Chương 28: Chapter 27: A BAD HAND

Watched how the competitors fought, what powers they used. Each sect had its own schools of martial arts for each weapon, as well as its own set of signature bondskills. Jieyuan was really only familiar with the Gleaming Stone Sect's. This was the time to get acquainted with everyone else's.

Something that became clear fairly early on was that he also had to watch out for the artifacts at play, particularly the weapons and their spiritskills. The tournament, as Elder Yiming had put it days ago, served as a proxy for war. The competitors represented the strength of the sect they belonged to, meaning there were no limitations on the use of chromal artifacts and concoctions.

Their sect's wealth and resources mattered just as much, if not more so, than the participant's talent and aptitude for martial arts. Despite that, it was generally only artifacts that were used; using other kinds of resources would encourage others to do the same. And that could lead to a lot of deaths, particularly if tenth-step talismans started being thrown around. All five stages were being used, multiple duels taking place simultaneously, each one overseen by an elder of the Radiant Gold Palace.

That meant Jieyuan had to pick which duel to focus on, but it wasn't like he would be missing that much, given the number of duels taking place today. One hundred and twenty-eight. The tournament followed a single-elimination format. Everyone would participate in one duel the first day, with the winners of the previous round once again fighting one duel the next.

So there'd be sixty-four duels tomorrow, thirty-two duels the third day, sixteen the fourth day, and so on, with the eighth day holding only one duel, between the two remaining undefeated contestants. The ninth and last day of the tournament was reserved for settling any specific ranking ties. Right now there were three duels taking place down on the fighting floor, the middle stage plus two others in use, with contestants being called down to the remaining two.

Everyone moved with blurring speed, each and every competitor space-hasting. Elder Yiming had warned him about this. All the competitors in the tournament should have space-haster artifacts, and you should use yours the moment the duel began, because your opponent would certainly do so.

It didn't matter how costly it was use to use a space-haster; the tournament served as a proxy for war, and a sect's ability to provide their disciple with the means to quickly recover their chroma reserves was part of their strength.

Jieyuan wasn't that invested in the duels; he should have been (he might end up facing any of the combatants currently down below in a future round), but he could only barely bring himself to pay attention as a Radiant Gold Palace disciple faced an opponent from the Xiyunfeng Clan in the center stage. Both fifth-steps, judging by their speed.

The fight had already been going on for a couple of minutes now; the two duelists were about evenly matched, and the duel would only end when one of the contests was incapacitated or admitted defeat. It was a good fight; Jieyuan would've been interested in it normally, but something else was taking up most of his attention right now. Namely, the Viridian Death Cult. Or, more precisely, with how High Priest Tangqiao kept on looking over.

The man had been doing so for a while now, only looking down to observe the fights when someone from the Viridian Death Cult was fighting. The elderly man was as subtle about it as Yunzhu staring at Daojue. Jieyuan and Meiyao were standing beside each other, right in front of the railing, surrounded by the other Gleaming Stone Sect disciples, the elders a little further back. Neither he nor she had been called down yet.

Neither had Yongyi nor Daojue, though Yunzhu had already had her duel a while ago, against a sixth-step from the Xiyunfeng Clan, which she'd won with relative ease. He'd been waiting for Meiyao to bring up the matter on her own, but so far she hadn't taken her eyes off the fighting floor yet, and Jieyuan decided he'd waited long enough. Meiyao had said they weren't a problem, but Jieyuan wasn't about to just take her word for it.

He had little intention to end up dead because he overlooked the one group from Radiant Gold Province known for their deranged fanaticism.

"So," he said, softly. They were both leaning against the railing (an ornate balustrade, standing just slightly lower than his chest, made from brightgold as with just about everything else in sight), and he nudged her with his elbow.

"What's the deal with you and the cultists?" Meiyao glanced up, briefly meeting the gaze of the highest priest, before turning her head to face him. She then glanced about, at the disciples next to them. She pursed her lips.

"Give me a moment." Frowning, she looked away, seemingly at nowhere in particular. It was over a minute later that she nodded, the frown still on her face.

