The morning sun rose over the majestic capital of the Aurelian Spear Kingdom and cast a brilliant but blinding glare across the golden spires of the royal palace. The city was completely alive with an electric and chaotic energy as millions of citizens and visiting cultivators flooded the streets.
The main event had finally arrived, the grand royal arena, a colossal structure built from pristine white marble and reinforced with heavenly gold, was filled to absolute capacity. Over a hundred thousand spectators cramd into the towering bleachers to witness the martial prowess of the younger generation. Those that couldn’t watch directly were able to tune in through different viewing arrays set up around the capital.
The royal family occupied the highest viewing pavilion which was suspended above the arena floor. Emperor Jinhai sat on a grand throne with Princess Jinling standing confidently by his side in her flexible golden chainmail.
Ancestor Longwei sat quietly on a simple wooden chair next to them, his ancient eyes scanning the crowds below while his calloused hands rested on his plain wooden spear. He too ca out to enjoy the festivities. Having battled in that zone for so long has made him miss the more normal things. So unlike other ancestors who are in seclusion to make progress on their martial path, he was out living life for the ti being.
Li Yu sat comfortably in the designated VIP section alongside Zhan Chen and the rest of the Zhan Clan delegation. He was completely relaxed while holding a cup of hot tea and looking down at the fighting stage. The arena floor was paved with a dark spiritual stone specifically designed to absorb the shockwaves of high level combat.
A resonant gong echoed through the entire stadium and instantly silenced the roar of the massive crowd.
Four elderly n wearing the heavy golden robes of the royal court stepped onto the four corners of the arena. They raised their hands in perfect unison and poured their Qi into the floorboards. An intricate array flared to life beneath the stone as golden chains of spiritual energy erupted from the ground and temporarily wrapped around the bodies of all one hundred and twenty-eight competitors waiting in the staging area.
This was the kingdom's heavenly sealing array. For the next several days, any competitor possessing a cultivation base higher than the King realm would find their cultivation strictly compressed and their output forcefully capped. The tournant was designed to be a test of foundation, combat intent and skill.
"The sealing array is fully active," Zhan Chen noted as he leaned forward in his seat. "The playing field is as even as it will ever be but it’s not going to be fair. Now we get to see who has actually polished their martial arts and who has simply been relying on realm suppression to a better degree."
The first day of the tournant was dedicated entirely to the opening round of one hundred and twenty-eight fighters. With so many competitors, the matches were set to proceed rapidly. The arena was large enough to hold two simultaneous matches on opposite ends of the stone floor and was separated by a transparent but highly durable Qi barrier.
The crowd erupted into a deafening cheer as the first competitors were called to the stage.
Zhan Feng stepped heavily onto the dark stone of the northern arena. He wore no upper armor, choosing instead to display his heavily muscled torso and the thick iron gauntlets strapped to his forearms. His opponent was a slender and elegant sword cultivator from a minor sect who looked visibly nervous standing across from the towering body refiner.
The mont the referee signaled the start of the match, the sword cultivator unleashed a flurry of a dozen sharp sword strikes. The blades of light cut through the air with impressive speed and were aiming directly for Zhan Feng's chest and vital points.
Zhan Feng did not bother to dodge or deploy a defensive technique. He lowered his head, raised his thick arms to guard and charged straight forward like an enraged rhinoceros. The sword auras slamd into his bare chest and shattered into harmless sparks of spiritual energy, failing to leave even a single white mark on his heavily refined skin.
'His physical foundation is incredibly dense,' Li Yu thought approvingly as he watched the brief exchange. 'A King realm strike cannot even penetrate his outer layer.'
The sword cultivator panicked and tried to retreat but Zhan Feng crossed the distance in a single explosive leap. He swung his heavy iron gauntlet in a brutal horizontal arc and the strike shattered the sword cultivator's defensive barrier, snapped his slender blade in half and launched the man completely out of the arena bounds. The entire fight lasted less than ten seconds.
The crowd roared their approval at the display of overwhelming force, while the Zhan Clan disciples cheered loudly for their champion.
On the southern side of the arena, the atmosphere was significantly darker. Young Master Su Chen of the Verdant Gale Sect stepped onto the stage wearing a fresh and immaculate set of green silk robes. His face, however, was a mask of dark and barely contained fury. The humiliation he had suffered at the hands of Mo Fan the previous night still burned brightly in his mind and he was desperate to re-establish his reputation.
