Yu staggered a little as she sat back down in her booth, still adapting to having Qi back. And it was not just having it back that was strange. Everything was… different. Lighter. Easier. Everything from pulling on her Qi, to moving, to even just breathing. It was like she had had a weight on her that she had not noticed for eighteen years, and all of a sudden it was just… gone.

“You will need some time to adapt,” her master said as he looked her over.

She nodded. It was obvious. Right now, she might just blow herself up if she tried using even a grade 1 skill.

“I have no idea how I didn’t realize how… I don’t know… how heavy everything was I guess.”

“Yes,” was all he said.

“I need to find a place to practice.”

He nodded.

“Can you help me find such a place?”

He shrugged.

She scowled. “It’s probably dangerous for me to use Qi around others.”

He mmmmed.

Now Yu was outright glaring.

That’s all I get from you? Really?

But as she thought that, she saw the corner of his mouth tick.

Oh. Oooh. You’re messing with me. Damit, I still have to get used to this new attitude. Well, fine then.

She stood, carefully, and walked to the edge of the booth where there was a wooden banister. Once facing away from him, she let the smile split her face. She had never thought of her master as playful, but she could go with it.

While she was standing there, her eyes scanned the arena, seeing the bloodthirsty crowd, the enchanted display showing the start of a match she did not care about, her chatty friends in the reserve seating, the boisterous announcer, and finally the other open noble boxes.

They were the same as they had been the previous days they had been outdoors. It was a choice she did not care for, primarily because of the smells. But after all these years, she was able to shove those distractions to the back of her mind.

What she focused on instead were those in the noble booths. The first she looked to was the Fan booth, with Ran and another woman leaning up against the banister. Yu recognized her as Qinxue, his sister. They were talking and looking over the crowd.

Ran had always sounded intimidated by his father, and Yu could see why just in his appearance. He looked quite ferocious with his scowl, straight back, dark hair and beard, and the way he gave away nothing about himself other than the impression that he would squash you if you got too close.

Definitely intimidating.

Following that, Yu was a little nervous to look into the Gui booth, but for a different reason. Thankfully, the second princess, that awful woman who was responsible for hurting Ai, was not present. Yu was relieved. She was not sure how she would react to seeing her. Definitely with less… intensity as before, but also probably not great.

The last three large booths were about what she had expected. The Bao were, well, blue. Lots of blue. Blue clothes, blue hair, blue robes. Their expressions were a nearly identical grumpy, although there was an edge of superiority to it too.

What a bunch of asses. Then she chuckled darkly to herself. See you in the spirit realm…

The Shen and Ling clans were boring and did not stand out, so she barely even scanned them. From what Ran had told her, those two clans were not that different from any other large noble house, they were just many times bigger and richer, which made them each one of the leading five.

And that was pretty much the only interesting thing she saw from any of the booths. Yu found herself surprisingly disappointed.

After everything you all have put me through over the last three years, I guess I expected… I don’t know… more, I suppose.

Well, she figured maybe the next generation would be better than she presumed. Moreover, she knew not to judge by appearances and that she would find out the truth in the spirit realm.

“And now, the next match will be between the Earth Mage, Yaochen Du Fang, a member of the Dark Fang mercenary group, and the Wind Warrior, Jao Li from the Black Dragon Sect.” Yu had been intentionally ignoring the announcer, as she had little interest in listening to him encourage the crowd’s bloodlust, but at Li’s name, she looked at the large, enchanted display.

Li was shown in her sect robes, grinning like a maniac, as she always did before a big fight. She was hopping from foot to foot, showing her excitement in all her petite glory. The other fighter was thin and tall with dirt-brown hair and focused brown eyes that showed experience and preparation.

“You’ve seen this Wind Warrior speed her way to victory, slitting throats and stabbing hearts. She is one of only three Warriors remaining, which should tell you all how well the Black Dragon Sect trains its disciples. Even so, she battled her way through, against strong affinities, both ranged and up close.”

Yu nodded, finding the description of her friend simple but accurate.

“But can she maintain her streak against her opponent? He holds an opposing element. As an Earth Mage, can he take advantage of his superior affinity? The well-tested mercenary has demonstrated that he knows how to fight against a warrior and use range to his advantage.”

Again, Yu could not argue with the announcer’s statements. Li could really only have been at a greater disadvantage if it was an Earth Warrior instead of a Mage. This was not a good matchup for her at all. And what made it worse was that they had no Earth Mages in their faction, which left only Yu as Li’s practice partner. In fact, there were few Earth Mages in the outer sect in totality. Yu did not know why, it was just one of those things.

In this case, though, it was a problem. Yu could only spend so much time pretending to be any specific type of cultivator. She had to be every type she could to everyone she could, herself included.

No, this was not a good matchup at all.