"All right," she said, her voice soft, barely more than a whisper.

"The first thing you need to know is that there used to be a Linzushen Clan—and that they founded the Viridian Death Cult." Jieyuan would admit to some surprise, though not a lot of it. He'd been expecting something along those lines.

"So the Linzushen was its royal clan?"

"Not just that," Meiyao said.

"They… we … were worshiped. Not just for founding the cult. There's also the way we look—especially our eyes—as well as our… affinity with chromal plants. In these last few centuries, however, less and less Linzushen started being born. Nobody knows why. And by my mother's generation, only she and her father—my grandfather—remained. And then my grandfather died while she was still a child, leaving only her. The Last Linzushen." The Last Linzushen. She spoke it like a title.

"As I said earlier, the Linzushen were worshiped from the start. But with my mother, it was many, many times worse. The cult was obsessed with her. From the moment she was born, she was under constant supervision, to ensure nothing would happen to her. Then, shortly after she turned eighteen, days before she was set to become a cultivator, she decided she'd had enough of it. So she left." Meiyao smiled, then.

"More than anything else, the cult was concerned over her safety. Over her life. So my mother figured out early on that she could get the cultists to do just about anything by holding that hostage."

"You mean she'd threaten to kill herself?"

"Exactly," Meiyao said, sounding oddly amused.

"She did so when she commanded her guards to take her out of the sect to Radiant Gold City. There, hair dyed and eyes turned mundane, she registered for the Gleaming Stone Sect's entrance trials under a different name. Near the end of the trials, the Viridian Death Cult came knocking, demanding her back, and it was then that the Gleaming Stone Sect learned who she was." Meiyao was smiling now, her eyes distant; Jieyuan got the feeling she didn't even realize it.

"My mother had fourth-step heavenly affinity, just like us, but that wasn't worth going to war with the Viridian Death Cult over, so the sect was happy to hand her back. But then my mother threatened to kill herself if the Viridian Death Cult forced her to return." Jieyuan raised an eyebrow.

"Again?" But he wasn't too surprised; if a tactic worked once, it could work twice. Besides, it wasn't like he was a stranger to that particular trick. He'd held his own life hostage it in the Fatebloom Woods against the Fusongshi core disciple. He'd also used that same tactic against his old man a few times.

"Again," Meiyao confirmed.

"And then, when the Gleaming Stone Sect refused to accept her now that they knew who she was, she did it again to force the Viridian Death Cult into pressuring the Gleaming Stone Sect to take her in." So the situation was now the opposite—the Gleaming Stone Sect not taking her in would cause a war, because if they didn't she'd kill herself, and Viridian Death Cult couldn't let that happen." She glanced back, where the elders were; Jieyuan followed her gaze to Sovereign Zhaoyong.

"In the end, the matter was settled by Grandfather taking her in as his apprentice." Jieyuan stared at Meiyao, trying to look for any signs she was having him on. He found none.

"You're serious?" he asked, just to be sure.

"Fully." Jieyuan turned to look over at the Viridian Death Cult's delegation. It wasn't Meiyao's mother's actions that he found hard to believe in Meiyao's story, but the cult's. If Radiant Gold City didn't lack one thing, it was rumors about the Viridian Death Cult's insanity. How their older members, reaching the end of their lifespan, would head into the Viridian Dome, never to return. How they'd sacrifice both their own and abducted mundanes—particularly children—to the Viridian Forest.

How even other cultivators tread lightly around them, afraid of setting one of them off for disrespecting some obscure custom of theirs. Despite all of that, though, he hadn't thought it possible for an entire sect to be at the mercy of a single person's whims like that. Jieyuan frowned, turning all of what Meiyao had just said over in his head, thinking of what that could mean for him and for their current situation.

The first thing that occurred to him was that if Meiyao's family was connected to the Viridian Forest, it was far more likely that they'd somehow get involved with it. This was one of those times that Jieyuan really hated being proven right. There was something else, too. He lowered his voice, leaning in closer.

"Back in the Gleamstone Valley, didn't the nobles have orders to capture you alive? Do you think—""The cult's not involved," Meiyao cut in.

