"I have delivered my last words!" I announced as I pointed my materialized qi sword at Guoqiang. "Now come kill me if you dare!"

Guoqiang stood petrified at the other end of the arena. How could he not be petrified? For normal cultivators, this kind of sword was proof of absolute expertise of qi, expertise so advanced that only a handful of Core Formation cultivators could manage it. And yet here I was, a piece of trash with no qi, wielding such a sword!

I let my eyes wander across the crowd. Those amazed, dumbfounded gazes! I loved them all! It was like sweet, sweet ambrosia to my bruised heart! And it was all thanks to her. Her power, her training, her presence. By her I had confidence! By her I had certainty! Certainty that even if I staked my life, I would win! And that, precisely, was my Dao, the Dao of True Trust! To stake one's life without doubt, whether fighting an ant, or a tsunami, or the sky entire! To trust in oneself, to trust in one's weapon, to trust in one's power! My power, borrowed from nobody other than Natsuki!

"Holy shit. Was Bai Chunxue fooling us all this entire time?"

"So the story about murdering those nine people was true?"

"Wait, if Bai Chunxue was in Foundation Establishment before, then why was he in the outer sect?"

"You think maybe the sect was hiding this?"

"Long Guoqiang!" I shouted. "I will give you thirty seconds, and then I will cut off your right arm. Make your move."

This provocation angered him so much that he burst forth from his fear and leaped towards me. "I don't know what bullshit you're pulling," he growled, "but I'll fucking kill you! Don't blame me for this! Flowing Rapids Style, Second Form: Whitewater!"

His path across the arena curved and turned with unpredictable speed, and fog descended to hide him from view! But that was not enough. I could feel his approach. I could feel his presence. Perhaps it was because he feared my threat, but he led with his left arm. The heel of his left hand reached for my chest—

so I cut his left arm off.

My advancing cut left me ten meters behind Guoqiang. When the dust cleared, the result was evident. His left arm was lying on the ground, and I was standing calm in the middle of the arena.

"Reattach it," I mocked, pointing my sword at his amputated arm. "Go on. I'll wait."

Grimacing in pain, Guoqiang reattached his left arm, and as soon as he did, I swung my sword, casting out an arc of projected qi. He moved to block it, but my qi was far stronger than his. It severed his right arm, which fell to the ground.

"Graaaaakh...!"

He tried to suppress a cry, but his voice would not hold.

"That's thirty seconds, give or take," I said with the slightest of smiles.

The crowd broke into raucous shouts and hollers.

"Holy shit, it wasn't a joke!"

"Bai Chunxue actually is in Core Formation!"

"So all of those bullshit questions weren't for stalling?!"

Guoqiang leaned over to pick up his right arm, but he had not yet regained sensation in his left arm, so he could only grimace and wait!

I took the time to walk over to the part of the railing behind which the Bai family was standing.

"First Sister!" I called out with a wide smile. "As an apology for what happened to Xiaolong, I'll let you decide how I should kill Guoqiang. What do you think would be best? Lately, I have gotten in the habit of severing spinal cords, but it is a bit tiresome."

"You—!" Her face full of impenetrable rage, she reached for my throat, to choke out my life! But the patriarch grabbed her arm and held her back— luckily for her! If she had laid a finger on me I would have cut her arm off and burned it to ash, since I promised to Natsuki I would never again let others hurt me!

"Bai Chunxue," the patriarch whispered with something like regret in his voice, "If only you had told us about this earlier, we would have..."

"Not would have," I growled, pointing my sword at his head. "Do it now. If you regret your decisions, then fix them now. Recognize me as a proper member of the family. Let me go to the Imperial University. I will not die here today, so you can still fix this."

He turned his head away.

"Where are you looking, bastard?!" shouted Long Guoqiang. "Take this! Infinite Glacier Style, Fourth Form: Calving!" I turned and saw him leap, but his trajectory would put him a few meters short of me. In other words, his target was the ground. He was probably trying to open up the ground underneath me. I could dodge away and then attack him, like I had done with the ape monster on the first day of training with Natsuki, but there was a possibility that his technique would still affect me. However, with further training, I had learned since then that there was a more surefire way to win such an exchange.

Every attack your opponent makes is an opening for you.

I dashed into his trajectory and leaped up to meet him in the air. I locked eyes with him for just a moment, confirming the surprise, the dismay in his gaze. He did not even know that he had given me such a wide opening! So I stabbed him through his right lung, much as I had done to Chen Mantian!

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I flung him off my sword as I landed, and he went crashing to the ground, gasping for breath. But he was a Foundation Establishment cultivator. This would not kill him.

