Hearing Yang’s words, feeling Yang’s gaze, and staring at that smile brimming with an almost self-destructive frenzy, Sagat—for reasons he couldn’t explain—felt his heart give an inexplicable lurch.
He was silent for a moment.
Sagat said nothing, only kept his face grim as he slowly lowered his center of gravity.
That two-meter-twenty-six body was like a volcano stirring awake; beneath the bronze-hued skin, the muscle fibers began to emit a faint, trembling hum.
“Then come.” Sagat murmured to himself in a voice barely audible.
And then, he vanished.
It was not that he disappeared—it was simply that his speed was too great.
His fighting aura erupted around him, and his already formidable frame, propelled by that fighting aura, turned into a streak of afterimage in the black night—so fast that Chun-Li’s retinas could only catch a blurred image, so fast that even Yang himself couldn’t truly follow it.
A mid-level sweeping kick: Sagat’s right leg was like a battle-axe, with no flashy technique whatsoever, only pure speed and power.
His thoroughly tempered shinbone was like a quenched steel pillar, wrapped in the shrill scream of splitting air as it bore straight for Yang’s ribs.
Yang did not dodge.
Or rather, there was no time to dodge.
He dropped both arms, his left arm sealing off his ribs, his right arm bracing diagonally at the elbow joint, and in the instant that axe-like shinbone came crashing down, his muscles snapped taut in a flash—fighting aura eruption!
“BAM!!” With a heavy, muffled roar, even though he had already triggered his fighting aura eruption, Yang was still bodily shoved sideways nearly two meters by that single kick.
The soles of his shoes plowed two white furrows into the cement ground beneath him, and the scorched stench of burning rubber spread out in their wake.
The sleeve on his left arm had already burst into shreds, and on the exposed arm a purple-black bruise swelled up at a rate visible to the naked eye, the capillaries beneath the skin bursting in sheets, the welling beads of blood glinting a dark red under the dim, yellowish streetlamp.
Even though he had executed every correct countermeasure in the shortest possible time, in the instant of their collision Yang still felt, with utter clarity, this enormous gap in strength.
And without giving Yang any more time to relax, Sagat’s second kick had already chased its way to his face.
A high-level horizontal sweep.
His right leg, carrying a howling rush of wind, hacked down along its path toward Yang’s skull—the angle vicious and tricky, the force far heavier and far more savage than the first.
But Yang did not take it head-on.
His body abruptly snapped backward, his whole frame folding into an impossible angle, and that shinbone all but grazed past the tip of his nose.
The fierce wind slashed at his face, and several strands of the loose hair at Yang’s forehead were sheared clean off, scattering away into the night.
But Yang did not stop at evasion.
His center of gravity sank back, his body seeming about to topple straight to the ground—but in the instant before he reached it, Yang thrust out both arms to brace against the earth, and at the same time, with that astonishing core explosiveness of his, he curled in his waist and abdomen.
Then, fighting aura eruption!
Like a spring compressed to its absolute limit suddenly springing open, his arms pushed against the ground to provide support, his coiled body abruptly straightened, and his sturdy, slender legs were like a heavy cannon barrage rising from below!
Sensing Yang’s attack, Sagat’s single eye also contracted sharply.
He had actually overcome the impact to his body and ferociously launched a counterattack?
Even amid his surprise, Sagat’s movements did not pause in the slightest.
Relying on the absolute advantage of his own physique, Sagat tucked his knee inward, his muscles clenched, and in the instant of his fighting aura eruption, he slammed his tough, resilient shinbone head-on into Yang’s upward-surging feet.
“BAM!” Accompanied by the muffled sound of impact, Yang felt as though the soles of his feet had kicked into a massive boulder; the rebounding shock raced up along his ankles, his shins, his knees, all the way to his lumbar spine, and his whole body, riding that very kick, was instead sent blasting away several meters.
By comparison, though Sagat too had borne the heavy blow, he had only retreated half a step.
But it was in that very instant of Sagat’s retreat that Yang had already reacted, and Chun-Li, too, came charging at Sagat amid her surging fighting aura.
Pouring fighting aura into her slender legs, her muscles bulging, she came crashing brutally down toward Sagat like a heavy log.
But Sagat merely raised his right arm and tensed his muscles; in the instant he took the attack, his left arm stretched back to gather force, and then a fist came slamming toward Chun-Li’s face like an artillery shell.
Fortunately, Chun-Li raised her arm in time to parry, and so was not struck squarely in the face—but even so, her form was still blasted back several meters, splashing up a great deal of dust as she landed on the ground.
And by shedding the force through a breakfall, though she looked exceedingly disheveled, Chun-Li still swiftly rose from the ground.
But compared to Chun-Li, Sagat was clearly far more concerned with that young man off to the side.
Clambering up from the ground, Yang’s eyes were still fixed dead on Sagat.
The gap.
A raw, naked gap.
In the face of an absolute gap in strength, physique, experience, and bone density, even a coordinated assault seemed pale and powerless.
Especially as he felt Sagat’s gaze, Yang could clearly sense that murderous intent had already erupted within Sagat’s heart—it was obvious that Sagat had no wish to drag this out until the members of Interpol’s Hong Kong headquarters arrived.
Feeling the cold glint in Sagat’s eye, Yang could likewise clearly sense that every cell throughout his entire body was trembling, was shuddering.
Was it fear?
Surely it was fear?
After all, this was not a sparring match with the old man Gen—it was a true battle, one in which he might actually die.
Facing death head-on, Yang’s brain perceived the lethal threat; his adrenaline surged, sending his heartbeat racing, his blood pressure rising, his pupils dilating, his blood flowing away from non-emergency systems and into his limbs.
Dopamine was released in great quantities, and mixed with the threat of death, the once-pleasurable neurotransmitter began to transform into an intense, deeply satisfying sense of “winning,” making Yang feel as though, from spirit to flesh, he had entered the peak of his condition.
Endorphins were secreted at an accelerated rate, beginning to steadily soothe Yang’s nerves, easing the pain that fear brought, preventing the bodily paralysis that excessive tension might cause…
Then, before Sagat’s eyes, Yang abruptly raised his right arm, turning it into a powerful, heavy knife-hand strike that came down hard upon the bruised blood on his left arm.
The sound of flesh striking flesh left Sagat and the others wearing blank looks, as if they could not understand why Yang would wound himself this way.
But immediately after, Sagat too came to understand why Yang would do such a thing.
As life energy poured ceaselessly in, his originally swollen arm rippled in layer upon layer, and then, before Sagat’s incredulous gaze, the swelling dissolved away outright at an astonishing speed.
Though the bruising from the heavy blow still lingered, the great lump that had originally bulged up was now gone without a trace, and along with it, neither his muscle movement nor the circulation of his power was any longer subject to any hindrance.
Spitting a mouthful of blood from his split lip onto the ground, Yang merely stared blankly at Sagat.
Cold, calm, and yet brimming with an undisguised fervor.
“Keep going!” On a rooftop not far away, a pair of cloudy old eyes gazed at this scene from afar, and nodded thoughtfully as well.
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