"Trust me."

"But don't they want you back?"

"Oh, they do. More than anything else. But they can't force me back, just as they couldn't force my mother. They know I won't hesitate to do the same thing she did if they try anything." She could probably tell from his expression he wasn't convinced, because she seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing, "I already did it, once. When… When my mother was … taken. When they found out, they came to the sect, trying to get me to come back with them.

I almost did, just to spite my father, but in the end, I decided to stay." Jieyuan tried to imagine what that'd have been like. An eight-year-old Meiyao, standing up to the elders from the Viridian Death Cult—probably the high priest himself—and threatening to kill herself if they took her away.

"Liangshibai Yongyi, from the Gleaming Stone Sect," one of the Radiant Gold Palace overseers below suddenly called out. Looking down, Jieyuan found that the duel in the center stage was long over, with the proctor standing in the middle of it, looking up at the viewing level. Yongyi was nearby, over to his left. The core disciple pushed off the railing, then looked over at them.

"Good luck," Jieyuan said.

"Thanks," Yongyi said. He didn't move, though, and Jieyuan realized that his friend was waiting on Meiyao. The two remained estranged. They'd been that way for a long time now, best as Jieyuan could tell, from way before they came to Radiant Gold City, and it'd only gotten worse since the chief elder's words in the Gleaming Stone Palace's underground conference room. Much as Jieyuan expected, Meiyao said nothing, but she did tip her head forward by a fraction.

For Yongyi, that seemed to be plenty, because the core disciple smiled, nodding back, before walking off, away from the railing. There was an entranceway on the wall behind them, off to the side, leading down to the lower level. Envoy Guodan, Jieyuan noticed, currently had her attention on the arena floor for once, eyes on the center stage.

The envoy had arrived just before the first duel, joining the Radiant Gold Sect's delegation, though the only one standing even remotely close to her was Sovereign Aoxin, everyone else a healthy distance from the Orangesoul. There probably wasn't anyone who'd failed to notice how Envoy Guodan's hair was now flowing down her neck, no longer bound up in a bun, or how her lips were now painted a subtle red.

Jieyuan also reckoned nobody had missed how she'd been paying far more attention to Daojue than to the fights below. Or rather, there might be one person who didn't notice any of that, Jieyuan changed his mind. And that one person would be the object of the envoy's attention, Daojue himself, who'd kept his eye on the arena floor from the moment the first duel began. Daojue was standing further over to Jieyuan's left, and much like with the envoy, a bubble of empty space surrounded him.

Probably because of how often the envoy looked that way, as nothing good could come from her attention, in most cases. Even Yunzhu wasn't sticking around him for once, instead standing with the elders, beside her mother, even if she spent most of her time staring at Daojue. Clearly, both Daojue and Envoy Guodan had their priorities straight. And it was just as clear that their priorities didn't intersect in any way. Jieyuan could've pitied the woman.

But then he'd recall how she could very well kill him with a sneeze, and he reckoned that he wasn't in any position to be pitying an Orangesoul. Yongyi appeared on the arena floor, walking toward the middle stage. From the opposite side walked out a woman from the Viridian Death Cult. They both got on the stage, and the proctor briefly went over the rules; or at least he thought that was what she was doing, as she was too far away for him to hear her words clearly. The proctor then called the match.

Both Yongyi and his opponent had their weapons out and drawn and shrouded. Both of them sword artists. Two out of three disciples were, from what Jieyuan had seen so far. The Gleaming Stone Sect, as it turned out, was an anomaly in terms of how many saber and spear users it had. Jieyuan would only need two hands to count the number of cultivators who weren't sword artists he'd seen from the other three sects, combined.

The moment the proctor stepped off the stage, the Viridian Death cultist launched herself forward—and Jieyuan knew at once she was a sixth-step. The center stage was the biggest of the five—standing on opposite ends of it had put well over two hundred feet between them—but the woman crossed that distance in moments. And then she was swinging her sword at Yongyi, swinging it hard. Yongyi parried the strike, and the next dozen ones that followed in barely the span of a breath.

