When my derisive words left my mouth, Jiang Jun Hao turned a shade of gray immediately. He glared at me murderously, still remembering the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of Zhu Jiao. Just a few months ago, Zhu Jiao had beaten him up so badly that he needed to call upon Elder Shen to save his a.s.s.

Right now, that Elder Shen in question was preoccupied with battling against my Ancestral Master, and couldn"t afford to rush over and save Jiang Jun Hao if he got beaten up badly in combat. Jiang Jun Hao was on his own.

However, he refused to submit.

"Trash who got lucky because Elder Shen refused to raise a hand against you that time, let"s see if you"ll be able to survive today!" Jiang Jun Hao snarled ferociously. His qi surged forth from his body in an intimidating manner, the sheer volume of it proving that he was not at all weak. For people of our generation, anyway. "Your pathetic sect has been targeted by the Martial Arts Alliance for destruction! You"ll never be able to escape!"

"So you finally acknowledge that I"m from a major sect?" I asked mockingly, recalling the last time he insulted me. He had refused to believe that I was from one of the eight major sects and claimed that a loser like me definitely belonged to some minor sect on the verge of being disbanded, and then insisted that my amount of qi made me too weak to belong to Nine-Tailed Fox Sect, deluding himself into believing that Zhu Jiao and I were bluffing him.

But right now, the incontrovertible truth was before him. I was fighting for the Nine-Tailed Fox Sect as one of the members of Blood Blades, I had survived the subsequent waves before this, and I had even fought on par with a one-armed Wu Tuo. Not unless he was blind an insane could he continue denying my membership in Nine-Tailed Fox Sect.

"Oh, shut up!"

Jiang Jun Hao thrust his spear at me, but I deflected it with one of my swords. Even though I provoked him a little, I wasn"t going to underestimate. It wasn"t as if I was Lin Dong, who could easily crush w.a.n.g Yan just so the author could w.a.n.k off at how powerful he had become, and how he was just humiliating the idiotic cliché crowd who enjoyed trash-talking him before getting slapped when proven wrong.

Jiang Jun Hao was still a formidable opponent worthy of respect. With regards to his combat ability anyway, even if his personality was rotten to the core.

"Hora, hora, hora!"

Jiang Jun Hao"s movements were growing faster now, his spear almost disappearing into blurry after-images numbering in the dozens as he sought to pierce my defenses. I did my best to keep up, parrying, blocking and deflecting the deadly tip of his spear away from my body, but right now I was completely forced into the defensive. I couldn"t even launch a counterattack, both my swords completely engaged in defending myself.

We traded over a few hundred blows, our blades leaving marks and scars across the concrete of the plaza. As much as I wanted to fire a volley of qi beams at Jiang Jun Hao to relieve the pressure, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was moving too quickly for me to get a lock-on. And given his close proximity, it was near-suicidal to fire upon his position. I would more than likely end up hitting myself, given the fluid nature of combat, and killing myself when Jiang Jun Hao delivered the fatal blow while I was injured from my own attacks. I wasn"t like anime characters, able to calculate everything at the most precise angle or whatever, and hit my target by the millimeter while completely avoiding myself.

I wasn"t a perfect Mary Sue protagonist where everything went exactly to plan and I could literally calculate and predict in a G.o.d-like manner all these trajectories, angles and positions. I was a totally regular guy who prevailed only through sheer effort and hard work. Nothing more than that.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" Jiang Jun Hao took this as irrefutable evidence of his superiority and drove me back. Increasing the pressure, he smashed my regular sword to bits, the immense force of his spear shattering the metal and causing it to rain down on me.

"!"

I brought my Azure Lotus Sword back to parry his next strike, clutching the hilt with both hands now.

"Hah!"

Jiang Jun Hao knocked me back with a ferocious blow, sending me skidding a few meters back. My hands trembled from the violent impact, my arms going numb as I felt the aftershocks reverberating through them.

"Weak," Jiang Jun Hao sneered as he approached me, triumphantly twirling his spear and getting ready to lunge at me again. However, a volley of qi beams from above bombarded his position, forcing him to abandon his charge and retreat to safety.

"Yet you still have yet to defeat me," I pointed out dryly. "If I"m weak, then what are you? Slightly above weak?"

