Chương 102: 101. A Calculated Fall To Shake the Mountain’s Foundation

Ling'er looks toward the platform. I send the next words through sound transmission.

'Be careful. You do not need to prove anything here. The last thing we want is attention on you.' She turns back to me. Her expression carries its usual seriousness. She bows with perfect form.

"Yes, Sect Leader." Then her voice reaches me privately.

'Do not worry. I will use nothing beyond Qi Condensation. I will appear unusually talented and nothing more.' The words should reassure me, but they don't. There is something in the way she phrases the promise that makes my stomach tighten. I cannot identify exactly what is wrong, only that it reminds me of just days ago. Village Head Guo calls the fourth representatives.

"Qiao Ren of Stone River Sect." The Ninth Stage disciple steps onto the platform.

"Ling'er of Coiling Dragon Sect." I consider stopping her. I should ask what she means. I should make the instruction more precise before she discovers another interpretation that technically obeys every word while ruining my evening. Ling'er has already turned away. She walks onto the platform and Qiao Ren looks at her in open disbelief. The crowd responds much the same way. Seeing a child stand across from an adult Ninth Stage cultivator makes the disparity almost comical. Whispers move through the square.

"How old is she?"

"Stone River agreed to this?" Qiao Ren hears them. The uncertainty on his face gives way to embarrassment as more attention settles upon him. Whatever confidence he carried onto the platform is now complicated by the fact that victory is expected and anything less than an easy one will reflect poorly on him. He draws himself upright.

"I will not hold back merely because you are young." Ling'er says nothing. She settles into a simple stance, one foot slightly behind the other and both hands raised loosely before her. Village Head Guo looks between them and lowers his hand.

"Begin." Ling'er moves first, though not with anything approaching her real speed. Qiao Ren is visibly faster than her. His steps cover more distance, the qi gathered around his limbs is denser, and every committed strike carries the physical advantage of several additional stages of cultivation. Ling'er keeps herself entirely within the limits she promised.

Nothing she does requires more strength or speed than an unusually gifted Qi Condensation cultivator might possess, and the techniques she chooses are simple enough that even the less experienced spectators can understand them. What they cannot easily imitate is her precision. He stamps one foot and raises a wall between them. Before the earth can fully gather, thin roots spread through the platform and enter the forming structure from below.

They separate the packed soil at several points, causing cracks to spread through the wall before it can stabilize. Ling'er passes through the opening without slowing. He turns and raises a second wall beside her, intending to close the path toward his exposed flank. A wooden branch sprouts from its base and presses against the structure at an angle. The wall tilts only a few degrees, but that is enough to leave a gap where there should have been none.

Ling'er slips through it and reaches Qiao Ren before he can complete his next technique. I understand her choice immediately.

'Wood overcomes earth.' The elemental relationship gives everyone watching a straightforward explanation for what they are seeing. Ling'er does not appear impossibly powerful. She appears to be an exceptionally talented child using a favorable element with a level of control far beyond her age. Qiao Ren raises barriers, and she weakens their foundations. He shifts the ground beneath her feet, and roots spread through the loose earth to hold the surface together.

When he attempts to trap her inside one of Stone River's narrow corridors, vines curl around his ankles and force him to divide his attention before the walls can close. Unlike Wei Chen, she never tries to break through the terrain directly. She allows Qiao Ren to spend qi constructing it, then alters one small part and moves through the weakness he has created. Every time he commits himself to shaping the platform, she crosses the distance left open elsewhere.

Her fist touches his ribs before he can lower his elbow. A kick lands behind his knee as he tries to reset his stance. When he raises one arm to direct another wall, two fingers strike the inside of his elbow and interrupt the flow of qi before the technique can form.

"Grah!" Qiao Ren turns with a wild punch, but Ling'er has already lowered herself beneath it. His fist passes through the space above her head while she steps inside his reach and strikes him once beneath the sternum. The blow is not strong enough to cause serious injury, but it forces him back several steps and breaks the rhythm of his breathing. Around the square, the attention of the crowd begins to change. The merchants are no longer watching only to see which sect wins the wager.

Several lean toward one another while their eyes move between Ling'er and the disciples seated behind me. Mei Lin fought through water. Wei Chen used fire and body reinforcement. Ling'er is now displaying wood techniques. Stone River's disciples all develop from the same central inheritance, adjusting the balance between earth, water, terrain control, and close combat.