The meeting of blades sounded surprisingly dull, not at all like metal striking metal, but Jieyuan was too focused on the moves themselves to dwell on that. Even space-hasting, Jieyuan had to strain to keep track of the woman's movements. The best way to describe the martial arts of the Gleaming Stone Sect would be incisive. For the most part, it boiled down to keeping on the defensive while studying the opponent's style, and then finding flaws and acting on it.

It was similar to a jeweler working on a gemstone with a chisel, targeting its flaws. The Viridian Death Cult's, by contrast, was a more wild, almost feral thing, meant to overwhelm the opponent through sheer ferocity. That made for a rather random, unpredictable style. One riddled with flaws. Flaws that Yongyi didn't hesitate to take advantage of. He endured the barrage of attacks stoically—and then struck out, once, and his blade cut a line in the woman's dark green robes.

It didn't draw blood, but he'd still accomplished more with a single move than the woman had with thirty. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. The woman leaped back by more than a dozen yards. Yongyi didn't give chase, staying put. Jieyuan had an idea of what was about to come, even if he hadn't expected it to happen this early into the duel. So far, most disciples had tried their best to win without relying on bondskills or spiritskills.

They'd be fighting further matches, and in a battle between cultivators, keeping your powers hidden was a significant advantage. The woman's body started radiating a green glow. One that Jieyuan immediately recognized. One he'd seen twice before, though it'd been a couple of shades deeper then.

Jieyuan had gotten a rundown on the signature skills of each of the province's sects, and when he'd heard of how one of the Viridian Death Cult's bondskills caused them to radiate a green glow, he'd already made the connection, but it was his first time seeing it in action, and it left little room for doubt. Just as he was about to turn to Meiyao, the spirit-shroud over the Viridian Death Cult disciple's sword came undone, falling to the floor, revealing a brown, wooden blade.

Then both the woman's gauntlets dropped to the floor, baring her hands. Why she'd done so became clear just the next moment as something brown appeared over and around the woman's arms. Squinting his eye, Jieyuan realized they were roots, extending out from the sword's hilt. The wooden sword then began to pulse, throbbing-like, before growing longer, larger.

At the same time, the green glow around the woman's body grew thicker, a deeper shade of green, closer to what Meiyao's had looked like in the Gleamstone Valley. Jieyuan blinked, and then the woman was upon Yongyi, striking at him much, much faster than before. And with much greater strength, Jieyuan suspected. Yongyi managed to parry the first couple of strikes with his sword, but each one forced him back. But then what met the woman's next strike wasn't Yongyi's sword, but a gleamstone barrier.

The woman clearly hadn't been expecting it, the sudden, hard parry throwing her off balance, and Yongyi got a stab in, his sword snapping in and out of the woman's side. That didn't seem to slow the woman in the slightest—rather, it only seemed to make her faster, her blows more frenzied. Yongyi, though, took full advantage of that. He used the very same move again, parrying a strike with a gleamstone barrier, and again that gave him an opening. Except with this one, he managed to stab the woman in the shoulder.

Yongyi could've gone for a killing blow, but murder was heavily discouraged. It'd count as a win, but there'd be severe penalties for the murderer's sect should that happen. And as it turned out, Yongyi didn't need to go that far, because he managed to repeat that another three times. Jieyuan had a suspicion that the sword's spiritskill impacted the woman's ability to reason, though he wouldn't be all that surprised if it was just the Viridian Death cultist being a Viridian Death cultist.

The woman collapsed at Yongyi's feet, multiple bloodied spots on her body. None of them lethal on their own, but if she didn't get treatment soon she might very well bleed out, even with a sixth-step's regeneration. Yongyi, for his part, looked ruffled but otherwise unharmed. And he'd pulled it off without using his new sword's spiritskill, one that Jieyuan knew could easily decide a fight. And only making use of the most basic, straightforward application of Gleaming Stone Containment, too.

