Sage set up a Formation Array and used himself as the core. Surari would have to exhaust all of its energy, or knock Sage out in order to defeat it. The Formation Plates could still be targeted to damage it, but now that the formation was activated it could defend ‘itself’. Surari didn’t realize what was going on until the array was activated and the look on his face was one Sage hadn’t seen yet: confusion.

The monk didn’t believe it and started to attack again, Qi shaped like a golden lotus appeared around his arms and he tried to use the wind vortex attacks from before. Yet, this time the vortexes fell apart almost as soon as they were formed. The golden lotuses seemed to grab the air and helped propel it like the wings of a bird or the tail of a fish, but at this time, Surari felt like the air had a mind of its own. Every carefully constructed pressure vortex would unravel before it even traveled a few feet.

In a way, it did have a mind of its own as Sage was in control of it. It also wasn’t just the air, as this array was a high level one and able to redirect motion. The Path of Fate’s Direction was a Formation Array created to control physical energy. The people of this world used it to stop punches, kicks, and weapons. It could also stop people from moving around, but Sage felt there was far more untapped potential in the array so it had become a topic of intense study. It didn’t just stop kinetic energy, it redirected it and that meant it might have endless applications. At this time, it was like tearing out the Venerable Surari’s fangs and claws. The monk had already shown himself to have a very powerful body and also had mysterious methods of using that great strength. Sage saw many similarities between the monk’s air vortex attack and the explosive attack he’d used to counter it.

Collapsing Sun. It wasn’t a specific move, but a style of moves that were similar to what Surari used. For a body focused Cultivator, physical strength and toughness were the main focus, but that came with downsides. As one got stronger and stronger the world around them would feel softer and softer. The small surface area of a person’s foot compared to the hardness of the ground meant their foot would sink in every time they tried to use their full acceleration to move. This was extra annoying because they had to physically touch their enemy to harm them. Some got around by using ranged or throwing weapons, but they could only carry a limited number and there was always the concern of the quality of the weapon. Did they cover themselves in storage treasures or invest a fortune into a set of very powerful and sharp throwing weapons? What happens when they run out? How troublesome is it to collect them all after they’re thrown with the power of a cannon and then deflected randomly into the distance?

The more impressive fighting techniques for Body Refiners were like the Collapsing Sun and the move used by Surari. Instead of carrying a limited number of weapons, they used the world as a weapon. More specifically the air itself. Most Body Refiners were not exclusively body cultivators with no Qi Cultivation at all, that was a very rare path. Most of them still had various styles of Qi refinement. They usually used that energy to enhance and empower their bodies in innumerable ways, but there were also exceptions. Just like the Jade Mantle, they might use it to form weapons to expand their reach. Their true strength was still their physical body, but they’d use their Qi to act as a weapon so they’d never be left unarmed.

The Collapsing Sun used a special Qi technique and a specific set of opened Qi pores to assist the grasping claw motion. Surari seemed to use his huge strength to form a massive wind vortex, while the Collapsing Sun used that great strength to create a high pressure zone. The simplest form used the motion of a punch to collect a bunch of air and start to compress it, then it was forced together into his palm and the release of such immense amounts of pressure manifested as an explosion. In both of these cases Qi was used as a tool to gather large amounts of air and control it so they could use their powerful bodies to create miraculous effects. Sage assumed Surari’s technique was similar, but there were many secrets to such a thing, just like for the Collapsing Sun and the many Qi pores and Qi circulation paths necessary to pull it off.

There were many variations and at the highest level, the manual from the Violent Sun Sect boasted that the greatest masters could use the Collapsing Sun with any part of their body and in any environment. Sage had a ton of time to practice and learn on the Inner World, but he could only do body refining and practice with the Heavenly Materials on the outside world. His progress in this area was not so deep as others and so his mastery was lacking. In the Depths the Collapsing Sun was very difficult for him to pull off due to the higher density of water and so he didn’t have much chance to test it in combat.

Venerable Surari’s move might not be replicable without specific knowledge, but Sage had a good idea of its basic principle. That was why as soon as he set down the Path of Fate’s Direction and personally controlled it, he was confident the monk was done for. To create such a powerful attack using the air likely needed a very careful control of its flow. Like a giant compressor fan, Surari had to get it just right to make such a big effect. All that Sage had to do was divert the many smaller currents of flowing air and the focused wind cannon turned into gentle breeze.

Surari tried a few times and realized that it wasn’t working so he reverted to rushing towards Sage for a fist fight like they’d first gotten into. This time, instead of being an even match, Surari was sent flying with a single punch. When he moved, everything felt wrong, and that’s because Sage was using the array to interfere. The more kinetic energy that was redirected, the greater the strain upon the array, but with Foresight, the time dilation Inner World and the Adjutor to help make calculations, Sage not only knew which muscles Surari was likely to be using at any instant, but could also target them quite accurately.

To throw a good punch, or any powerful martial move in general, a person should take advantage of their whole body. A decently strong mortal man could do a bicep curl with fifty pounds, or squat three hundred, but if they were a trained fighter they could strike with thousands of pounds of force. They pushed off the ground with their toes, extended the leg, twisted at the waist and hips, rotated the shoulder and extended the arm. Each of these muscles had to act at just the right time to exert force in unison. This kinetic chain required many hours of training to build muscle memory until it could be performed instantly and without any concentration whatsoever.

Sage used the Path of Fate’s Direction to interrupt this kinetic chain. He made Surari’s toes push a little too far, his leg to extend not far enough, the twist of his waist to sway towards the side. All it took was a few little nudges to disperse most of the strength of his attacks. Of course, Surari was still strong and could still instantly kill most weaker Cultivators with these strikes, but it was similar to missing the ‘power zone’. Just like when swinging a baseball bat, or striking a nail with a hammer, the arc of motion concentrated all the power upon a certain point. If you hit a nail with the handle of a hammer it won’t do much other than damage the handle. If you try to hit a baseball with the part of the bat near the hands the power of the strike will be only a fraction of what will happen if you hit it with that ‘sweet spot’ near the end. Since they could fight quite equally before, this huge loss of power made Surari helpless to resist.

The prerequisite to this being the fact that Sage had so much time to gauge and analyze the moves that Surari was going to make so he could most perfectly pick the right muscles to redirect at the right times. He could do similar things without all these advantages, but the energy expenditure to stop so much power would be many times higher in comparison to now, where he could easily neuter the monk’s strength without much expenditure.

Not willing to give up so easily, Venerable Surari’s chanting suddenly intensified in volume. This whole time he’d been chanting to make his body resonate, but now it got much louder. Then he clapped his palms together and a ghostly apparition appeared behind him. This golden haze spread out from his back and slowly started to resolve. This mirage coalesced into golden arms, shining just like the monk’s original pair. Fourteen golden arms had suddenly sprouted from his back and he stepped forward to slam them towards Sage in a flurry of punches.