Boots
patreon
2.40 - Tan Xiaoling Repays a Debt
🕑 Added 2024-03-23 22:00:02 +0000 UTCWhen Leader Zhou Shanyuan called the name of her opponent, Tan Xiaoling’s blood roared in her veins. Xiao Jun. In the fourth round—the round that determined eligibility for the inner sect. Zhang Lifen had made good on her promise. Maybe the arrogant woman wasn’t so bad after all.
The smug expression on Xiao Jun’s face was like a spring festival gift. She couldn’t help but smirk when she saw it. Her father would have admonished her for such a display—it was inappropriate for her station. She didn’t care. Tan Zihao wasn’t here. She was—and she was going to repay the humiliation Xiao Jun had made her suffer ten thousand times over. Her father at least would have approved of that.
“It seems your path to the inner sect ends here, Jade Princess,” Xiao Jun said, arrogant as ever. “Shame. I’d looked forward to seeing you languish in the lower ranks of the inner sect while my own star climbed ever higher.”
Tan Xiaoling raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You think you can beat me? It took your interference to keep me from killing your three lackeys back when I was still a Foundation stage. I don’t think you appreciate just who you’re dealing with.”
“I’m dealing with a spoiled princess who doesn’t seem to realize she’s a long way from home.” Shadows rose up around Xiao Jun as he spoke, his meteor hammer falling into his hands.
The gong sounded, and Tan Xiaoling activated her sandstorm. Ten thousand shards of razor-edged metal kicked up around her in a howling cyclone, borne amid wind and sand. The technique had become easier to maintain with each stage of advancement and every increase of her mastery over the technique. Now it cost her practically nothing.
Xiao Jun vanished from sight, obscured by the razors and grit, but she no longer needed her sight. The storm itself told her where he was, and the motions he made. Just as it blinded her opponents, the technique made it trivial for her to track them within its effect.
Her opponent swung his meteor hammer in a tight circle before launching it at where she stood. She intentionally hadn’t moved—she needed him to strike at her and try to disrupt her technique as she’d been certain he would. She needed to test him.
The meteor hammer shot out from the wall of the sandstorm and into the tiny pocket of clear space around her. She crossed her paired dao before her, and the hammer’s metal weight crashed into them. She could feel the wave of qi that pulsed out from the weapon at the moment of impact. Her technique remained, and she allowed herself a satisfied grin.
She’d been right. The hammer needed to hit her in order to disrupt her techniques. She still suspected that he could disrupt any techniques that she bound to the sabers themselves, as he had with Li Heng’s sword techniques, but that mattered little here. Her two arts, the Breath of the White Desert and the Golden Tiger Cultivation Law would remain active so long as he couldn’t land a solid hit.
Tan Xiaoling circled her prey with the silent grace of a stalking cat. Through the not-sight granted by her storm, she sensed his hesitation. Xiao Jun still spun his hammer around him in a pattern that created an impressive defense. It would not be enough. She rushed forward, the pocket of calm following her as she moved. The instant the edge of her little bubble reached Xiao Jun, he turned.
The meteor hammer swung towards her. Tan Xiaoling twisted underneath it, pushing qi into her leg meridians. Her paired dao flashed. Their pommels were wrought in the likeness of roaring tigers, and Tan Xiaoling struck like one now. Xiao Jun was a late Third Realm, however, and he’d been at that stage for some time.
Some defensive technique of his activated, and shadows surged up around him. It felt like she was cutting through a thick syrup as the shadows robbed her attack of its momentum. Xiao Jun himself danced back to the edge of the clear space around them before launching an assault of his own.
The iron ball at the end of its chain shot straight towards her. Half a dozen spikes forged from shadow qi formed around it, adding their spiritual weight to the attack. Tan Xiaoling deflected and then faded back. Once again, Xiao Jun was engulfed by her sandstorm. The first exchange had been a draw, with neither of them landing a solid hit. She had taken his measure though.
The first time she’d clashed with him, all those months ago, he had been so far above her. It had shamed her to be at his mercy then. When he’d attacked at the waterfall, the only reason she and her friends had walked away was because he had allowed it. When his followers had ambushed her, it was his arrogance and laziness that had allowed her to hold on until Chen Fei had fetched help.
Now? She allowed herself a flicker of a smile. Half a year ago Xiao Jun would have crushed her. But for all his bluster and smugness, he had barely managed to defend himself in that last exchange.
