Having this many upsets in a single competition didn’t dampen the spirit of the audience. Instead, the constant changes and developments served to further increase the ferocity with which they watched.

Even now, watching the disciple of a Grandmaster concede without fight, a great amount of speculation arose within the seats. All around Master Jiao and Riri, people ran left and right, chasing the people who organized the bets. These ‘scammers’ had been the public enemy, since their proposed win rates were all wrong.

Listening to all the great chatter and conspiracies about the possibility of rigging, the duo glanced at the resting Li Ao.

‘’Two disciples are out just like that...’’

‘’What about the third one? If he meets with the same fellow, won’t it be bad?’’

‘’Bad for whom? Isn’t it the same as admitting to rigging the competition? And I felt bad for the judge before...’’

‘’Hey, who knows which master created that randomizer box? They always keep their identities hidden in competitions like these, so he might not know how it even works.’’

‘’Screw that—I’ll bet the third disciple will get disqualified as well.’’

‘’Chen Ping was one of the dark horses, but he got beaten in less than fifty rounds.’’

‘’Round counts aren’t any good indicator. The boy didn’t even use everything he had in that fight.’’

‘’It is still risky to bet on him, though.’’

‘’What is a man without risk? Let’s see the rates—I’ll play whatever is most profitable!’’

‘’By the way, where is the scammer?’’

‘’They are beating him with sticks down there...’’

Master Jiao let out a deep breath of relief.

At least he had made his bets before the organizer got beaten to death...

‘’The real darkhorse is Jie Mintai, right? Just bet on her.’’

‘’Ponytail girl? Everyone is thinking the same, so her rating is off the charts...’’

The chatter continued even as the other round began. Jie Mintai, the ponytail girl, ended her new opponent in three strikes. The opponent couldn’t hold herself very well, and it took her a bit of luck to get this far.

Still, she descended with a smile near her family members.

‘’Number five and six! Come on stage!’’

Li Ao leaped onto the stage, fully spirited and ready to demolish his enemies.

He first saw a beautiful butterfly accessory on a dark hair, then the slightly feminine face of Lei Jin.

The duo looked at each other, baffled, and Li Ao felt his fighting spirit extinguish.

Then Lei Jin let out a loud laugh and came to stand a few meters before him.

‘’Well, Liao, don’t be so disappointed with me.’’

‘’It’s not that...’’ Li Ao rubbed his cheek. ‘’Well, I’m sorry.’’

‘’Nothing to be sorry about,’’ Lei Jin waved his hand with a wry smile. ‘’It was my luck to hold on until now.’’

Lei Jin knew both instinctively and factually that he stood no chance.

From when they made Fan Yueyin’s gift together to their formation lessons, he learned how terrifying Li Ao’s strength was.

Just his Spiritual Qi cultivation could make him almost invincible among his peers, let alone his magical Physique. Even standing here, Lei Jin’s robes stuck to his skin with sweat. There was something within Li Ao’s aura that made him uncomfortable and afraid.

It was like the feeling of a prey seeing its predator.

‘’Can you do me a favor?’’

Li Ao perked his ears even as the judge descended to summarize the rules.

‘’Of course, anything.’’

‘’Send me your biggest strike.’’

‘’Why?’’

‘’I just want to see where I stand.’’

‘’I think you are standing in a good place.’’

‘’Come on, Liao,’’ Lei Jin frowned at him. ‘’Isn’t it a simple request? Didn’t you say anything?’’

‘’Just not that.’’

Lei Jin’s cheeks twitched. ‘’Why?’’

‘’You will die.’’

His direct answer made Lei Jin freeze.

‘’Hey, don’t use rude language.’’ The judge put a hand between them right then. ‘’You are all peers. You should be good friends.’’

The duo didn’t really hear the old man. Staring at each other, Lei Jin bowed at the judge.

‘’Senior, can you protect me if my life is in danger?’’

The judge raised a brow, cast an unapproving look at Li Ao, then patted Lei Jin’s hair. ‘’No worries! Even if another Core Formation cultivator strikes, I can save you!’’

Lei Jin shrugged. ‘’There you have it.’’

‘’You are insufferable.’’ Sighing, Li Ao walked back to his spot. The judge clicked his tongue, then explained the rules to them in a booming voice and ascended.

Lei Jin also went back, then the duo took fighting positions.

‘’You may begin!’’

Lei Jin brandished a long, black saber in front of him and leapt forward. His speed eclipsed his cultivation, and his reaction truly deserved respect.

The sharp glint of the saber echoed the forming of an Elementary Intent, then blinked out of existence. A wind blew with it, and Lei Jin saw the judge land in front of him.

‘’What?’’

For a moment, he didn’t understand what happened.

The next second, he fell to the ground, knees weak.

An oppressive aura crashed on his shoulders, making him tremble all over and cracking his skin. The aura itself was bronze, visible to the naked eye, and enigmatic.

Its sight caused many in the audience to scratch their bodies, making their skins crawl.

