"Heh, since brute force didn't work, you figure you'll try to buy me off?" Yang Kai sneered without end. "Can you possibly be any more shameless?"
Jiang Lin's face stiffened, his heart seething with fury, but constrained by the gap in their cultivation, he didn't dare truly show his anger.
Jiang Taisheng, however, was burning with rage. He bellowed: "Junior, my Jiang Family has already shown you more than enough face! Don't you push your luck!"
"Oh, I'm pushing my luck? What are you going to do, bite me?" Yang Kai stared at him with utter contempt.
"You're infuriating this old man!" Jiang Taisheng felt the blood and qi churning in his chest, nearly spitting out a mouthful of blood. His hair bristled wildly as he glared at Yang Kai with a vicious expression, roaring: "Boy, even if you are at the first level of the Dao Source Realm, today I will show you what this old man is made of!"
"Why waste breath? Just fight!" Yang Kai roared back, the source power within his body surging madly.
"This old man has been at the Dao Source Realm for over a hundred years—how can a whelp like you even be mentioned in the same breath!" Jiang Taisheng shouted coldly with a self-satisfied look.
"A hundred years and you still haven't broken through to the next level? Your aptitude is truly pathetic for an old fossil like you," Yang Kai said with undisguised disdain.
Jiang Taisheng flew into a towering rage. The source power within his body roiled in response, and he was no longer willing to waste another word with Yang Kai, lest he be angered to death. With a single tap of his foot, he vanished from where he stood, and a soft pop echoed from his previous location.
The sound was clearly from the air being shattered by his sheer speed.
In the next instant, he materialized before Yang Kai like a ghost, his face dark as he growled: "Then let this old man show you the power of a Dao Source Realm veteran of a hundred years!"
As he spoke, he casually, almost languidly, pushed a palm strike toward Yang Kai.
Within that palm, the power of law swirled, and before it even truly launched, a violent gale was already howling around Yang Kai, roaring at full force.
Mo Xiaoqi, standing not far beside Yang Kai, turned noticeably pale, her chest heaving as she found it difficult to breathe.
Though Mo Xiaoqi's origins were mysterious and extraordinary, and her own strength was nothing to scoff at, she had not yet reached the Dao Source Realm. Under the crushing pressure of Jiang Taisheng's law power, her expression immediately grew strained.
However, she was no stranger to the world's wonders and would not be cowed by mere law power alone. With a sharp cry, she forcefully drove the power within her body, breaking free of the law's suppression, and flashed away to a safe distance.
And just at that moment, before Jiang Taisheng's palm, a massive ethereal energy hand gradually took shape, bearing down upon Yang Kai with the force of toppling mountains and overturning seas.
The gale lashed at his face. Yang Kai's robes snapped and cracked in the wind, and the hair of Zhang Ruoxi, cradled in his arms, whipped wildly about…
"Petty tricks, and you dare show them off!" Yang Kai snorted coldly. Before the opponent's law power could press down upon him, he similarly mobilized the Space Law, forming an invisible, airtight shield around his body that blocked the other's legal suppression.
In the next instant, he raised his hand.
An equally enormous energy palm materialized before him and struck forward to meet Jiang Taisheng's.
The two energy palms loomed like colossal pillars holding up the heavens, and after a single breath, they collided.
With a deafening boom, the energy of heaven and earth instantly descended into chaos. Fragments of shattered law power sprayed across the void, radiating outward in every direction…
A faint, mocking smile hung on Yang Kai's face, while Jiang Taisheng's eyes narrowed sharply, a look of horror creeping across his aged features. He gasped: "How can this be?"
The moment the words left his lips, his massive translucent palm shattered and disintegrated on the spot, while the palm Yang Kai struck down with continued its descent toward him, its momentum undiminished.
Jiang Taisheng's expression changed drastically. He knew the biggest reason this had happened was that the Origin Power within his opponent's body was far more abundant and refined than his own.
After all, in a direct clash of killer moves fueled by one's own Origin Power, what was being compared was nothing more than the quality and quantity of that power!
He had originally seen how young Yang Kai was and assumed he hadn't been long promoted to the Dao Source Realm — that his cultivation base might not even be fully stabilized yet. There was no way he could compare to himself, a veteran powerhouse who had immersed himself in the Dao Source Realm for a hundred years. But after a single exchange, he realized how wrong he had been.
Seeing the massive palm bearing down on him, Jiang Taisheng no longer dared to stand his ground. He hastily twisted his body to dodge, shooting dozens of zhang away into the void, where he stared at Yang Kai with a grim expression.
Yang Kai, however, showed no intention of pressing the advantage. He simply stood there, gazing at Jiang Taisheng with a face full of mockery. That sneering smile was like a thorn driven into the man's heart, making him deeply uncomfortable.
"Despicable!" Jiang Taisheng growled through clenched teeth. Under the watchful eyes of so many members of the Jiang Family, his old face was beginning to lose its dignity. Gritting his teeth, he reached out and clenched his fist in the void, and a massive tiger-headed saber suddenly appeared in his palm.
The saber was unmistakably a Dao Source-grade Artifact — its blade was heavy and thick, engraved with many intricate patterns, and the hilt was shaped into a vividly lifelike tiger's head, radiating an extraordinary aura of power.
He had clearly decided that since he could not match Yang Kai in Origin Power, he would rely on the might of his Artifact instead.
This Artifact was none other than the Jiang Family's treasured heirloom. As a Dao Source-grade treasure, only he could activate it, and he had always kept it in his possession.
Origin Power surged wildly into the blade. Jiang Taisheng fixed Yang Kai with a savage glare, his expression twisted with murderous intent, as though he wanted nothing more than to kill his opponent on the spot.
Accompanied by a heaven-shaking tiger's roar, a phantom of a tiger suddenly burst forth from the saber's blade. As Jiang Taisheng poured more of his power into it, the phantom grew increasingly solid. Moments later, it had become as real-looking as an actual demon beast.