John and Joy stared at each other, John with a confident smile while Joy had a look of slight worry. Her fighting style relied on extremely quick, agile and light attacks to get past her opponent's defenses to inflict damage. She had managed to win all the way to the semi finals by being extremely quick and nimble in her fights, and had not even taken a single blow in return. No one was able to match her speed, and the only thing they could do was wait for her to slowly but surely wear them down. Since all her opponents were essence Qi cultivators, their defenses were naturally weak and her attacks were able to inflict serious damage.
However, John was the worst matchup she could get. John had an Innate Variant Body, and the natural defense of his body was unlike anything she had faced before. Since Joy focused on speed instead of power, she had no idea whether her attacks would even work on John.
While Joy was thinking of a battle strategy, John decided to take the initiative and charged towards her. He quickly approached her, and slashed down heavily with his scythe. Joy was instantly roused out of her strategic thoughts, and used her movement speed technique to dodge John's attack at the last moment.
John once again dashed towards her, and swung down heavily with his scythe. Joy continued to dodge, as she knew she did not have the physical power to successfully parry his attacks.
Once more, John dashed towards her and swung down with his heavy scythe. This time however, Joy dodged and quickly sent out her own extremely quick counter attack. Her sword traveled at an unblockable angle towards John's waist, and struck him before he could dodge.
Peng!
Both the crowd and Joy's eyes widened in shock as the sword bounced off John's body like it was made of metal. A small, thin cut opened up on John's waist, and blood started to flow out ever so slightly. However, the wound was far from enough to cause any real damage to John.
"What? How is his body so strong?"
"I know right? That attack would have quite severely wounded a normal cultivator."
The crowd instantly exploded into uproar at the sight of John receiving almost no damage from Joy's attacks. Up to this point in the tournament, no one had managed to land a blow on John besides Ryan, and Ryan's attack was mostly blocked by John's scythe, so the crowd had no idea how tough John's body truly was.
Even John himself was slightly surprised at the toughness of his body.
'Although I knew my body was tough, this is the first time I've received an attack on it directly since my body advanced to the late Mist Creation Realm. The Immortal Asura Body continues to amaze me.'
John had taken the attack directly from the late Mist Creation assassin when he was in the mid Mist Creation Realm, and although he was half dead after the attack, he had managed to survive which was a feat that was practically unheard of. Now that he was taking attacks from those in the same realm as him, John was truly able to see the sturdiness of his body.
After taking the attack, John came to a sudden stop and put away his scythe. Both Joy and the crowd were confused by John's actions, and some thought that he was about to give up since he couldn't catch Joy.
"What are you doing?" Joy couldn't help but ask in confusion. She had no way of defeating John herself, and was quite shocked to see him put his weapon away.
John looked towards Joy with a smile and responded. "You're way too fast for me to catch up while holding my scythe. It weighs three hundred pounds, so it really slows me down quite a bit."
Both Joy and the crowd were once more shocked.
"Three hundred pounds? What weapon at the Mist Creation Realm weighs three hundred pounds?"
"I know. Even greatswords don't weigh that much for Mist Creation cultivators, let alone scythes."
The crowd initially couldn't understand how John was able to wield such a scythe, but when they thought about his variant body, it started to make sense to them.
While the crowd was completely shocked, only Roy had a knowing smile of depression on his face. He was the only one who had blocked John's scythe in this tournament, and had personally felt the immense weight and power it carried.
After putting his heavy scythe away, John felt like he weighed nothing at all. Even for him, three hundred pounds was quite a lot of weight, and it slowed him down considerably.
"Let's continue, shall we?" John said and dashed towards Joy with his fist flying towards her waist.
Since John was weaponless, Joy figured that she might be finally able to attack him evenly with her sword and struck out with her sword.
Peng!
Fist and sword collided, and Joy was sent flying backwards dozens of yards, while John only had a slight wound open up on his fist. She landed gracefully on the ground, but found herself face to face with John once more. Having realized his power was still immense from that last attack, Joy quickly dodged to the side to give herself some distance.
Just as Joy dodged to the side, John followed up with the first step of his Five Step Movement Technique, and appeared right in front of her once more.
"So fast!" Both the crowd and Joy were surprised to find that John had instantly caught up to Joy, and appeared to be just as fast as her. It was known that Joy was by far the fastest junior out of all the five powers in the tournament, so John equaling her speed was shocking indeed.
What the crowd didn't know was that John had worked on combining his body power with the Five Step Movement Technique, which made it even faster than before. Although it wasn't John's fastest movement, which was when he combined the Supreme Battle Art and the Five Step Movement Technique, it was still fast enough to keep up with Joy.
Yet again, the advantages of having two dantians revealed itself. Unlike a normal Innate Variant Body essence cultivator that could only rely on Qi essence and physical body strength to utilize a movement technique, John was able to send both essence Qi and body Qi to his legs, which superimposed in power and propelled him forward incredibly fast.
For the next several minutes, Joy was seen dashing all across the arena with John closely in tow. Occasionally, John would catch up enough to land a fist attack, which sent Joy flying backwards. After several minutes of this, Joy was feeling quite miserable, and her arms were shaking from repeatedly blocking John's attacks.
All of a sudden, Joy came to a stop and put away her sword. John stopped chasing and came to a halt as well, expectant of what was to come.
"You really are my worst matchup. I concede." Joy had finally realized that no matter what she did, she was not able to beat John. Her attack power just wasn't strong enough to breach his defenses, and John's speed made it so that he could land occasional blows on her. Eventually, the only one who would suffer in the end would be her.
Although the crowd had expected this result as soon as they saw how John was Joy's worst matchup, they were still slightly disappointed to have a semi-final end in concession.
"The winner by forfeit, John Fenix."