To the side of the clearing, Xiao Jun laughed. “I should have added one of those wagers you’re so fond of to this contest, Senior Sister Zhang.”

“Perhaps,” Zhang Lifen said. He Yu didn’t spare her a glance, focused as he was on Sha Xiang, but her voice had taken on the serious timbre it often did when she dropped her usual playful affect. If he’d needed any signal of how dire things had just become, that was it.

Sha Xiang pointed at He Yu. “When this is over, I’m taking your storage treasure, everything in it, and tossing it all off the side of the mountain just to spite you. Then I’m tossing you off after it.”

“That would just make it easier to retrieve,” he said.

That had apparently been the entirely wrong response. Sha Xiang roared again and launched herself across the clearing. Thankfully, the technique she’d activated hadn’t made her any faster. He Yu could follow her movements just as easily as he could before, and now that the gap between them was a single stage, he could match them as well. The technique did make her much stronger, though.

She’d been strong before, to be certain, but now every blow felt like it had half a ton of earth and stone behind it. As her fists crashed into the haft of his guandao in a rain of blows, He Yu was thankful to Li Heng for making him spend his precious spirit stones on a quality weapon. Reinforced as it was with formation scripts to handle the stresses placed on it by Second Realm cultivators, the weapon held. If it hadn’t, any chance he may have left would have shattered along with it.

The succession of strikes sent concussive shocks up He Yu’s arms. He managed to block her attacks, but only just. A fact that was not lost on Sha Xiang. Each blow grew fractionally more frenzied than the last, and her increasing abandon made it more difficult to defend. Some distant part of his mind not entirely focused on the fight mused at how unlike the cultivators of the stories she seemed now. When rivals fought, they were supposed to be determined—and yes, she certainly was that—but they were also supposed to be in control of themselves. It made him think of Li Heng and Tan Xiaoling when they fought. There had to be a path here. If only he could find it.

Sha Xiang continued to press him, her attacks relentless. With the strength granted by the Eternal Mountain Root, he endured. But just as he’d feared, the effort drained his qi reserves. He needed to go on the offensive, but Sha Xiang showed no signs of letting up.

It was a risky move, but He Yu saw no other real option. He activated the Sky Dragon’s Flight. Wind curled around his legs, and he darted away from Sha Xiang. Unlike when he’d used it during his first duel, he was prepared for the technique and was able to control it, but only just. Having created distance, he darted in for an attack.

Cutting off the flow of wind qi to his legs, he replaced it with the mountain qi of the White Mountain Body Art. He wouldn’t make the same mistake as that first duel and use them both at once. Besides, now he needed raw power rather than speed.

He Yu lunged, sweeping his guandao before him, and cloaking it in the Shearing Wind. The blade sang as it flowed from one attack to the next. Of course, Sha Xiang wasn’t defenseless, but the speed of his technique allowed him to keep her at bay as he pressed his offensive.

She became visibly more frustrated as the onslaught of the Shearing Wind along with the power from the Eternal Mountain Root prevented her from mounting an effective counterattack of her own. It was enough to keep her at bay, but He Yu grew frustrated himself as he continually failed to break through her defenses.

Worse, the longer this went on, the more qi he spent. He had no doubts that she could last longer than him, given that he was still only early Foundation while she was surely close to reaching late Foundation by now. Although they were within the same realm, He Yu knew well enough the difference. Once his qi ran out, the fight was lost.

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As Sha Xiang deflected another sweep of the guandao with a palm strike shining with golden earth qi, He Yu shifted his attack and brought the metal end cap of the weapon around. He struck her in the side of the head, much harder than he’d thought himself capable of. The blow sent her staggering away from him, and hatred flared in her eyes.

She spit blood and lifted her chin in his direction. “I won’t rest until I have repaid your insults tenfold, He Yu.”

“What did I even do?” he demanded. “I wasn’t the one who arranged the tournament match, and you won anyway! This is absurd!”

