[Foxfire Palm Barrage!]
[Reflection: Weasel Thunder Palm Barrage!]
BAM!
"Am I seriously this annoying to deal with in a fight?!" Zhen Xing shouted indignantly as his attacks were matched blow for blow.
"Kind of!" Zhen Tai agreed as he punched his clone in the face, only to get cross jabbed in the process. "Ouch! Good to know even my copy can throw an ice cold punch!"
When Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai agreed to go on this trek to the Dozing Salamander continent, they weren’t entirely on-board with the idea.
They knew damn well that amongst the scions of the Zhen Clan, they weren’t exactly the strongest members of the bunch nor did they considered themselves the most qualified to go abroad for something as noble as a rescue mission.
Hell, one of them used to bully the guy they were trying to rescue.
That stated, they didn’t exactly have much choice but to listen since the orders to go came from not only the patriarch, but their elders, Zhen Liu’s scary mother and the Kaijin themselves.
Apparently, they had all agreed that going to the land where Ignatii aether arts were perfected was a good place to send them to cultivate for a spell.
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They weren’t wrong, since the duo managed to absorb some high quality Ignatii aether from the environment as they traveled through the Ember Isthmus, but they soon discovered that they were kind of in over their heads.
The two of them might’ve been peak Aether Masters at this point, but they had reached this point while under somewhat controlled conditions.
They may have gotten caught up in a lot of dangerous situations and somehow survive them, but Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai were never the reason why they managed to survive.
During the assault on Willow Scale, they followed the lead of their parents and crazy strong cousins.
This was also the case when they were raiding that wandering ruin that popped up in their territory.
Even on the way to this [City of Mirrors], more than once, the Kaijin had to come in and save the two scions from aether beasts that were way out of their league.
Hell, a part of them were expecting not to fight at all once they entered the wandering ruins for real and were assigned to be in the same team as Zhen Liu and his literal army of monsters.
That expectation, though, was thrown out the window and into a pit of broken glass the moment these weird clones started showing up.
While neither of them could fathom how strong that clone of their cousin actually was, the fact that Zhen Liu said that it was able to match him blow for blow even when it wasn’t able to fully copy Zhen Liu’s [Chaos] abilities wasn’t a good sign.
Regardless, they had their own battle to fight and could only pray that their cousin won theirs.
"Stomping shit! How the hell are we supposed to beat these copycats?!" Zhen Xing complained as he and Zhen Tai were forced to retreat after their latest power clash with their respective clones.
On the plus side, the clones themselves were looking equally banged up as well, so all of their efforts hadn’t gone to pot quite yet.
"Well, I think in some of the books I read at the library, the smart thing to do is for us to switch opponents," Zhen Tai answered. "I fight your clone, you fight mine, we reveal our weaknesses to each other, and hope that these bastards copied those weaknesses as well."
"Okay, that makes sense," Zhen Xing agreed, finding the idea unusually clever.
"Or we just break through own limits and show these imitations that were better than them," Zhen Tai immediately followed up with significantly more vigor than his previous answer.
"Of course," Zhen Xing commented with a defeated tone of voice.
Zhen Tai had always been the most vicious of his cousins, but that wasn’t always a bad thing.
In this instant, though, it was a bit of a liability.
"Just follow my lead!" Zhen Tai declared while pulling off his belt and transforming it into the three-section staff aether treasure he picked up in Roaring Tide. "Come forth, [Staff of the Fire Boa]!"
Heeding it’s masters command, the three-section staff shaped like a boa constrictor flared to life as burning hot aether began to flow up and down its surface.
Mirroring his movements the clone version of Zhen Tai pulled out his three-section staff, but his was radiating cold aether in sharp contrast to Zhen Tai’s burning spirit.
"Now we’re talking!"
In response to this challenge, Zhen Tai rushed forward while swinging his staff towards his mirror double with burning passion.
Reflecting this, Zhen Tai’s double swung his staff upward with cold calculation.
A sharp cracking noise echoed out as the two staves of opposing elements collided with each other.
[Boitatá Buster!]
[Snow Snake Strike!]
As the hot headed viper went to war with his cold blooded counterpart, Zhen Xing let out a massive sigh. He had honestly wanted to do the smart thing and not fight against himself anymore.
"Ah...fuck it. Fuck it!" Zhen Xing spat out with exasperation as he took on a wide legged fighting stance. "Let’s do this for real. [Flying Fox Fire Wheels]!’
At his command, a pair of wheels that were decorated with the image of foxes chasing their tails, manifested near Zhen Xing’s feet moments before he leaped up and began to stand on them. For all intents and purposes, Zhen Xing took on the visage of a certain lotus immortal from another world, that was famous for breaking the spine of a dragon prince.
"I might as well take a page out of Zhen Tai’s book and go for broke!" Zhen Xing roared as he surged forward, flames shooting of his feet and taking on the visage of fox tails.
[Inari Impact!]
In response to this foxfire empowered human missile strike, the mirror version of Zhen Xing’s body began to spark with blue arcs of electricity before his own pair of wheels manifested around his feet.
Unlike Zhen Xing’s elegant looking fox decorations, this mirror version’s wheels had decorative elements of a weasel riding a thunderbolt.
[Raiju Rush!]
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The mirror version of Zhen Xing launched himself like a thunderbolt directly at the real one, ready to match him in terms of raw power.
As the human thunderbolt and human fireball impacted each other, a vortex of fire and lighting began to form and disturb the surrounding aether.
Outside looking in, this clash of power was absurd and unnecessary
If both opponents were equally anyways, then the smart move would’ve been to change up a factor to make the battle more lopsided in one’s favor.
However, this observation could only be made if one were to remove the emotional and growth elements of battle.
If is often said that is much easier to see one’s faults in other people than it is to see it oneself, and this was especially the case when the other person in question was one’s own doppelganger.
In a sense, it was as if they were fighting their own past.
As Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai continued to fight their twisted doppelgangers, they were able to see the myriad of flaws and unnecessary movements that existed in their fighting styles.
As such, being forced to confront their flaws, the two young warriors were able to polish themselves further and further.
"Come on you icy fuck! Let me see whether or not you can keep up with me!" Zhen Tai shouted as he spun his staff faster and faster to the point that the shadow of a giant burning anaconda began to manifest around him.
"My fire will burn up your lighting!" Zhen Xing shouted as the flames wreathing his body began to burn hotter and hotter to match the growing fury in his heart.
The mirror versions of Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai managed to keep with these changes as well, but there was one key difference that was barely noticeable unless they happened to have razor sharp aether senses.
As they kept trading blows, as they kept burning up aether, as they continued to fight the distorted reflections of their current selves, Zhen Xing and Zhen Tai’s aether started clinging tighter and tighter and to their skin to the point that little flashes of condensed aether could be seen for a brief moment before disappearing.
In other words, they were rapidly approaching a bottleneck in their cultivation that people twice their age have failed to breakthrough despite over a lifetime of experience, and were getting ready to smash right through it.
Of course, while they were becoming more and more sure of the strength of their own hearts, a fighter near by them was having an entirely different heart to heart with their opponent.
One that neither of them were the expecting to have in the slightest.
...
[Hey...can you hear my thoughts?]
[I...can.]