My mother and brother stood further away from the clearing. They didn't make any moves to intervene. Their lack of surprise at my arrival probably meant that she knew about this beforehand.

Not a surprising fact, but still a bit disappointing. I'd hoped my new abilities would give me some protection against the prophetic visions.

They had expected this fight, but I wasn't sure if my father had. It wouldn't make that much of a difference in how I approached the match, but it did make me more cautious. My father was a powerful force on his own. The addition of him having time to prepare would mean that this fight would be significantly more difficult.

It was an expected outcome that only increased my resolve.

We both stood at opposite ends of the field. The sun shone, and its rays glared down at us. The fight had already started, yet neither of us moved.

My false divination was active. Every inch of the battlefield was within my calculations. My senses were a flurry of numbers and flashing images overlaying atop each other.

All moves that he could make were calculated. My spear was at the ready, and my heart rate began to slow down.

We both continued to watch each other.

He stood straight, and his muscles were relaxed. There was no alteration to his stance nor movement in his qi. He was unfazed by me.

And I was unfazed by him. Such simple mental warfare would not change my combat approach. His lack of caution would be his downfall.

We stood there for several minutes, both unwilling to make the first move.

Patience was a lesson that the wilds had taught me early. I could stand here for hours.

My father suddenly raised his leg and took a step forward. As his leg touched the dirt, a boom was heard, and suddenly he was before me.

His fist was aimed at my chest, and it was only at the last second that I managed to block. He followed up after with a series of punches and kicks. Each blow ripped through the air and howled as they were launched.

Father was ferocious. He continued to rain down blow after blow.

Not once did he relent.

Each attack forced me further and further backward.

My senses and calculations barely allowed me to keep up. My false divination worked overtime, but my father was moving faster than I could calculate.

I couldn't let this continue. Every blocked punch still stung, every kick still rattled my bones. His face was still impassive.

He was unimpressed.

As expected, my father had grown stronger. What wasn't expected was the sheer one-sidedness of this fight. There was no time for me to counterattack.

Crack!

I slipped up.

One second I was blocking and starting to fall into a rhythm, and then suddenly, his fist slammed into my gut.

My breath was knocked out of me, and my vision blurred.

My instincts roared at me as his qi violently charged through his fist.

A spark flew through the air.

My eyes widened...

..and then.

BOOM!

There was a flash of white.

The wind roared in my ears as I was flung away.

My back slammed against one of the pillars of the temple and pushed right through.

Dust billowed in the air.

What had happened?

As I emerged from the rubble, I grimaced in pain.

My father now stood at my spot.

My gut ached in pain. Whatever he had done had caused a lot of damage. It was only due to the qi reinforcement that I hadn't passed out from his punch.

As I rose to my full height and got ready to fight, I couldn't help but be worried.

The fight had only begun, and his strength was already overwhelming. I had trump cards, but I hadn't expected to need them this quickly.

I knew for a fact that the current me could take on my father from years back but now was entirely different.

Quickly I used my senses and peered into his qi. The amount contained within his body was ridiculous. His meridians were entirely different from what they used to be.

It looked as if I'd had to go all out to win this.

I took a deep breath and calmed my senses.

My false divination served only as a distraction. Without my former titles, its growth had been limited. It hadn't been clear to me back then, but that limitation was obvious to see now. The difference between an ability powered by a title and an unpowered ability was the rate of growth.

My false divination had not grown much over these years. That hadn't made much of a difference back then, but now... it made all the difference.

Currently, it was more of a burden than anything else so, I deactivated it.

I reentered into my stance before racing towards my father.

In a second, I crossed the distance and arrived before him, my spear aimed at his throat.

He grabbed the spear with his arm before pulling it towards him and smashing his head into mine.

My nose cracked as blood flew out.

I barely managed to reorient myself before his kick slammed into my ribs.

Crack!

"Aaargh!"

One of my ribs had cracked from the kick.

Another one came at me, but I managed to weave around it.

My qi flowed through my arm as I jabbed it towards his chest.

As my hand made contact with his chest, it felt as if I had attempted to destroy an unbreakable wall.

My fingers barely managed to pierce his skin.

"Put your back in it, boy."

I twisted out of the way of another kick.

Grabbing my spear, I glided into the air. As my body blocked the sun, I took aim. The spear glowed with energy before it launched at him.

The air screamed as the spear flew through.

He managed to evade but was surprised when I suddenly appeared before him, fist was blackened.

I threw a punch at his gut.

He managed to block, but his eyes still widened as his one arm grew black.