His opponent was a confident young noble from a neighboring empire who wielded a heavy halberd. The noble offered a polite bow to initiate the match but Su Chen completely ignored the courtesy.
"Die," Su Chen hissed with malice.
He snapped his folding fan open and unleashed a terrifying barrage of wind arts. The air inside the southern arena instantly turned into a localized hurricane. Dozens of highly compressed, invisible wind blades tore across the stage. The noble desperately swung his halberd to deflect the incoming strikes but the volu of Su Chen's attack was overwhelming.
The wind blades sliced through the noble's armor, carving deep and bloody gashes into his arms and legs. Su Chen did not aim for a quick knockout or a ring out. He was actively and maliciously torturing his opponent. Using his superior elental control to inflict as much pain and humiliation as the tournant rules would allow before the referee was forced to intervene.
"He is fighting with pure spite," Li Yu comnted as he watched the noble collapse to his knees in a pool of his own blood.
"It is petty but it is effective," Zhan Chen replied with a slight frown. "Su Chen is sending a very clear ssage to the rest of the bracket. He wants everyone to be terrified of him."
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The referee finally stepped in and declared Su Chen the winner, signaling the dics to carry the bleeding noble away. The crowd murmured nervously with their previous cheers replaced by a heavy and uncomfortable silence. Su Chen snapped his fan shut and walked off the stage with his head held high, though his eyes continued to scan the staging area for the plain blue robes of the man who had truly shad him.
As the opening round progressed throughout the day, the vast disparity in skill levels beca glaringly obvious. The tournant was a ruthless at grinder that quickly separated the true elites from the arrogant pretenders.
The entire stadium went completely silent when Ghost Wu took the stage. The man wrapped in dirty grey bandages did not speak a single word to his opponent, a heavily armored rcenary that looked like a knight and was wielding a large broadsword. When the match began, the knight charged forward with a heroic shout, bringing his heavy blade down in a devastating overhead cleave.
Ghost Wu stood his ground and raised a single, bandaged hand. A thick and grey mist erupted from his body and rolled across the arena floor. The mont the knight entered the mist, his heroic shout turned into a scream of terror.
The heavy steel armor began to rust and decay at an impossible rate. The broadsword withered into a cloud of brown dust before it even reached Ghost Wu's head. The corrosive aura bypassed all physical defenses, eating away at the knight's protective Qi and blistering his skin. The knight dropped to his knees and wildly surrendered, desperately crawling out of the grey mist while coughing up black blood.
"Disgusting." A female cultivator sitting a few rows down from Li Yu muttered while covering her nose with a silk handkerchief. "How can the royal family allow such a vile path to be showcased?"
"Because death does not care if an art is beautiful or ugly," Li Yu whispered to himself with his eyes locked on the bandaged dark horse. 'That rot is highly concentrated. If that mist touches an open wound, the opponent is finished.'
A few matches later, the wild youth known as Fang provided an equally shocking display of unfiltered violence. He was matched against an elegant cultivator who wielded a long, barbed whip that crackled with fire Qi. The whip user tried to keep his distance, snapping the flaming leather to keep the jungle native at bay.
Fang ignored the burning pain as the whip lashed across his bare chest. He dropped to all fours and sprinted across the arena floor like a rabid beast that was hunting. When the whip user lashed out again, Fang lunged forward and caught the burning leather whip between his bare teeth.
The crowd gasped in collective surprise by his agility and fighting thod. Fang ignored the fire burning his mouth, grabbed the slack of the whip with his bare hands and violently yanked the cultivator forward. The man stumbled, completely off balance and Fang t him with a savage and bone crushing headbutt that instantly shattered the man's nose and knocked him unconscious.
By the ti the sun finally set over the golden capital, the first round had concluded. Exactly sixty-four broken and defeated cultivators had been eliminated from the bracket, leaving only the strongest, the smartest and the most ruthless fighters to advance.
The royal hosts provided a grand feast for the remaining competitors and allowed them a full night of rest to heal their minor injuries and regulate their Qi.
