The murmur in the arena was a contained roar. Kyrian’s cunning victory over Yan Ling had left everyone even more alert.
Bai Zhu watched, his face a mask of concentrated expectation. There would be no underestimation. He knew the danger now.
To him, Kyrian was a sharp mind disguised in an apparently weak body.
Dong Zhen gave Kyrian another thirty minutes to recover. But Kyrian rely waited, standing above the arena. He still seed completely fine, and it was difficult to tell what was going through his mind.
After thirty minutes, Dong Zhen waited no longer.
"The finalists are decided." His voice thundered, silencing everyone.
"Bai Zhu of the Military Force Branch. Kyrian of the Main Branch. This is the decisive battle. The winner will take the glory and the resources for their branch for the next five years."
He looked at the two youths already at the center of the arena, who now approached one another.
"Begin."
The command echoed like thunder.
Bai Zhu exploded into action.
"Blood-Iron Body!"
Dark veins burst beneath his skin. He did not fire waves of Qi. Instead, he charged like an enraged bull, his fists a storm of brute force and speed.
Each blow split the air with a dry crack.
Kyrian retreated. His carmine eyes, however, were not on Bai Zhu’s body but on the blood flow within him.
He saw the muscles contract, the blood accelerate, and the intentions form an instant before the movent. His evasion was not a reaction but a prediction.
He leaned back before the fist crossed his face. He stepped aside before the kick swept his legs.
It was a deadly and precise dance, where an error of a single centiter would an broken bones.
Kyrian flowed between the strikes like water, but the pressure was imnse. Bai Zhu’s strength and speed, empowered by the peak of the Qi Liberation Realm and his technique, were monstrous.
Seeing that the physical attacks were not landing, Bai Zhu roared. His blood, already boiling, reacted. From his fists, short and thick blades of bright coagulated blood extended.
"Blood Butcher Blades!" The charge continued, but now with sharp weapons that increased his overall reach.
Kyrian was finally forced to retaliate. From his own cuts, blood gushed forth, solidifying into two short daggers, identical to those he had used against Li Fen.
The tallic clash of blood against blood echoed.
’Clang! Clang! Clang!’
Each block from Kyrian was a concentrated calculation. His daggers cracked under the impact, requiring constant Qi to reform. He slid backward, his feet scraping over the black stones.
The difference in strength was overwhelming.
"You’re just an agile rat!" Bai Zhu thundered, his fury growing with Kyrian’s stubborn resistance.
"But rats exist only to be crushed!"
His carmine energy pulsed. He stopped for a fraction of a second, concentrating.
The air around him distorted with heat.
"BLOOD DESTRUCTION!"
Sothing suddenly changed. His eyes, previously focused, ignited into a bright red. The veins already bulging across his body swelled even further, becoming black, pulsing cords beneath the skin.
A wave of heat and pressure exploded from him.
His speed suddenly doubled. His next movent was a blur.
But Kyrian predicted it. His eyes saw the explosion of energy, the blood flow becoming an uncontrollable torrent.
But predicting was not the sa as avoiding. He moved, but it was not enough. Bai Zhu’s blood blade, now a trident of pure force, grazed his flank, tearing away a piece of his robe and opening a deep cut that gushed hot blood.
The pain was sharp. Kyrian staggered. For the first ti, his impassive expression broke into a frown of pain and extre concentration.
He tried, with his eyes and intention, to grasp Bai Zhu’s raging blood, to slow that brutal force. But he t a wall.
Bai Zhu’s understanding of blood, driven by the extre technique, now seed like a fortress.
Bai Zhu’s blood intent seed primitive, but it was still too powerful to be nullified by his eyes. Especially because they were understandings of a similar level along the sa path.
Another attack ca. Kyrian dodged by a hair’s breadth, feeling the wind of the strike cut his hair. Another ca. A blade tip scratched his shoulder.
The speed was relentless. He was being cornered, almost being cut to pieces. His physical strength was insignificant before Bai Zhu, and his blood eyes alone seed not to be enough.
He sighed loudly. A sound of resignation, but also of decision.
Amid the whirlwind of pain and movent, Kyrian closed his eyes for a microsecond.
Then, a familiar darkness arose. A void. Where a single crystallized drop of blood, his blood intent, pulsed softly. But he did not look at it. His inner gaze turned to the other side.