“Can the little spitfire of a warrior hold up against the overwhelming might of a mage? Let’s find out! As always, betting ends when the match starts. You have thirty breaths remaining to enter your wagers. And remember, this is the final. Whoever wins gets the privilege of going into the Spirit Realm and earn miraculous rewards, so both fighters will be battling harder than they ever have before!”

Yu heard the banister beneath her fingers creak in protest as she had unknowingly squeezed it a bit too hard.

“Sit,” her master said, causing Yu to spin on him. “You cannot help her standing there breaking the booth. I will bring up the closer view.”

Without wasting any time, he did, pressing some things near him which caused the now-familiar enchanted display to materialize before her. Yu backed up and sat, but was leaning forward, close to the screen.

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Time seemed to crawl for Yu, her leg bouncing under her hand.

“Betting is clooooosed… now!”

“Here we go,” Yu whispered to herself.

“Fighters, are you ready?” the announcer shouted.

At nods from both, he said, “Judges, the fight is yours.”

Each match had two floating judges. They nodded at each other, raised their hands in a synchronous movement, and dropped them with a yelled, “Fight!”

The armrests beneath Yu’s hands cracked at the same time the field under Li’s feet exploded. She shot forward like an arrow, straight at the mage, who lifted and then slammed her foot back onto the ground. He started to slowly rise as a column of stone formed beneath his feet.

C’mon Li. You can do this!

***

Li watched as the mage did exactly what she expected him to do. Creating a column of stone was a common, almost automatic, approach to battling any type of warrior for an Earth Mage. Yu did it herself quite often. Li could do nothing about it, but she had known it was coming.

Thankfully, this mage was clearly not as talented as Yu. When she created a column of earth, it could rise to five times her height in two to three breaths. Li’s opponent was not Yu. He rose much slower, which was a huge problem for him against a Wind Warrior. Anything that involved being slow was a problem.

In the five breaths it took Li to use the push of air to rush to the mage’s location, the column was only three times his own height.

Li knew her own capabilities well after years of practice, so she was aware that leaping that high was not within her ability without standing still to build up pressure. She had seen other fighters in this tournament doing that and, unsurprisingly, they all lost… or died. It was the height of idiocy to stand still – well, unless you were a strong Earth or Metal Warrior, but she was neither of those things.

She was a wielder of the wind. She commanded the breeze against her skin, the swirl of power that caused dropped leaves to float, and the gale that forced mighty trees to fall. She controlled the very air she breathed, and right now, she used that to force it behind her.

Li spun it around her body like a cape and shoved it backward in a skill she rarely had the need to use. It was too specific and far too Qi hungry to enact and maintain outside of specific circumstances. But that rare need was now.

She ran towards the column, not slowing down in the least. In fact, she pressed harder, speeding up, the wind whipping against her skin and clothes, causing resistance she tried to offset with delicate use of her skills.

Her speed increased, the momentum building, until she finally reached the column, not yet five times her own height. In a blur, she was directly in front of the stone cylinder, the light brown creation of Qi almost all she could see. And like she was running straight and without slowing down, she stepped onto it, changing her orientation so she could see the azure sky and its white clouds.

Straight up she ran, pressing her power into and through that strange Qi skill, Wind’s Ascent, that created a cape of air behind her, lightening and lifting her. For every breath she used it, the Qi requirement tripled, causing a cascade of emptiness to fill her. It was not that she did not have plenty of Qi to spare, she did. With eighty-eight open meridians, she had so much Qi she almost never ran out.

However, the constantly increasing drain was a pressure against her dantian and meridians. This feeling would leave as soon as she let go of the skill, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Rather, she pressed harder, forcing the cap-free skill to use every drop of Qi she could force through her eighty-eight meridians.

She felt lighter than a feather, as light as air itself, as she ran up the still-rising column of stone. She looked at the mage at the top, who was looking over the edge down at her, his dark eyes wide.

Five paces.

She ran, pushing against the very pull of the earth, her affinity’s opposite.

Four paces.

Three.

The hollowness inside grew, but she pressed anyway. She needed to reach him, get in close. It was her only chance.

Two.

Seeing how her foot placement would end, she twirled both knives in her hands, so the right faced forward and the left back.

And one

Just as she lunged upward, toward his neck and while also sweeping out at this bent leg to sweep him, she saw it. His wide-eyed panic fell like a curtain and in its place was a victorious smile.

The column she was attached to by only momentum, exploded out from under her. Li felt herself launched away from it, her body flailing in the air. She tried to orient herself, but brown dirt and blue sky spun in and out of her vision. Not helping were the stones, varying in size from pebbles to her fist, pummeling her as she flew.

She tried to use Qi to stabilize herself, creating wind tunnels around her limbs, but just then she realized she had, in her surprise, not released Wind’s Ascent. This meant she was draining herself of Qi while simultaneously slowing her descent to the point of nearly floating in the air, making herself a perfect target for ranged attacks.

