One was an active skill, the other a passive skill. One required self-activation, the other was a permanent effect that operated without conscious effort.
The superiority of one over the other was already established.
In this era, the first thing every accomplished martial artist did was to open spiritual apertures.
Like Jiang Caiying, a mere thief before, who only knew some martial arts and had just stepped through the door of martial arts, he had opened a spiritual aperture to aid his cultivation, allowing him to be in a state of constant practice.
The level of spiritual apertures also varied. The aperture opened by Jiang Caiying was insignificant, its efficiency not very high.
The constable who had just unleashed that palm strike at Fang Ming, however, had opened more than one spiritual aperture.
Of the forty-three spiritual apertures within him, the "Blazing Fire Aperture" was the primary one. Twenty-six of these were fire-attribute apertures, which jointly channeled numerous fire threads into his right arm, gathering the power of many apertures to unleash a martial art: "Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm."
As this palm strike was unleashed, Fang Ming felt as if he were facing a great furnace, radiating light and heat, like an eternal sun.
A strike to the "spirit"?
Fang Ming, with his vast experience, quickly understood the essence of this Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm.
Martial arts cultivation was, after all, comprised of three elements: essence, energy, and spirit.
While the Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm outwardly aimed to kill the enemy with high temperatures, it secretly struck at the enemy's spirit and willpower.
Fang Ming could imagine that the result for an ordinary person facing this palm strike would be to first be overwhelmed by the spiritual will carried by the strike, that eternal, sun-like spiritual will, believing their opponent to be an unshakeable sun.
With their spiritual will shaken and damaged, believing they were doomed, they would indeed meet their doom.
The spiritual and material realms were intrinsically linked; defeat in the spiritual realm essentially meant defeat in the material realm as well.
And if the opponent were not an ordinary person, but a martial artist.
The Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm could also strike at less skilled martial artists from a spiritual and willpower perspective.
A martial artist's spiritual will was much more refined than that of an ordinary person, making it unlikely to be directly defeated spiritually. However, the Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm did not aim to shatter the enemy's will directly from the spiritual level—that was for ordinary people who were vastly inferior, like ants.
When truly facing an opponent of equal standing, the spiritual aspect of the Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm served only to disrupt the opponent.
As long as the enemy was disrupted spiritually, even if they were only stunned for a few seconds, the material attack of the Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm would have already landed, and the intense blazing fire would utterly incinerate the enemy, leaving behind a completely charred body.
Spirit as a supplement, matter as the primary focus.
It did not rely solely on spirit to defeat the enemy, but rather on this disruptive capability.
Between two equally matched masters, a single flaw could decide the outcome. Often, gaining a certain advantage could determine the final result, let alone a few seconds of spiritual disruption.
Even a single second of disruption could decide life or death.
This illustrated the power of the Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm.
Utilizing over twenty fire-attribute spiritual apertures, this move was far more powerful than ordinary martial arts techniques, yet it was still no match for Fang Ming.
In the span of a breath, Fang Ming calculated the energy level of this move—it was still far inferior to that of the lowest-tier cultivator.
Even with spiritual apertures that could accumulate for decades or even centuries, allowing this world to surpass ordinary martial arts worlds.
However, martial artists capable of rivaling cultivators were few.
Perhaps top-tier martial artists could confront cultivators head-on, but this was clearly not something a constable could achieve.
Therefore, in the face of the constable's Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm threat.
Fang Ming condensed a thread of water between his fingers and sent it towards the blazing palm print.
This was not a martial art, but a spell—Water Condensation Art.
Water Condensation Art was merely a low-level spell learned by low-level cultivators.
Like Weed Removal Art, strictly speaking, it was not a true combat spell for cultivators.
It was primarily used for convenience in daily life, jokingly referred to by cultivators as "acting tricks" or "zero-tier spells."
Generally, among the handyman disciples of Baiyun Sect, this Water Condensation Art was used to gather water when none was available.
Why then would Fang Ming use such a seemingly useless spell?
It was simple.
Although Water Condensation Art was useless in cultivator battles, it was useless by cultivator standards.
Fang Ming, who could kill a thrice-mutated Tyrant zombie, possessed strength that could practically dominate the zombie-infested Earth. This ruined civilization essentially had no power to contend with him.
From this, one could discern the caliber of opponents Fang Ming deemed worthy of his attention.
Perhaps beings like the Eight Unrivaled Immortals and Demons, but certainly not a mere constable.
The life level of this constable was far, far removed from Fang Ming's.
With such a vast difference in life levels, Fang Ming did not need to employ anything else; with just a zero-tier spell, he could still annihilate this constable.
Water Condensation Art, this zero-tier, life-skill spell, faced the martial artist's dedicated killing move, the Heavenly Sun Blazing Fire Palm. The result reversed: the water directly extinguished the fire. The eternally setting sun, in the face of this icy rain like ten thousand years of frozen ice, had little ability to resist before being directly extinguished.
The constable felt an extreme, unprecedented coldness, as if he were in an abyss of infinite low temperature.
He seemed to sense the appearance of a full moon.
From that moon, an intensely chilling power emanated, enveloping him. He wanted to struggle; the twenty-odd fire-attribute spiritual apertures within him activated together, but the fierce flames could not shake the internal coldness in the slightest, nor could they alleviate or resolve it.
The coldness quickly permeated his brain, his heart. He felt his heart ceasing to function, his brain losing vitality, his body freezing, his thoughts becoming incapable of processing.
When he thought this, he truly became incapable of thinking.
He was dead.
Because martial artists did not have the concept of "falling," nor was he a Buddhist martial artist with the concept of "nirvana," this was the only way to describe it: he had passed away.
The surrounding constables and the onlookers gasped in unison.
Even the county magistrate's eyes, at this moment, flashed with shock, a hint of anger, and fear.