The proctor called the match. Two elders from the Viridian Death Cult headed down, picked up the woman and her artifacts, and carried her away, all without a word. There was no clapping or cheering from the viewing floor, no thunderous applause. This tournament was, after all, a proxy for war, not a spectacle, and it seemed everyone here was well aware of it. As Yongyi stepped off the stage, the proctor stepped back onto the stage and called out, "Haoyujin Jieyuan, of the Gleaming Stone Sect."

—∞— Jieyuan only really got a proper sense for the size of the stages as he stepped out into the arena floor. The raised platforms were much taller than he'd thought, taller than his chest. As he stared across the floor, all the way over to the opposite side, all he could tell about the Radiant Gold Sect disciple stepping out was the color of their robes—those of a core disciple—and that it was probably a man that he was looking at.

There were ongoing duels in three of the stages, and the sounds of clashing steel rang out constantly, drowning out all other noises. As he crossed the floor, Jieyuan did his best to ignore it all, focusing on his opponent instead, recalling all the times he'd seen a Radiant Gold Sect disciple fight so far. He had a fairly good idea of what to expect. All Radiant Gold Sect disciples so far had had the same bondskill, Radiant Gold Ascension.

The sect's only other signature bondskill, Radiant Gold Transmutation, had no use in combat, even if it was arguably the more important of the two. His opponent shouldn't be any different. Radiant Gold Ascension's first form was Radiant Gold Strike, and it transformed its user's arms into brightgold while increasing their strength.

You couldn't see the transformation, given everyone wore gauntlets, but you could tell when it was being used based on how the Radiant Gold Sect disciple would start overwhelming their opponent all of a sudden. There was a downside to knowing your opponent's bondskill so easily, though. Precisely because everyone already knew what bondskill the Radiant Gold Sect disciples had (and one with a use that was straightforward as it got, at that), Radiant Gold Sect disciples had no reason to hold back on using it.

When he was about halfway to the stage, the distance shrank enough for Jieyuan to see his opponent in a little more detail. It was indeed a man, and by his waist was a sheathe that Jieyuan would bet on holding a sword. From what he'd seen, the Radiant Gold Palace's sword arts was fairly balanced between offense and defense, though it favored the former more. It was a rather rigid style, too, reminding him a little of the way Daojue fought, though not nearly to the same extent.

Something else he could count on was the core disciple's weapon being a prime artifact. One that should be roughly comparable to the offerings from the Radiant Light Atelier. Because if there was one thing the Radiant Gold Sect had, it was money. Radiant Gold Transmutation and its ability to permanently convert things into brightgold had made them unreasonably rich. Jieyuan could perfectly recall all the lessons he'd gotten on brightgold economics. Brightgold was far less valuable than mundane gold.

Mundane gold was the best inscript vessel—very few inscripts wouldn't take to it—whereas brightgold wasn't compatible with any known inscript. Brightgold couldn't be refined, either. Rather, what made brightgold special was that, despite looking like unusually shiny gold, it was actually closer to steel when it came to the properties that really mattered—hardness, strength, durability, toughness—making it just about perfect for weapons. And it could be easily mass-produced.

The user of Radiant Gold Transmutation just had to expend a little bit of chroma to transmute any material into brightgold at the same step as their own. So what the Radiant Gold Sect did was mass-produce brightgold weapons on the cheap. Brightgold artifacts lacked the convenient properties traditional artifact weapons had, like blade-sharpening, but they often cost as little as a third of a blank artifact weapon at the same step.

Reaching the raised platform in the smack center of the floor, Jieyuan vaulted himself onto it. Just beats later, the Radiant Gold Sect core disciple did the same on the opposite side. Jieyuan was too far away to tell the man's step, but it'd probably be fifth-step—or at least Jieyuan hoped so. The match-ups had supposedly been collectively agreed upon by the upper echelons of all four sects the previous day.

According to Yongyi, in these first few rounds, it was standard practice for sects to volunteer their weakest fifth-steps to fight the sixth-steps of the other sects, to ensure that their own sixth-steps would only face fifth-steps in the beginning and get a high a rank as possible. Unless they were really confident in their own sixth-step and wanted to get rid of the competition right off the bat.

