, pulling Zheng Chengze along with him in a sideways leap.

He landed lightly on his feet before launching forward again, his movements as graceful and agile as a Spiritual Crane in flight.

Soon, he saw a river.

It was the great river at the foot of the Five Elements Sect’s mountain.

It was called the Five Flavors River. It was wide and turbulent, stretching for hundreds of kilometers and connecting to the primeval forests of Wei Mountain.

’Once we get in the river and follow it into the mountains, they’ll never find us, not without a massive effort, even with all their modern technology.’

"We’re almost there! Just a little further!" Zhang Ji said.

As he spoke, he glanced back.

He saw that, at some point, Zheng Chengze had stopped breathing.

The expression on Zhang Ji’s face froze.

...

"Captain, targets are on the bank of the Five Flavors River. One is confirmed KIA. The survivor is Zhang Ji, a direct disciple of the Five Elements Sect."

"Surround him. Urge him to surrender."

....

Spirit Soldiers surrounded Zhang Ji, drones circling in the sky above.

Zhang Ji knelt, opened the helmet of Zheng Chengze’s armor, and gently closed his eyes.

Then, he pushed Zheng Chengze’s body into the Five Flavors River.

Legend had it that the founder of the Five Elements Sect had also passed into his final meditation in this river, which was how it came to be called the Five Flavors River.

"Zhang Ji, surrender! You can’t fight against us!"

The voice, broadcast from a drone, reached Zhang Ji’s ears clearly.

Zhang Ji looked at the drone, then at the Spirit Soldiers surrounding him.

A faint smile touched his lips.

’The new era?’

’How weak is an individual in the face of an entire era’s might!’

’Even a great Sect like the Five Elements Sect was forced to retreat.’

’Those who resisted head-on, like the Vajra Sect, were ground to dust by the wheels of history.’

"But I... I *am* this era!" Zhang Ji’s expression was calm, but his voice rang with conviction.

’The Vajra Sect isn’t. The cowards hiding behind drones aren’t. Li Long and the others aren’t... Only I am. Only I can be... No, right now, I *must* be... I must be the carp that leaps the gate and becomes a dragon!’

GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG!

Zhang Ji closed his eyes. The fluctuations of his Spirit changed as he felt the abundant water vapor around him begin to tremble.

At some point, the final essence of his [Waterfall Drop] had formed. Through his Limited Space, he synthesized it into an [Excellent] grade Martial Arts Crystal named [Waterfall Drop].

ROAR!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

All the remaining Essence Qi in Zhang Ji’s body erupted. A dragon-shaped torrent of Qi surged out from within a sky-spanning cascade of water, combining with the current to form an attack of unparalleled might.

When it was all over, the Spirit Soldiers in the area lay in pieces. Even most of the drones in the sky had vanished.

And the spot where Zhang Ji had been standing was now empty.

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