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Your hand clenches itself into a fist. Shaking it menacingly, you slowly fall into a combat stance once more.
"A beating sure is coming. We can figure everything else out afterwards. Let's do this."
The hairs on your arms stand on edge as the old man leaps forward a small distance and completes his entrance into the courtyard. His base is spread wide. You're getting the impression that the instant you step within range he's going to lash out with a strike.
Thanks to your warm up with Shuji your adreline is already pumping full speed. Taking a smooth breath you step into the enemy's range. Just as you anticipated he fires off an attack with an unpredictable trajectory. You can actually see the man's fingers begin to cut through the air and juke left and then right in an attempt to get you to dodge the wrong way.
Your advanced reflexes more or less automatically nullify such effects. You can plainly see each and every twitch of muscle fiber rippling underneath the man's clothes. The way his weight shifts in the slightest of ways preceding his actual attack.
This allows you to smoothly weave around even this advanced Kung-Fu user's unpredictable rush. His slithering blows sail around your head harmlessly as you tease the outside of his range, waiting for a chance to push in.
Dipping forward past his lead arm, his rear hand suddenly strikes out at you with cobra-like speed. It's an upwards swipe, not dissimilar to an uppercut. This time you pull backwards, but as you do your left hand fires off an uppercut directly towards his exposed liver.
It felt as if the timing of the blow would be perfect. You'd fired off the punch just as he'd missed with his. It should have landed well before he recovered. The moment your knuckles make contact with his midsection everything feels wrong. He actually seems to use the force of the impact to spin his body around and reduce the damage of the hit, even after you'd made contact. You're so surprised that it's only your reflexes which let you spin your neck away from his retalitory back-hand fist.
Your head whips to the side and a bit of blood leaks from the corner as you take a backstep. Jiang is showing no signs of wanting to explain what he just did and how.