Coiling Dragon has placed three entirely different elemental styles before the crowd and shown that each disciple has been trained according to his or her own strengths. Guo Jian has noticed as well. He remains beside his disciples with both hands held behind his back, but the controlled posture no longer conceals his displeasure. The stone beneath one foot cracks as Ling'er dismantles another wall before it can rise. Qiao Ren hears the sound.

He glances toward his sect leader, and the frustration already visible in his face deepens. Until now, he has tried to establish the terrain before committing to an exchange. He abandons that patience and begins forcing his way closer, accepting Ling'er's smaller strikes in the belief that his superior body can endure them long enough for him to land something decisive. The judgment is not entirely wrong. He is stronger, faster, and possesses far more qi than she is allowing herself to display.

None of Ling'er's blows causes enough damage to end the match. The problem is that she never gives him the clean exchange he needs. Her smaller frame passes beneath his arms and around the edges of his stance. Vines tighten around one ankle just long enough to spoil a charge. Roots lift beneath his heel and alter his balance by a fraction. Whenever he corrects for one interference, she is already attacking from the opening created by the adjustment. The damage accumulates gradually. One cheek begins to swell.

His stance loses some of its stability, and his breathing grows rougher each time Ling'er interrupts it. She remains almost untouched. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. The knot in my stomach disappears and I breathe a sigh of relief. The crowd can see the disparity in cultivation. They can also see that Stone River's Ninth Stage disciple has been unable to impose himself upon a child using basic elemental counters.

Qiao Ren raises another series of walls in quick succession. Branches push through the forming earth before the structures can close. One wall leans inward, while another splits near its base and collapses across the route he intended to use. Ling'er steps between them and kicks a loose stone toward his ankle. The stone is not powerful enough to injure him, but it moves quickly enough that he has to lift his foot and turn away. When he settles back into his stance, Ling'er is already within reach.

Her fist lands squarely against his cheek. His head turns with the impact, but he remains upright. Ling'er appears to have held back too much. Qiao Ren forces himself through the blow before she can withdraw. Anger and embarrassment have stripped away the last of his caution, and he pours everything he has been unable to use throughout the match into the counterattack. Ling'er raises both arms to guard. His fist strikes them with enough force to lift her from the platform.

I watch her travel backward across the boundary and land flat on her back upon the stones outside it. For several breaths, I cannot make sense of what I have seen. Ling'er is lying outside the platform. Qiao Ren is still standing inside it. I rub my eyes and look again, but nothing changes. It occurs to me that the Foundation Establishment pill may have caused some hidden spiritual deviation during the breakthrough.

Repeated blows to the head during the following days of training may also have produced consequences that neither Ling'er nor I noticed. There are several possible explanations. Ling'er losing a Qi Condensation match is not one of them. I turn the Gaze inward. It is blunt and concise. Verdict: You are not hallucinating. Village Head Guo appears nearly as confused as I am. He looks toward Ling'er, then checks the boundary beneath her before turning back to Qiao Ren.

"The fourth match is awarded to Stone River Sect!" The Stone River delegation reacts with relief. Several disciples exhale at once. One of them begins clapping and for a brief moment their side of the square sounds almost celebratory. It takes nearly all of my willpower not to sink to my knees.

'This is not a dream.' Reality has apparently decided to continue functioning while ignoring one of the most reliable principles upon which I have built my understanding of the world. The sky is blue. Grass is green. Ling'er does not lose to someone who is not at least one or two realms above her. Even then, I would still reserve judgment. Wei Chen stares at the platform with his mouth half-open.

"How?" Jun says nothing. Mei Lin has forgotten her injuries. Their disbelief is understandable, but mine is worse. I have watched Ling'er kill a seasoned Foundation Establishment cultivator before he understood he was dead. The girl brushing dust from her robes cannot be the same one who just lost to a clumsy Ninth Stage disciple. The crowd doesn't react as though it has witnessed a convincing victory. The initial noise fades into uncertain murmuring.

Qiao Ren remains on the platform with one cheek swollen, his stance damaged, and his breathing rough enough to be visible from where I stand. Ling'er rises beyond the boundary without any obvious injury and brushes dust from the back of her robes. The image favors us even though the result does not.

"She couldn't have been older than twelve."

