Martial Dao: Peace by Force

Chapter 166: Chapter 128: He Arrives, Like a God

The steel bar tore free from his body, taking bits of flesh with it. Copper Mountain grunted, his arm trembling, but his fingers remained locked in a death grip around the rebar.

The next moment, he swung his arm!

The rebar shot from his hand with a sharp whistle, fast as a black lightning bolt, heading straight for Black Panther’s face!

Black Panther didn’t even raise an eyelid.

He simply raised a hand, pinched a stray piece of gravel from his cuff between his thumb and middle finger, and flicked it.

”WHOOSH!”

The pebble flew out, striking the tip of the rebar dead-on.

”CLANG!”

Sparks flew.

The rebar, which had been flying with unstoppable Momentum, tumbled backward through the air and embedded itself in the brick ground thirty feet away, its end quivering with a low HUM.

Black Panther retracted his hand. He looked at Copper Mountain and leisurely dusted off his cuff. ”You think just because you’ve grasped a fraction of Divinity Transformation, you have the right to challenge me?”

With that, he began to walk forward slowly.

His pace was unhurried, like a leisurely stroll.

He stepped over broken bricks and rubble, right through the pool of blood Copper Mountain had coughed up, grinding it under his sole.

”What a joke.”

Black Panther stopped three paces in front of Copper Mountain.

He looked down at the blood-soaked man as if he were a stray dog on its last legs.

”I’ll give you one last chance. Who were you just—”

”ROAR!”

Copper Mountain didn’t let him finish.

He lunged forward.

He swung both fists. With an explosion of vitality, his bones and tendons seemed to creak and groan in unison. He was like a crazed bull charging a matador’s cape.

Black Panther smiled.

It was a smile of cruel appreciation.

”Even though I said I wanted you alive—”

”—I can still break all of your limbs.”

As he spoke, Black Panther sidestepped Copper Mountain’s right fist. He followed the Momentum and slapped a palm against his lower back, then twisted again, smashing an elbow into Copper Mountain’s shoulder blade as he uttered the last part of his sentence.

”And leave you on the ground like a...”

But his words stopped dead.

Black Panther’s third strike never landed.

His hand was frozen in mid-air.

Because a hand had suddenly clamped onto the left side of his face.

The fingers tightened.

A faint CRUNCH sounded as knuckles pressed against cheekbone.

Black Panther went rigid.

He hadn’t even seen the person arrive.

No sound of rushing air!

No footsteps!

No ripple of energy!

With no warning whatsoever, the hand had appeared from nowhere, as if it had been waiting there the whole time for him to deliver his face right to it.

...

Black Panther’s pupils shrank.

’I can’t just wait here to die!’

The instant that thought exploded in his mind, his body was already moving.

His shoulders trembled as his energy erupted. Every muscle in his body pulled taut like a bowstring. ’I have to break free! I have to fight back! I have to—’

Black Panther was horrified. He couldn’t move at all.

The hand was clamped to his face like an iron vise. The fingers tightened. No matter how he surged with energy, no matter how his muscles bulged, the hand remained utterly motionless.

’That kind of Power... No, it’s not Power.’

’It’s absolute suppression!’

’Like an ant trying with all its might to overturn the boot crushing it.’

A bone-deep chill crept into Black Panther’s heart.

He grabbed the hand with both of his own, digging his fingers between the intruder’s, and pulled...

But he couldn’t budge it.

He threw an elbow strike backward... and hit nothing but air.

Sweat beaded on Black Panther’s brow. He lifted a leg and twisted his torso, trying to use his core Strength to throw his assailant off. But the hand held him fast, and he remained rooted to the spot.

Before that hand, all his struggles and counterattacks were as futile as a child’s flailing.

The next moment, the hand pushed forward.

”BANG!”

Black Panther’s entire body lifted off the ground, his back slamming heavily against a white wall.

Plaster and stone shattered. The entire wall bulged outward as cracks spread like a spiderweb.

Black Panther’s body was embedded in the wall. Shards of brick pinned his arms, waist, and legs, making him look like a ruined statue forcibly crammed into a niche.

He could only hang there, mouth agape, gasping for air. His eyes bulged, his gaze locked on the spot where his attacker stood.

Under the flickering lights...

...a figure stood.

Wearing a mask...

Copper Mountain was utterly stunned.

His jaw hung slack. He looked from Black Panther—who just moments ago had been so imperious, now embedded in the wall—to the masked figure who had appeared from nowhere. For a moment, he forgot what he should do.

”Go,” the newcomer said, his voice low.

Copper Mountain didn’t react.

The newcomer was already at his side. He grabbed Copper Mountain’s arm, hauled him up from the rubble, and shoved him in the direction of the West Gate.

Copper Mountain stumbled a few steps, then looked back. He finally seemed to register what was happening and opened his mouth to say something...

”I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!!!” Black Panther’s roar erupted from behind them.

He tore himself free from the wall, sending rubble flying and kicking up a cloud of dust.

His face was a bloody mess, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was disheveled.

His voice was filled with shrill resentment.

The shame of having his dignity trampled in front of everyone had incinerated his last shred of reason.

He shattered a wooden beam blocking his path with one palm and charged at the masked man’s back!

Wan Ze turned.

Black Panther was already upon him.

The wind from the fist blasted his face. Surging with energy, Black Panther put the culmination of his life’s training into this one blow. Fueled by a towering hatred, he aimed to smash that mask to pieces!

Wan Ze didn’t dodge.

He simply raised a hand.

His fingers clenched into a fist. Though he moved second, his strike would land first.

A single punch landed on Black Panther’s chest.

”SPURT!!!”

Black Panther’s forward Momentum came to a dead stop.

He stared down in shock.

He stared at the fist pressed against his own chest.

Then, his entire body was sent flying backward.

His body flew like a puppet with its strings cut. He shot backward with unstoppable force, smashing through one wall, then a second, before finally embedding himself in a third. He didn’t move again.

The dust slowly settled.

A dead silence fell over the area.