Chapter 336: If All Else

~~~

Two Heaven Realm cultivators stand in the ring.

It is not the first time such has happened in the history of the tournament, but the arena explodes with applause and cheers all the same. The people chant Xiao Shuang’s name without end, while others call for the Young Dragon’s victory. Regardless of their skill, everyone instinctively understands that this is no ordinary battle. If they were to miss this, they surely would regret it for the rest of their lives!

Surrounded by such fervor, Feng Zhi stands up and leaves.

“Don’t bother going after him,” Lady Ling calls out in a bored tone when Feng Zhuo turns in the direction Feng Zhi went. “No doubt he resents being surpassed so utterly.”

“There was no need to voice that thought,” Lady Feng says, glaring at her out of the corner of her eye.

“Enjoyment is all the motive one needs,” Lady Ling notes, smirking. “Of course, I don’t suppose you know much about–”

“Why fight today?!” Feng Zhuo interrupts with a smile that is only slightly forced. Ever the family’s peacemaker, that one. “Especially when such an excellent battle is already happening in front of us!”

He keeps speaking after that, but Lady Ling stops paying attention. She looks at her husband. Her darling Gui has his eyes on the ring and nowhere else. If his gaze starts to wander, she has at least ten ways to distract him. That will have to be enough.

Unfortunately, it is all up to that brat Feng Zhi now.

~~~

Feng Hao’s seals need to be reapplied.

His mother demanded it early in the morning, arguing that it has been a while since they were placed and that all the energy in the arena might destabilize them if proper measures were not taken. Feng Hao protested fiercely, but his protests went unheard, as they often are, and his father sided with his mother as he often does.

Feng Hao is pretty sure he does it just to avoid arguing with her.

“Are we not done yet?” Feng Hao asks impatiently. “The fight’s already begun!”

He can feel it even from here. Elder Brother broke into the Heaven Realm, and he wasn’t there to see it! Feng Hao will never forgive himself if he misses more of this fight than he already has!

“Patience, Young Master,” says one of the attendants applying the seals on his skin. “We’re nearly done already. Just half an hour more will do.”

“Half an hour?!” yells Feng Hao.

“Do not move,” the attendant chides him. “This is a delicate art. It requires precision. Trust me when I say you do not want any mistakes made. The new seals need to be applied, then the old ones can be removed safely. Only then can the real binding begin. Just be patient, Young Master. Empty your mind and-”

The man falls over unconscious. So do the rest of the attendants around him.

Feng Hao blinks. Feng Zhi is suddenly in the room, standing over all the unconscious men in a way that leaves little doubt as to the cause for their flight from consciousness.

“Brother?” Feng Hao asks, blinking.

“There is no time to explain,” Feng Zhi says. “We’re leaving the city right now.”

Feng Hao blinks once more.

“What?”

