Scorn appeared the next day, and informed the semi-finalists that they will hold the last two rounds back to back, there won’t be a day in-between.

This was the last challenge in the tournament, to see who has more stamina to end two fights in a row.

Who can try their best to not get injured or depleted while fighting their first fight to win the second one?

First fight was Seph against Huan Chun, they both headed towards the arena.

“No element of surprise to serve us in this fight, master Seph. We both know each other’s skill. It’s just a skill for skill fight. Best individual wins!”

“Huan Chun, forgive me for being a little paranoid, but I’ll still be ready for any surprises. You never know, Personally I have improved considerably during this tournament. Good luck, give it your all.”

The contestants exchanged brief words before the fight, as usual. They knew too little about one another, so there wasn’t much to talk about.

Only the highly inflammable contestants seemed to make the exchange go longer so far, as they were highly irritable, and very easy to piss off, and more likely to take things personally.

Huan Chun whispered their mantra with their palms clasped in front of their body again, and they became two.

The newly split male and female started running towards Seph.

Sun didn’t get off Seph’s shoulders, but took his stance on top. They were fighting two tall opponents. Taking the lower ground would have made Sun easy pickings in this fight.

Male Huan reached Seph. Their daggers were smoldering. Seph blocked the attacks with his gourd, over and over.

Each time he wanted to attempt a palm strike, he would move the guard out of the way and launch one, but Male Huan was so fast, he dodged each one of his strikes.

Meanwhile, female Huan did the same as Glenda’s fight. She stood afar and attacked with her shadow.

Controlling the shadow seemed to affect her mobility, she couldn’t concentrate on her own body and the shadow’s body at the same time.

Which wasn’t a huge weakness, because of her male counterpart, making sure their opponent was occupied.

Seph took out a lump from his gourd and threw it at Female Huan. She exchanged places with her shadow counterpart, but Seph had prepared a surprise for her.

He had another lump ready at hand. Once the exchange was done, he slapped his palm with the lamp into the exposed area between her chest and her neck.

Her eyes became wide, and she looked over at her male twin.

After seeing the moment of hesitation in male Huan’s eyes, Seph attacked him with a palm strike to the stomach, followed by a palm strike to his twin’s stomach.

Their extreme care for each other is their weakness, and since I’ve got female Huan dealing with the lump of death, this fight is about to be over, they can’t escape their fate anymore, and their fate is death, unless Scorn saves them.

The twin went back on the attack. Seph kept blocking with the gourd, Sun doing his best to block the shadow counterpart of the female Huan attacking their back.

She was slowing down at an alarming speed, and once the entire naked area of her chest blackened, she looked over at her twin.

He nodded at her. He knew they were in a critical position and needed to end their split phase now.

They jumped back several steps, before clasping their hands in front of their chest, and they became one again, completely healed!

Seph knew something like this was going to happen, but he wasn’t worried. If he can take two of them, he sure as hell will crush the one!

Seph ran fast towards them, and overwhelmed them with palm strikes, blocking with the gourd, and Sun was doing his part too, by attempting several strikes at their head.

Even if most attacks didn’t land, the attacks that did land were slowing down their opponent, and the fight ended, when Seph timed Huan dodging a staff strike to the head, by lowering it, when Seph landed a palm strike uppercut to their chin, that made them sail through the air several feet backwards.

Seph had knocked out Huan. He bowed down to them before heading out of the arena.

His strategies that he kept coming up with in-between the fights were really paying off the time he spent over-thinking them.

He came in here not knowing much of any fighting martial art, but his dedication to training, and to his mantras, add to that his contemplation of how to use palm strikes, from many positions. All proved to be integral to his growth and strength in this tournament.

A legendary martial arts style doesn’t hurt either…

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Sun was proudly standing tall on Seph’s shoulders, when they were leaving the arena, he knew he was getting better, and proving to be a great help in their combined fights, the strength factor was a gap he filled a little after the moonstone, and his new staff fixed his issue with reach, the short staff was making the entire advantage of using a long staff weapon non-existent.

Next up were Gabalawi and Black Crow, who both headed towards the arena. Gabalawi looked confident, while Black Crow just looked lazy and bored out of his mind like usual.

Once in the arena, Gabalawi nodded to his opponent, who didn’t return the nod, and the fight started regardless, as Gabalawi started running towards his opponent.

Again the vultures flew away, Black Crow really cared for them, and didn’t want to put them in harm’s way, especially against the tough opponents in this tournament, even Lao Wencheng could harm them, so he won’t bet them against the monsters that reached the quarterfinals, let alone the semi-finals!

Once Gabalawi was close enough, Black Crow exploded into a storm of bugs once again, crawlies and flyers, a huge number of them that looked threatening to everyone, especially that they didn’t know what the bugs can actually do yet, as Scorn saved all contestants before any harm befell them.