Jieyuan reckoned putting up one of your top talents (even if one low in step) as a sacrificial lamb might be a bad look, though. So as long as the Gleaming Stone Sect hadn't shafted him something fierce, he wouldn't be facing a sixth-step for his first match. The proctor—a middle-aged woman, Jieyuan realized, now that he was paying attention to her—was standing in the middle of the stage. Jieyuan could feel the hundreds of gazes boring down on him from above, from all directions.

Those were overshadowed, though, by the glare of the brightgold all around. It was like the people who built the palace had taken a walk in the Gleamstone Valley and gotten the idea to replicate it while putting their spin on it. He'd have certainly liked to have a word with them, because glowing building materials were very much so not a good idea, even more so for interior work.

It didn't escape him, either, that this might have been intentional, meant to give Radiant Gold Sect disciples, who should be used to it, an edge over everyone else. At least it wasn't as bad as it could've been; he'd taken more than a couple of walks in the Gleamstone Valley himself, and was no stranger to fighting while being assaulted by lights from all directions. As the elder began reciting the rules of engagement (nothing Jieyuan didn't already know) he forced himself to focus.

He unsheathed the Shifting Sisters, spirit-shrouds fully wrapped around both the half-amphises— splitfangs —and adjusted his grip to around the middle of their shafts, the position he'd found to work best for him. He'd be keeping them in split-state, at least for the time being, as that was the form he'd gotten the most practice with. On the other side of the stage, his opponent drew out a sword. Shrouded, of course, though Jieyuan had little doubt that he'd find gold underneath it. Inscribed gold, not brightgold.

What exactly was he looking at here? An opponent at least one step above him, with a bondskill he wouldn't hesitate to use, plus a spiritskill held in reserve just in case. All right. What about me? He had Shifting Edge. The Shifting Sisters, Ruby and Sapphire. His amphis was an unusual weapon with a nifty spiritskill, sure, but one that he was far from mastering.

He'd gotten in as much practice as he could against Meiyao and Yongyi the last few days, and had also spent a significant time running simulations for it with Absolute Will Command, but he was nowhere near as skilled at wielding it as he was with a spear. He'd been focusing mostly on split-state, and so far he was treating it mostly as dual-wielding a pair of short glaives. He knew that wasn't quite the intended use for the weapon (far from it), but it was the best he could manage on such short notice.

His armor was all tenth-step, but he wasn't about to count that as an advantage. His opponent was likely to be kitted out in artifacts just as good, being a core disciple of the Radiant Gold Sect. What else? Absolute Will Command. Except he couldn't use it. Not even in a subtle way. He doubted he'd be able to get anything past the dozens of tenth-step Redsouls watching down from above, let alone the tenth-step Orangesoul.

Not to mention how his opponent would know he'd done something to them and would realize he had a bondskill. As for the Fatebloom Heart… It was just as bad. Two of its three spiritskills wouldn't be of any use. Not only did he not know how to use Fatebloom Intuition, he also wasn't clear on what Fatebloom Incarnation did, meaning it was also a no-go. Fatebloom Renewal was the only one of its powers he could use, but if he got wounded others would notice his abnormal regeneration, and that'd lead to questions.

He also didn't want to waste a Heartblood drop just like that. Jieyuan smiled ruefully. All in all, that added up to as stacked a deck as Jieyuan had played with. Stacked against him. But it wasn't hopeless. Being dealt a bad hand wasn't necessarily game over. He did have Shifting Edge's spiritskill, Ephemeral Weight Shift, which his opponent shouldn't be aware of. The core disciple would also probably be underestimating him. Though Jieyuan didn't know his opponent's step for sure, the reverse couldn't be said.

He reckoned everyone knew the basics about him, Yongyi, Meiyao, and Daojue, given their importance to the envoy. So he could probably count on being underestimated because of his lower step. And if Jieyuan did have one edge, it was that he was no slouch at fighting. He wasn't on Meiyao's level, let alone Daojue's, but he'd say he was a step above Yongyi in terms of pure skill. Yongyi, who'd just soundly beaten another sixth-step Redsoul and made it look easy.

