The cheers filled the stadium as the first match ended as quickly as it began.
With a bright smile on her face, Julia stood in the ring, victorious. She was nervous before the match, but as soon as the fight began, she forgot it all and only focused on fighting.
Her opponent limped out of the ring.
The fight was pretty much over after the successful high kick. Since then, his balance was nowhere to be seen, and after a few more exchanges, he forfeited.
Sumino High's students gave their representative one round of applause. Quiet applause. The showing wasn't great, but they couldn't ask much more from him.
Coach Jin nodded approvingly from the sidelines.
Julia didn't leave the ring just yet. She was going to try to fight the next one as well and then leave the last one for Dominic so he could also have a chance at fighting.
Currently, in room 9.
Bernard's explosive punches made a mess throughout the room. The walls had holes, the furniture was overturned, and debris was scattered everywhere.
Jumping around the room, Kiernan could barely keep up with Bernard's relentless attacks. He didn't dare to use Rendering Edge.
The strength difference of their punches was quite vast.
Even if Bernard had lacked in his training, the power from his martial soul was more than enough to punch through his rock-solid defense.
Bernard grabbed the overturned table and hurled it across the room with a fierce yell.
"Iron Style, Void Chop!"
The chopping hand came crashing down and cut through the solid wood table, splitting it in half and creating a loud cracking sound.
Bernard suddenly appeared right in front of him. The muscles around his chest tightened. He then punched straight with his right fist that hadn't seen much action lately.
Kiernan bent his body backward. The fist flew over him. He then moved under the arm and lifted his leg high.
The sole of his feet touched Bernard's neck. Then, two afterimages appeared around Bernard. All of them had their high-kick feet touching Bernard's neck from different directions.
"Iron Style, Reversal Taekwondo!"
Three kicks landed in quick succession on Bernard's neck.
Bernard coughed airless breath and stumbled around, but then angrily swung his arm at Kiernan, barely grazing his shoulder, but managed to dislocate it nonetheless.
Kiernan frowned, then raised his dislocated shoulder and snapped it back in place with a grunt of pain.
Bernard gritted his teeth with hatred.
"I'd like to know what your plan is after this. You know I'll go to the police. You're mentally unstable, after all. Will you kill me to keep me silent?"
Kiernan asked with a scoff.
It was painfully clear that Bernard wasn't that smart. He didn't think it through before acting out his plan.
There were a lot of holes and uncertainties, but with his arrogance, he always believed that his first plan would always work.
When it came to plan B, C, etc., it all fell apart like a house of cards.
"Shut your mouth, little shit. The world of adults is far scarier than you can imagine. I've friends in high places. I can just make it so that you attacked me first!"
"What about the text message that told me to come here? They'll find out that my father sent me that message. They'll go ask why he told me to come here. My father has no idea, and with police digging deeper, they'll find out where that message really originated from.
"That friend of yours in the phone service place will be put under great pressure. Will his loyalty to you really last? Money can only buy so much loyalty, but when the heat turns up, who knows what he might do to save himself?"
Bernard's expression kept changing, turning worse and worse. The gears were turning inside his mind, thinking about solutions, but he noticed that he had reached an even bigger dead end than with Karma.
What could he possibly do to get away from this situation?
Killing Kiernan wasn't the answer.
It was easy to track his last known location to this room, which Bernard specifically used for this today. He would be the main suspect.
"I kill you. Blame you for attacking me and used self-defense. Then I'll go visit my friend in the phone service and kill him too to keep him quiet!"
Kiernan laughed once again, shaking his head. It was pure desperation and madness.
At that moment, the door opened to both of their surprise, and one man walked inside, phone in hand with the recording program open.
Karma closed his phone and then pocketed it.
Kiernan said in surprise.
"You… why are you here?"
Bernard's eyes shook, and he saw the recording phone that was on his phone. He recorded it all. However, he didn't panic this time around.
He also included killing Karma in his plan. He was one part of the grand scheme. He needed to be killed so that his whole self-defense case could be justified.
Based on the phone records, it was Karma who called Kiernan here. He could make it look like he called for his son to help him in killing him.
"I found a message on my phone. A message I hadn't sent. I then came here as quickly as possible. Luckily I was already here watching the matches…"
"Heh, you shouldn't have come alone. You are nothing but someone with a shelled soul. Trash!"
Bernard smirked hideously.
Power, an influx of never-ending power, flowed through his body like a raging river and straight into his fist.
Karma punched forward. The force of the blow shattered Bernard's smug expression and hurled him back several feet.
Bernard's eyes shrank in shock.
That wasn't the strength of shelled martial artists. That was the strength of a warrior of the Martial Grandmaster realm!
The soul inside Karma was pure white. It was like a beautiful pearl found inside a dark and murky shell.
It wasn't shelled anymore!
He'd unlocked the power of his martial soul once again!
Before the shelling, he was a veteran of Martial Grandmaster rank. That made him as strong as Bernard with rank alone!