A collective gasp swept through the expansive coliseum as Vanya Thorne landed heavily upon the crushed white stones. The thousands of citizens and traveling merchants packing the grandstands leaned forward in disbelief. A reigning clan leader stepping into the arena to fight a junior cultivator was an unprecedented event.
It was a severe loss of prestige for the Thorne faction to admit their people were insufficient but the woman clearly no longer cared about public perception. Her grey eyes burned with a venomous fury as she stared down the youth who had just slaughtered her people and trampled all over her family legacy.
The heavy and suffocating pressure of the Tribulation realm washed over the fighting ring. The dense aura distorted the air and caused the defensive barriers protecting the audience to hum with a frantic warning tone.
Li Yu watched the angry clan leader approach and his relaxed posture shifted into a stance of serious martial intent. He knew he could not take this opponent lightly like the others since she rested a full major realm above his own cultivation level. The gap between Karma Severing and Tribulation was a vast chasm of gathered energy and refined laws. He needed to utilize his true abilities to bridge that divide.
He raised his right hand and summoned his defensive layers. He channeled his dense Qi into the Phantom Aegis resting beneath his black robes. The ethereal fabric instantly flowed outward and wrapped securely around his entire body. It formed a perfectly tailored and weightless under layer of pale light and shifting shadow.
The crowd watched in awe as Li Yu reached into his Koi Sanctuary and retrieved his outer armor. The heavy metal plates resonated with him immediately upon appearing in the sunlight. The armor separated into distinct sections and flew directly onto his body. The dark metal locked into place over his chest, shoulders and legs with a series of loud and satisfying clicks. The pieces readjusted and shrank slightly to fit his lean form perfectly.
The colors were entirely inverted from the radiant white gear worn by his grandfather. The metal was forged from an abyssal black alloy that seemed to consume the surrounding light and was hungering for battle. Stark and brilliant white runic engravings traced the sharp edges of the dark plates. The visual contrast was breathtaking to behold as he stood there looking terrifying and undeniably imperial.
With his defense secured, Li Yu pulled from his Koi Sanctuary once more to bring out his other arsenal.
A deafening clatter of heavy metal echoed across the arena as dozens of objects fell from the sky and slammed into the crushed stones surrounding his boots. The crowd murmured in deep confusion upon seeing all of them. Many people thought he had accidentally dropped debris or ruined training weights onto the battlefield.
Resting in the dirt were sixty distinct blunt weapons. There were heavy spiked iron spheres, four sided metal discs designed to spin like tops and smooth heavy javelins forged for destructive might. They were split evenly between large items measuring a full meter in length and smaller pieces measuring a quarter meter. He did not levitate them into the air just yet but he kept them resting on the ground so they would be ready the exact moment he needed them.
He then summoned his flying swords. Silent Bastion appeared first and took its place floating right beside his shoulder to act as his immovable defensive anchor. Pale Extinction flew to the North while Firmament's End took the South. Whispering Frost took the East and Gilded Calamity took the West. The lethal blades formed the Celestial Star Sword Formation and orbited his black armor with a terrifying synchronized grace.
Then came out the other two swords, Resolve and Duty. Finally, he reached his hand out and grasped the long handle of his glaive.
The spectators were stunned into a deep silence by the sheer volume of weapons he had produced in an instant. They could not fathom how a single cultivator was going to use everything he just pulled out but the fact that he summoned such an expansive armory in a single instant proved he was preparing for a war.
The official judge standing near the edge of the safety barrier swallowed hard and raised his flag.
"Begin the match!" The judge shouted before turning and running toward the reinforced exits.
Li Yu actually moved his feet this time as he stomped his armored boot against the arena floor and shattered the stones beneath his heel as he charged directly at the Tribulation expert. As he sprinted forward, his orbiting swords shot out in different directions to surround his target.
Vanya Thorne narrowed her grey eyes and blurred her physical form using a movement technique. She vanished from her initial position and reappeared several yards to the right while drawing her own weapon. She wielded a long sword glowing with vibrant green energy.
