That soul-rending scream of despair, however, could only echo within the depths of Mo Fan's heart.
It did not manifest as actual sound waves capable of blasting the combat-obsessed maniac across from him into the canyon wall.
The cold morning wind swept through, carrying a few dead leaves with it.
Mo Fan's eyes—bloodshot from the all-nighter, ringed with heavy dark circles—stared hard at Wu Kuan, who was vibrating with excitement like an overstimulated silverback gorilla.
He knew exactly what he was dealing with.
A pure combat fanatic, "fight" carved into his bones at the cellular level. If Mo Fan didn't throw down today, there would be no sleep.
And if he turned and ran, this lunatic would chase him down the canyon like a dog that had spotted something worth biting.
"...Hah."
Mo Fan exhaled a long, slow breath—hot and stale, the kind wrung out by bone-deep exhaustion and sheer unreasonableness.
The aching back and sore waist from digging all night. The suffocating frustration of being shaken down by Xiao Hai's smiling extortion.
The fraying nerve endings that felt like they were one more irritation away from snapping clean.
All of it piled into a pressure cooker together, fermented, twisted, and converted itself into the most catastrophically volatile form of morning rage known to man.
"Fine."
The dead-eyed look of a man with nothing left to lose slowly faded from Mo Fan's face.
Something feral flickered in the depths of his eyes.
"You want a fight? You want to see my limit? Fine."
"Every last drop of aggravation these cultivation freaks have dumped on me today—I'm putting it all on you."
He stopped talking.
He reached up, yanked off his battered straw hat, and tossed it aside, baring the scarred, powerfully built body beneath.
"Come on."
Mo Fan bent his knees slightly, and stomped—the flagstone beneath his foot cracked apart.
The Qi and blood throughout his body detonated under the Body Forging Record's drive. No flashy stance. No elaborate form.
Just both fists raised in the most brutal, most direct street-brawler's opening guard imaginable.
"HAHAHA! YES! Now were talking!"
Wu Kuan's eyes ignited. The fanaticism in them was almost a physical thing.
No pleasantries. No dazzling spell-light preamble like the Mystic Realm's spell cultivators loved to perform.
BOOM.
Two figures launched simultaneously—twin tigers charging down a mountain—crushing the rock beneath their feet.
Tearing the air apart with the shriek of their momentum, they slammed into each other in the center of the canyon.
No dodging. No footwork.
Pure, primal, body-to-body collision.
THOOM——!
The instant their arms met, a sound like muffled thunder cracked through the canyon.
A visible shockwave blasted outward from the point of impact, sending the surrounding weeds into a frenzy.
Hss——
Mo Fan's pupils contracted slightly.
"That's... not nothing."
He'd been tempered by corpse toxins, brought the Iron Bone Stage to full mastery, and pushed his body to the absolute ceiling of Qi Condensation under the Body Forging Record.
He'd been confident this body could casually suppress Lin Tian—the former top seed of the outer court.
But the moment he clashed with Wu Kuan, his arms went numb.
The force that transmitted through was mountainous—not just matching him, but carrying the crushing weight of something far heavier pressing down from above.
"This guy suppressed his cultivation and his body is STILL this terrifying?!"
Mo Fan ground his teeth and held the line.
On the other side, Wu Kuan's eyes had gone completely alight—brighter than stars.
"GLORIOUS! This is GLORIOUS!"
He could feel it—the rebound force coming off Mo Fan's arms, unyielding as rebar-reinforced steel.
In all his time in the inner sect, he had never once met a disciple who could take a full-force blow from him with pure body alone and not budge an inch.
"Junior Brother! Again!"
Wu Kuan was fully ignited now.
He roared and unleashed his assault like a storm breaking.
This was the terrifying foundation of a mid-grade Earth Spirit Root.
Earth: heavy, enduring, inexhaustible. That Spirit Root hadn't just given Wu Kuan refined Mana—it had given him a monstrous physical constitution, absurd muscle density, and stamina that simply refused to run dry.
Even with his cultivation sealed at peak Qi Condensation, the body that had been bathed in earth-vein spiritual energy for years was still a weapon unto itself.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Fist. Elbow. Knee. Leg.
Wu Kuan's attacks came in relentless waves—wide and powerful, yet carrying the precise, cutting edge of a sword cultivator's trained instincts.
Without a single undead technique, without summoning a single skeleton, running purely on an exhausted body...
Mo Fan was being driven back step by step under the storm of blows.