Just as she recognized her predicament and released the Qi to the skill, she saw a stone the size of her torso appear out of the corner of her eye. Knowing she had no choice, Li curled into herself, tucking her face into her knees and wrapping her arms about her head.

The collision felt like, well, she had been hit by a flying boulder, and she would know as Yu had hit her with many. The stone crunched into her left side, just under her arm. Li felt ribs break as she wheezed out a yelp of pain that was soon followed by another when she smashed into the unforgiving stone of the fighting circle.

Li felt herself roll over and over, skidding against the ground and the debris laying upon it. Skin tore from her face arms and hands, until it all vanished in a flash of agony as the back of her head made contact with something entirely unforgiving.

The world faded into a blur and then blackness, until, thankfully, consciousness returned, steady and unchanging. Light did not, but that was ok. Yu often used Darkness to help her spatial awareness.

Yu’s so mean, always beating me up. I’ll get her for it one day.

But right now, the pounding was for her own good. She knew that. Yu and she were in one of the training rooms and Li was being destroyed yet again. It was basically rote now. Yu would pound Li into the ground, Li would get up and they would do it again and again until she stopped making mistakes.

At the moment, Li’s body was pretty much moving of its own accord, any decisions barely cognizant, having built those reactions from being beaten unconscious into her habits. So, without thinking, Li rolled over a few times quickly, ready for flying stone or fire or lightning whatever Yu would throw at her.

She pressed her legs against the ground, somersaulting backward over herself. She heard a crash from her old position and felt herself get pelted by more stone. She figured Yu had tried to drop another boulder on her.

It sucks when you do that. Boulders hurt you know.

But one boulder was never the end with Yu. So Li spun wind around her body, running to side but facing toward the sound she heard Yu make. It must be one of those days when Yu wanted to train her to use her hearing rather than sight.

Am I wearing a blindfold again? Ugh.

Li sighed internally. These types of fights always ended with her needing healing.

So Li listened, hearing her fellow faction members screaming for her. It was definitely louder than normal, but they always cheered for whichever faction member Yu was beating that day. Nobody except maybe Fan Ran ever won, but that had never been the point.

Using a trick she had learned from her instructor for the Air Warrior class, Li increased the wind around her, lessening its tightness but broadening its reach. It still had to stay in contact with her as she wielded Aura, but she could expand her senses. Of course, the sacrifice was that her air defense was pretty much non-existent now. Once she had a domain she could do this without losing her defense, but for now it was one or the other.

Doing so turned out to be the right choice because the air told her projectiles were coming. Li leaped again, twisting in the air, as the wind around her fed her information on her surroundings. She landed and immediately moved again, knowing a still target was a struck target.

Ha ha! Take that, Yu!

Li jumped, rolled, twirled, and ran, moving in a zig-zag towards where she had started to hear the panting of her friend.

Yu had probably been fighting a lot today. I tell her to take it easy, but she doesn’t listen. Well, maybe I can get one in on her since she’s apparently exhausting herself.

Li stayed in motion, closing in on the panting sound. She realized that she had lost her knives at some point, so it was fists only. But that was fine with her. They were her favorite weapons anyway. Punching people in the head was the best.

“What the fuck!” she heard a man’s voice scream not too far from her.

Hehe. Must be a new guy, not used to Yu’s training methods yet.

Li continued her run, panting and hurting, but thrilled. Her “wind sense,” as her instructor called it, had never been so strong. She had pushed her affinity out far enough that she felt the stones approaching enough in advance that she could dodge most of them.

“Fine!” she heard that same voice yell. Then it screamed wordlessly and her wind sense told her columns were rising all around her. They were thin, but there were many and they rose quickly. She tried to jump over the lowest, but mid-jump all the others slowed and the ones she was attempting to bypass shot skyward. She collided with them and they exploded, shoving her backward and causing more cuts and slices all over her body.

Damnit, Yu. No mercy today, huh?

She landed in rolling heap yet again, but this time when she rose, her wind sense told her she was surrounded by stone.

“Oh, crap,” Li muttered groggily. She then pulled all the wind at her disposal tightly to herself as she curled into the most compact ball she could, hoping Yu was feeling generous.

The explosion came as expected. Her air defense did its best to mitigate the damage, but it was air and Yu was using earth. Innumerable stones crashed into her.

Pain ripped through her body as blood flew and more bones broke. When the rain of stone finally ended, Li tasted copper in her mouth, coughing it up in a splash. Everything was still dark to her eyes as she faded away, blackness taking her consciousness like it had her vision.

Still, she smiled as she faded out, mumbling her final thought to Yu as she waited for the illusion to end. “It was a good fight.”