"Hey, Long Guoqiang!" someone called out. "Are you just going to sit there and get killed?!"

"What happened to avenging your followers?!"

"Yeah! Don't let Bai Chunxue do you like this!"

I sighed. Such was the temperament of the mob. They had come here to watch Guoqiang kill me, and even now, that was all they could think of.

I looked at Sima Rui. She seemed to be laughing behind her fan. I looked at Bailian. She seemed to be suppressing a laugh behind her impassive smile. I looked for Professor Jibeidi, but I could not find her in the crowd.

And with that, with my proof delivered, it was about time to end this charade.

I turned to face Guoqiang, who was looking at me with the expression of a rabid dog. He was still recovering. He could not stop me from killing him.

I stepped towards him and raised my sword. I would split his entire body down the middle, giving him the most disgusting possible corpse, because he was the person I hated most in the sect, and second most in the world.

He stood there, breathing heavily, struggling to put up a barrier spell.

I kicked through the barrier and stepped in front of him.

I swung down my sword, and—

before it could cut through his head, it connected with something else. It connected with golden qi blooming forth from his body like the discarded skin of a snake. It was still possible for me to kill him, but I instinctively knew that if I killed him at this point, I would lose a great amount of face, and building face was half of my purpose for being here.

I pulled my sword up and jumped back.

I looked at him, and was not sure what to think, but when I heard the crackling of thunderclouds from the clear sky overhead, I winced. Golden flames erupted from his back, blindingly bright, but also so heavy that his posture sagged under their weight. But he did not fall. He pushed himself upwards, advancing but never yielding inch by inch.

The audience knew what was happening just as well as me.

"Is... is he breaking through?"

"What is he breaking through to?"

"Core Formation realm, right?"

"Holy shit! That means a tribulation, right? Is it— is it safe to be here?"

Bailian gave a signal, and elder cultivators from the Long and Bai families leaped through the stands to set up several layers of barriers around the arena.

I, of course, was trapped inside with Guoqiang.

"I see it!" he howled. "I feel the weight, the weight of their lives! I bear it! I bear it on these shoulders!"

I could kill him. I could kill him right now. But if I did that, nobody would ever consider this victory legitimate. I needed them to recognize my strength. I needed the Bai family to recognize my validity! And for that, allowing him to break through was the correct decision! It was the only decision!

I leaped away as far as I could from him, then grabbed a loose stone and began drawing an array on the ground. I would need something to reflect— no, redirect the force of the lightning. Since he would receive the lightning strike with his body, the lightning's energy would then ricochet randomly within the arena. Furthermore, the interaction between the lightning and his internal qi would probably cause a massive explosion. I wouldn't be able to stop an explosion with a sword, so I would need an array that would protect me from all sides.

—Just as Professor Jibeidi had taught me! Accept any energy as input, then consume its speed in order to change its direction, increasing the deviation the closer it is to the center of the circle. It wasn't a particularly complex pattern. It took me less than half a minute to draw. Sitting inside the array, I thrust both hands into the entry point and activated it with my qi— with Natsuki's power. Now, I was ready.

Guoqiang fully straightened his back. I looked into his eyes. They burned with golden hatred, wisps and sparks of which danced to the ground and launched geysers of condensed qi to the sky. The flames on his back wrapped around his arms, and his legs, and his head, so he was utterly surrounded by flames, which condensed and deepened, so the ones closest to his body were now white— no, blue, and only as they flew away from his body did they weaken to gold. Against some kind of resistance he brought his hands towards each other. An invisible force pried them apart, but Guoqiang did not yield. Straining every muscle in his body, he solidified his stance and drew his hands towards the center of his body, closer!, closer and closer, until he finally clasped his hands together in an uttarabodhi mudra, the mudra of enlightenment.

I pressed myself to the ground,

and when the thunder boomed, everything went white.

I could not see anything in the flood of energy surrounding me, nor could I hear anything but its resonant frequency, nor could I feel my hands or the array I had fixed them to.

—I need to avoid being swallowed up by the sea of energy! I took all of Natsuki's power that was galloping through my veins and pushed it out, onto my skin, forming an exoskeleton like an ant's. When I did, my senses returned to me. I poured more qi into my array, trying to dye it as blue as possible, and the energy around me scattered away.

And then I saw it.

The entire arena, but for the little circle where my array had been drawn, smoldered with golden flame, like the aftermath of a wildfire.

Professor Jibeidi had taught me well. Without her alchemy guidance, I might not have survived that.

And there, at the other end of the arena, stood Long Guoqiang, his aura ever more powerful, his glare ever more intense, now that he was a proper Core Formation cultivator.