Chapter 141: Chapter 141: The Sect Tournament [4]
Damon watched the first two matches with only half his attention.
Both were core disciples, both fought well enough, but neither did anything that made him lean forward.
The second match ended when a fire cultivator overwhelmed a wind user with raw output.
The third was a ground fight, two Earth Qi users trading heavy blows until one ran out of stamina.
It was the standard stuff.
He was already thinking about the bracket, about who he might face, about how much he should reveal before the real tournament, when the fourth match began and someone stepped onto the stage that made him stop thinking entirely.
Lark.
Still in the male disguise. Still wearing that plain inner disciple robe with the modified shoulder seams. Still carrying that sword that looked ordinary but wasn’t.
But this time, the opponent was different.
The core disciple across from Lark was a woman, tall, with short-cropped silver hair and a wind aura that coiled around her like a living thing.
She held a curved blade, thin and fast, and she moved with the kind of confidence that came from winning a lot of fights.
Elder Alder raised his hand.
The match began.
The silver-haired woman vanished from her position and reappeared three meters to Lark’s left, blade already mid-swing, the Qi screaming along the edge in an arc that would have taken most cultivators’ heads off before they finished blinking.
Lark moved.
The blade passed through empty air where Lark’s shoulder had been, and Lark’s sword came up in a motion so smooth it looked rehearsed, the tip tracing a line of light that flared once and died.
The silver-haired woman’s blade stopped two inches from Lark’s ribs.
Lark’s sword was already resting against her throat.
One move.
The crowd erupted.
Damon didn’t hear them.
His Incubus Celestial Eyes were already active, golden patterns shifting deep within his irises, and he saw something that made his breath catch.
The technique Lark had just used, it wasn’t just a sword art.
It was a Saint Grade technique.
The energy signature was unmistakable once you knew what to look for. The way the Qi had compressed, the way the light had bent around the blade, the way the strike had ignored distance entirely and simply arrived at its destination.
’That must be the Sect Leader’s sword art.’
The rumoured technique that every disciple in the Azure Dragon Sect whispered about in corridors and dormitories, the one that older outer disciples invoked like a myth to explain why the Sect Leader was untouchable, the one that inner disciples claimed to have heard described second-hand but never witnessed with their own eyes in an actual bout.
And Damon had just watched it happen, standing three rows back in a crowd of hundreds, seeing what none of them had seen.
The silver-haired woman lowered her blade slowly. The arrogance that had radiated off her before the match had evaporated entirely, leaving something rawer behind it.
Her face had gone pale, the colour draining from her cheeks as if the realisation of what had just occurred was only now finishing its journey from her eyes to her mind.
Her sword hand trembled faintly as she stepped back, and she brought herself into a formal bow, her head dipping low and staying there for a moment longer than custom required.
Lark sheathed her sword in a single clean motion, the sound of it barely audible over the lingering noise of the crowd.
She didn’t acknowledge the applause.
She didn’t look at the silver-haired woman, or at Elder Alder, or at any of the hundreds of faces turned toward her.
She simply walked off the far edge of the stage with the unhurried composure of someone who had already forgotten the match before it was over, and disappeared into the shadowed mouth of the tunnel beneath the stands.
Elder Alder raised his voice and declared the winner.
Damon’s golden eyes tracked Lark until the darkness of the tunnel swallowed her completely, his gaze lingering on the empty space she had left behind, his mind still turning over what he had seen, cataloguing it, pulling it apart.
And then he heard it.
A notification.
The system’s voice, clear and direct, cutting through the noise of the arena like a blade through silk.
[Incubus Celestial Eyes has recorded a Saint Grade Sword Technique: Dragon Sundering Strike.]
[Technique is incomplete. Current recording: 12%.]
[To copy this technique, Host must observe the complete execution of Dragon Sundering Strike.]
[Copying a technique requires the host to witness the full technique from start to finish through Incubus Celestial Eyes.]
[Once fully recorded, the technique will be available for purchase in the Lust Store at a discounted rate.]
Damon’s eyes widened.
He had never seen that option before.
He had used Incubus Celestial Eyes plenty of times, to read status windows, to track desires, to find weak points, to watch pleasure responses during sex.
But he had never used it to observe someone using a technique.
’All this time. I can copy a technique.’
Every fight he had watched. Every sparring session.
Every moment when someone had demonstrated a technique in front of him, and he had just watched it with his normal eyes like an ordinary person.
He had been sitting on a function of his Incubus Celestial Eyes this entire time and never known.
He looked down at his hands.
The golden patterns in his irises pulsed once, slow and deliberate, and he felt the weight of what the system had just told him.
If he could copy techniques just by watching them, if he could record them through his eyes instead buy them from the store, then every fight he witnessed from now on was a potential resource.
Every technique anyone used in front of him was something he could take.
He looked back at the stage where Lark had just fought.
The Dragon Sundering Strike.
Saint Grade.
And he had only seen a fraction of it.
The match had ended too fast.
Lark had used the technique for less than a second, just enough to end the fight, not enough to show the full form.
He knew that the tournament bracket would eventually put Lark in another fight.
He smiled.
’Next time. Next time, I’ll watch the whole thing.’ he thought.
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