He pushed away from me before observing his arm. The grimace on his face alerted me to his pain.

One of my trump cards had come into play.

I grinned before rushing at him with my now blackened spear. What followed was a dance of evasion and attack.

His caution put him on the backfoot as I continued to up the pressure. The longer this fight lasted, the higher my chances of victory.

That didn't last long as he quickly figured out my plan.

A look of determination crossed his face before, in a burst of speed, he arrived behind me.

I managed to barely turn around before BAM...

..his fist smashed against my face.

I fell to the ground, my ears ringing.

He did not stop there because the next thing I knew, my face was pressed into the ground and ...

BOOM!

A crater formed underneath as he pushed my head further into the ground.

"Venom, I'm impressed but you gotta do better son, this is not going to take me out."

"I know."

I grabbed his arm tightly with my blackened hands. He didn't react to my action, instead, he raised an eyebrow.

The darkness traveled from my hands and quickly infected the rest of his arm.

But instead of a look of pain, he grinned.

He cocked his head to the side. "Did you really think I didn't see that coming?"

I watched in surprise as black poison spilled out his arms. They looked normal again as if they had never been infected.

In the next instant, my body rose from the ground as he lifted me up before slamming me into the ground.

Boom Boom Boom!.

Again and again, he continued to slam me into the ground. Finally growing tired of that, he flung me away into the side of another pillar.

Damn, I had become more powerful, but I should have realized that the world doesn't stop for anyone. As I had grown, the world hadn't stagnated.

I'd always known that, and I'd even seen it first hand that, but it's one thing to know and another thing to experience it.

Sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way.

My fighting style relied heavily on stealth and surprise attacking. A battle in this head-on format put me at a disadvantage.

I'd known this but hadn't thought much of it.

In hindsight, that had been rather arrogant of me. I had never been in a head-on battle when I lived in the wild.

I always ran away from those. All the beasts had been my superiors, and as such, I'd never let my guard down.

Every confrontation was stacked in my favor.

Yet because I simply wanted to beat my father, I had put myself at a disadvantage.

He was faster, stronger, and had a higher cultivation than I did. My ability to keep was due only to new methods I had created in the wild.

When I left, I experienced desperation and fear from all sorts of opponents that were far beyond me.

My titles were only a hindrance. Their false nature made them a sort of enemy.

But in that journey, an opportunity came to me. I had achieved something that had granted a title to me. In that process, I have sacrificed the two false titles to gain my new one [The Chimera].

The new title had granted me entirely different boons than I was used to. Most surprising of all, I hadn't lost all the abilities that were related to my old titles. The ones that relied heavily on them were gone, of course. The voice of the winds was no longer available to me, nor was [The numerator]'s ability to pull probabilities from information I didn't have.

There had been other boons from sacrificing my titles as well. Boons that had made me believe that I could overcome the abilities of my parents.

Clearly, that was false.

My father couldn't fully calculate my movement, but he could still determine everything else around me.

He could still pull probabilities from nowhere, even if they weren't as accurate as he wanted them to be.

I had forgotten how powerful those titles had been.

"You know that I didn't really expect to use this power." I slowly stood up and faced him.

"I don't hold any anger towards you or anything of that sort. Not any longer, but that really hasn't tampered my desire to beat you."

The air shuddered, and silence descended upon the grounds.

The venom that covered my arms enveloped my entire body. Horns ripped through my flesh and emerged from the skull. My fingers elongated and turned to claws.

From my neck, the head of a void chaser appeared. Its fangs bared against the world.

All of my limbs touched the ground as I took the stance of a wild beast.

Like an apex predator, I pounced towards my father, claws outstretched.

He attempted to dodge, but I twisted in mid-air and slashed across his chest.

He made no grunt of pain, but the blood leaking was all I needed. I pressed my advantage and continued to attack.

My venom continuously entered his body. Despite it being pushed out, it was clearly still eating at his strength.

Slowly he was being weakened. Slash after slash, tearing at his flesh.

He threw punches and kicks, but I evaded them with ease. I wouldn't allow him to repeat his little trick.

As I continued to weaken him, I saw the light of victory. I could almost taste it.

I focused all my qi and pounced for the final time.

"I've humored you for long enough."

I was shocked. The injuries that once riddled his body were nowhere to be found.

I attempted to halt my attack, but it was too late. My claws were only centimeters from his chest when he vanished from before my eyes.

I felt a sharp pain in my gut...

...a spark flew through the air ...

.. the world flashed white...

...and then...