Sage laughed, “That’s quite funny coming from you, with your ridiculous reasoning for why you won’t pay your debts. Once you see how helpless you are against me, then it’s only natural you’ll pay. If I make a fool out of you in front of your temple, you might be too embarrassed to keep living. If you were to destroy yourself and take along all your belongings, wouldn’t I lose out?”

The Venerable Surari did not enjoy Sage’s words. Sage spoke at a very low volume, where those outside the defensive formation wouldn’t hear him, which fit with his reasoning for not wanting to make the monk into a laughing stock. Even so, this enraged Surari as he was also going easy.

“I felt that there is a chance you are the real representative of the Dream Dealer, so I shouldn’t injure you so harshly. It seems I am only inviting ridicule.”

“I am the legitimate representative, and your attempts to get out of paying your debts make you seem like a clown to me. Do you monks swear off material wealth? Is that why it’s so hard for you to pay what you owe?”

Sage realized that he couldn’t easily intimidate this Surari with combat so he started throwing insults. There’s a chance he might get lucky and make the man so ashamed or embarrassed he’d pay up. Some people cared more about their face and reputation than money or even their life. He wasn’t quite sure what drove these monks or Surari personally so he wasn’t sure what angle to take. His line about self destruction was real though, if he scared someone too much and couldn’t instantly subdue them, they might just self-destruct and take all their belongings with them out of spite. That would be much worse than if they were to run away. If one of these debtors just ran, then Sage could follow after them and try again. He may not use it often, but the Hindsight ability of the Timeless Eyes was very good at tracking. It would be quite difficult for someone to hide from him once he caught up with their trail.

Unfortunately, Surari didn’t take the bait. Instead of being ashamed and paying up, he doubled down. The gold skinned monk opened his mouth and started to chant. It was very unusual as with just one voice, the monk was producing a single melody with multiple pitches at the same time. Then he struck his fist against his chest and his golden body rang like a bell. Surari’s whole body started to resonate and Sage felt a strange sensation. That dangerous aura from before suddenly reappeared and Sage suddenly moved to interrupt what Surari was doing.

Sage took off running, dashing around Surari while releasing a torrent of orange flame from his mouth. If the burning flame didn’t work to disrupt the monk, then maybe the mind affecting part of the Samsara Flame would stop him. At the same time he threw out a dozen seeds, tossing the pre-charged Parasitic Root seeds out but frowning when he saw them being blocked by the metal ground. They spread their hair like roots out and sunk them into the metal ground of the fighting arena. The ground wasn’t hard enough to stop them, but the formation that hardened the arena into metal also stopped the roots from draining their energy. The Parasitic Roots couldn’t siphon any extra energy and could at best run off the energy charged into them in advance. With this limitation they were relegated to small patches of trapping terrain, like tiny bear traps that would grip Surari’s feet if he stepped upon them.

With such a dense protection upon the ground, it blocked off one of Sage’s main tools. Wood based Qi techniques were one of his first choices when it came to slowly trapping and binding enemies, which was his go to for making the enemy give up. Unfortunately, this wasn’t working and Surari continued to bang his fist against his chest to create louder and louder ringing sounds.

The noise started to carry a dangerous intent so Sage created a Soundshield, something invented to combat the Jinxi and their sound techniques. A few thin layers of vacuum around him blocked the violent sounds, but it seemed that his Samsara Flames were not enough to disrupt Surari’s plans. After Surari banged on his chest a few dozen times, some sort of equilibrium was reached. The Soundshield stopped Sage from hearing the difference, but he could see that Surari’s body was resonating like a tuning fork.

Somehow the man had used his fist to make his body vibrate at the same frequency as his chanting and now just his voice was able to maintain the vibration through his whole body. Then Surari’s body released a golden light and he punched the air.

Sage saw what was happening seconds in advance, but he was still unable to avoid it. No matter which direction he tried to dodge away to, this attack struck too wide of an area for him to escape from. The limited arena they were in and Surari’s reaction time and wide area of attack meant that Sage’s acceleration speed was not high enough to escape. Surari’s punch was thunderous and ended with a sudden corkscrew motion. A golden lotus shaped aura around his arm caught the air, vibrating it as it moved and releasing a wide shockwave. A single punch caused a pressure wave to blast outwards, covering a full ninety degree arc. A full quarter of the fighting area was blasted by the shockwave from a single punch.

So many extra energies and techniques had entered the battle in comparison to before that this attack, even if it used the air as a medium, was many times more powerful than the previous punches they had exchanged.

Seeing no way to avoid it, Sage responded with a move of his own. He inverted a flow inside his body and a toxin spread outwards from his Poison Meridians. Instead of pulling poisons into themselves, the meridians spread it4 into his body with terrific speed. His muscles bulged and he burned a bit of the aura surrounding his body. He thrust a hand forward with his fingers outstretched like claws. Then his fingers snapped together, grasping the open air and using a very specific set of open Qi Pores on his fingers to compress air and Qi into a single point.

A raging hurricane vortex was met by an explosive detonation.

The meeting of the two intense forces caused the two of them to be blasted backwards, knocking Surari out of the spot he had been rooted in since the fight started. Sage had been running circles around Surari, before he was forced to defend, so his footing wasn’t as secure and he was sent tumbling backwards, stopping just before he hit the wall. He didn’t trust this arena very much so he didn’t want to touch the wall if he didn’t have to. Once he regained his footing he took a few steps towards Surari, but then he clenched his fingers again and clawed the air, slamming his hand forward to send out another explosive detonation in time with Surari’s second shockwave.

They were blasted backwards again and this time Sage’s back hit the wall. He didn’t have time to worry about its hidden dangers, pushing off of it and taking a few quick steps to release a third explosive strike. Bam! Both of them were smashed against the wall this time and to Sage’s chagrin, the monk continued to press the attack. Without time to regain his footing and get a proper windup in, Sage spun sideways, pressing both feet up against the wall and pushing off it to throw another explosive strike. The colliding forces kept him from sliding down the wall and he had to swing his other hand to quickly throw a follow up attack.

The two of them braced themselves against the wall and started throwing a flurry of ‘punches’. The shockwaves of their attacks rippled across the whole fighting arena and collided in the center.