"I"m strong, d.a.m.n you!" Jiang Jun Hao roared. "I"m the second-strongest disciple of Heavenly Way Sect! I"m a G.o.d compared to trash like you!"

He tried to lunge forward again, only to be kept at bay by a second hail of qi beams from my mobile turrets. He clicked his tongue as he fell back, spinning his Heavenly Spear in his hands to deflect several of the deadly bolts.

"That"s quite the interesting Spirit Weapon you have there," he growled. "I"ve never seen anything like it before."

He then grinned ominously.

"It"ll be a waste to leave it in the hands of trash like you. Don"t worry, once I kill you, I"ll make sure your Spirit Weapon will be in good hands."

The idiot was already a.s.suming that the outcome of this battle was a foregone conclusion. I really wanted to see his expression when he was proven wrong.

Unfortunately, he was too powerful. I couldn"t just crush him like Lin Dong did to w.a.n.g Yan, or how Li Fu Chen stomped every single opponent of his generation that made fun of him.

As frustrating as it was, that was reality for you. You weren"t always going to be able to indulge in some fairy tale ending and destroy whoever made fun or insulted you. I still remembered how in my previous life, when I played Starcraft 2, there would always be a couple of opponents who would trash-talk me throughout the game, calling me noob or pathetic, and even though it pained me to admit it, they were superior to me at the game.

This wasn"t to say their arrogance was deserved (honestly, the whole idea of "I"m better than you, so I have the right to be arrogant and look down on you" was just stupid, especially if it turned out that I was your boss or teacher in real life), but in reality, you couldn"t just steamroll over everyone who was condescending and abusive toward you.

Fortunately, there was also just as many cases where the opponent was just a bag of hot air, and as long as I stayed calm and stuck to my strategy (countering cheese, focusing on teching up to an army of Thors or an armada of Battlecruisers), I could sometimes turn the situation around and my opponent would ragequit with a few parting insults. And me being me, I couldn"t be bothered to look for the fella and gloat over him – I had better things to do, such as searching for a new game and ranking up in the ranked ladder.

Right now, I had no idea which of the situation this fell under, but I knew the most important thing was to ensure that I didn"t fall for his provocations, maintain my cool, and calmly fighting with the skills and tactics I exceled at the most. I wasn"t going to be complacent and take anything for granted, unlike Lin Dong or Li Fu Chen. Only after I won, would I gloat (just like I did when playing Starcraft 2). Before then, I would focus on fighting.

"Ugh!"

Unable to close in, Jiang Jun Hao shoved his spear forward and unleashed a shock blast from the tip of his Spirit Weapon. I was almost taken by surprise, by managed to block the incredible blast with Azure Lotus Sword.

Even so, I was sent hurtling backward. Jiang Jun Hao capitalized on the moment when my concentration was disrupted to close in, swinging his spear and swatting me away. I crashed onto the ground in an undignified heap, but hastily rolled away, scrambling back to my feet as he stabbed the ground where my head had been.

Clang!

In a smooth motion, Jiang Jun Hao swung his spear up and batted me away. I barely managed to deflect his spear, but he dropped down and kicked me. I just barely blocked his foot with my knee, having detected his intentions through reading the flow of his qi, but I could just only keep up with his next attack, parrying his spear with Azure Lotus Sword.

Jiang Jun Hao grinned, and the next moment, a shock blast erupted from his spear at pointblank range, buffeting me and sending me flying.

"Kuh!"

I hit the ground and staggered unsteadily, rolling back up to my feet ungracefully. Gritting my teeth, I launched another volley of qi beams, but Jiang Jun Hao was prepared for that. Again, he spun his spear around, slicing the qi bolts before they could hit him.

As arrogant and infuriating as he was, Jiang Jun Hao was truly strong. As expected of the second senior disciple of the Heavenly Way Sect. His reputation wasn"t for nothing.

