Elias slowly stopped. He didn't look at Jaxson's face; his eyes remained fixed on Jaxson's chest, taking in the young man's rapid, shallow breathing and his erratic, tense center of gravity. Elias mentally calculated the situation. He needed exactly five hundred dollars for the pump manifold. Without it, his southern crop would die in the heatwave. If he took a loan, it would take months to pay off with interest.

Elias slowly lowered the heavy burlap sack to the asphalt. It hit the ground with a dense, heavy thud. He finally raised his eyes, meeting Jaxson’s aggressive stare with a look of absolute, terrifying calmness. The old man's eyes were like deep, still water—unreadable, ancient, and completely devoid of fear.

"Five hundred," Elias’s voice was gravelly, quiet, yet it carried clearly over the murmuring crowd. "Cash. And I just have to stand there?"

"That’s right, old timer," Jaxson laughed, looking at the camera crew and giving a thumbs up. "Three minutes on the clock. Body shots only. You go down, you get nothing. You stay on your feet, you walk away rich. Assuming you can walk."

Elias nodded slowly. He stepped past Jaxson and walked into the center of the chalk circle. He didn't take off his heavy denim jacket. He didn't put up his hands to guard his face. He simply stood there, his feet shoulder-width apart, his knees slightly bent, his shoulders still hunched. He took a long, deep breath, pulling the air all the way down into his lower abdomen. To the untrained eye, he looked like a tired old man waiting for a bus. To a master of the martial arts, he had just rooted himself to the center of the earth.

Marcus held up his phone, finger hovering over the timer app. "Alright, folks, this is gonna be quick. Somebody call an ambulance in advance. Three, two, one... go!"

A sharp buzzer sounded from the speakers. Jaxson bounced on the balls of his feet, doing his signature shuffle. He was playing to the crowd, smiling at the cameras. He stepped in and threw a fast, probing left jab directly into Elias's sternum.

Smack.

The punch landed with a crisp sound, enough force to knock the wind out of a normal man. Elias didn't blink. He didn't flinch. His body didn't even rock backward. The energy of the punch seemed to simply disappear into his chest, traveling down his spine and into the asphalt beneath his boots.

Jaxson frowned. He stepped in again, this time putting his hip into a solid right cross aimed at the old man's ribs.

Thud.

It sounded like punching a wet bag of sand wrapped in thick leather. Elias remained perfectly still. His breathing was slow and rhythmic, his eyes half-closed, gazing placidly at Jaxson’s collarbone. Inside his body, Elias was employing an ancient technique of internal tension and structural alignment. Every time a blow landed, his muscles infinitesimally shifted, creating a perfect geometric structure that transferred the kinetic energy away from his vital organs and down into the ground. He was no longer a man; he was a shock absorber made of bone and earth.

"Come on, Jax, stop playing around!" Marcus yelled, looking at the timer. Thirty seconds had passed.

Jaxson’s smile vanished. His ego was slightly pricked. He planted his feet and unleashed a professional four-punch combination. Left hook to the liver, right hook to the spleen, a devastating uppercut to the solar plexus, and a final, brutal cross to the heart.