Even though Jieyuan was still getting the hang of the amphis, he'd managed to eke out a couple of wins his last few spars against Yongyi with their steps equalized, and had come close even with Yongyi a step higher. So if he came in hard, struck fast, and caught his opponent flat-footed… It wasn't a strategy he'd be able to repeat as successfully in the next few rounds, but it might just be enough to secure him a win here. He could worry about the next duels after he got this one down. He didn't need to win.

He had no real stake in this. He'd be getting scouted regardless, and that was all that really mattered. But that was just the thing: he didn't want to get ahead just because of his heavenly affinity, something that had been beyond his control. A matter of luck. He wanted to be more than that, to prove he was more than his heavenly affinity. To everyone else and to himself. As far as he was concerned, victory was its own reward.

"… do your sects proud," the proctor said, nodding to the two of them, before raising her arm.

"BEGIN!" She jumped off the stage. Space-hasting, Jieyuan broke into a run, his mantle augmenting his legs as he pushed off against the ground. His opponent remained in place, both hands holding his sword in front of him in a defensive stance. Nearing the core disciple, close enough to reach him with his soulsenses, Jieyuan confirmed that the man was indeed at fifth-step Redrealm. And that he had a considerable height advantage over his opponent.

Then there was no more distance between them, and Jieyuan whipped both arms out, over his head and then downward, the Shifting Sisters singing as they cut through the air, coming down on his opponent's shoulders from above. The core disciple slammed his sword against both incoming blades—even as Jieyuan used Ephemeral Weight Shift on both splitfangs, tripling their weight.

The three blades met, and the core disciple grimaced, eyes slightly widened in surprise, as he shifted his weight back to steady himself, overwhelmed despite his higher step. Jieyuan wasn't faring that much better himself, his arms straining as he made sure to redirect the increased weight toward his opponent's sword. He could handle the Shifting Sisters just fine at their normal weight, but that required him to fully tap into his mantle. They were made of gold, and gold wasn't exactly known for its lightness.

Not about to give up the initiative, Jieyuan increased the weight of the right-hand Shifting Sister—Ruby—even further, sextupling it, while pulling back his left hand before sweeping Sapphire sideways at his opponent's shoulder. Even faster, though, was the fifth-step. Suddenly the force pressing up against Ruby increased explosively, pushing it back. Radiant Gold Strike, Jieyuan realized. At the same instant, the core disciple released his right hand from the handle of his sword and flung his arm out to the side.

Sapphire struck the core disciple's gauntleted right forearm. There was no give, the splitfang coming to an abrupt halt. Ruby, stalemated with the sword, fared even worse. Though he was only wielding the sword with one hand now, Jieyuan felt another explosive burst in strength coming from the sword, and Ruby was thrown back. And then the core disciple was thrusting his sword at him, at his right side, and Jieyuan only just barely managed to twist his body to the side, evading the strike.

Before his opponent could draw his sword back, Jieyuan pulled both his arms away, bringing both splitfangs back for balance, and then stepped in with his left leg, before bending his right leg up and pushing it out, slamming the sole of his greave against the core disciple's stomach. The core disciple stumbled back. There! Jieyuan pressed on. Even as his foot returned to the ground he was whipping both his arms down and forward again, both Shifting Sisters cutting downward at the man's shoulders.

Unlike the first time, the core disciple wasn't ready for it, his sword to the side, his balance destabilized by Jieyuan's kick. This was the strike that'd end the fight. Or it would've been—if both Shifting Sisters didn't veer wildly off course halfway to their target, moving as if by their own will as they dragged Jieyuan's arms down to the right and away from the core disciple's body, before crashing onto the core disciple's sword.

Instinctively, still processing what had just happened, Jieyuan tried to pull the Shifting Sisters back, but met resistance, as if they were stuck to the core disciple's sword. And then Jieyuan's gaze landed on his opponent's grim but pleased expression, and realization struck. The next moment, the force acting on the Shifting Sisters disappeared, and Jieyuan immediately pulled back.

