Those two people had reached the level where each and every single one of the martial arts belonging to their own family or school had no flaw whatsoever. However, they both know that no matter how fierce the stance was, the opponent would easily break it; therefore, they had to create a new and unknown move in order to gain an upper hand.
After their sword meet twenty years ago, both men – one resided in the Central Plains, the other came all the way from the Western Region, had never met or even heard about the other's condition; so they did not know how far had the other man improved his martial art. Now that they were fighting each other, the situation was not much different. Each had his own strengths, each had his own weaknesses; nobody could tell who would overcome whom. In the meantime the moonlight had faded, and one could see a streak of sunlight glowing in the east. Both had racked their brains and had created innumerable new and wonderful moves; fist techniques or palm strengths, along with tens of thousands variations thereof, but still nobody could tell which one was better.
Guo Jing witnessed the fight between two top experts of their present age martial art world; wonderful moves and exquisite techniques came one after another. Sometimes he understood, more often he did not. Sometimes he saw something that was related to the theory taught by Zhou Botong; which made him excited and wanted to try. But before he could finish half of a stance, Hong Qigong and Ouyang Feng had already launched new moves; and Guo Jing had already forgotten the previous move he was trying to master.
When Huang Rong saw Guo Jing like that, she was secretly alarmed. "I did not see him for dozens of days, could it be that he got some profound martial arts lessons from a divine being?" she thought, "I looked at the fight and I got confused, how could he exclaim in admiration?" But then another thought came to her mind, "Could it be that this silly brother of mine missed me so much that he went insane?"
She had not seen Guo Jing for quite some time, and now that they have seen each other the situation was not conducive for them to be intimate. She moved forward, wanted to hold Guo Jing's hand. Right at that moment Guo Jing was imitating Ouyang Feng's palm technique; he was turning his body around and launched a palm attack. It looked ordinary, but in actuality it carried enormous hidden energy. Her hand barely touched Guo Jing's palm when suddenly she felt a surge of incredible energy pushing her. She was sent flying upward.
After touching Huang Rong's hand, Guo Jing came back to reality. "Aiyo!" he cried and jumped to grab Huang Rong's waist. While falling down back to the ground, Guo Jing's left hand grabbed the bamboo pavilion's eave. Swinging their bodies they landed on the roof. Two people sat shoulder to shoulder on top of the bamboo pavilion watching the fight on the ground.
By that time the battle situation on the ground had changed again; Ouyang Feng was squatting on the ground with both arms bent on the shoulder, resembled a big frog was about to strike its enemy. His mouth created some deep rumbling noise, like a cow mooing; sometimes it was audible, and sometimes it wasn't.
Huang Rong was amused; she smiled and with a low voice asked, "Brother Jing, what is he doing?"
"I don't know," Guo Jing replied, but suddenly he remembered Zhou Botong's story on Wang Chongyang's Solitary Yang Finger breaking Ouyang Feng's Toad Stance. "That must be it!" he exclaimed, "This is his fiercest martial art; it is called the Toad Stance."
Huang Rong clapped her hands and laughed, "He does look like a toad!"
Ouyang Ke had observed those two people sitting close and leaning toward each other, talking and laughing; his heart was burnt with jealousy. He wanted to leap up and fight Guo Jing, but his chest was still in pain; he could not exert any strength. Besides, he did not have any confidence his martial art was superior to Guo Jing's. But now hearing Huang Rong said 'he looked like a toad' he thought they were ridiculing him, saying that he looked like a dirty toad desiring to eat a swan's meat; he was furious. With his right hand holding three secret projectiles he quietly walked around toward the back of the bamboo pavilion. Gritted his teeth he moved his hand and three silvery streaks came flying toward Guo Jing's chest.
In the meantime Hong Qigong was launching his palms to the front and to the back, busily fighting Ouyang Feng's Toad Stance with his 18-Dragon Subduing Palms. These two martial arts were the highest skill of each combatant, so the fight was no longer slow and sluggish like it was before. It was fierce as two people were using their dozens of years of martial art training trying to gain victory; life and death could be decided in a twinkling of an eye. Guo Jing had learned the 18-Dragon Subduing Palms, but he had not seen his master using this technique before. It sent shivers along his spine to see how wonderful the palm techniques were, with infinite variations in them. It was truly incomparable to the ones he had already mastered. He was completely captivated with what happened on the ground; how would he expect somebody to sneak in from behind and attacked him stealthily?
Huang Rong was not aware that the two fighting on the ground were using their highest martial art skills; she was still laughing and joking around when she suddenly realized one person was missing from the bamboo pavilion. Her mind immediately went to Ouyang Ke, she was afraid of his craftiness; so her eyes scanned around but it was her ears that heard the wind generated by the secret projectiles coming toward Guo Jing's back. With the corner of her eyes she could see three silvery streaks coming fast. She did not have any time to think, immediately she threw herself behind Guo Jing's back. "Puff! Puff! Puff!" three secret projectiles landed squarely on her back. She was wearing the 'ruan wei jia' [soft hedgehog armor] so she was not injured, but she felt some pain nonetheless.
Her hand reached and grabbed the secret projectiles. She turned around and smiled sweetly, "You are scratching the itch on my back, aren't you? Thank you, but I need to give these back to you."
Ouyang Ke saw how she intercepted the projectiles with her own body to protect Guo Jing, he was more jealous than ever. Hearing her saying thus he thought she was going to throw the projectiles back his way, so he readied himself. But after a moment he saw Huang Rong was holding the projectiles in her hand with the palm up, like she was expecting him to take them back from her hand.
Ouyang Ke kicked his left foot and leaped to the bamboo pavilion's roof. He intended to show off his lightness kungfu, lightly perched on the edge of the roof; looked like a white shadow swaying gently in the wind. It was indeed an excellent skill, as elegant as a deity.
"Your lightness kungfu is truly wonderful!" Huang Rong exclaimed. She stood up and walked toward him, arm extended with the projectiles in her hand.
Ouyang Ke saw her white complexion, he was mesmerized. Absentmindedly he stretched his hand to pick the projectiles, with an ill intention to rub her hand, when suddenly some metallic streaks coming his way. He had had fallen twice under Huang Rong's hands and did not want to repeat it, so he somersaulted and came down the roof; waving his sleeve and parried an abundance of Huang Rong's steel needles.
Huang Rong giggled and threw the three silver projectiles to the ground, right in front of squatting Ouyang Feng.