The moment Xiang Hi saw this armor she recognized it. It was the same armor Horo used against Judy during is entry into the palace, but she sensed an immense difference and its appearance proved the fact that this wasn't the exact same object.
Some had guessed that it was his aura, but those like her knew that wasn't the case because he was in the foundation stage at the time. She knew this had to be some advanced skill on par with an incarnation.
This caused her to manifest her incarnation. Its appearance was a sapphire whip. The moment it appeared in her grip her entire body was enveloped in an aura of the same color, tremendously boosting all of her stats and capabilities.
Horo was aware of this phenomenon called genuine incarnation. He wasn't too worried about it because his bright spirit armor nearly gave him boosts of equivalent value.
Before he could think any thing else the tip of the whip was nearly in his face threatening to tear his face off, and it did, or at least it seemed like so for a second.
Xiang Hi whip around so fast while striking at a figure that appeared beside her with a devastating palm.
The figure was Horo. When she had struck his face with her whip she didn't tear it off, instead it was a small patch of blackness that she tore off and the image of Horo dissipated and fell into the shadow of where he previously was.
Those within the audience whose eyes were able to keep up with his movements had raised brows.
What they saw was a thin string leave his shadow and appeared beside Xiang Hi before rising from the ground revealing the actual Horo. The Horo that stood where the whip was headed was just an afterimage made of shadow.
This ability was the evolved version of Horo's skill shadow steps, [ Shadow Phantom ].
Horo didn't doubt her reflexive abilities nor her perception he knew she would be able to react to his movement skill, he was just gaining battle experience with the new version of his ability.
His arm moved like a viper as he countered her palm by hitting the inside of her forearm.
But that strike might as well have been considered a faint because the flurry of palms she unleashed within the next two breaths left Horo dumbfounded and hard pressed to defend.
It wasn't that she was more skilled than him but the shear speed of her arms and palms was definitely superior to his hand speed.
He had to use his hand to deflect the blows that he could while dodging and evading the rest of them.
While it was taking Horo a large amount of effort to defend, Xiang Hi knew that this was just a temporary upper hand. She knew Horo had much more up his sleeve when it came to hand to hand combat, and her thoughts certainly was on the mark.
The next two strikes that she threw was met with an unexpected counter. Horo deflected her first blow like a true expert. The way he hit her wrist was completely soft seeing as she felt no pain at the point of contact, but that was because he borrowed the kinetic force of her strike and deflected it toward her next strike.
She was throwing her palms continuously at speeds he could barely see but could perfectly perceive, and this was the reason his perfect counter was possible.
Her palm struck the forearm of her other palm, then the force and effect of the gentle ending palm was used against its own wielder.
The power of the palm put her entire arm to sleep.
The was what the gentle ending palm was capable of. The palm was powerful as the wielder, but the technique forcibly converted the force of the palm into a power that put practically anything to sleep permanently, including cells and even atoms at the highest levels.
Horo saw what the palm did and was intrigued, he wondered why it was even effective against the one who wielded it.
Too bad for him she had an easy fix.
The palm that struck herself glowed with a soft white light and she applied pure touch to her sleep arm. The pure touch practically reversed the effect of her gentle ending palm.
She had recognized that her superior strength and speed was not helping her as much as it could because his experience and skills in hand to hand combat is far beyond her's.
She had to acknowledge many things about him. His superior hand to hand combat, his strange unique true cloud, his physique that gives him a special energy as well as tremendous addition to physical stats, the fact that someone at such a low stage like him had a golden core, and lastly his variety of peculiar abilities.
Since this is supposed to be a simple spar to gage his ability, she decided to end to it with her next move.
Her pure cloud completely merged with her body. Normally it dwelled within her and she was able to gain slight enhancements and use its abilities like that, but when she performed the complete merge, it's merged with her entire existence and gave her boost of 200% to all abilities.
When she did this the boost applied on top of the boost from her aura incarnation, so the multiplication effect was much more than it would have been with her and the cloud.
Her body began to emit a soft white glow, and then.... She vanished.