Free Web NovelChapter 83: Déjà vu.
Before Alaric could react, a strange static noise echoed through the air. It wasn’t just an ordinary sound; it was so sharp and unnatural that it seemed to bother even the spirit of time itself and unsettled the strongest beings in this world. It was as if reality itself was being disrupted.
Suddenly, everything around Alaric, including his own body, seemed to flicker and glitch, as if the world was a broken screen. A pounding ache started behind his eyes, and his instincts screamed a warning so intense that he physically stepped back, startled. A powerful sense of wrongness swept through him, making his very existence feel out of place.
’What is going on?’ Alaric muttered to himself, rubbing his temple as if trying to press away the weird sensation. He wondered if the heart demon was using some kind of mental attack he’d never seen before. ’The battle hasn’t even started yet. Maybe this is what happens when you don’t prepare for an enemy you know nothing about.’
But really, it wasn’t all his fault. Alaric’s mind was so strong that even someone as powerful as Tian would struggle to hurt him mentally. Because of that, he never really worried about protecting himself from attacks like this.
...
Earlier, when Alaric spoke, his words seemed to vanish into the quiet forest, like tossing a stone into a perfectly still pond; there was a moment of silence and then a subtle ripple through the air. frёewebnoѵēl.com
Suddenly, the birds went silent, not slowly, like before a storm, but all at once, as if someone had pressed a giant pause button on the whole forest. Even the wind seemed to stop, freezing the leaves in place for a heartbeat before everything slowly started moving again. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
The heart demon stared at Alaric for a long moment, as if weighing what to do next.
Then, suddenly, he laughed.
It sounded just like Hundao’s laugh, same voice, same pitch, and the same way it used to spill out when he found something truly funny. But this time, there was no warmth in it. What once signaled harmless trouble now felt cold, like the demon was laughing at Alaric instead of with him. The laughter hinted that whatever was coming next would cost Alaric dearly.
"You will die today," the demon repeated, almost savoring the words. "It’s been a long time since I heard someone say that and actually mean it."
"I meant it," Alaric replied, his voice steady.
"I know." The demon rolled Hundao’s shoulders, something loose and preparatory in the motion, the way a person moves when they are about to use a body for something it was not originally built for. "That’s what makes it interesting."
By this point, Alaric had stopped paying attention to the demon’s words. Something felt deeply off. ’Why do I feel like I’ve been here before?’ he wondered. ’Has this happened already? That’s... weird.’
He had been watching the body since the laughter started. Watching the way the demon inhabited it, the small wrongnesses that accumulated across every gesture. The posture was different. The weight distribution was different. Hundao always carried tension in his left shoulder, a habit from years of favoring his dominant side during training, and it was gone.
The demon stood in the body with a stillness that Hundao had never achieved, not because Hundao was restless, but because stillness like this came from a different kind of relationship with time. The kind of relationship that develops when it stops feeling urgent is very old.
A nagging feeling told him this was a thought he already had before now, but only now fully realizing it.
The demon moved first.
The demon didn’t lunge forward with blinding speed like Alaric had expected. Instead, he just walked at a normal pace, hands relaxed, head tilted slightly down. But that simple, casual approach put Alaric on edge. Something about it felt off, almost too ordinary for a fight like this. Suddenly, Alaric sensed a change in the air, a subtle shift that made his instincts flare. Before he could fully process it, the demon’s first attack came, not from straight ahead, but from the left, a hooking punch that shouldn’t have been possible from the way the demon was walking.
Alaric barely managed to lean back, and the demon’s fist whooshed past so close that he could feel the rush of air brush his jaw. It was a reminder of just how fast and precise the demon could be, even when moving so casually.
Right away, Alaric realized what had happened. The demon had used a clever trick; he made it look like he was going to attack from one direction, then twisted his body at the last second to strike from somewhere else entirely. It was a move that took advantage of Hundao’s special flexibility technique, but in a way that Hundao himself had never used so cunningly.
’Weird, why did I assume he couldn’t use Hundao’s techniques?’
Hundao always used his flexibility to defend himself, bending away from attacks. The demon, though, treated it like a math problem, using angles and timing to turn the body into a weapon in unexpected ways.
Before Alaric could even recover from dodging the first punch, the demon’s second attack was already coming.
Alaric tried to block, raising his forearm just in time, but the punch still clipped the edge of his guard, sliding across it with surprising force. Even though he managed to deflect most of the impact, the power behind the blow pushed his arm back toward his shoulder. Hundao had always been strong; the demon hadn’t changed that at all. He had just recently reached the peak of the Flesh-refinement realm.