Gabalawi sent two punches towards the flying bugs, which reduced their number by about 10%.

Then he jumped and stomped the ground, killing 50% of the crawling bugs, as his earthquake attack was really significant and overreaching.

The swarm of flies got to him before he could punch them again, and once they landed on his skin and covered his body inside his robe, Scorn appeared and stopped the fight!

Gabalawi was furious!

“Why the fuck did you stop the fight? I didn’t give up. They hadn’t even harmed me at all yet. I could have beaten him!”

“These insects are poisonous, and not only that they eat human meat at an alarming speed. One minute and you would not have been able to continue, you would have lost considerable health, and there was no way to take them off you once they reached you. I know your skill-set. I kept watch through all the ten rooms each of you have beaten so far, and I know all your capabilities, all your strengths, and all your weaknesses. The fight was over, Gabalawi, and I won’t risk a great potential disciple after all the prizes you got from my legacy labyrinthine.”

Gabalawi looked at him in disbelief. Not really buying it was over, but it was done. There was no going back now. He lost his chance to win the tournament…

*****

image [https://imgur.com/XfBSXXC.jpg]

Seph was sitting on the far side, doing something to his Gourd. No one was paying attention to what he was doing, but he was really concentrating on his work.

Once Black Crow’s fight was over, he didn’t leave the arena. He had congealed from his bugs again, his vultures returned to him, and he took out pieces of unknown meat and was feeding them.

There was a 15-minute period between the fights, so Seph had time to finish whatever he was doing.

People started looking towards him to see what he was doing, but he was giving them his back, with the gourd in front of him, so they didn’t know what he was up to.

Some even thought that he was scared or thinking of a way out, because his lumps won’t save him from the insects storm.

His gourd defense won’t keep them at bay, and his palm strikes were pretty equal to Gabalawi’s punches. All onlookers thought they knew the result. They knew Black Crow was going to win.

Once Seph was done with what he was doing, he went over to the arena. He didn’t allow Sun to take part in this fight, which made people believe he knew that the fight was unwinnable!

Sun sat on the side of the arena, and when he looked beside him, he saw the vultures of Black Crow giving him the stink eye. He grimaced and waved his little hand at them, and they didn’t change their expression at all.

“May the best man win, Black Crow. Both of us are the finalists, but only one of us leaves here as the winner. Good luck!”

Black Crow gave Seph a lazy furrowed eyebrow look, like he didn’t believe in his confidence, and exploded into a storm of insects, all headed towards Seph.

To everyone’s surprise, Seph sat down on the ground in a sitting cross-legged position!

Some of the wilder contestants started snickering, thinking he wasn’t even going to try landing a strike to save his life.

The gourd was in front of Seph, and once the bugs were close enough, he ordered the gourd to circle him!

It kept picking up speed, that by the time the bugs got to him, the speed was fast enough that the gourd could make a full circle around him in two seconds!

The bugs started getting stuck in the gourd and dying. Before they could change their strategy, fifty percent of them had already expired!

The bugs halted in the surrounding air and ground, then the flying ones tried to avoid the circling gourd by attacking from the top side.

Seph seemed ready for that too and landed a few palm strikes that halted their progress once again.

What little bugs could get to him, he fought by circling his energy to their area of effect, that they became irrelevant and of little effect.

The bugs retreated as they had lost most of their numbers, and all the bugs on the gourd had decomposed completely!

Black Crow congealed from his bugs and just walked off the arena lackadaisically.

Scorn declared Seph the winner!

“It was a brilliant move to cover your gourd with the lumps of pestilence the way you did! Other than being a deadly, mysterious substance. It’s also sticky that no bugs can escape once caught by it. You deserve to be the winner, because you kept improving your technique since you arrived in the tournament. Your fighting prowess were pretty mediocre before this tournament, but you rose to the challenge! Some people crumble under pressure, and some people shine when the lights are brightest. You are definitely one of the latter!”

“Oh, so that’s what they are called, lumps of pestilence? Thank you, but I still feel it was the luck of the draw. If I had to fight Gabalawi, he would have taken me out. I had a strategy for most opponents, but not for him. My lumps won’t stop him for long before he would have crushed my head!”

“Perhaps, but we will never know. Luck is a significant part of being a cultivator, as well as the wisdom to know which fights you can take, and which fights you must avoid at all costs. Many aspiring cultivators got their journeys cut short just for crossing paths with advanced cultivators, who they pissed off and got their lives snuffed out. The Labyrinthine isn’t only a great opportunity for the valuable Items present, but also because it’s a protected environment to some extent, you are contending with people similar to your strength, you don’t have to worry about keeping your head low around advanced cultivators.”

“Yeah! Now you are scaring me. Looks like I need to invest into a fast escape skill. Or maybe a silver tongue skill! Do you have any lying around here?”

“Maybe, but now that you are the tournament winner, I have to present you with the prize.”