The second round of the tournament was little different than the first. Easy victories for the disciples who were paired against opponents far weaker than themselves, and fairly uneventful matches for the rest.
Sha Xiang and Cui Bao both displayed the same cruelty as they did in the first round. Xiao Jun similarly humiliated his opponent. Qiao Xia was the only disciple among them who treated her opponents with any amount of respect.
Chen Fei’s fight in the second round was against a Second Realm disciple this time and she won easily enough once she’d finished apologizing to her opponent again. He Yu, Li Heng, and Yan Shirong all won their matches as well, although Li Heng had been paired against an early Body Refining disciple. It had still been a fairly easy fight for the well-practiced noble.
Much like she had on the first day, Princess Tan conducted herself with dignity and offered her opponent a chance to surrender. They had, of course, refused. The girl she’d been matched against was also a Third Realm, and pushing up against breaking into the middle stage. She didn’t fare any better than Tan Xiaoling’s opponent on the first day.
“How is she so strong?” He Yu asked, still not entirely believing the fight he’d just witnessed.
“That’s the Jade Kingdom for you,” Yan Shirong said with a shake of his head.
“The Jade Kingdom is a harsh land,” Li Heng said. “They control a large territory, but the capital is the only settlement of any considerable size. It hugs the mountains that line the southern edge of the White Desert. The rest of the population is scattered among tiny villages either clustered around oases or tucked away in the high valleys of the Jade Mountains. The whole land is lousy with bandit clans, awakened beasts, and spirits. As a princess of the royal Tan family, it’s no wonder she’s seen her fair share of combat before coming to the sect. She would have been sent into the wilds with a company of soldiers to hunt bandits as soon as she broke into the Second Realm.”
“I went on my first bandit assault when I was a peak First Realm at thirteen years,” Tan Xiaoling said as she returned to her seat.
Nobody back in He Yu’s home of Shulin began cultivating before they turned fifteen. As far as he could tell, that was the standard in the empire. If she’d been cultivating—and fighting—for that long, no wonder she already had such a strong cultivation base and refined killing intent.
The third round of the tournament passed like the first two had. With the first full week of the tournament done, the remaining disciples were given a day to rest before the commencement of the fourth round. By now all the Second Realm disciples had been eliminated, and the fights would actually matter.
This round was perhaps the most important, as it would determine which disciples would earn a place in the inner sect. The eight disciples who advanced to the next round would all be guaranteed a spot, and the rounds beyond this would be a contest for initial rank and the prestige that came from placing well in the tournament itself.
When the first round was called, He Yu’s heart skipped a beat. It was Chen Fei against Qiao Xia. This would be the most evenly matched opponent either of them had fought so far, with both of them having reached middle Body Refining just in the week prior to the tournament’s start.
He recalled how despondent Chen Fei had been back when Qiao Xia had taken to insulting her, calling her a barbarian who had no place in the Shrouded Peaks Sect. It seemed that since her breakthrough, Chen Fei had embraced her background, and had fought in every round of the tournament so far dressed in the same outfit she’d worn when first arriving at the sect. Plus one bear-skin mantle.
The two girls took the arena floor. They were cordial to one another, bowing as was appropriate, but for the first time since the beginning of the tournament, Chen Fei didn’t apologize.
“Barbarian trash,” Qiao Xia said. “Thankfully I won’t have to put up with your presence in the inner sect.”
Chen Fei squared her shoulders. “You shouldn’t be so cruel.”
The gong sounded, and both girls’ presences filled the arena.
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Qiao Xia’s spirit was a rolling bank of clouds and mist, cascading through densely wooded slopes of mountain and hill. Strong with wood and water, her spirit was rich with life. The scent of red pines and damp earth arrived with the clouds, along with a drop in temperature much like when Zhang Lifen unleashed her spirit. He Yu thought he could almost make out voices, lurking just at the edge of his hearing, beckoning him deeper into the misty pine boughs.
Chen Fei was a mountain. Solid and strong, she towered to the heavens. Her stance reached deep into the earth, pulling strength and stability from the very ground she stood upon. Earth, metal, and mountain qi all coursed through her, and He Yu immediately recognized the White Mountain Body Art from his own brief time cultivating it.