“Do you truly have so little pride that you can’t see?” she asked, her words laced with venom. “I was forced to humiliate myself by beating what may as well have been a child. Before my family. Before the whole village. I will always be remembered for that, not for my victory in that stupid tournament.”

“And? Are you ever going back to Shulin? You’ve already surpassed Dong Wei. Why should any of that matter now?”

Silence stretched between them for what felt like a lifetime.

“Break before the Four Demon Fists,” Sha Xiang said, her voice growing calm for the first time since the fight began.

“Sha Xiang, no!” Xiao Jun shouted.

Xiao Jun took a step forward, reaching out towards Sha Xiang as she gathered yet more earth qi. A surge of dark water qi rushed from where Zhang Lifen stood and crashed over Xiao Jun, forcing him back to the edge of the clearing as her tide withdrew.

“Junior Brother Xiao,” Zhang Lifen said with the tone of a grandmother scolding a wayward child. “You would throw away your honor and break your oath of noninterference? I can’t allow you to do such a thing. Not in good conscience.”

In He Yu’s spiritual senses, a faint gathering of qi rippled along Sha Xiang’s arms, as though another larger pair had been laid over her own. They added bulk and muscle and power to her earth-infused limbs. Along with the technique came a tangible sense of danger. It was, in a way, similar to the presence of stronger cultivators, like Zhang Lifen, that weighed on the world around them. There was something else to it though. Something unfamiliar that He Yu couldn’t quite place. He quickly glanced to Zhang Lifen. By her thoughtful expression, she sensed it, too.

Whatever it was that Xiao Jun had tried to stop, Sha Xiang hadn’t listened. She settled into a stance He Yu had seen hundreds of times before while training with Ren Huang. There was still something off about her, though. It had to do with the technique she used—the Four Demon Fists. She seemed larger than she had a moment ago, but that wasn’t the whole of it.

He Yu narrowed his focus and observed her with the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment. It didn’t give him the perfect insight that it had earlier, but it gave him enough. Sha Xiang’s technique was earth aligned, but that much he already knew. The paths it carved through her meridians were wrong somehow—as though it went against her nature. He Yu frowned. That shouldn’t be possible—not for someone following the Way. If the Four Demon Fists was so inimical to her very being, she shouldn’t have been able to cultivate it at all. To further confuse things, her very being was so strongly aligned to earth that cultivating a purely earth aspected technique shouldn’t have gone against anything about her. Whatever it was, he’d have to leave it for later. Xiao Jun obviously knew something he didn’t, and He Yu was certain a bit of research in the sect manual pavilion would turn up some sort of answer.

“It’s time to end this,” Sha Xiang said. Even her voice sounded different in a way he couldn’t quite place. The whole of it was unnerving, but he couldn’t back down now.

“I never wanted this,” he said simply.

Sha Xiang spat. “Bleed, break, and die.”

Those words caused something inside He Yu to crack. Just as he’d told her, he’d never wanted this. This grudge of hers was so comically one-sided. As far as he was concerned, the tournament in Shulin was part of another life. Sure, it had happened less than a year ago, but he wasn’t the same person he was then. He was a cultivator now, walking the path of an immortal. He’d stepped fully into the Second Realm, placing him on roughly equal footing with Dong Wei—fifty years his senior, and the very man who’d refused to teach him. By all possible measures of things, he’d already achieved more than he’d ever dreamed of before properly entering the world of immortals. That Sha Xiang could hold on to something so petty, so pointless, was laughable.

Would an emperor bow to someone so small? Sha Xiang wasn’t someone to be feared. She was a petty tyrant, fit only to be crushed. His dantian pulsed, then compressed. A great weight settled on his shoulders, bringing with it a sense of approval and acceptance.

He Yu stood at the base of a stair, stretching towards heaven behind him. Far above floated a resplendent palace, filled with the secrets of ten thousand sages. He stood upon the clouds. The world lay before him, and far below, Sha Xiang stood and looked up at him in hatred.

Back in the clearing once again, He Yu pointed his guandao at his opponent. “Then let us end this.”