There, hovering in nothingness, was a fla. Small, discreet. Its color was mortal gray, the ashes of sothing that had burned for a long ti.
It did not crackle, it danced silently, emanating a palpable contradiction. A heat that promised disintegration and a cold that desired life.
Kyrian approached the fla in his mind.
In the real world, the instant he opened his eyes, sothing changed.
Around his body, erging from nowhere as if it had always been lurking there, an energy of silent flas erupted.
They were gray, translucent, and wavering like distorted heat in the air. The fire erged like a whisper of air being consud.
And his eyes... the deep carmine that had defined his presence since he arrived... disappeared.
In their place, within his sockets, two small gray flas danced where the pupils should have been.
Bai Zhu, in the midst of his next brutal attack, froze. His survival instinct, sharper than his intellect, scread.
What stood before him was no longer a disciple of the blood path. It was sothing strange he had never known. He retreated, but not fast enough.
The gray flas around Kyrian expanded slightly, touching Bai Zhu’s outstretched arm.
There was no explosion. Only a wet, horrible hiss.
The blood blade on Bai Zhu’s fist evaporated instantly, turning into smoke.
The skin of his forearm, where the black veins were most prominent, darkened and carbonized into a pattern of fine cracks, like burned porcelain.
The pain that followed was not rely of fire, but of sothing deeper. A new sensation of heat that burned the very essence, followed by a cold that seed to drain his vital force.
Bai Zhu scread, a sound of pure terror and agony, as he pulled his arm back.
The entire audience rose as one.
What was that? How?
They could not understand. The Qi in the air changed completely. The heavy blood Qi that dominated the arena was swept away by a strange presence, hot and icy at the sa ti, a living contradiction that sent chills through everyone.
Dong Zhen rose abruptly, his eyes wide. He felt the change before he saw it. Kyrian’s Qi... the blood Qi he had felt before had disappeared.
In its place, now emanating from the boy, was a dense and strange gray Qi. A Qi of flas of high quality, yes, but of a type he had never felt.
It was not the devouring fire of a volcano nor the purifying fire of the sun. It seed to be a fire linked to the end...
"Ashes...?"
’Was I wrong?’ The question echoed in Dong Zhen’s mind, a chill running down his spine.
"The boy does not possess an Innate Talent tied only to the path of blood..."
Kyrian did not hear. The fight had beco a burden. Using this, exposing more of his innate talent, would bring questions. Questions that would be annoying to answer but necessary.
He no longer wanted to waste ti, it was ti to end it.
He took a deep breath, feeling the imnse reserve of Qi in his two dantians. Most of it is still intact.
He channeled half of it, a colossal amount, and directed it to his eyes, where the gray flas danced.
Kyrian’s eyes shone with a blinding gray light.
And then, the arena ignited.
It was not a normal fire. It was as if the concept of gray fla had materialized in every centiter of air within the combat arena.
There were no leaping orange flas, only an incandescent gray luminescence that filled everything, a silent and absolute furnace.
Bai Zhu, still clutching his carbonized arm, had ti only to raise a desperate barrier of Blood Qi mixed with his own blood in a final, agonized effort.
It was like raising a sandcastle against the tide.
The gray fire did not rely burn the barrier, it consud it. The Qi and the blood simply unraveled, dissipating without much resistance. Like snow beneath an impossibly hot sun.
The heat that followed was terrible. Bai Zhu felt his consciousness fade, not from impact, but from being erased by the extre heat and the subsequent cold that robbed him of his senses.
He fainted before his unconscious body even fell heavily to the ground, the skin intact but cold as death, marked with gray patterns.
As soon as Bai Zhu fell, Kyrian blinked.
The gray fire that consud the arena vanished. Instantly. Completely.
As if it had never existed. Only the tallic sll of blood and a scent of ashes remained in the air, along with Bai Zhu’s motionless body and Kyrian’s standing figure. The glow in his gaze faded.
The silence in the arena was deathly. No one moved. No one breathed loudly. Everyone simply stared at the figure at the center, at the mystery that had just revealed a face of its power that no one, not even Dong Zhen, could have imagined.
Dong Zhen, recovering from the shock, looked at Kyrian, then at the fallen Bai Zhu. The victory was clear.
With a voice that sounded strangely restrained, he announced.
"Winner... and champion of the Five-Year Branches Tournant... Kyrian, of the Main Branch."
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