She expected to blindside the charging youth but she quickly realized her movements were already compromised.
Li Yu had activated his Nexus Mind technique the moment the match began. His soul expanded and his consciousness split into parallel streams of detached thought. He processed the entire battlefield from multiple angles simultaneously, using his swords as extra eyes almost. He tracked her blurred movements perfectly and directed his flying swords to intercept her path.
Pale Extinction arrived first and thrust toward her throat. Vanya swung her green blade upward and deflected the bone sword with a loud clash of sparks. Before she could reset her stance, Whispering Frost arrived from her blind spot and slashed toward her ribs. She twisted her waist and brought her long sword down to parry the icy blade.
Her arms trembled violently as she blocked the strikes. Her own weapon shook with a frantic resonance while small hairline fractures began to form near the hilt. She noted the terrifying density and power of his flying weapons and a spike of genuine fear pierced her heart.
‘What are these blades forged from and how does he have so many powerful swords?!’ Vanya hissed internally while parrying another strike from Firmament's End. ‘My weapon feels like brittle glass against his swords!’
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Realizing she shockly could not win a physical exchange of blades, Vanya tapped into her deep Tribulation reserves and summoned her martial spirit. A giant Venus fly trap erupted from the crushed stones behind her. The spiritual plant possessed thick green vines covered in sharp thorns and a colossal jaw dripping with corrosive acidic sap.
The martial spirit roared and lashed out with its thorny vines to swat the annoying flying swords out of the air.
However, the blades belonging to Li Yu were impossibly sharp and carried immense weight. Whispering Frost and Gilded Calamity danced through the air and sliced through the thick vines with effortless precision. They trimmed the aggressive martial plant down to its roots in a matter of seconds while sending showers of green spiritual energy spraying across the battlefield.
Vanya panicked as her spirit suffered damage and she quickly utilized her wood techniques and laws. She stomped her feet and summoned thick walls of hardened ancient bark from the arena floor to block the incoming swords. She conjured a storm of poisonous wooden needles and sent them flying toward the charging youth in a dense overwhelming wave.
Li Yu did not slow his advance though. He slashed his glaive in wide sweeping arcs and carved a brutal path straight through the hardened bark walls. The wooden debris exploded outward like shrapnel but he did not bother dodging the storm of poisonous needles. He took the glancing blows on purpose as he kept closing the distance.
The sharp wooden projectiles struck his black armor and shattered upon impact while the white runic engravings flared brightly to absorb and disperse the weaker attacks. The Phantom Aegis resting underneath caught any stray energy that managed to slip past the outer plates. The three Zhan disciples watched the onslaught from the sidelines with their mouths hanging slightly open.
"Look at the coordination of those strikes," Zhan Feng muttered while observing the intricate dance of the flying swords. "He is controlling lethal weapons independently while charging forward and swinging a glaive. The mental bandwidth required to maintain that offense is staggering."
"So this is how he truly fights when he is serious," Zhan Lei added while wiping dust from his eyes. "Hearing the wild rumors back home is one thing but seeing it in person is a different reality. How do you even face an opponent wielding that much lethal pressure? Not only is he incredibly strong, he is also incredibly rich! Look at his armor and weapons! Probably one of those would bankrupt any of us."
"You do not face it at all." Zhan Ren answered with a grim expression. "He truly is a calamity walking in human skin."
Their thoughts were shared throughout the arena by those in power. The Thorne side was getting nervous but if their clan leader couldn’t face this man, none of them could make any difference. They would have thought perhaps if joining in numbers would be helpful but seeing those flying swords and also those weapons all over the ground made them pause.
Li Yu finally closed the remaining distance and stepped inside the optimal striking range of the clan leader. He spun his body to generate immense momentum and swung his glaive in a devastating horizontal arc aimed directly at her waist.
Vanya let out a desperate shout and poured all her Tribulation Qi into her long sword. She raised her glowing weapon to block the heavy polearm.