Within the same second, a shrill boom rose towards the heavens, then exploded like thunder.

The shockwave blinded the audience, then deafened them, and right after made several people on the front row fly out of their seats with wind pressure.

A hot gale blew all around, searing to the skin even for cultivators at the sixth-level of Qi Condensation.

Upon the high seats, the Imperial Ancestor opened his mouth. He sucked in the hot air like a balloon, and in a moment the wind was gone and people were back in their seats, confused.

‘’...I see why you asked.’’ The judge murmured. Even he felt a little troubled by the strike.

Li Ao had done nothing special. He took a step forward, condensed his spear, then stabbed.

That was what made it terrifying.

The speed and accuracy which he moved clearly aimed to kill Lei Jin.

Coupled with his Spiritual Qi cultivation, his Physique, and the enhancement of the bronze mist that spread around his pores, he was well beyond the limits of the Qi Condensation stage.

The Judge narrowed his eyes and watched Li Ao descend from the arena, then looked down at his open palm.

There was a white mark on it.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Below the white mark, on the ground was a ten meter pit. The pit spread behind him like a carved tunnel all the way to the seats. Only his immediate back remained safe from destruction.

Glancing back at the trembling, traumatized Lei Jin, he sighed. ‘’Okay, let us get you to treatment room.’’

Li Ao walked down and sat on the ground. Right as he finished absorbing the rest of the bronze aura, a divine sense washed over him and he heard Fan Yueyin’s voice in his mind.

’Why were you so cruel?’

Li Ao gazed at the shocked figure of Lei Jin until he was sent inside the treatment room. The boy cast a frightened look at him before vanishing.

A confused light twinkled in Li Ao’s eyes.

He whispered to the air.

‘’Where is the cruelty? I only did what he asked, and nothing more.’’

‘You had killing intent.’

‘’It wouldn’t my biggest strike without it.’’

‘...you don’t understand, do you?’

Li Ao stared towards the high seats. He saw Fan Yueyin carry a strange stare. She seemed to be reprimanding him, but also carried a concern which he never saw her show.

‘’What is there to understand, master?’’

‘I don’t know your upbringing, Liao.’ Her voice sounded deeper than before. ‘But you need to understand; not everyone leads the same life as you.’

‘You need to think of that when dealing with people.’

‘’...what, then? Should I act soft because he led a pampered, easy life?’’

His voice rose a notch as he spoke.

‘’It is better for him to realize his weakness than live without knowing it. If he doesn’t know how death feels like, how will he live in the future?’’

‘Don’t speak things you don’t believe in—at the very least, not to me.’

‘Are you confident in saying these excuses to his face?’

‘Do you see your senior brother and sister the same way? Pampered, easy lives they lived, huh!?’

Fan Yueyin’s voice battered in his ears.

‘You can’t decide what people should know about life! What do you know about living!?’

‘I am saying you need to have consideration, precisely because you know nothing about their lives!’

‘Who told you he led an easy life? When did you see he was pampered?’

‘It doesn’t matter even if you know it—and you don’t know any of it, I assure you.’

Face dark, Li Ao turned his gaze to the ground.

‘Just because you suffered a little, you think it should be the way to live?’

‘That is a childish thought, Liao! That is the attitude of an attention starved kid!’

Trembling, Li Ao almost shouted. ‘’He asked for it, not me—’’

‘He asked you to show how far you two stood apart. Not for enlightenment, nor for your ‘teaching’.’

Fan Yueyin’s voice no longer carried any anger. She sounded cold.

‘What you did was using excessive force on a boy who thought you his rival and friend.’

Li Ao bit his lips and forced himself to go into meditation. He ignored the rest of the matches, and didn’t see Sun Jian limping out of the treatment room towards the high seats. His sight dark, he took deep breaths, closing his mind.

‘Why do you refuse to think before acting?’

‘’It never helped me.’’

‘...prejudice never helps, either.’

There was no conversation after that. Only, he heard a long, deep sigh, and felt the divine sense retreat.

Li Ao took a deep breath, then exhaled, but no matter what he couldn’t wrap his mind around the scolding he received.

What was wrong with it?

Lei Jin did ask him for his biggest strike, and he delivered. It wasn’t his responsibility to assess whether he could take it on—and Lei Jin did consider it, asking the judge to protect him.

And even if he didn’t consider, again, what was wrong with it anyway?

In The Great Wei, no one would bat an eye to his action. Grand Nobles back there weren’t naive nor pampered. Duels were a matter of life and death, and cultivation required blood to progress.

Everyone was a warrior, and they had a duty to be so.

With a constant threat to their lives hanging by their neck, who could spend their days just eating cakes and holing up in their rooms to make useless trinkets?

‘Prejudice...’

Li Ao’s thoughts stopped there. His Qi seemed to freeze, then go out of control for a moment.

He remembered something, which further darkened his face.

‘...It's not like I am making things harder for people...’

‘...they always isolated me, because they shamed me for doing something useless, I never tried to make it my aim.’

