The referee called for Liu ChuHua versus Little Spring.

The two stepped up to their places, causing sparks of hatred to practically fly off each other.

“I’m glad that it’s you that I’m fighting,” McTraitorFace said. “This way, I get to show Sister Lin my real skills.”

With a flourish and an aggressive crack, the girl brought out her whip. Then she happily looked at me and waved.

Little Spring calmly took out his sword, stood in the fighting stance I taught him, and narrowed his eyes at her. “She’s my sister, not yours!”

“And when I beat your butt, I’ll prove to her that I’d make a better sibling!”

The fuck is this? Why were they arguing over something so dumb?

Little Spring was usually so calm and logical for a child of eight. But he stood there, seething, holding his sword like he was about to murder a bitch. “Oh yeah? Well, when I beat yours, I’ll prove you’re not worthy!”

I covered my eyes and turned my head to pretend like I didn’t know those two.

I mean, feel free to smack talk, but leave me out of it!

The referee, who was probably also tired of their shit, raised his hand. “Fight!”

Little Spring ran toward McTraitorFace.

The girl coolly cast her Sly Fire Falcon technique, sending a bird made of flames shooting toward the kid’s weak side. Something she must have picked up from his past fights.

Fortunately, between me and the Reds, we’d given him plenty of instruction on how to protect his vulnerabilities.

Without breaking a sweat, he sent a blade of Qi slicing towards the fire falcon, severing it.

The girl experienced a backlash from the forced cancellation of her technique and coughed up a mouthful of blood. Enraged, she took a few steps forward until he came within her whip’s range. With quick successive strikes, she pelted his shoulders and arms.

Fortunately, the protective talisman I’d forced him to wear caught all of those attacks, only letting some of the damage through.

The whip’s tip zipped toward his eye. He dodged backward, escaping the blinding attack. Of course, doing this killed his momentum. But he wasn’t a normal kid who was just learning the way of the sword. He was someone who already knew how to manifest sword Qi and didn’t have to fight in close combat.

He sent a blade of it flying towards her.

With an awkward jump step, she dodged the attack.

Her face filled with rage. She flicked her whip out and wrapped it around the hilt of Little Spring’s sword.

As she pulled, the kid’s weapon flew out of his hand, landing across the arena floor.

She smirked. “Now that you’re weaponless, I’ll allow you to give up!”

“And listen to you brag about being the better sibling? Never!”

Why did these two sound more like actual siblings than I ever had with the original Bloodsword?

Wait, that was beside the point. Neither of us were technically real siblings. We were all martial brothers and sisters of the same sect. There was literally no reason for this.

McTraitorFace flicked her whip out. Little Spring, using a Qi strengthened hand, caught the end. Then he pulled.

It flew out of her hands.

“Aaaah!” she yelled, then ran towards him.

He awkwardly attempted to wield the whip, but I’d never trained him on it. Eventually, he just threw it far behind him and jumped at McTraitorFace’s legs.

They both rolled on the floor while punching and kicking each other.

I sighed. Seriously, what was with this pointless jealousy?

That was when I noticed the hidden knife McTraitorFace pulled out of her sleeve and stabbed into Little Spring’s side.

How the hell did it bypass the protective talisman I made him wear?

The kid grunted with pain when she pulled the dagger out. His face paled. Then it was like the pain made him focus, and he used a couple of hand seals to create a massive spiritual palm that smacked her so heavily that she flew off of him.

She landed on the arena floor with so much force that she coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her head lifted for a second, then her eyes unfocused and she fell unconscious.

These brats!

“Winner, Little Spring!”

I ran from my spot to kneel beside the dumb kid.

He smiled at me. “See? I’m the better brother.”

“Yes, yes. You’re the best. Now let’s get you healed.”

I brought out a healing pill but paused when I looked at his wound. It was turning purple at the edges. Fuck. There had been poison on that knife!

Fucking McTraitorFace!

He grabbed my arm. “Promise me that I’ll be your only little sibling.”

I rolled my eyes and hefted him up, using the superior strength I earned from my body cultivation. His eyes went wide. “I... I can walk!”

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“Don’t be ridiculous. Come on, let’s get you healed. This is going to be a bit more complicated than I’d like. So let’s make room for the last two fighters.”

I didn’t need to see the next fight, anyway. I already knew that Young Master Zhang would win. His talent and trump cards were superior. Not to mention that, at eight years old, little Zhao XiuYing was two-thirds his age.

The only thing that might be a factor was that he was limited to the fourth layer of Qi Condensation while Icy Tsundere Fairy had reached the 5th level of Qi Condensation last night.

Unfortunately for her, she was dealing with a man who slapped problems with money.

I carried Little Spring all the way to the back room where we had rested while waiting for everyone to get here. After laying him down on the floor, I took a sample of his poisoned blood and put it on my sanitized knife.

Now, the most perfect way to test the poison would be to get a pill testing beast, let it consume it, then test the antidote on it.

However, I didn’t have time for that. The kid’s lips were already turning purple. Of course, that also told me that the oxygen content in his blood had significantly decreased. He appeared to have no problems breathing.

Then using a highly scientific method (not really), I grabbed two general antidote pills that I had prepared a while ago. I used a little of my sword Qi to scrape off some of each pill onto my knife. Focusing my divine sense on the mixture I watched the reactions.

