Chapter Ninety: Fighting for a Place in Your Heart

He threw the first punch without the slightest hesitation, and it was a ferocious one, delivered with no restraint at all. Xiao Cheng could even feel the cutting pressure of the wind.

Xiao Cheng sprang upward and slipped past the straight punch.

No sooner had he avoided it than Ning Jingzhe’s hook came in from the side. Xiao Cheng slammed a hand hard onto the sofa and burst backward, barely evading it.

After cultivating the Nine Mysterious Immortal Scripture, his body had become far more supple; otherwise, he would never have escaped those two blows.

But that retreat left him with nowhere else to go. The wall was right behind him.

With both strikes missing, Ning Jingzhe’s expression tightened, but her movements did not pause. A swift side kick flashed out, aimed straight at Xiao Cheng’s chest.

He could retreat no farther. Twisting his body, he narrowly avoided the kick.

A thunderous crash rang out as her side kick punched a great hole straight through the wall. It was a cement-brick wall, and one kick had blasted out a cavity; the force behind it was unmistakable.

Ning Jingzhe bent her left leg slightly and withdrew it from the hole, but did not set it down. Instead, she lifted it and, before Xiao Cheng could evade again, brought it down in a fierce axe kick toward his forehead. Her motions flowed like running water, smooth and seamless, without the slightest hesitation between them.

She had been wearing a loose camouflage T-shirt, which was nothing unusual while standing still. But with that axe kick, the boundless allure beneath it was thrust directly before Xiao Cheng’s eyes. His movements involuntarily slowed by a fraction. That tiny delay was already too much to recover from.

Xiao Cheng raised an arm to block the blow. With a sharp crack, Ning Jingzhe’s axe kick slammed heavily into his forearm. A radiating force surged through him at once, and his arm buckled under the strain, dropping slightly. The joint of her foot struck his forehead.

Having landed a hit, Ning Jingzhe gave him no chance to counterattack. Turning sharply, she drove her back brutally into him. This was the Iron Mountain Lean, a move that could injure without warning. It was not a military combat technique, but one of the most destructive strikes in Baji Fist, which Ning Jingzhe had ingeniously fused into her fighting style.

Xiao Cheng’s face tightened. He had seen the power of the Iron Mountain Lean before, and had witnessed his elder sister-in-law using it to smash through a plane tree trunk as thick as a bowl rim.

In this situation, dodging was no longer possible. He could only prepare for the worst.

Lowering his right hand, Xiao Cheng waited until Ning Jingzhe was about to ram into him, then pressed his palm against her waist.

The Iron Mountain Lean depended chiefly on waist strength; if he could restrain the waist, he might reduce the force of the blow to a minimum.

The thought was sound, but the tremendous power transmitted through his palm told him it would have little effect. He hastily changed tactics, circling both arms around her waist and shifting into a nearly desperate hold.

Bang. Another deafening impact rang out as the two of them smashed a hole in the cement-brick wall and crashed through it, leaving the living room and entering Ning Jingzhe’s bedroom.

Her force was terrifying. The two of them charged across the room without slowing and fell straight onto the bed.

Xiao Cheng felt as though every bone in his body was about to come apart, and his chest was tight with pain.

Fortunately, it had been a soft landing. He could not help breathing a little easier, though his arms did not loosen, still locked tightly around her waist to keep her from breaking free.

He had already come to a clear realization: without using true energy, he was no match for his elder sister-in-law in pure combat. He would have to endure for just a dozen seconds more.

Ning Jingzhe’s oversized T-shirt had been tugged up to her waist, exposing the deep red undergarments beneath. Her long legs pushed hard against the floor, but the tiled surface was too slick to gain purchase.

Their current position was extremely strange. Ning Jingzhe was pinned atop Xiao Cheng, while Xiao Cheng had both arms wrapped around her waist and his own legs bent to trap hers, like an octopus.

Ning Jingzhe’s entire body was taut with strength, drawn tight like a full moon bow. Xiao Cheng felt as though he were holding not a person, but a rampaging beast in human form. He knew he could not last another dozen seconds.

She took a breath, drew in her abdomen, arched her waist, and then thrust her hips backward with force, striking him right below the belt. Before Xiao Cheng could even appreciate the soft elasticity of her rear, a piercing pain exploded through his lower body.

His elder sister-in-law’s fighting style was, as always, brutally savage, leaving no method unused.

With that pain, Xiao Cheng’s legs loosened involuntarily. Ning Jingzhe seized the chance to pull hers free and slipped out of his lock. Xiao Cheng thought, bad. The lower body is where human strength is greatest, and now that her legs were free, she would escape his hold very easily.

Just as he expected, once her legs were no longer restrained, Ning Jingzhe stood up at once. Xiao Cheng rose with her movement as well. Then he felt a surge of tremendous force from her waist, and in the next instant she dropped her body sharply, bending backward with extraordinary flexibility.

This was a classic tactical combat move for escaping a body lock. In general, performing it made it easy to break free of this sort of hold.

But reality and textbooks are not always the same. Besides, Ning Jingzhe often overlooked one fatal issue: she was a woman, not a man, and her figure was even more womanly than that of most women.

As she bent backward, the two of them froze.

If a man had made that movement, he would have slipped free of Xiao Cheng’s embrace with ease. Her waist might have escaped his hold, but how could those terrifying full breasts possibly pass through his arms?

Because she had failed to complete the escape by bending back, her footing became unsteady. Xiao Cheng immediately swept her legs.

Her feet flew off the ground, and she sat down hard on the floor.

Seizing the opportunity, Xiao Cheng brought his palms together like a blade and chopped toward the back of her head. Of course, this strike was only symbolic and carried very little force.

Ning Jingzhe ceased all movement. In the wake of their violent struggle, the deep red undergarments had slipped down a great deal, exposing the sensual inner lines of her thighs, and much of her pale rear as well. Her shirt was disheveled, leaving her looking somewhat disordered and discomposed.

Xiao Cheng drew a long breath and plopped down on the floor. At the sight of his elder sister-in-law in such a seductive posture, his heart jolted violently, and even his lower body reacted strangely.

Having exerted herself so intensely, Ning Jingzhe was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling in unsteady waves.

She reached up, raked a hand through her hair, and pushed it back with a bright laugh. Only then did she pull up her undergarments and straighten her shirt. Unexpectedly, something slipped from inside her clothing and fell to the floor.

Xiao Cheng looked closely and saw that it was her deep red bra.

It turned out that in the force of her backward bend, the straps and hidden back clasp had snapped. When she straightened her clothes, it simply fell out.