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2.45 - Final Round
🕑 Added 2024-04-04 22:00:01 +0000 UTCWhen they took the stage on the final day of the tournament, the only acknowledgment of their conversation that Tan Xiaoling gave was a brief nod. She had to know that he wouldn’t concede the match. When she saluted him, the only words she had were, “It will be an honor to exchange pointers, Sect Brother He.” While Tan Xiaoling’s features were hard, he could hear the sincerity in her words.
“Likewise, Princess Tan.” It was the least he could do, to show her proper respect.
Although He Yu had felt Tan Xiaoling’s presence through the formation barrier in the previous matches, facing down the full power of her spirit was a different thing altogether. Before the crash of the gong had faded away, the arena was consumed by howling winds bearing thousands of razor-sharp shards of metal and sand.
Li Heng had told him what being in Tan Xiaoling’s sandstorm was like, but it did nothing to prepare him for the experience. Dozens of tiny cuts opened on his skin every second, and his body naturally began its healing process, bleeding a fraction of his qi reserves to do so.
Regardless of any other factors of strength, technique, cultivation base—anything—that alone put the match on a countdown. She could simply hide and wait for him to run out of qi if she wanted. Or at the very least wait until he was too weak to fight back properly.
Li Heng had said he always had the option of blocking his own body’s healing, however. That would conserve the qi, but then the sandstorm would tear him to shreds. He could only imagine what a technique like this would do to someone still in at the Foundation stage. They’d be helpless in the time it would take to draw only a few breaths.
Of course, that was just the effect of her technique. The weight of her presence was similarly overbearing. The sensations He Yu had felt back when he’d first encountered her spirit were still there, just amplified and made more complete. Tan Xiaoling was like a desert—sun-scorched dunes and shimmering heat. Her spirit sapped the strength of all who entered, and her sandstorm stripped flesh away from bone. Hanging over it all was the sharp edge of her killing intent, like a knife pressed to He Yu’s throat.
Heat from fire, sharpness from metal, and wind to carry the storm—that was He Yu’s path. Tan Xiaoling used wind in much the same way he used heaven. While wind may be the driving force behind her technique, it wasn’t the core of it. Her cultivation base was primarily metal in its aspect.
He Yu activated the Bracing Wind. The sandstorm blasted away from him, and for an instant, he was in a pocket of clear air. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up long though—the techniques of the Five Crescent Winds weren’t made to be sustained. The storm was thick all around him and impossible to see through. All he knew was that somewhere close by, Tan Xiaoling stalked him. He cast out his perception, aided by the Peerless Judgment.
He Yu saw nothing. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. The Peerless Judgment had never failed him before, and he’d come to rely on it as a result. Now he was as functionally blind as anyone else.
A spike of danger caused him to turn. Tan Xiaoling burst from the storm just as the Bracing Wind collapsed back in on itself. She carried a bubble of calm with her—an oasis at the center of her desert. Amid the dense foliage of that oasis stalked a tiger.
Flames licked the edges of Tan Xiaoling’s paired dao sabers, and as she emerged the sense of danger that followed her everywhere became a nearly physical weight pressing down on He Yu. It was only thanks to the speed granted by the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering that he managed to bring his guandao up in time.
Li Heng had always said Tan Xiaoling was strong. He Yu had assumed he meant in spirit more than anything else. Her presence had already been well-formed while she was still at the peak of Foundation, after all. He Yu had likewise used Sha Xiang as his measure of physical strength, especially after being on the receiving end of her fists. Strong almost seemed to be an insult when applied to Tan Xiaoling, given how woefully inadequate it was as a descriptor.
The paired dao came down onto the metal haft of He Yu’s guandao with a force like a collapsing mountain. The attack drove him to the ground and pushed him to one knee. It was all he could do to pour qi into the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering, just so that his defense didn’t completely collapse under the weight of her blow. The shock from the impact made his arms go numb, and the explosion of qi had left a spider’s web of cracks in the stones beneath him.
Tan Xiaoling’s foot slammed into him, sending him sailing across the arena. He Yu crashed into the formation barrier at the boundary before he could right himself with his movement technique. Before he’d even hit the ground, Tan Xiaoling was on him again. Her sabers flashed, this time heavy with killing intent.
He Yu pushed all the qi he could through his meridians, activating the Sky Dragon’s Flight in an uncontrolled burst of wind qi. He had no thought other than to get away from this monster bearing down on him.