Huffing, I backed away under the covering fire of my mobile turrets, trying to a.s.sess the sitation and come up with a countermeasure. It was just like playing Starcraft 2 again. Even if you were annoyed by the opponent"s insults, you couldn"t just lose your head and recklessly attacked. You had to evaluate your opponent"s skills, figure out his strategy, and then counter it. If he was going for cheese, then I had to defend against that cheese, survive, and counterattack (he would be behind in economy by then). Same with an all-in. If it was macro, then I needed to figure out his army composition and build the appropriate counters – was he going air-heavy? Then I needed Vikings and Thors. Was he going for a ma.s.sed ground push with Zealots, Stalkers and Immortals or Zerglings, Roaches and Hydralisks? Then I needed h.e.l.lbats with the infernal pre-ignitor upgrade and siege tanks. Or if he was too pa.s.sive (focusing his efforts more on abusing or insulting me), I could aggressively expand and tech up to Battlecruisers and overpower him with sheer firepower.

In Jiang Jun Hao"s case, I had to a.n.a.lyze his skills and figure out what his favored tactics were, and what he was vulnerable to.

"Fei Wu!"

I turned my head slightly when I heard Tang Qi Hong"s voice. She, Lian Rou and a cl.u.s.ter of inner sect disciples were holding their own, using superior quality Spirit Weapons to overwhelm a bunch of Heavenly Way Sect, Green Dragon and Kunlun Sect disciples who had made their way to the plaza. She drew a good quality sword from her spatial ring and tossed it to me.

"Use this!"

"Thanks!" I called back and dove forward, s.n.a.t.c.hing the new sword before it hit the floor. And not a moment too soon.

"f.u.c.ker!"

With a roar, Jiang Jun Hao lunged at me, thrusting his spear forward. I deflected it with my newly acquired sword in my left hand, and then counterattacked with my Azure Lotus Sword in my right. Jiang Jun Hao staggered back, flipping his spear around to parry my strike with the shaft of his Heavenly Spear, and sparks flew between us as metal screeched against metal.

I kicked at his knee, causing his leg to buckle, and then slashed with my new sword. Jiang Jun Hao, to his credit, knocked it away with his Heavenly Spear, but left his side open. I thrust my Azure Lotus Sword forward, and his eyes widened. Stumbling to the side in a desperate attempt to avoid the deadly blow, he wasn"t able to escape getting a cut on his face. A thin, red line appeared on his cheek before a trickle of blood flowed down.

"Argh!"

Clutching at his face, his complexion pale at the close shave, Jiang Jun Hao stumbled back. As for me, I pulled back in disappointment to catch my breath.

"d.a.m.n, and I was hoping I could cut his neck," I muttered.

"You hurt me…" Jiang Jun Hao growled in disbelief, staring at the blood on his fingers after he lowered his hand from his cheek. "You actually scratched me!"

"Dude, you were trying to kill me. You think you can just jump into a fight and not get hurt by your opponent? We aren"t going to just lie down and let you walk over us, you know?" even as I explained, I was already familiar with the idiot"s delusional tendencies. This was the same guy who thought that he deserved compensation when we caught the weapon that he tried to murder us with. And continued to delude himself that he was stronger even after being physically proven wrong. Sighing, I shook my head and then fired a volley of qi beams at him.

I wasn"t going to waste my time arguing with him when I could kill him.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

However, unlike w.a.n.g Yan and 99.9% of xianxia/wuxia antagonists, Jiang Jun Hao wasn"t a pushover who existed solely for the protagonist to beat up. He lliterally vanished from in front of me, and reappeared in front of me, thrusting his Heavenly Spear forward.

"!"

Clang!

I barely managed to deflect the tip of his spear in time. I sc.r.a.ped my foot against the ground and spun around, delivering a riposte that Jiang Jun Hao deflected. He then counterattacked, knocking both my swords back with immense force.

Standing his ground, his killing intent suddenly intensified and he struck with his spear in fast, precise movements.

"Hundred Heaven Splitting Spears!"

The qi in his body exploded and his golden Heavenly Spear seemed to multiply before my eyes. They transformed into a hundred humongous spears, which streaked forward at my vital spots, each of them a lethal strike that would kill me instantly.

"Kuh…!"

I did my best to deflect and parry them, my two swords going into overdrive as I knocked them away. Realizing how much faster and stronger Jiang Jun Hao was, and how I could just barely keep up, I abandoned any attempt on counterattacking and strove to stay alive by focusing completely on defense. Even so, I was nearly overwhelmed by his sheer speed and power, his spears mercilessly zeroing in on any vulnerable areas, such as my joints, my chest or my neck.