The glaive crashed into the long sword with the force of a falling meteor. The deafening sound of shattering metal echoed across the city. Her green blade could not handle the accumulated stress of blocking the flying swords and taking a direct hit from the glaive. The spiritual artifact exploded into dozens of jagged metallic shards and went in every direction.
The shockwave traveled up her arms and sent her stumbling backward across the ruined stones. Blood leaked from the corners of her mouth as her internal organs suffered from the blunt impact.
She quickly reached into her spatial ring and pulled out another weapon. This second sword was much thicker and resembled a heavy executioner blade rather than a dueling weapon.
Li Yu stepped forward and brought his glaive down in a crushing overhead strike, not giving her a chance to breathe. Vanya raised the thick blade to defend her head but the polearm smashed the new weapon to bits just as easily as the first.
Sera Astor watched the uneven battle unfold from her raised balcony. She gripped the stone railing and studied the strange tactics employed by the black robed youth.
"He is a Karma Severing cultivator fighting a Tribulation expert but he is the one pushing the entire advance," Sera observed with a stunned whisper. "He is treating the Thorne clan leader like a mere training dummy."
"Look closer at his targets," the Astor Patriarch instructed his daughter while stroking his beard. "He is intentionally aiming for her weapons and her defensive barriers rather than her vital organs. He could have ended her life three exchanges ago when she stumbled backward. He is playing with her on purpose."
The Head Elder nodded in agreement. "He is waiting for something. He is torturing the clan leader in broad daylight to force the Thorne family to reveal whatever hidden ace they are keeping in reserve. His combat awareness is truly terrifying."
Li Yu was indeed overwhelming the Tribulation expert with calculated precision. He continued to smash her defensive techniques and shatter any backup weapons she pulled from her storage ring. He battered her pride and broke her martial confidence until she was reduced to frantically dodging his relentless strikes.
Eventually, he decided she had suffered enough public humiliation and he commanded his swords to end the chase.
Gilded Calamity shot through the air and bypassed a wall of rising vines to impale the clan leader directly from the back. The golden blade pierced her right shoulder blade and pinned her to the ground. Vanya screamed in agony as her Qi flow was violently disrupted.
At the exact same moment that the golden sword struck, Tian's Cataclysm flashed with harsh silver light and stabbed straight through her left leg, anchoring her lower body to the crushed stones. Pale Extinction arrived a heartbeat later and drove its bone edge through her right arm, rendering her completely immobile and defenseless.
Vanya Thorne lay pinned against the ruined arena floor while bleeding heavily from three severe puncture wounds. She looked up at the towering figure of the black robed youth standing over her. Her pride had been entirely shattered and replaced with raw consuming terror.
Li Yu reversed his grip on his heavy glaive and raised the long polearm high into the air. He prepared to deliver the final executing blow to sever her head from her shoulders and end the trial by combat. Just as the curved blade of the glaive began to descend toward her neck, a terrifying roar exploded across the arena.
The volume of the sound cracked the stone benches in the lower tiers and caused the defensive barriers shielding the audience to shatter like cheap glass. A wave of scorching heat washed over the stadium as the air itself seemed to catch fire.
An old woman wearing tattered red robes appeared hovering in the sky directly above the fighting ring. She possessed a withered face deeply scarred by ancient battles and eyes that burned like twin suns. The aura radiating from her frail body was profound, ancient and infinitely heavier than the Tribulation pressure Vanya had projected.
This was Eldora Thorne. She was the mother of the current clan leader and the hidden ancestor the Thorne family relied upon for their supreme confidence. She was an expert who had successfully stepped into the Origin Awakening realm a year ago after a very long secluded cultivation session. It was at that time that the Thorne clan started making plans and becoming more brave and bold.
The old woman glared down at Li Yu with a murderous intent that made the surrounding space tremble and warp. The ace they were counting on and hiding had finally arrived to save her daughter from the executioner's blade.
