Yun Tian’s plan was bound to not work. Chu Hong was after all a Peak dantian building expert and his speed greatly surpassed his estimates.

Besides his superior cultivation base, Yun Tian saw that his movement technique was of the mid, maybe even high, spirit grade and was much more suited for moving at high speeds than the Chen clan skills. While moving with the skill, Chu Hong resembled a beast chasing his prey.

As for Yun Tian’s fleeting steps skill, he had already pushed the skill well beyond its limits with his great comprehension ability, but it was still worse than Chu Hong’s skill.

Along with their skills it came down to their strengths to see who was faster and from their earlier collision Yun Tian realized their strengths were at similar levels. Thus, Chu Hong’s movement technique allowed him to move faster than Yun Tian.

Chu hong closed in quickly, but Yun Tian still did not want to give up. Chu Hong got in his way once again, but Yun Tian didn’t stop. Instead, he prepared himself to fight even while being outclassed in terms of the grades of their swords and skills.

He would just make up the difference with superior strength. He continued to pour demonic qi throughout his body and qi flowed out from his dantian while he prepared to deliver his assault against Chu Hong.

He still held Shen Yu with one arm, but with the other he poured all his strength and slashed rapidly at Chu Hong. Each strike contained immense force and was delivered extremely rapidly with killing intent behind each strike. Each time he slashed there was a flash of light and everyone spectating in town marveled at his speed.

Seeing Yun Tian’s strikes even Chu Hong became serious and he held his sword with both hands ready to defend. A ferocious aura started to emanate from him and he swung his sword against Yun Tian blocking his strikes.

Yun Tian emphasised on speed and used his movement technique to dance around Chu Hong while striking from every angle. It seemed that Chu Hong’s movement technique wasn’t as good at battle like this as Yun Tian’s so he didn’t use it to move around much, but he did dodge some strikes with slight movements.

However, his sword technique allowed him to block basically every one of Yun Tian’s attacks. While he was not as fast as Yun Tian, his strikes were much more refined and could block multiple attacks from Yun Tian at once.

Sometimes, he even made it so that if Yun Tian didn’t stop his attack, both of them would be harmed. If it was just the two of them, Yun Tian would actually welcome this based upon his body that was stronger than normal human cultivators, but right now he was also holding Shen Yu.

While Chu Hong didn’t explicitly target her, she would be harmed if he didn’t pull back so he was forced to retreat at those times and was being slightly pushed back.

Each of Chu Hong's attacks contained an innate ferocity and the willingness to trade damage to himself for his opponent's life. Seeing that Yun Tian backed away at the times when he wanted to trade damage, Chu Hong forced him into those situations more and more, causing cuts on his body when Yun Tian was too slow to pull back.

He did have the great defensive ability of his body and qi shields which is what kept the damage to a minimum though.

Yun Tian cursed ‘I am getting too low on qi to continue this battle. If I was at my peak this might have gone differently. No, there must be something I can do.’

With that he tried to find a solution to his problem even while being pushed back and ultimately came up with an idea.

‘My comprehension of the deadly flash skill has already gone beyond the complete mastery level. Right now, the main reasons I am losing is because of the difference in our skills and swords. If I can just raise the level of deadly flash, I will be able to beat him.’

With that he put his all into the fight with a new vigor. Chu Hong noticed this and was confused as Yun Tian was already being pushed back. He also knew that Yun Tian had used up a large amount of his qi at this point. He didn’t see a way for Yun Tian to beat him anymore.

He even said “Just leave. There is no way for you to get past me.”

Yun Tian ignored all he said though and put his all into the feeling he got as he wielded his sword. He tried to comprehend everything he felt as he swung his sword at Chu Hong. Eventually, he felt the skill seemed to be missing something. At some point he put special attention on the way Chu Hong wielded his sword.

That was when he realized something.

‘The deadly flash skill emphasizes speed and killing intent. Yes if your speed is great enough then you can just overwhelm your opponent, but if you are too slow you can do nothing else.’

While this alone is usually good enough, Yun Tian knew he could do more with the skill. He liked the deadly flash skill, but he wanted more out of it.

He continued to study the way Chu Hong wielded his sword and eventually Chu Hong realized something was wrong. Each of Yun Tian’s strikes were still just as fast, but now they had also started to carry the same ferocity he had in his attacks. Also, each time he clashed blades with Chu Hong each of his forms were being continuously refined and becoming better with him integrating the insights he gained from Chu Hong’s sword style.

As this was happening Chu Hong thought ‘What! How could this kid be creating a new skill in the middle of our fight! It seems he is learning from my sword style too! What a freak!’