He crossed his arms and weathered it, each block sending a dull shudder through his bones.
Fwwwsh——!
Suddenly, a vicious high roundhouse kick screamed through the air and raked across the top of Mo Fan's head.
He ducked just in time. The kick missed him—and connected squarely with the half-man-height boulder behind him.
CRACK.
The granite shattered like it was made of dried clay. Shrapnel sprayed in every direction.
A fragment grazed Mo Fan's cheek, drawing a thin line of blood.
That did it.
The last three percent of Mo Fan's patience burned away.
"You think I'm a pushover? You think you've got me figured out?"
Mo Fan clenched his jaw. Those bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes flashed with something cold and mean.
They'd agreed on a pure body contest—so he wasn't going to break the rules and pull out [Grave Chill] or [Corpse Explosion], both laced with death energy.
This was a sparring match between fellow disciples. Wu Kuan was a straight-up man worth knowing, not a mortal enemy.
But that didn't mean he had no other cards to play.
"Can't use outward-facing spells. Doesn't mean I can't run an internal buff."
In the split second he twisted away from another of Wu Kuan's combination punches, Mo Fan's mind snapped inward.
The necromantic Mana lying dormant in his soul sea surged like molten rock flooding through every channel in his body.
"[Bone Armament]—activate."
Silently.
An invisible force—cold, dense, and iron-hard—latched onto every bone in his body at once.
Beneath his skin and muscle, his already formidable skeleton was overlaid with something like artifact-grade armor, fused directly to the bone.
No light. No visual effect. Every change happened entirely within.
The instant [Bone Armament] locked in, Mo Fan's structural integrity, bone density, and explosive output spiked to a terrifying new level.
"Junior Brother! Watch yourself!"
Wu Kuan was deep in the flow of battle.
He let out a battle cry, planted his stance, and his right arm's muscles rose like twisted roots beneath the skin—carrying a force that simply did not know the meaning of restraint.
He fired a straight punch like a siege cannon.
This time—
Mo Fan didn't dodge.
He didn't block.
He stood up straight. The slight hunch in his spine vanished. His back snapped upright like a drawn bow.
"Come on."
A low growl rose from his throat.
He hauled his right arm back—
And threw everything he had directly into Wu Kuan's incoming fist.
Punch met punch.
THOOM——!!
The sound was not like two people fighting.
It was like two meteors colliding head-on in open air.
A white shockwave—several times larger than anything before—detonated from the point of contact, hurling dust and shattered rock in every direction.
The air itself warped briefly around the impact zone.
Time seemed to stop.
Then the dust began to settle.
"Ngh——!"
Wu Kuan let out a strangled grunt of pain.
That tall, powerful frame—for the first time—was hit like it had taken a battering ram to the face.
His feet clawed at the ground. It didn't matter.
He couldn't absorb it.
His boots carved two deep furrows into the canyon floor—inches deep, seven or eight paces long—before his back finally slammed into the rock face behind him and he stopped.
His entire right arm hung limp at his side.
From shoulder to fingertip, it shook uncontrollably. The bone-deep numbness radiating from within made it impossible to close his hand into a fist.
And across from him—Mo Fan.
Still in his follow-through stance.
His body had swayed once, just barely, at the moment of impact.
His feet had not moved.
Not one inch.
Rooted.
The morning light filtered through the canyon mist and fell across Mo Fan's expressionless face, gilding the edges of that imposing frame in pale gold.
Gulp.
Wu Kuan pressed his completely deadened right arm against his chest and leaned against the rock wall.
He looked at the junior brother across from him—breathing steady, expression unreadable, depth immeasurable.
The combat fever drained from his face.
What replaced it was pure, absolute, almost disbelieving awe.
He was a mid-grade Earth Spirit Root genius. Even with his cultivation suppressed, his body should have been able to steamroll every cultivator at the same level.
But in that final, pure exchange of force—no techniques, no tricks—he had been broken head-on by a junior brother with no Spirit Root at all.
"You..."
Wu Kuan opened his mouth. His voice came out slightly unsteady.
He was done.
He knew it clearly: if Mo Fan hadn't held back in that last exchange, his arm would currently be a pile of bone fragments on the canyon floor.
"Junior Brother..."
Wu Kuan drew a slow breath, and when he spoke, there was nothing in his voice but genuine, unguarded reverence.
"At the Qi Condensation realm..."
"Your body is, without any question, the undisputed number one in the Azure Cloud Sect."