Chapter 44: Absorbing Inner Force! Killing Zuo Zimu with a Palm!
As countless thoughts swirled through everyone’s minds, the situation in the arena suddenly changed again.
Zuo Zimu, who had always valued saving face, now found himself unable to subdue a young man after so long. Not only had he lost face before the local martial artists of the Wuliang region, but also before the West Branch—and even within his own East Branch. Normally, this would’ve left him seething with humiliation.
But now, having been forced into a life-and-death struggle, how could he spare the effort to think about pride?
Facing a sword that grew more erratic and unpredictable by the second—sometimes slashing from the front, sometimes striking from the sides or even the rear—Zuo Zimu’s forehead gradually broke out in cold sweat. Panic rose in his chest. As his mental state crumbled, his swordplay began to falter.
Fang Han’s eyes sharpened. He spotted an opening—and his sword sliced through.
“Ah!”
Zuo Zimu let out a miserable cry. His sword clattered to the ground with a metallic clang.
Bright red blood streamed from his chest and arm, staining his robes.
His face turned pale. Before he could utter a word, he saw Fang Han close the distance in a flash, and his expression twisted in fear. He opened his mouth, likely to beg for mercy.
But Fang Han had already sheathed his sword and thrust out his palm—pressing it directly onto Zuo Zimu’s chest.
Weng!
Zuo Zimu suddenly felt his entire body tremble as if his inner force had inverted itself. In the next instant, it began pouring out like a river flowing upstream—flooding into Fang Han’s palm.
His eyes went wide with terror. A chilling realization struck him like lightning:
“Hua Gong Da Fa!” (Technique of Energy Dissolution!)
He opened his mouth to scream—but just then, Fang Han’s calm, indifferent gaze seemed to read his thoughts.
A sharp pain shot through his body—he couldn’t make a sound.
His mute acupoint had been sealed!
Zuo Zimu’s heart quaked in terror.
It’s over! I’m finished!
And just as he feared, the internal energy he had cultivated over half his life continued to leak away.
In the span of just a few breaths, Zuo Zimu’s face turned the color of parchment—ashen and lifeless. His eyes went dull.
At that point, it wasn’t fear of death that haunted him anymore—it was despair.
The hollow emptiness inside his body—unable to sense even the slightest thread of inner strength—broke his spirit entirely.
It was worse than dying.
Crack!
An intense pain erupted in his chest and heart. Zuo Zimu’s eyes widened—then gradually lost their light.
He was dead.
Fang Han calmly restrained the surging energy, withdrew his hand, and Zuo Zimu’s body collapsed with a heavy thud.
His eyes were cold, not a ripple of emotion in them.
Fang Han had spent over a decade roaming the world in his first simulated life—his experiences had been vast and dangerous.
Whether directly or indirectly, he had slain his fair share of fugitives and scheming villains. He no longer reacted emotionally to such things.
He silently felt the energy now circulating in his body—absorbed from Zuo Zimu. While it lacked the purity of Beiming True Qi, in sheer volume, it far exceeded his original internal strength.
After all, Zuo Zimu had been a sect leader—his decades of accumulated energy were indeed formidable.
Yet under the circulation of Beiming Divine Art, all that inner force was stored directly into Fang Han’s body.
A glint flashed in Fang Han’s eyes. He felt power welling up from within.
This absorption of inner force had gone off without a hitch!
Once all this was over, he just needed to find a quiet place, run the Beiming Divine Art, refine and digest the stored energy—transforming it fully into Beiming True Qi. Only then would it truly become his own.
Though the absorbed force could already be used now, it wasn’t yet refined. It lacked precision and fluidity—it didn’t yet obey him completely.
Still, even in its current state, it was enough to shock the world.
Even without refining it, Fang Han had obtained the lifetime’s worth of inner power that had once belonged to Zuo Zimu.
Compared to before, his internal energy had more than doubled.
Logically speaking, Beiming Divine Art warned against absorbing force from those whose cultivation exceeded your own. Otherwise, it would be like ocean water pouring into a stream—too much to bear, resulting in disaster.
But then again, in the original tale, Duan Yu had no internal energy whatsoever at the start—and yet he managed to absorb the force of a dozen or more martial artists.
Many of them were no weaklings—take the Four Great Evildoers, the Yellow-Browed Monk, or Cui Baiquan. Later, he even absorbed energy from high monks and royalty like Emperor Duan Zhengming.
And ultimately, in the abandoned well, he drained the entirety of Kumozhi’s incredible inner strength.
One might argue that this was because, by that point, Duan Yu had already accumulated enough inner energy to endure stronger sources.
But in the very beginning, Duan Yu truly had zero inner power.
Even then, he was able to absorb from six or seven Wuliang Sword Sect disciples.
While those disciples may not have had deep reserves, they were certainly stronger than Duan Yu at the time.
According to the original rules of Beiming Divine Art, this should have been a fatal mismatch.
But Duan Yu was unharmed.
If anything, the only reason he later faced backlash was because he had absorbed too many mixed and impure energies, while only cultivating one-eighteenth of the Beiming meridian map—without even learning the method to convert the force into Beiming True Qi. That lack of balance eventually caused internal conflict and the events at Tianlong Temple.
Which led others to mistakenly believe he had practiced Ding Chunqiu’s Hua Gong Da Fa.
Even so, Duan Yu survived.
Fang Han, on the other hand, had studied the complete version of Beiming Divine Art, and spent three years refining it in solitude.
He had also consumed the Zhuha Spirit Pill—though his own energy wasn’t abundant, it was pure Beiming True Qi.
With that foundation, absorbing Zuo Zimu’s lifetime of energy posed no danger at all.
While Fang Han was immersed in the sensation of drawing in power, the arena had gone utterly silent.
Everyone stared, wide-eyed and horrified, at Zuo Zimu’s corpse—his eyes still bulging in death.
A chill ran straight from their feet to their skulls.
To them, everything had happened far too quickly.
Suddenly, the sword flashed. Zuo Zimu’s sword fell with a cry of pain. Then the young man changed sword for palm—struck Zuo Zimu’s chest—and shattered his heart in one blow.
Zuo Zimu was a sect leader! And just like that… he was dead!?
Moreover…
What a ruthless man!
What a domineering man!
No hesitation. No mercy.
Just a kill—clean and cold.
“Master!”
The stunned Gong Guangjie finally snapped out of his horror and let out a heart-wrenching scream.
His voice—shaking with terror and grief—seemed to awaken the entire crowd like a switch had been flipped.
The disciples of Wuliang Sword Sect’s East Branch were all gripped by a storm of emotions:
Terror. Rage. Fear. Confusion.
All of it collided in an unbearable whirlwind.
Literal: “Energy-Dissolving Great Technique.” Explanation: A feared martial art that forcibly absorbs another person’s internal energy. Often seen as sinister or forbidden in wuxia novels. Not to be confused with Beiming Divine Art, though effects are similar. Literal: Explanation: A pressure point that, when sealed, renders a person unable to speak or cry out. Literal: “Beiming Divine Art.” Explanation: A fictional martial art from Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, capable of absorbing others’ inner force and converting it to one’s own. Literal: “Shattering like Mount Sumeru trembled.” Explanation: A vivid metaphor in Chinese literature implying overwhelming force. Here, it’s used figuratively to describe Fang Han’s palm shattering Zuo Zimu’s heart. Literal: “Defense broken.” Explanation: Internet slang referring to someone’s psychological defense being shattered—total emotional breakdown. Now used even in martial context to show someone giving up inside.