Fortunately, I was able to direct his blows the way I wanted to. Despite his savagery, superior strength and speed, Jiang Jun Hao"s one-dimensional desire to kill me made him predictable. Thanks to my experience in real battlefields, I could somewhat play upon this to my advantage and tricked him into attacking me where I wanted, especially since my Heavenly Flow and Earthly Steps allowed me to read his techniques as a double insurance.

I realized I might be playing with fire, but this was the only way I could survive at this moment. I revealed or feigned openings, particularly toward my weak spots, such as my neck or chest, tricking Jiang Jun Hao into attacking those. He was moving virtually on instinct, his training kicking in and his arms moving before he could think, his spear rushing toward my neck or chest or whatever openings I deliberately showed. Having antic.i.p.ated that and led him on, I was thus in a position to deflect or parry those attacks because I was the one who purposely tricked him to strike at those areas in the first place. His spear that aimed for my neck was knocked away by Tang Qi Hong"s sword, while the tip that was directed at my forehead was swatted upward by my Azure Lotus Sword. A thrust toward my chest was parried by crossing both my swords.
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Of course, I was playing an extremely dangerous game. It only needed one attack – just a single strike – to land, and I would die instantly, unable to endure such a lethal hit. The moment Jiang Jun Hao"s Heavenly Spear gouged my heart out of my chest, or his spear crushed my head, or severed the blood vessels in my neck, I would die immediately.

However, I would prefer a swift death than death by a hundred cuts. As misleading as the description for the latter was, a death by a hundred cuts was still death. Allowing Jiang Jun Hao to cut me up slowly but surely was still enough to guarantee my defeat. The gradual loss of blood, the acc.u.mulation of battle damage and injuries – they would s...o...b..ll to devastating effect, and my movements, stamina and reflexes would be slowed considerably. While I was weakening slowly but surely, Jiang Jun Hao would capitalize and deliver a fatal strike.

So whichever path I chose, it would still end the same way. If that was the case, I might as well stake everything on not getting hurt.

Clang!

"…"

The two of us sprang apart in a shower of sparks. I skidded backward and retreated gratefully, appreciating the time to catch my breath and recover. Jiang Jun Hao was only human, so he needed the break and a breather as well, but he had also withdrawn because he had realized that something was amiss.

"I don"t understand."

"Huh?" I raised an eyebrow, wondering why Jiang Jun Hao decided to start talking instead of resuming his attack. He was watching me warily, his eyebrows furrowed. I returned his inquisitive gaze. "What do you not understand?"

"With your strength, why are you just a sidekick? You can be the protagonist of your own story."

"Who says I"m a sidekick?" I snapped, irritated. "You"re the one who decided that on your own and labeled me as such. I already told you that I"m not a sidekick. You refused to believe me."

Jiang Jun Hao didn"t answer. He was still thinking deeply, as if trying to decipher a mystery. He shook his head.

"In terms of qi and realm, you"re much weaker than me. By right, you should have fallen by now. I"m much faster and stronger, yet for some reason you"re able to withstand all of my attacks and emerge without even a single scratch. You seem the type to engage in long-range combat." He glanced at my floating mobile turrets. I didn"t fire, because it would be a waste of qi and he would easily deflect the qi bolts anyway. "Yet you wield dual swords and fight me almost evenly in close range. I have never heard of anyone like you."

"I am not responsible for your ignorance," I replied irritably.

Jiang Jun Hao shook his head. "Just who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"You know who I am." I spread my hands, still holding my swords. "I"m Fei Wu, a member of Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. You"re the ones who barged into our territory and tried to slaughter us all. Don"t pretend you are suddenly unaware of who we are."

"That"s not what I meant!" Jiang Jun Hao snapped. "How are you pulling this off?! On paper, I"m a much more superior martial artist. I"m at a higher level, I"m stronger and faster, I have more qi. Theoretically, you shouldn"t be able to fight on par against me like this!"

"That"s the problem with you people, all obsessed with realms, stages, levels, quant.i.ty of qi and stats." I shook my head. "Reality is never so neatly categorized and obedient to all these numbers that humans willfully imposed on them. So what if your strength value is higher than mine? Or that you have more qi than me? What does that mean in reality? It doesn"t mean you automatically win just because you"re stronger or faster. There"s a lot of other factors that interfere and influence the outcome of a match. The battlefield is an actual living, evolving thing."