Xiao Jun’s meteor hammer came hurtling out of the storm. She’d felt it coming the moment he released it into a wide sweep—clearly swinging blindly in an attempt to score a hit and disrupt her technique. Tan Xiaoling sent one of her dao back into her storage treasure. She caught the iron weight on her remaining saber, deflecting it into her waiting hand. The instant she touched it, Xiao Jun’s qi pulsed, and all her techniques were banished.
The perpetually overcast sky of the Shrouded Peaks came back into view as her sandstorm died. Tan Xiaoling sent her second dao away and grabbed onto the chain. Xiao Jun pulled on his weapon. Tan Xiaoling activated the Golden Tiger Cultivation Law and pulled back.
The strength of a tiger surged through her, and Xiao Jun stumbled forward. She’d left him with a cursed choice—either lose his weapon or be pulled to her like a hooked fish. It seemed as though he’d chosen the latter.
She yanked again, just as he’d regained his balance. Xiao Jun stumbled a second time, and now he was close enough. She released her hold on the chain and leaped forward. Her paired dao appeared in her hands once more. This time, she also layered her killing intent into her blades.
It wasn’t as refined as using it in conjunction with a technique, but she wanted to save that trick. Regardless, she’d been fighting—and killing—for just over half a decade now. Merely an instant in the lifespan of an immortal, but longer than anyone she’d encountered at the sect so far. One’s killing intent grew sharper and more potent the more blood one spilled. She’d already killed well over a hundred of her father’s enemies.
Xiao Jun looked up as she reached the apex of her leap, and fear filled his eyes. She let go of her restraint and gave him a wicked grin. He was nothing more than prey. She slammed down on top of him, and her paired dao rent his flesh like claws. Blood sprayed from twin wounds, and her sandstorm howled back into being around her.
Her opponent let out a pained cry and sunk into shadow, vanishing from the bubble of calm she retained around her. She extended her qi sense into the whirling sands, searching and ready to pounce once again. The sound of metal scraping against stone caused her to look down. The meteor hammer’s chain had grown taught, and the iron head was slowly pulling back into the storm. She looked up and focused her awareness, following the chain. She couldn’t sense him, so she let the storm drop once again.
At the far side of the arena, she saw him. Xiao Jun huddled at the base of one of the formation pillars that stood at each of the four corners of the arena stage. He was cloaked in shadowy qi, but the aspect of his spirit was almost that of the formation inscribed into the pillar.
“Clever trick,” she said, just loud enough for his Third Realm senses to hear.
He looked up, then rose to his feet. “I’m not finished yet,” he said.
Tan Xiaoling pointed one of her sabers at him. “Nor am I.”
Xiao Jun’s meteor hammer flew towards her once again, brimming with qi and trailed by yet more of his shadow spikes. Wind, sand, and razor-sharp shards swirled around Tan Xiaoling’s saber. She knocked the incoming attack into the ground, cracking the flagstones beneath her feet with the impact. She slammed one foot down on the chain, trapping his weapon. Then, she released one of her paired dao and raised a hand to the heavens.
A spear of black qi formed above her head, limned by the fiery corona of a solar eclipse. As she formed the second technique of her family’s Breath of the White Desert art—the Mark of the Dark Sun—she also poured her killing intent into it. The tip of the spear took on a knife-edge glint as it drank in her killing intent. Fire and metal-aspected qi washed over the arena. As she finished forming the technique, she dropped her hand and pointed at Xiao Jun’s heart.
Xiao Jun had spoken true, and still had some measure of fight left in him. He grimaced as he poured the last remnants of his guttering qi into the shadows that billowed around him. A black spike, a shadowy mirror of her own technique, shot forward. Xiao Jun’s spear of shadow struck a spear of flame—and shattered.
The Mark of the Dark Sun tore through Xiao Jun’s technique. Shadow qi puffed to nothing. The blazing black spear of metal and flame hurtled towards him unimpeded.
Her technique flew true. Xiao Jun puffed to mist, and her technique slammed into the formation pillar at the edge of the arena. The stone cracked, and the formation flickered for a moment, dimming in power, but it held. It was a testament to her own power and the strength of her technique that she could even effect a formation scripted by the sect’s experts. She held her head high and smiled to herself as she turned to face the pavilion with the sect elders and the core disciples.
As she saluted the elders and her seniors before returning to her seat, she caught Zhang Lifen’s eye. Her senior had made good on her promise, that was certain. And she’d done so in the most satisfying way imaginable. Tan Xiaoling supposed she could listen to what Senior Sister Zhang had to say. She owed the woman at least that much.
