Chapter 236: Master of Combat

Li En was beaten up.

By a coward.

But he was still happy.

Because he had vented well.

"That coward."

Li En suddenly woke up, still muttering under his breath.

That guy refused to activate the inheritance mode, claiming "you haven't earned my approval." And Lex's chosen method of approval was "defeat me."

Heaven, never seen such a shameless person.

You say I must defeat the Hero of the Continent to receive the Hero's inheritance—why not just say first save the world, kill a few demon kings, then I'll give you the Hero title and a beginner's sword!

So that night, it was one side cursing, the other side fighting.

Lex probably had his fill of fighting, and Li En had his fill of cursing. He couldn't even remember how many times he'd died or revived.

This was a battle destined to have no victor, yet Li En kept going—not because he was a sadist, but simply because the rewards were simply too great.

"How about this: I teach you how to fight, you curse less, and isn't my mom your mom? At least don't curse about that."

Leaving aside everything else, Lex was truly absurd when it came to fighting.

Unlike Su Er, who only had that rigid, decisive killing style and just wanted to slaughter for fun, Lex could suppress his strength, speed, even sword techniques below Li En's level—and still win easily.

Li En lost, and in the first few fights, he didn't even know how he'd lost.

Every battle ended with Lex as the victor, yet the gap between them was always just a tiny bit.

"A tiny bit in the universe of fingertips?"

Li En knew that unless Lex held back, this bottleneck that seemed breakable through effort was in fact an insurmountable barrier.

But when Lex imitated Li En's fighting style, sword techniques, and innate abilities, and showed him how a "better Li En" fought, Li En simply couldn't refuse this cheat-like growth.

"Footwork—the key is footwork. He held back his power from start to finish, only exploding in an instant to make his opponent briefly misjudge, then getting crushed under his greatsword."

"Just gained one extra innate ability and I'm completely outmatched—what the hell, can fire be used like this? A spiral acceleration engine? Does he even have this technology?"

"Why don't you become a red dragon breed? I'll take the sick cat."

Though Li En never said it aloud, he truly respected the other's fighting talent and combat experience.

This wasn't just a matter of technique and experience overwhelming him—it was more like a dimensional gap in combat wisdom and instinct, a true "pilot gap."

Lex, with inferior hardware and skills, could combine just a few abilities to forge a usable "instant combat power," seize that fleeting opening, and effortlessly overcome stronger opponents.

He was assembling and simulating Li En's abilities, yet always producing a superior combat style—this meant Li En could find his own future path simply by copying the answers.

I don't actually have any fixed techniques or combat conventions; the term "prodigal's sword" simply describes a sword with no fixed form, adaptable and freely combined according to the situation.

"Overcoming the strong? Doesn't exist. Reality always has the strong crushing the weak. You think I'm overcoming the strong, but I'm actually combining abilities to be stronger in one instant, one aspect, one part—and seizing that advantage is enough to turn the tide."

The essence of Lex's fighting style lies in seizing opportunities, exploiting the opponent's weaknesses. Fighting him is exhausting—any blind move, any foolish decision, could be met with a crushing counterblow.

Even if you make no mistakes, this conservative response is still a foolish waste of time—tactical inertia could, in the next second, drag you into a death trap.

And his "single-minded focus" ability ensures he never misses a single opportunity. Li En even suspected he could never make a mistake in battle.

"No, I do make mistakes—only, to you, they might seem like my greatest strength. My mistakes are probably just the slightly worse choices among hundreds. Your 'optimal choice' is merely a random decision among three or four options."

"In battle, right and wrong decisions aren't absolute. If you strike with a sword and can't anticipate at least ten possible instant reactions or simulate three or four steps ahead, you're still just a beast relying on instinct."

Perfect calculation, beast-like instinct, preemptive prediction, pushing all hardware and software to their limits in extreme mechanical combinations—Li En had met a true "Master of Combat."

He'd originally thought Hela, who had knocked him out, was an absurdly skilled swordsman—but now it seemed she couldn't even compare to Lex's shadow.

"I can't learn it."

"You don't need to learn it. Just take it with you."