"And it still took a Ninth Stage disciple to push her off the platform. Look at him! He's all battered while she's barely got a scuff on her robes."

"How many inheritances does that sect even have?" A few claim that sending someone so young into the wager only proves Coiling Dragon's irresponsibility, but those voices are quickly drowned beneath arguments about her control, her elemental choice, and how easily basic wood techniques exposed weaknesses in Stone River's earth methods. Even through the haze of my disbelief, I understand what they are seeing. I simply do not care. The score is two to two.

The victory I considered guaranteed has vanished, and the sect-leader match is now unavoidable. Ling'er returns to our side of the square. She stops in front of me and bows.

"I apologize, Sect Leader. I tried my best." She looks barely touched. I stare at her. There is no need to use the Gaze. I do not need to reconstruct the angle of the blow or consider whether her guard failed.

'You lost deliberately.' Something inside me moves dangerously close to qi deviation. Anger arrives first, followed immediately by betrayal and then by the particular frustration produced when Ling'er has done something technically obedient and catastrophically unreasonable. I send the words through sound transmission because speaking aloud would require more control than I currently possess. Ling'er maintains the same apologetic expression.

'I remained within the limits Master gave me.'

'I told you to win.'

'Master told me to be careful.' The answer carries the same precise obedience that haunted the previous week. For one irrational moment, I wonder whether she is still angry about the pill. Perhaps this is delayed revenge. Perhaps she decided that rearranging the mountain was insufficient and that forcing me into a public fight with an Eighth Stage sect leader would communicate her displeasure more clearly. Village Head Guo begins announcing the deciding match before I can continue.

Across the square, Guo Jian does not appear satisfied by the fourth victory. He says something to Qiao Ren and the other Stone River disciples in a low voice. I cannot hear the words from this distance, but each disciple lowers his head before Guo Jian turns away. Then he removes his outer robe. The body beneath it is broad and dense, reinforced by decades of cultivation. His shoulders and arms belong to a man far younger than sixty-seven.

Old scars cross his chest and ribs, while the musculature around his joints has the compact thickness of stone. My stomach turns. Ling'er's voice reaches me again.

'I did not risk the sect, Master. Please believe in your skills. He possesses more qi, but he is not better prepared.' I look at her. Ling'er continues before I can answer.

'The others have already shown them that our generation will surpass Stone River. If I defeated their Ninth Stage disciple, people would remember me. If Master defeats their Sect Leader, they will remember Coiling Dragon.' Her gaze moves toward the crowd. In the middle of my panic, I begin noticing what she means. Qiao Ren's victory has not restored anyone's confidence in Stone River. Merchants are still pointing toward Ling'er.

Several cultivators are discussing how basic wood techniques dismantled the sect's standard earth methods. Qiao Ren has won the match, but he looks more humiliated than triumphant. She gives me one last assurance as Guo calls my name.

'He is a large fish who has spent years ruling a small pond. Master has seen the ocean again and again. When you defeat him, they will understand that Coiling Dragon is not merely fortunate enough to possess talented disciples. They will understand why those disciples chose to follow you.' I look toward Guo Jian. Celestial Jade City comes to mind first, followed by Hollow Scale, Ling'er, and every enemy, genius, or impossible standard that has forced me to confront how small I remain.

Guo Jian is two stages above me. He is stronger, more experienced, and supported by an inheritance built for the kind of match about to take place. I step onto the platform. The atmosphere changes when sect leaders face one another. The disciple matches carried excitement, surprise, and the noise of people enjoying an upset. This match decides the public hierarchy between two regional sects. Guo Jian studies me without any of the uncertainty his disciples showed.

His expression suggests that the wager has finally reached the part Stone River cannot lose. A sound transmission reaches me.' This farce has lasted long enough,'Guo Jian says.' It is time for Coiling Dragon to learn its place. I have led Stone River since before your predecessor held your position.' I meet his gaze. For all the discomfort twisting inside me, the training remains. I settle into a stance. Village Head Guo steps between us and repeats the restrictions for the deciding match.

"Weapons are prohibited. Elemental manifestations beyond direct reinforcement are prohibited. Formation tools are prohibited. The match will be decided through body techniques, qi reinforcement, surrender, inability to continue, or leaving the platform." Guo Jian accepts and I do the same. Village Head Guo withdraws to a safe distance, then he lowers his hand.

"Begin."