Alaric steadied himself, planting his back foot firmly on the ground and pushing back to regain his balance.
What happened next was a flurry of movement that lasted only eleven seconds but felt much longer. They darted across thirty feet of forest, weaving and spinning through the undergrowth as if the plants weren’t even there. Grass was flattened by their movements, and a small sapling snapped when Alaric’s momentum sent him crashing into it.
Alaric managed to land four hits, but the demon’s flexible body just absorbed the blows, spreading out the force until it disappeared. The demon struck back twice; Alaric dodged one, but took the second hit on his left shoulder on purpose, needing more information from the contact.
He’d offered his shoulder on purpose, wanting to feel exactly how the demon’s body handled the impact.
The sensation was different from what Alaric remembered when sparring with the real Hundao. On the surface, the demon’s body felt just as flexible and able to spread force as before. But underneath, there was something new, a slight tightening after the impact, as if the tissue snapped back to readiness way faster than should be possible. The real Hundao would recover from hits at a normal rate, but the demon was somehow making the body bounce back much faster, pushing it beyond what Hundao had ever managed.
Alaric realized the demon was burning through energy or stamina to pull off this trick. He tucked that detail away in his mind, knowing it might be important later.
Alaric broke away from the clash to put some distance between them, and, surprisingly, the demon didn’t chase him. He just watched, letting Alaric have the space.
That was the next thing Alaric noticed: the demon was patient. He didn’t rush in to attack or try to overwhelm Alaric with speed. Instead, he stood about twelve feet away, watching closely with Hundao’s dark eyes, full of a patience that felt ancient, like he’d done this sort of fight many times before. The demon’s plan, Alaric realized, was to wait, to study his moves, and to only attack when it would really count.
Alaric realized they were both analyzing each other, each trying to find an advantage by learning the other’s patterns.
The Heart demon started ranting again, causing him to shake his head, not listening, he felt his ears would clog if he kept listening to its rambles. It was an instinctive feeling rooted in his body.
Alaric moved.
Alaric changed tactics, coming in low this time, moving at a new angle he hadn’t used before. Even before he got close, he could tell the demon had already picked up on his shift. The demon’s body pivoted smoothly, turning just enough to let Alaric’s attack slide past instead of hitting head-on. Hundao’s body, with its unique flexibility, seemed designed for this, presenting as little of a target as possible. Sensing this, Alaric adapted on the fly, curving his punch at the last moment. Instead of hitting the demon in the center, his fist struck the side of the demon’s torso.
As his fist connected, Alaric sent a subtle wave of vibration through the demon’s body, just enough to test, not to cause real damage.
This vibration was much weaker than what he’d used during sparring. Alaric wasn’t aiming to win with this move, he was gathering information. Through the feedback of the vibrations, he could sense how the demon’s elasticity was spread through the body, where it was thickest, where it got thinner at joints or tendons, and which areas the demon controlled most actively.
The demon took a small step back, not far, but enough to show he noticed what Alaric was doing.
"Interesting," the demon said in a calm voice. "You used that move during your sparring match with this vessel, right? Some form of molecular vibration technique. You came up with it right then, didn’t you?"
Alaric didn’t answer, keeping his focus on the fight.
"You’re studying me now," the demon said, tilting his head as if curious. "You mapped Hundao in just forty seconds, didn’t you? I saw it in his memories. You’re trying to figure me out the same way."
"I already know how your main structure works," Alaric replied. "Now I’m trying to understand the deeper parts."
’Sigh, it is really difficult to act like you are weak.’
The demon froze for a split second. Then, for the first time in their fight, he exploded into full speed.
Everything changed in an instant; the demon’s movement was now a blur, almost impossible to track.
The demon crossed the twelve feet between them in the blink of an eye. The first strike wasn’t aimed at Alaric’s chest or head, but straight for the back of his left knee, a place that could end a fight fast if hit right. Alaric twisted out of the way just in time, but the demon’s body flexed and redirected, using its flexibility to change direction mid-attack. A second blow followed immediately from a new angle.
This time, the attack landed, hitting Alaric hard across the ribs.
Alaric felt the impact, not pain exactly, since his training had made him tough enough that normal pain didn’t register, but the force was real and heavy. It was the kind of blow that came from both strength and perfect technique: Hundao’s powerful body, controlled by a demon who knew exactly how and where to hit. Alaric’s ribs held up. He let himself move with the hit instead of resisting, letting his body absorb the force like water softens the splash of a thrown stone.
He was already moving when the third strike came.
