"Combatants, from Wangjiang City, Lin Zhengli! From Sanshan City, Zhao Tiehe! Begin!"
The judge's order fell, and both men began forming hand seals at a blinding pace.
The only difference was that Lin Zhengli stood rooted in place, his expression calm, while Zhao Tiehe rushed forward as he formed his seals.
These were two utterly opposed styles colliding, and before they met, no one could say which would win.
Earth-element Dao essence gathered, and sharp spikes of stone burst up out of the soil.
An earth-spike opening — the same art Yang Xingyong had used. But where he had used it to defend, Zhao Tiehe used it to attack.
As if conjured out of thin air, a wave rose up to bear Lin Zhengli aloft, carrying him neatly past the onslaught of spikes.
This was the Surge Ride, a superior-grade D-Class Dao art, one that moved its user with water-element Dao essence.
Zhao Tiehe's mudras were already complete. Both hands lifted, and the spikes wrenched themselves free of the earth, volleying upward at Lin Zhengli in mid-air!
Unlike Yang Xingyong, who had driven his spikes with raw force for a second stage of attack, Zhao Tiehe was wholly manipulating the art itself through its second transformation — a true reinvention of the technique!
Still airborne, Lin Zhengli had already spent his Surge Ride and seemed spent of options. But his fingers, which had never truly stopped, flicked upward all at once. The wave bearing him churned violently, and a new wave rose from within it, carrying him clear of the spike-fall in the narrowest margin.
He, too, had shown a second transformation of Surge Ride!
It could be said that the battle between Zhao Tiehe and Lin Zhengli was the true face of Dao-art power clashing. And both these advanced transformations spoke to the depth of the Sanshan City Dao Academy and the Wangjiang City Dao Academy. For it is precisely such reinventions of the foundational arts that lift a whole academy's strength at the root.
Lin Zhengli dodged again and again, yet Zhao Tiehe's offense never broke. With a stamp of one foot, he launched himself clean off the ground.
Upward from below, he threw a rising uppercut — only, that fist had long since been sheathed in layer upon layer of stone. The stone-clad fist!
He had all but replicated Yang Xingyong's art, a direct answer to Lin Zhengli's earlier jibe about "weaklings picking at one another."
Lin Zhengli had not yet touched the ground, with almost no room to dodge - but his fingers flicked once more.
Within the wave, another wave was born, thrusting him clear of the blow yet again.
The triple surge!
A mere Surge Ride, a humble displacement art, had shown three transformations in a single day. If the two-stage earth spikes had pushed that technique to the very limit of the superior-grade D Class, then the triple surge had forcibly hoisted the D-Class art clean up into the C Class. This was a qualitative leap!
Zhao Tiehe's stone-clad fist missed a second time, and he had no chance to be stunned, for Lin Zhengli's counter was already upon him.
Relying on the triple surge as his hidden trump, Lin Zhengli had dodged again and again until, at last, this moment, he completed his art.
All the water-element Dao essence on the field suddenly rioted. Waters rose on every side, waves billowing. The surging flood rushed in from every direction, and Zhao Tiehe, too slow to avoid it, was caught full-body by a single wave. He was hurled backward, reeling, as if struck by a heavy fist.
Still mid-air, another wave slammed into him, sending him spinning off with a spray of blood.
Waves crashed to and fro, and Zhao Tiehe was batted about like a broken sandbag, a dull thudding following each blow.
This was a naked C-Class art — the Raging Surges!
Lin Zhengli's expression remained unruffled, all trace of his pre-battle flippancy gone, replaced by a composed mastery that had the whole field in hand. His hands flashed through their seals, and the instant the Raging Surges ended, he drew out an enormously long vine-whip and lashed it whistling through the air.
Zhao Tiehe had been almost wholly helpless within the Raging Surges, but he merely tucked his head and curled his body tight, shrinking himself to the smallest possible target.
The instant the surging ended, he unfolded, shot out one hand, and caught the whip.
Blood still trickled from his lips, his robes hung rags, and his body showed bruises and welts everywhere. But he seemed to feel no pain at all — as if every cultivator from Sanshan City shared that same ferocious grit. Gripping the whip, he heaved, meaning to haul Lin Zhengli clear up to him!
But Lin Zhengli's hand let go, and the whip suddenly whipped about, coiling over Zhao Tiehe's whole body like a living snake and binding him fast.
It turned out the art Lin Zhengli had just used was not the mid-grade D-Class Green Vine Whip at all, but the superior-grade D-Class Entangling Vine!