Once more he was engulfed by the mass of wind and sand. Although he had to bleed yet more qi to heal the constant barrage of tiny razor shards, at least he was away from Tan Xiaoling for the moment. He knew he had only an instant before she was on him again. Li Heng had mentioned that her sight didn’t seem to be impaired by the storm, and there was some truth to that. She’d found him easily enough, after all. But she also carried a pocket of calm with her.
That familiar sense of danger spiked again, and an instant later Tan Xiaoling emerged from the storm. Rather than defend, He Yu ran.
He shot off into the storm again—he needed a moment, an instant, just to think. There had to be something.
Tan Xiaoling followed. It didn’t seem to matter that he could use the Sky Dragon’s Flight and its control of wind qi to somewhat protect himself from the sand. It wasn’t as effective as the Bracing Wind had been, but it was more sustainable so long as he kept moving.
Even with his own little pocket of clear air, Tan Xiaoling seemed to be able to track him just as well as if he left himself exposed. He supposed that he could always just keep running, but he had no doubt that he’d run out of qi long before she did. Besides, he wasn’t that much faster than she was. He could be certain that she’d adjust quickly enough and catch him anyway.
When she burst from the sand the next time, and very nearly took off his head, he knew that he wouldn’t get another chance. Running would only delay the inevitable. This time he kept moving, burning more qi than he would have if he’d just stayed in the storm, but at least this way he wouldn’t be caught out so easily. As he darted around within the sandstorm, using wind qi to keep his surroundings as clear as he could, he chanced to look up.
The sky above was clear.
He Yu shot straight up. After only about twenty feet or so, he found himself above the storm. He had maybe a few seconds at best before the law of earth overpowered his technique and he fell back into the storm, but with his cultivation of the Peerless Judgment that was more than enough time to at least gather his thoughts. Below, the sandstorm truly filled the arena—all except one spot. Tan Xiaoling stood at the center of a pocket of calm, only about ten feet across. She stood motionless. Poised and ready to attack or defend, but motionless. As though she didn’t know where he was.
Surely she had to have seen him?
He activated the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment. When the answer came, it seemed so obvious.
She couldn’t see through the storm after all. She could clearly track her enemies within the storm, otherwise, it wouldn’t be much of a technique, but she couldn’t see them. He Yu recalled that Fang Yingjie had spoken of being able to sense the movement of winds during their training sessions. Tan Xiaoling must be using something similar. After all, it was her qi that created the storm. Her qi created the shards that relentlessly dug into her foes within it. She likely had some mental map of where everything was within it—but if her target wasn’t actually in the storm, she would lose track of them.
Why she hadn’t sensed him leave the storm, he couldn’t say. But it was clear she hadn’t. It was also clear he wouldn’t get a second chance.
Just as the pull of the earth took hold once again, He Yu activated the Sky Dragon’s Flight. Using the momentum of his fall, he angled himself at the clear spot with Tan Xiaoling at the center.
Around the end of his guandao, held forward like a spear, he gathered the Rushing Wind. The strength and speed of the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering were evident in the crackling sparks of heaven along the length of his weapon, and trailing behind his descent. He poured qi into his meridians and his techniques.
Tan Xiaoling looked up and met his gaze. There was nothing in her eyes of what He Yu had come to expect when fighting the likes of Sha Xiang, a cruel and sadistic fighter who delighted in making her opponents suffer. Even King Hao, until the end, had seemed to delight in the struggle. Li Heng had always displayed an easy confidence when they sparred.
Tan Xiaoling was simply ambivalent. No cruelty, no malice—just a cold sort of certainty. This was just another fight to her, and fighting was what she did. When He Yu saw that something within him shuddered. Not in fear, but something beyond emotion. Something he didn’t have time to examine because he was already upon her.
She raised her paired dao, crossing them to meet his attack. He Yu slammed into her with an explosion of wind and heaven. It was like colliding into the side of a mountain at full speed. She didn’t even flinch.
As she returned her sabers to their ready positions, her sandstorm died around her. She didn’t attack. Instead, she let him recover from crashing into her, and the shock of his technique meeting an unmovable object. As he fell into his own stance, heaven qi coursing through his meridians, she nodded to him.
Tan Xiaoling inclined her head and asked, “Shall we finish this, Sect Brother He?”
Comments
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