‘You don’t really begrudge me, or make fun of what I do. You are good friends.’

Then a particular conversation sounded in his ears. They, he and Lei Jin, had it after they forged his master’s gift, learning formations.

‘...not that it has become any better. Now that I gave up publicly, there is a lot of pressure for me to take up something else.’

‘They even brought a pill cauldron to my room. My uncle said that I should become something at least, rather than nothing.’

‘But with what you taught, I can become something in what I want. Even if I can’t, it doesn’t matter.’

‘I would rather become nothing than anything else...’

With a sigh, Li Ao calmed his Qi down, then looked at the arena.

It was better to not think of some things.

Still, Li Ao himself knew he would need to think, then learn at some point.

He had shut off his mind for years. Now that he chose to move forward once again, with a different aim other than revenge, he also had to change how he thought.

It was at this moment he realized that, perhaps, he and his master weren’t exactly similar people. Or Sun Jian and Qing Yan.

But was that a bad thing?

He didn’t know.

Li Ao sighed, then shook his head. Even though he felt like he didn’t want to think, Fan Yueyin somehow made him unable to stop. More and more thoughts formed in his head.

In a minute, he was deep in meditation, considering many things he never had.

After all, not one day of his was spent leisurely for months, then years.

After escaping the deadly danger behind, he focused too much on what was in his front.

Was that the reason he begrudged others’ peaceful lives?

‘I don’t truly feel that way.’

But thinking of what he said to Fan Yueyin, to his master, he seemed to embody the thought.

That wasn’t right either. A storm of ideas and questions appeared within his mind, and one by one he tried to solve and adjust to them.

He didn’t experience this kind of contemplation before.

Chasing what was in front of him without rest, how could his mind have the time to adjust to things? Or adjust to this world, even?

Li Ao forgot that he was a foreigner here.

When he reached that realization, a strange feeling squeezed his heart. The weight in his throat felt hard to swallow.

‘This isn’t my home.’

‘This is their home.’

‘I can’t act like I belong to this place.’

That was a silly thought, but one that needed to be thought.

Fan Yueyin could read a part of Li Ao’s conflicted state from the high seats. When she saw him fall into meditation, she showed a worried frown.

She herself didn’t think Li Ao’s action was ‘wrong’.

The wrong thing was his ‘intent’.

‘If he just stayed longer with me, I could help him more than this.’

Fan Yueyin, as well as any profound cultivator could sense certain changes to fate.

A cultivator’s sixth sense was similar to a prophetic ability, after all. It was this sense that allowed them to survive through the years, not just their strength.

Now that she felt that they would part soon, and saw her disciple still crooked in many ways, she deployed a somewhat cruel tactic to help straighten him.

Was it right?

No one knew. She knew her own intent was right, but most of the time, a person’s intent didn’t decide the outcome.

When she saw Sun Jian reach near her, Fan Yueyin stopped thinking. She called an attendant to bring a seat.

Smiling, Sun Jian greeted her with his limping legs. ‘’No, master, I’m alright! Everyone else is standing as well.’’

‘’Let them stand like fools, then.’’ Fan Yueyin snorted. ‘’Sit down.’’

‘’Okay~’’

Sun Jian didn’t object and took a relaxed seat.

‘’Why don’t you all sit as well?’’

The disciples and heirs of the nearby elders kept their gazes forward. Many knew how the child of the Sun family had a few screws loose in the social department. Hence, no one was willing to speak to him in a somber atmosphere.

Some elders still called seats for their children, though.

‘’How is junior brother’s results?’’

‘’Didn’t you hear from Lei Jin?’’

Sun Jian’s eyes clouded for a moment. ‘’They put him to sleep. He was badly frightened...’’

A fist under her chin, Fan Yueyin nodded. ‘’He did good enough.’’

A few minutes passed while other fights concluded.

‘’...Master.’’

‘’Yes, Jian?’’

‘’Are you angry at Junior Brother?’’

Fan Yueyin opened her eyes. She let out a sigh, then ruffled his head with a smile.

‘’How come you aren’t this sharp in understanding minerals?’’

Sun Jian coughed, then avoided looking at his master. Since she said nothing else, he also returned to watching the occasion.

After all, Xu Liao and Fan Yueyin were both warm people. They would make up soon enough.

‘Junior brother is going up the stage...is that the guy I fought?’

While he was busy observing, Sun Jian noticed a faint glint near the corner of his eyes.

Looking to his right, he saw Fan Yueyin pointing forward with her ring. The orange gem kept flashing with white light that seemed unending.

‘’Master, what is wrong with the ring?’’

Fan Yueyin cast him a glance, looked down at the ring, then shook her head.

‘’It is fine.’’

Then she activated the ring again.

It flashed once, then twice, then in a few seconds returned to its constant blinking.

A confused gaze on him, Sun Jian glanced down to see Li Ao climbing the stairs to the arena.

‘How perplexing...’

‘Did it work like that before?’