He had cast the Entangling Vine yet held off binding his foe with it, disguising it as a Green Vine Whip purely to coax Zhao Tiehe into seizing it — and so bind him up flawlessly.
From the very start of this battle to now, every single step Zhao Tiehe took had landed inside the net of Lin Zhengli's cunning. And by that logic, even the very words Lin Zhengli had spoken before the fight might well have been laid as groundwork.
At this point, Lin Zhengli was free to gather in his victory.
He completed his mudra at his ease — this time genuinely drawing out the Green Vine Whip to lash the bound opponent with all his strength.
But the Entangling Vine about Zhao Tiehe suddenly burst apart. Zhao Tiehe rolled flat upon the ground, dodging that unsparing stroke.
Only now did the crowd notice the blood tracing down Zhao Tiehe's body, and the dense criss-cross of gashes upon him. On the ground, the scattered rubble was all mixed in with the severed vines.
It turned out Zhao Tiehe had cloaked himself in a suit of stone armor the moment the Raging Surges ended. Lin Zhengli may not have noticed, or may have noticed and not cared.
For the Stone Armor art only added defense; it offered nothing for breaking free of the Entangling Vine.
But the stone armor burst open.
In that instant it tore Zhao Tiehe's very skin apart, and blew the vines binding him clean away as well.
The sight was so brutal that many could not bear to watch. Ling He even reached out to cover Jiang An'an's eyes.
And Zhao Tiehe, dragging that blood-soaked body of his, charged at Lin Zhengli once more.
No one knew why he would not give up, why he kept on fighting.
Was this not only a Dao debate fight?
It was not the commandery academy exam in the eleventh lunar month — it touched on no future prospects whatsoever!
This was a fight of first-years, and all the other competing cultivators were watching from off the field.
Sun Xiaoman's eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the arena.
Lin Zhengren turned his head toward her. "At this point, does she still need to fight on, Miss Xiaoman? People will die."
"Whether it's his life or his honor, I have no way to decide for him." The little barefoot girl, who looked so very small, did not even turn her head.
"Crack!"
This time, Zhao Tiehe could not dodge the whip.
A deep gash opened, the skin split wide.
But it seemed he had no mind to dodge at all. Seizing the moment the whip withdrew, he caught its tip in one hand — then spun his whole body, winding the Green Vine Whip about himself.
He hauled on that whip and walked toward Lin Zhengli. Stone gathered slowly about his fist, far slower than before, but it was still that same stone-clad fist.
Lin Zhengli had no choice but to release the whip his art had conjured. He bounded backward, retreating and calling at once: "Surrender! Fight on like this and you'll truly die!"
"Surrender?" Zhao Tiehe looked at Lin Zhengli, the smile creeping ever wider across his lips. "We folk of Sanshan City — can't be looked down on so flat as that!"
He surged forward a few paces and slammed down with the stone-clad fist!
Boom!
Lin Zhengli leapt clear of his ground, and the stone fist smashed into the earth, gouging out a deep pit.
"Looking to die!" Mid-air, Lin Zhengli's hands were already flashing through their seals. He did not wish to admit that fear had begun to stir in him over this fight, but he had resolved to use a harsher art — even if it could not be controlled, even if... it killed his opponent.
The art was half-formed when he touched down. The timing was so perfect he almost admired himself for it.
But there was, on the ground, a pit he had no idea why or when had appeared.
It was a trap Zhao Tiehe had set long before — earth-essence guided, ground caving inward: the humblest art imaginable, a lower-grade D-Class whose name was literally Pitfall.
And it fell so perfectly in its moment.
Lin Zhengli twisted his ankle, his whole stance collapsed, and the art he had prepared scattered to nothing. Even though he wrenched his body aside at once and did not fall flat, he still stumbled.
And Zhao Tiehe, like a beast set loose, hurled himself upon him, bearing him down, pinning him hard to the ground.
The two were so close that any art beyond a spontaneous blast was meaningless.
Thud!
That was a fist cracking against a face.
"Me, I'm no mountain savage!"
Thud! Thud!
"Me, I'm — a cultivator of Qinghe Commandery, Zhuang Kingdom! Sanshan City! Zhao, Tie, He!"
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Zhao Tiehe punched, one fist after another.
Off the field, Lin Zhengren's eyelids jumped again and again, as if every one of those blows was landing on his own face.
"Concede!" he shouted.