The dawn of the second day brought a renewed sense of excitent to the capital. The weak had mostly been entirely weeded out of the tournant and the matches in the round of sixty-four promised to be highly contested clashes between true experts. The arena was repaired overnight and the massive crowds returned to their seats with eager anticipation.
The very first match of Round Six imdiately delivered an incredible spectacle.
The stadium grew quiet as the dark horse Mo Fan stepped onto the stage. The young man in the plain blue robes carried a simple and unadorned iron spear. He had drawn a very solid and highly respected opponent: a seasoned rcenary who fought with a heavy broadsword and possessed a solid defense
Up in the royal pavilion, Princess Jinling leaned forward slightly with her sharp eyes locking onto Mo Fan. She had received a detailed report from her royal guards regarding the brief but explosive clash in the courtyard the night before. She knew exactly what this seemingly ordinary youth had done to Su Chen and she was eager to see his true martial arts in action.
The rcenary imdiately took a defensive posture while planting his feet firmly and holding his broadsword across his body like an iron shield. Mo Fan did not activate the ring on his finger, instead, he lowered his stance, gripped his iron spear with both hands and exhaled a long and steady breath.
Then, he thrust the spear forward.
There was no flashy technique and there was no roaring beast phantom. It was just a single, perfectly executed thrust. However, the spear intent layered behind the strike was incredibly dense and unyielding that it created a visible distortion in the air. It was the physical manifestation of soone who had reached a high level in spear intent and walked on the spear path.
The iron spear tip struck the flat of the rcenary's heavy broadsword and the penetrating force of Mo Fan's intent smashed into the physical tal. The broadsword shattered into a dozen jagged pieces and the force of the impact launched the seasoned rcenary out of the ring in a single and devastating blow.
"He did not even use a martial art," Zhan Chen whispered in shock. "He won using nothing but fundantals."
'He is saving his true trump cards for the finals,' Li Yu thought as he observed Mo Fan quietly walk off the stage. 'His foundation is incredibly deep for soone without a major faction backing him up.'
The second round continued with a series of brutal and highly efficient victories for the key players. Prince Xue of the Glacial Peak stepped onto the stage to face a fierce cultivator who utilized compressed fire arts. The opponent unleashed a roaring wave of crimson flas ant to engulf the entire arena. Prince Xue exhaled a breath of frosty white air and gently tapped the toe of his boot against the stone floor.
A wave of freezing Qi exploded outward and the roaring wave of crimson flas was flash frozen in mid air, turning into a beautiful but harmless sculpture of red ice before shattering into a million pieces. The freezing wave continued forward, instantly encasing the fire cultivator in a solid block of ice. The referee had to call the match imdiately to prevent the man from dying..
The final match of the day featured Iron Fist ng against Blade Dancer Kai. It was a terrifying clash between two n who had spent their entire lives dealing in death. Kai imdiately utilized his training to ld into the shadows cast by the high arena walls. He vanished from sight, completely masking his killing intent as he stalked the rogue cultivator.
ng did not panic though. The stoic wanderer closed his eyes and stood perfectly still in the center of the ring, relying entirely on his forged instincts rather than his physical sight.
Suddenly, Kai exploded from the shadow directly behind ng, his wicked curved daggers aiming for the rogue's neck and kidneys in a synchronized and lethal strike.
ng then moved with terrifying efficiency as he deliberately twisted his torso, offering his non vital left shoulder to the assassin's blade. Kai's dagger sank deep into ng's flesh, drawing a heavy spray of blood but the strike missed the vital organs. By sacrificing his shoulder and trapping the blade in his own muscle, ng successfully locked Kai in place for a fraction of a second.
ng spun around with a roar, catching the assassin's wrist with his calloused hand. He pulled Kai forward and delivered a devastating right hook directly to the assassin's jaw. The sound of cracking bone echoed through the stadium as Kai's eyes rolled back into his head and his body went completely limp before he even hit the floor.
"He traded his own blood for a guaranteed knockout," Zhan Chen said while wincing slightly at the brutal exchange. "That is the fighting style of a man who has survived countless battles."
"It is ssy but you cannot argue with the results," Li Yu nodded approvingly.
As the sun set on the second day of the tournant, only thirty-two cultivators remained. The brackets were tightening, the stakes were rising and the Aurelian Spear Kingdom was preparing for a week of unparalleled violence.
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