By the time the word leaves his lips, Feng Zhi has already hauled him over his shoulder and taken off.

~~~

Xiao Shuang is unharmed.

Her clothes are a little damaged, including the veil over her face. A single tear in the fabric reveals a bright blue eye glaring fiercely at him. However, all those things are superficial. Liu Jin cannot detect any injury on her body. Her Qi burns just as strongly as it did before the attack hit her.

That doesn’t make any sense.

Tribulation lightning is dangerous no matter what. Even if Xiao Shuang is on the Third Level of the Heaven Realm, such a concentrated attack should have hurt her.

“Is it really that surprising, husband?” Xiao Shuang asks, easily guessing his thoughts.

“Very,” Liu Jin replies. “Are you going to tell me your cultivation is actually higher than the Third Level of the Heaven Realm?”

“No,” Xiao Shuang says, “and I am also not so reckless as to undergo a breakthrough in the middle of a battle.”

“It was a calculated risk,” Liu Jin defends himself.

“Your calculations leave much to be desired,” Xiao Shuang says coldly. “However, if you really wish to know, I have no issue explaining. Once upon a time, my master mistook the nature of her Dao. She sought to immerse herself in stillness, a wasted effort for anyone else, but my master is undeniably brilliant.”

In the highest seats, Meng Yue smiles, happy to be praised by her disciple. Meanwhile, Liu Jin mulls over Xiao Shuang’s words. What could stillness have to do with the lack of damage done to her?

“You froze yourself,” Liu Jin realizes.

Xiao Shuang nods, and it is only then that Liu Jin realizes her movements are a little stiffer than they should be.

“In her pursuit, my master created a technique that imposes a state of perfect stillness on the target, [Everfrozen Age],” Xiao Shuang tells him. “It is borderline impossible to use on someone else. Even using it on oneself is exceedingly difficult, but the results are worth it.”

A state of stillness. In other words, an unchanging state.

Right before the attack hit, Xiao Shuang used the technique on herself. The lightning had not done as much damage as it should have because Xiao Shuang’s body had been in a fixed state. It could not be changed, so it could not be damaged.

A smile tugs at Liu Jin’s lips.

“You are amazing,” Liu Jin tells her. A slight blush appears on Xiao Shuang’s cheeks. “Am I correct in assuming you cannot do it freely?”

He gave her too much time before attacking, and he had not been able to follow up the attack properly because his body was still acclimating to the Heaven Realm.

That should not be an issue anymore.

“Have I given you enough time to prepare yourself, husband?” Xiao Shuang asks instead of answering his question.

As expected, she noticed he needed a little more time to properly harness his increased Qi, but Liu Jin doubts it is simply mercy that made her play along. Most likely, she was still unfreezing herself from her own technique.

“I am glad to have such a courteous foe,” he says.

“I can afford to be courteous, husband. More importantly, I must be,” Xiao Shuang says, her Qi rising. “I’ll prove it here. You believe your strength is enough. I will show you it is not.”

Even with all he has done, Xiao Shuang’s cultivation is higher. An advantage of two levels in the Heaven Realm is no simple matter.

Nevertheless, Liu Jin readies himself.

“Let’s test that theory,” he says.

His body glows with purple lightning as he charges straight at Xiao Shuang. The girl meets him with a blast of ice, but Liu Jin simply breaks through it, his lightning shining brighter as he compresses the Qi around his body.

Xiao Shuang flies up.

Liu Jin follows.

Natural. That is how Yong Zhunyi and the others described the flight of the Heaven Realm. Now that he has achieved it, Liu Jin has to agree. It does not feel like a skill he needs to master, but rather something that should have been his from the start. He instinctively understands how to move, soaring past Xiao Shuang and tossing a lightning spear at her from above.

Ice rises to block it. At the same time, a bitter cold falls over the ring, followed by a shower of sharpened hail. A snake construct forms around Liu Jin’s body before the hail can touch him. White mist flows out from the snake’s mouth, melting everything it touches.

Xiao Shuang immediately recognizes the mist as poison. In a burst of speed, she flies back to the ground to get some distance and brings her hands together, encasing the white mist in ice.

A snake rises under her.

A spike of ice destroys it before its fangs can bite her ankle, yet the suddenness of it makes her let her guard down for an instant too long.

[Art of the Roaming Thief]

Liu Jin appears right behind her, a spear of lightning shining in his hand. Xiao Shuang barely turns around in time to dodge, yet not completely. The spear grazes her, making her grit her teeth as the lightning courses through her body. A space of cold manifests around her, forcing Liu Jin back before he can press his advantage and giving her regeneration time to work. Still, she eyes Liu Jin warily, trying to understand how he got that close without her noticing him.

“There is no trick to it,” Liu Jin says, assuming a fighting stance once more. “You may be able to sense me with your Sight, but if I force your focus elsewhere, you can still be caught by surprise. This is simply the difference in our experience.”

“Do you believe your training has been greater than mine?” Xiao Shuang asks.

“I have no doubts that Lady Meng Yue’s training has been superlative,” Liu Jin says, “But you are lacking in actual battle experience against other cultivators, are you not?”

Xiao Shuang does not answer, but she does not need to. Liu Jin realized it a long time ago. Whenever Xiao Shuang talked about her training with Lady Meng Yue, it always involved her being put up against wild Spirit Beasts or harsh environments.

Never other humans.

It could not be any other way. Exposing Xiao Shuang to too many people risked spreading the knowledge of her Body of Extreme Yin before she could adequately protect herself. While Xiao Shuang must have sparred against her fellow disciples multiple times, a spar is no substitute for a real battle, especially when so many of the spars must have been against disciples either weaker than her or so strong that they did not dare to use their full power on her.

It cannot be compared to the experience of the likes of Lu Mei and Fan Bingbing, who were forged by fighting for their lives in the Dead Plains and the Storm Dragon Empire. Liu Jin noticed it clearly when Xiao Shuang fought against them. Despite being far stronger, Xiao Shuang found it difficult to fight them, not merely because of her mental state but because she lacked experience in how much or how little strength to use against an inferior foe who would not surrender.

Put bluntly, her sense for battle is unrefined.

Liu Jin’s, though it shames him to admit it, is not.

Multiple snakes burst from the ring to attack Xiao Shuang, who counters by freezing them all in place. However, that is exactly what Liu Jin expected. A wave of purple lightning crashes down. Xiao Shuang easily dodges, letting it hit the ring.

The ice breaks.

The snakes advance.

She flies up, but this time, the snakes can follow after her. A frown mars Xiao Shuang’s face as she is forced to exert more power to fully destroy the constructs. As she and Liu Jin clash in the air with ice and lightning, her mind goes over their past few exchanges, and one particular detail starts taking prominence over the others.

She has always been the one exerting more energy.

“I begin to understand what you mean,” Xiao Shuang says. “All your reckless adventures have given you experience. Compared to you, I am a hatchling.”

“But that is not enough to convince you, is it?” Liu Jin guesses.

Xiao Shuang shakes her head.

“It is enough to make me understand how seriously I must take this,” she says as her Qi rises higher, making the entire arena tremble under her power. Every single one of Liu Jin’s instincts suddenly screams at him.

[Opening of the Blue Lotus]

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A strike of white that immediately ends the fight and leaves nothing but ice and snow behind. That is how Liu Jin perceived Xiao Shuang’s technique the previous times she used it. Though he tried to analyze it, his cultivation was not enough to grasp it. It was always too quick and sudden.

That is no longer the case.

He can sense as Xiao Shuang’s Qi molds the technique, and he can see it as it speeds towards him. Pure Yin. That is what Xiao Shuang’s Qi has become, and that is what [Opening of the Blue Lotus] is. Pure, overpowering Yin Qi that imposes its will on everything it touches.

In a way, it is almost similar to Su Daji’s fox fire, but the magnitude and effects are overwhelmingly different. The sudden annihilation of any Yang Qi in the technique’s path is most likely what causes the true damage. The ice and snow are mere after effects. Considering Liu Jin is male, the technique will have a greater effect on him than it did on Lu Mei and Fan Bingbing.

[Nine-Branch Barrier]

Nine snake constructs manifest around Liu Jin and surround him in concentric circles. Pure poison Qi glows in their bodies, melting anything that comes into contact with them.

Xiao Shuang’s attack hits.

The first, second, and third snakes are instantly obliterated.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth freeze and crack before breaking. The poison Qi lingers before becoming unstable and fading away.

The seventh holds for a little while but turns brittle and shatters. The eight puts up a valiant fight yet falters in the end.

However, the last barrier holds.

Its power was not particularly greater than the ones before it. Xiao Shuang’s technique simply could not maintain its level of force. The girl stares at him across a field of white. The move that defeated all her previous foes has failed to work on Liu Jin.

She does not look bothered.

“The [Opening of the Blue Lotus] is not meant to be a finishing strike,” Xiao Shuang says as her Qi spreads over the ring. “It is simply a sign of my inexperience that I require it to achieve the correct state.”

The noise has stopped.

The crowd cannot have possibly stopped cheering, yet Liu Jin cannot hear them anymore. Even the sound of the snow crunching under his feet has gone away. The silence on the ring is the quiet of the morning after the first snow of the year, when all the animals have fled into their holes, and the people are wrapped in blankets and huddled together for warmth.

Xiao Shuang stands in the center of it all, her aura brimming with glacial cold. A single blue light shines like a sapphire on her forehead. Unlike the previous times she used the technique, her Qi has yet to return to a normal state. Several people in the audience finally notice what others knew from the moment they saw Xiao Shuang.

She has a Body of Extreme Yin.

A winter storm is unleashed in the ring.

