Tower of Heaven

Atlas entertained the battle without any pauses.

'Its attack patterns are easy to read.'

When it was far away, it would charge in while gathering the wind around it. That attack struck a large area and blew down the entire environment. When it was in close proximity, it would use its horns to attack, use its body as a battering ram, or raise its body and slam it back down on the ground to shatter the area around it.

Once Atlas had learned every method it knew to attack, dodging those attacks became easier.

Still, he couldn't avoid being hit once or twice. This bull was at the same level of strength as him even if its intelligence was lower. In fact, to balance its lowered intelligence, its strength and defense were technically much higher than his.

Atlas was only able to get a few more clean strikes in before the beast threw him off of its back. He wanted to stay on the attack, but it clearly didn't want to give him the opportunity.

As soon as he was in the air again, it was chasing the position where he'd land. The moment he touched ground, it was attacking.

The bull's low intelligence didn't stop it from learning from its experiences. Knowing that Atlas wasn't as vulnerable in the air as the average creature, it didn't immediately enter his attack radius.

Rather, it waited until he had touched the ground and took that moment to attack, slamming its hooves into the ground.

The earth cracked and shattered into countless pieces. There were already pieces of trees littering the ground, but even they were destroyed.

The beast's sheer power could be seen in the way that it affected the environment, but did it matter if it couldn't do the same damage to Atlas?

He managed to break a piece of its skull when he struck it with Heaven's Press. On the other hand, it hadn't managed to do anything to him.

Atlas watched as it charged at him with its head down. He planted his feet. In this moment, landing a strike on its head meant making the initial skull wound much worse. That was something Atlas had to aim for.

The beast arrived before him and his own arm struck out, aimed at its forehead.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

However, at that moment, the beast suddenly stopped its momentum and turned its body. Rather than hitting Atlas the way that it had been, it merely threw himself at him.

Atlas was unprepared for it. He didn't expect such a brazen and suicidal attack. All of the bull's body weight slammed into his body, knocking the wind out of his chest. He was slammed back into the nearest tree and then through it. The bull only followed him a part of the way, but it still had the chance to strike him one more time before he left its range.

"Kuhuk…!"

Atlas coughed out a mouthful of blood.

'All of my internals were rocked by that impact. If I had not cultivated my body, that would have been dangerous.'

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the enemy.

'It's a stupid beast, but it's learning how to fight me. If this goes on too long, it might be dangerous.'

At the end of the day, this beast wasn't real. It was created by the pagoda and even its memories of past battles and hunts were fabricated.

This was a beast made to be Atlas' training partner, so even if it had specific traits, it was always able to change if it needed to push him more.

When he realized this, Atlas' eyes narrowed further.

'I have to end it quickly.'

Several of the bones in his chest were broken by the previous collision, which made it much harder to breathe. Atlas was able to keep going because he could physically feel those bones reshaping and returning to their positions with every passing second.

He ran up to the beast once more. It didn't expect him to recover so fast, but it still lowered its head and prepared to meet him with its horns. Your next chapter awaits on empire

Atlas drew his fist back and pooled all of his qi into it.

'Just like Alaric said.'

The king of the mountain was not an entity, but a concept. The king of the mountain was the weighty qi of the heavens that forced their peaks to never pierce the sky.

The Fist of the Mountain King imitated the power of the great Heavens themselves. It was the manifestation of a qi greater than oneself.

Atlas' qi compounded and compounded and compounded. It glowed in a strange light that it usually did not present, and when those few seconds passed and he collided with the beast once more, the technique was executed.

[Eight Calamities: Fist of the Mountain King]

Atlas' fist made contact with the bull's forehead. A vibration reverberated through its body as it was chosen as the target for his qi, forcing it to freeze in place.

And before a second could pass, the massive explosion of power appeared.

Any remaining chunks of the ground were torn away. The trees several tens of kilometers behind the bull were torn to shreds. The wind pressure wave physically spread through the sky until dispersing past where Atlas' eyes could see.

The beast that took the brunt of the impact didn't show any changes in the outside, but its eyes were hazy. It stumbled around, and subtly, Atlas could see blood leaking from many of the holes in its body.

When he pulled his fist back, the bull started to sway from side to side as if the very fist that injured it was the only thing it could use to find its balance.

At the same time, Atlas also stumbled back. He felt like the qi in his body had been sapped much more than it usually was. Was it because this fight went on for a while, or was it because he was pouring more qi into his techniques to deal with an enemy on his level?

He didn't know, but he knew that the bull's dizziness was something he could relate to very personally in the current moment.

Oouuu…!

The beast's cry was much weaker, yet it still wanted to fight. It did not resign and accept death because it knew that its opponent was injured as well.

The bull wasn't wrong. Its slam attack did serious damage to Atlas. He was able to play it off because he knew that he would eventually be fine, but that was only if he stopped taking damage now.

If the bull really did continue its assault and managed to land some clean strikes before its energy ran low, then it definitely still had the chance to kill Atlas.

The only problem was that Atlas knew that too.

Despite stumbling and feeling the loss of his qi, despite feeling the chunks of his organs moving around in his internal body as they forced themselves back together, Atlas raised his fist and gathered power again.

The Heavens never fell.

So neither would he.

The Fist of the Mountain King, the Fist of the Heavens that barred all mountains from ascending, appeared in the world once again.

And the one who so graciously welcomed it was the same bull that greeted it the last time.