But now it was the core disciple bearing down on him, attacking unceasingly, with Jieyuan straining to defend himself, all the while thinking furiously. Attraction. That, or some variation of magnetism. That's what his opponent's sword's spiritskill was based on. It was only the Shifting Sisters that had been pulled toward it, though, so the spiritskill either targeted only weapons, or could be used to attract a specific target. Tricky. But nothing Jieyuan couldn't work around.

And now that the core disciple had used it once, he'd be using it again. Even as he endured the onslaught, an idea came to Jieyuan, the semblance of a plan. Jieyuan was no adept at defense, but he'd faced Meiyao and Yongyi enough times to learn a few tricks and pick up on some bits and pieces of the Liangshibai style of martial arts. Blades clashing, mantle fully engaged, Jieyuan kept on defending, searching for an opening.

It came as the core disciple suddenly broke rhythm to go for a thrust, possibly to catch Jieyuan off-guard, but having the opposite effect. Jieyuan dodged with a side-step and a sideway lean, and as the sword went past the left side of his waist harmlessly, brushing the cloth of his robe, Jieyuan snapped both Shifting Sisters forward again. He'd barely begun the swing when he felt both splitfangs be pulled down and behind him, toward where the core disciple's sword was.

Unfortunately for the core disciple, that was exactly what Jieyuan had been waiting for. He increased both his weapons' weight tenfold and let go of them. The pair of them flew out, slamming down against the side of the sword so hard the core disciple lost his grip on it, and all three weapons were sent flying, spinning out in a flurry of shrouded metal. The core disciple tried to pull back and steady himself, but he hadn't been expecting this—whereas Jieyuan had planned it.

And so Jieyuan got inside his guard, punching out with his right arm. His gauntleted fist struck the core disciple's face straight in the middle, metal meeting flesh, and Jieyuan felt the crunch as the man's nose was crushed. The core disciple staggered back, but Jieyuan stepped in again, slamming his left fist into the disciple's stomach.

Even as the man was doubling over, Jieyuan grabbed onto his opponent's lowered head with both hands, bringing it down even as he kicked his metal-clad knee up, smashing it against the man's jaw. Jieyuan let go of the core disciple's head then, and the man's entire body dropped to the ground, limp, like dead weight. Knocked out cold. Breathing heavily, in part from the exertion but mostly from the rush, Jieyuan stared down at his opponent's slumped form. He dropped the hastespace.

The fire in him roared triumphantly, gloriously, and Jieyuan gave himself away to it for a moment, basking in it. He looked up at the viewing floor, but with the blood thumping in his ears and the glare of the brightgold he couldn't make out anything clearly. Then he caught movement out of the corner of his vision, and he snapped out of it. The proctor was back on the stage. She rushed over like a golden blur; she reached them in an instant and knelt down beside the fallen disciple.

She held that position for only a few seconds before she stood back up and gave Jieyuan a curt nod, looking perfectly neutral, before looking out to the second floor.

"Winner, Haoyujin Jieyuan, of the Gleaming Stone Sect," she announced, her voice resounding now, augmented. Jieyuan glanced back down at his fallen opponent. He was still riding the high, but he was starting to come down from it. He took a few deep breaths, steadying himself. The man would be fine. A concussion, a crushed nose, and a shattered jaw were nothing the right pills couldn't easily fix.

Seeing a Radiant Gold Sect elder appear on the other end of the arena floor, looking like a little golden blotch but quickly growing closer, Jieyuan turned around, and walked away, picking up the Shifting Sisters as he went and sliding them back into their sheaths. Reaching the end of the stage, he hopped down, and continued on his way to the end of the arena floor. On the wall of the arena was a large entranceway, leading to a corridor, at the end of which was the stairway leading to the upper floor.

And as he stepped into the corridor, leaving the arena floor, he saw a pair appear on the opposite side, climbing down the stairway. A woman in golden robes with a white-and-golden coat over it. And a man in the golden robes of a core disciple of the Radiant Gold Sect. Sovereign Aoxin and her nephew, Dayang.