~~~

“It is not often you see a Body of Extreme Yin,” Feng Zhuo says, looking down at the ring. “Very impressive.”

“Do not pretend as though you hadn’t noticed already,” Elder Xue chides him. “That’s far from the most important thing happening right now. The girl has unleashed her Dao.”

Elder Xue’s gaze shifts to Lord Feng Shang and Lord Feng Gui as she speaks. Both men are utterly silent as they watch the fight. As always, it is troubling when the two act alike. It is not just the girl they have their eyes on. Young Qing Jin also commands much of their attention.

The Crimson Cloud Tournament is always a gathering of the strongest talents of the youngest generation. However, that does not mean as much as people think it does. Success in the Crimson Cloud Tournament does not always equate with success in life. There are several great talents who failed to live up to the expectations placed on them.

A brilliant child becomes an ordinary adult. Such things happen often.

However, that’s not what is unfolding in front of them. Certainly, this tournament has been full of incredible talents, yet Young Qing Jin and Xiao Shuang are both superlative. Calling them merely promising would be an insult. Rather, they are people who will undoubtedly become their peers sooner rather than later.

As long as nothing interferes with their growth, that is.

Elder Xue, like many others, remembers Qing Jin’s Dao. As impressive as Xiao Shuang is, there are many in the audience who are waiting to see what will happen once Qing Jin calls upon his Dao once more. Elder Xue cannot say she is much different in that regard. However, more than curiosity…