As if to emphasize my point, I gestured toward my fellow Blood Blades, where so many of us were still alive and the enemies were dead. Based on numbers and statistics alone, the enemy would have overwhelmed us long ago, but this was our homeground. We used tactics, such as funneling the enemies through killzones where we unleashed death in overlapping fields of fire. We could launch guerilla tactics on a numerically superior enemy and stall them.

"Additionally," I continued. "It seems you misunderstand something about theory. Theory is just here to explain some things and help you optimize your tactics and plans. Theory does not decide the outcome of fights. They just inform you of the variables and explain how certain scenarios are reached, a.n.a.lyze the various factors and provide conjectures. Otherwise they wouldn"t separate theory from pratical. If everything is decided based on paper or theory alone, all we need to do is look at the matchup and team lists to decide the outcome of the match without the players actually playing a match. There"s no need for them to actually play out the football match, we can just automatically a.s.sign the team with theoretically better players the victory. But that"s not how football leagues work, right?"

I shook my head bitterly.

"Same with Warhammer 40,000. You have all these whiners and compet.i.tive win at all costs players crunching numbers and relying on mathhammer and statistics to prove their point, on how certain units are superior to other units, how they point for point deal the most damage or are the most durable, or whatever. But they are only calculating and mathhammering in a vacuum and stating their conclusions about the numbers as facts without actually playing any real games and seeing how they work out in reality. While I agree that theory, numbers and statistics do help you figure things out, improve your tactics and optimize your list, these whiners tend to over-rely on them and falsely equate theory with reality. There are so many things happening in a game that will affect how your entire army plays out, such as missions, synergies between units, etc. If all it took was for a specific combination of units or lists to win a game, then n.o.body would bother playing the game. You might as well make the tournament all about comparing lists and then basing the results solely on the lists. Why bother playing the game then?" I snorted. "It"s because theory does not equate to reality. It helps if you know the theory, and as a former graduate student I know how important theory is. However, it is precisely because I was a graduate student I also know the limits of theory. As much as win at all costs Warhammer 40,000 mathhammer people claim, theory does not decide the outcome of a match. It helps you deal with reality and mitigate unexpected occurrences, and account for different factors, problems and crises, but it does not decide or shape reality. You have to actually play out the game instead of claiming that your list is superior, the mathhammer is in your favor, and thus you should win automatically without even having to throw the dice or place your models."

Jiang Jun Hao stared at me, his jaw dropping in astonishment.

"What…what…what…?" he spluttered, probably unable to digest anything I had just told him.

Sorry, but I had kept all those feelings bottled up, and everything just went to h.e.l.l, and I had to vent after being insulted and abused by win-at-all-costs whiners who based all their arguments on numbers and mathhammer alone. Honestly, you could calculate and bring up a table of statistics all you want, but you aren"t going to convince anyone if you haven"t actually played any games to prove your point (and it has to be far more than a single game).

"Oh, shut up! You"re just a loser who cheats!" Jiang Jun Hao, unable to refute my argument, resorted to the same strategy that all Internet trolls adopted whenever they couldn"t counter the other side"s points and instead attacked the poster without addressing anything they actually said. In other words, ad hominem.

I merely shook my head. "If I"m a whining loser, what does that make you? Someone who can"t accept reality and has his head stuck so far up his a.s.s that he"s deluding himself even though he was clearly staring reality in the face."

"Just die already!"

Incensed, Jiang Jun Hao jumped as far back as he could. I felt a chill run up my spine when his murderous intent suddenly exploded. A tremendous amount of qi was flowing into his Heavenly Spear, the volume so incredible that it was actually distorting the air around him.

"…"

Ice gripped my spine and I retreated despite realizing the futility of it. Jiang Jun Hao was preparing to unleash his ultimate technique.

"I"m sure you"ve heard of my ultimate technique, Heaven Destroying Divine Strike!" Jiang Jun Hao gloated as he continued to infuse his Heavenly Spear with more of his qi. To stop him, I desperately fired a bombardment of qi beams, but the lethal bolts were actually deflected off the ma.s.sive amounts of qi that were swirling around my opponent. d.a.m.n it! "Be honored…for few people ever provoke me enough to use this against them!"