As she settled into her stance, the sound of cracking stone accompanied the layers of earth qi she gathered into her body with the Eternal Mountain Root technique. Metal followed, and then finally mountain. He Yu activated the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment just to be certain. While he didn’t know the names of the techniques, his suspicions were confirmed—Chen Fei had mastered at least the first two stages of the White Mountain Body Art.
Rushing forward as she had in her first match, Chen Fei pulled back a fist reinforced with the strength and weight of a mountain. Qiao Xia’s weapon, a brightly painted parasol, fell into her hand. The parasol snapped open just as Chen Fei reached her opponent. Mountain crashed into wood, and Qiao Xia stumbled back several steps under the impact.
He Yu had been on the receiving end of one of Chen Fei’s punches back when she was only at the Foundation stage. She hadn’t been using any sort of body enforcement techniques back then, either. He could only imagine what her blows must feel like now.
To her credit though, Qiao Xia recovered quickly. She used a movement technique to create distance, and swept her open parasol in front of her, spinning it as she gathered a bank of mist about her. Qiao Xia retreated into her mist as it rolled across the arena, growing denser by the second. Chen Fei settled into a defensive posture, looking around for her foe.
A figure flickered within the mist, and Qiao Xia stepped into view once again. Her parasol was closed now, and she thrust it like a sword as she closed the distance between herself and Chen Fei with another movement technique. Unlike the time He Yu had fought her, she wasn’t laughing as she darted in and out of her mist. Her features were set and serious, and her lips drawn into a thin line.
A circle of formation characters flashed into being, blocking Qiao Xia’s strike. Before the girl had even started to recover, Chen Fei had launched a spinning kick at her head. Her booted foot cracked against Qiao Xia’s skull, and this time the girl hit the arena floor more than a dozen yards from where she’d first been hit. With a single leap, Chen Fei crossed the distance, surging toward the ground with unnatural speed. Qiao Xia managed to roll away, but she was still caught in the edge of Chen Fei’s attack.
When Chen Fei’s foot slammed into the flagstones, cracks spiderwebbed across the floor of the arena. An instant later, stone burst up from the earth all around her. For a good ten feet in all directions around Chen Fei, the arena floor erupted in jagged stone spikes. Qiao Xia screamed in a mix of pain and outrage as her gown, and the whole left side of her body was torn and bloodied.
“I’m not going to lose to a barbarian like you!” she shouted, snapping her parasol open once again. Wood qi gathered around her ruined limbs and her wounds began to close. It would be expensive to heal that much damage that quickly, He Yu mused, but it was probably the right call given her circumstances. Besides, wood qi was ideal for healing the body, and it would have been wasted potential to cultivate wood without access to some sort of healing art.
Chen Fei made a quick gesture with her hand, and the formation character for metal shone on the stones beneath Qiao Xia’s feet. The smaller girl let out a half-choked cry as her wood-aligned technique was blasted away by the surge of metal qi from Chen Fei’s formation. In an instant, Chen Fei was on her opponent again. Qiao Xia’s defense grew increasingly desperate as she did everything she could to meet the relentless barrage of punches and kicks.
“I can’t lose—”
Qiao Xia’s words were cut off when Chen Fei slammed a fist into her gut. Although the smaller girl managed to block the next attack, it proved too much for her parasol. The bamboo and paper weapon cracked and splintered to pieces as the formation giving it the strength to serve as a cultivator’s weapon finally gave out. An instant later, Qiao Xia was on her back, Chen Fei standing above her, a qi-infused fist raised and ready.
“Surrender,” Chen Fei said. It was the harshest word He Yu had ever heard her speak. In that moment he’d no doubt about her resolve—the fight was over and if Qiao Xia didn’t concede, Chen Fei would end it right there.
“I can’t,” the other girl choked out, her eyes flicking to where Sha Xiang sat alongside Cui Bao and Xiao Jun.
Chen Fei’s fist cracked the flagstones beneath where Qiao Xia had lain just an instant before, as white mist puffed away from the impact.
“Congratulations, Disciple Chen Fei, the first fighter to qualify for the inner sect in this year’s tournament.” Leader Zhou’s voice carried easily over the sounds of the gathered disciples’ cheers.
As she returned to her seat, He Yu met her gaze. Her expression was grim, like she’d just bitten into something rotten, but there was still a hint of pride there. For his part, He Yu was just happy that she’d made it. He’d been worried for her, but now he could put all that to rest and focus on what lay ahead. And if that first fight had been any indication, he had plenty of reason to be excited for what lay ahead.