Visually, on the right side, the blood turned black. On the left side, it turned bright red. But what I sensed from the energies made me frown.

“What is it? Sister Lin?”

“This is a way stronger poison than a kid like Mc—Liu ChuHua should be able to come up with.”

His face paled. “Do we have an antidote for it?”

I smirked. “Who am I?”

“Fairy Lin!”

“That’s right. So stay calm and relax. Concentrate on cultivating to replace what you lost in the tournament.”

He swallowed and closed his eyes. I could tell that he wasn’t trying. Or maybe the pain was too much.

It was fine as long as he didn’t focus on the pain. I quickly cleaned and sanitized my knife while my mind went over the possible poisons. Based on my senses and the symptoms... Ah. That one.

Blue Fire Three Tears poison.

I frowned.

That was a rare one. Not that powerful. However... It was almost like someone had researched what pills I’d sold to the Alchemists’ Guild and had done everything in their power to find the one lower leveled poison I hadn’t prepared an antidote for.

Was this the work of a demonic cultivator that infiltrated the sect? Had they somehow convinced McTraitorFace that she’d need that poisoned knife to beat Little Spring? It was possible.

Or it was just a coincidence. I wouldn’t know until I spoke with that girl. Whenever that would be.

However, if this was someone’s plan, they didn’t know what I could do. Being a master alchemist, I knew how to speedily create a temporary general antidote for this poison from the ones I’d already concocted.

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t know this particular poison well. It helped that, compared to the poisons I could originally handle, it wasn’t that strong.

Since we were in the sect, the antidote for it should be procurable. However, judging from Little Spring’s face, he didn’t have a lot of time before he succumbed. And I couldn’t risk wasting a second asking for help that may or may not be available within the timeframe I needed it.

While this poison wasn’t that formidable, it still worked quickly against Qi Condensation cultivators.

I took out four general antidotes, each one dealing with different poison sets.

The first one, I cut in thirds. The second, I cut in half. The third, in tenths. And the final one, I crushed into dust. Using the dust mixed with spiritual spring water as a cement, I pasted the three other pills together.

Using a special hand seal and a little too much of my available spiritual energy, I began to harden the Franken-pill while merging the energies. It changed from looking like a tiny fucked up beach ball to a pure dangerous looking mess of colors and power.

This thing had about five seconds of stability before it exploded.

Frankly, one should never fuck with already tamed energies like this… unless there was an emergency.

Little Spring had passed out. I didn’t have time to wake him up — plus, immortal pills didn’t need a person to actually swallow them to be effective.

I held his nose until he opened his mouth and shoved the pill inside. It melted on contact with his tongue.

Slowly, his face regained some color.

This wouldn’t get rid of the poison entirely, but it would put a stop to its ability to damage him. At least for a few days.

Then I fed him a Lin’s Kickass Healing Dan and used my spiritual energy to renew his injured body. It was a shame that the healing pill did squat for poison aside from repairing the damage it left behind. The knife wound, which had looked jagged and nasty, repaired itself.

That was when I finally noticed the muffled sounds going on outside.

From what I knew about what each person could do, that didn’t sound right!

This kid might have to face whoever won up there.

I shook Little Spring, and he jerked awake.

“Quickly! We have to see this.”

He grimaced. “My clothes are bloody.”

“You can change later! Let’s go!”

We ran to the staging area.

Young Master Zhang — who looked like he just got his ass handed to him — collapsed to the jagged rubble that was left of the ground.

In front of him stood a referee, who held the corner of a giant metal fan. One that Icy Tsundere Fairy was about to use to crack the pre-teen’s skull open.

I hadn’t seen her wield that before. Was it a trump card, or something she purchased with her points?

Of course, after McTraitorFace, I wasn’t going to rule out the possibility of her receiving it from a demonic cultivator. And, considering the horrible state the arena floor was in, possibly some other fun tools.

Seriously, how the hell did the goddamn stage get so fucked up? There was ice, charred spots and broken stones all over the place.

It was so wrecked that even I couldn’t tell at a glance what exactly happened.

“Winner, Zhao XiuYing.”

Zhang WeiWei ran to his young master and gave him a pill.

Meanwhile, small Icy Tsundere threw her fan into her spatial ring and strode off stage while flipping her hair back.

Well, it was also possible that I’d just misjudged her ability to hide her strength.

***

After I explained to Little Spring about his current poisoned state, I pulled out the tent and guarded Little Spring while he changed. Of course, considering that the next round would be announced pretty soon, I also told him to cultivate for a few minutes.

The good thing about having the arena floor completely messed up was that it took a while to repair it.

Once he’d had some time to change and cultivate, I stepped into the tent and set up the obfuscation formation.

Little Spring slowly stopped cultivating. “Sister Lin?”

I sat down in front of him and crossed my arms under my chest. It was about time we had a serious fucking chat.

“What’s really going on with you?”

He scowled. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“First, there was the thing with Young Master Zhang where you told him to get on his knees and apologize.”

He opened his mouth to defend himself, but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Next, it was Liu ChuHua.” I glared at him. “You know that I have no intention of taking her as my junior sister. I only accepted you as my junior brother because of our past life.”

He looked sheepish. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do I look like a mind reader to you?”

“The furthest thing from it.”

This brat. I flicked his glabella, and he scowled at his feet as he rubbed his forehead.

“I’m not a mind reader. If you don’t communicate, I won’t understand you.”