Lei Yan committed.

The straight blade of Thunder Lotus swept down at an angle Lin Xuan had read in the man’s shoulder before the cut had begun, but the Qi that should have arrived in his arm to answer it did not arrive. The dantian opened. The channels parted. Nothing came through.

He stepped back two paces. The blade passed a finger from his right shoulder.

The crowd registered the retreat as opening posture. They did not see what was happening underneath.

Lei Yan came forward again, the second cut chained from the first the way Thunder Lotus always chained their openings. Lin Xuan moved his feet on instinct alone, the footwork of Cloud Step laid out in the body without needing Qi to power it. The yearlong combat memory of Yun Hai had spent itself on muscles, not on channels. The reflexes were there even when the rest of him was hollowed out. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

The blade passed a finger from his ribs this time.

His left palm had gone numb at the fingertips.

’Mira. Options.’

The word was old. He had used it once, a long time ago now, when the first assassin of Blood Fang Sect had broken into the back garden of the Skyedge family compound and Mira had needed to compress an answer into the time it took for a blade to reach his throat. She recognized it the moment he said it.

[ Processing, host. Give me ten seconds. ]

’I have five.’

[ I will work in five. ]

In the patriarchal tribune, Lin Zhen sat up by a fraction.

His son had taken three exchanges without releasing Qi. Three exchanges in a regional tournament against a Stage Seven representative of a rival sect. No cultivator of Foundation Establishment Peak or above watched a fight like that and missed the absence. The patriarch’s hand closed over the carved arm of the seat. The line of his jaw set.

’Something is very wrong.’

Beside him, Madam Mei did not look at the fighting floor at all. Her attention was on her husband. She waited for his face to confirm what she already knew, and when the small tightening of his eyes arrived, she lifted the cup she had been holding to her lips and drank from it slowly, the rim of the cup hiding the faint curve that had appeared at the corner of her mouth.

In the western sector, Su Qingyue leaned a degree forward in her cushion.

Frostmoon Ridge trained its disciples in long-range combat reading. The school of footwork was identified within the first three movements, the patterns of attack within the first six. What she was seeing now did not align with anything in those patterns. The footwork was clean. The technique was clean. But the Qi... the Qi was missing.

She drew a small breath through her nose. The faint color her cheeks usually carried in the Yuncheng heat had pulled away by a shade.

’He is not flowing Qi. Why is he not flowing Qi?’

Two cushions to the right of Lin Xuan’s empty seat, Wei Tianming had no formal training in the art of reading combat at distance. What he did have was a pair of eyes that had been watching Su Qingyue for the past forty seconds, and the moment she leaned forward, he understood that something had gone wrong in a way he was not equipped to diagnose. His hands closed in his lap. The folded cloth he had been holding twisted between his fingers.

"...Is the Young Master all right?"

He said it more to the air than to anyone. Nobody answered.

Inside Lin Xuan’s head, three breaths after the first cut had passed.

[ Diagnosis. ]

’Go.’

[ A meridian inhibitor. Not poison, it will not kill you. Leaves no perceptible trace before activation, no taste, smell nor immediate response from the body. Once inside, it waits for the moment of maximum Qi demand to release. That moment is now. ]

’When did it enter?’

[ Last night probably. It has to be the cup the staff woman handed you during the celebration. I am tracing the timeline now and confirming. The substance had no flavor and no scent. Neither your body nor I registered it as a foreign agent at the time of intake. ]

’...The staff woman. Shit Madam Mei must have done something after all... I let my guard down, I shouldn’t have accepted anything from anyone.’

[ That old hag... ]

He evaded the next exchange by a margin that was tighter than the previous three. The crowd around the third ring of the Arena began to murmur, the spectators had started to suspect that something in the combat was not playing out the way the realms suggested it should.

’Mira, I need solutions. And fast’

[ One. I can purge the inhibitor from your meridians. Cost: two thousand Origin Points. Immediate effect. Your Qi returns before the next exchange. ]

’Do it.’

[ Confirm the cost? ]

’Mira. Do it.’

[ Confirmed. ]

The panel arrived clean and gold-edged at the back of his vision.

═══════════════════════════════

[ MERIDIAN INHIBITOR PURGED ]

═══════════════════════════════

[ Cost: 2,000 Origin Points ]

[ Origin Points: 5,150 → 3,150 ]

[ ]

[ Qi flow restored: 100% ]

[ Meridians: clean ]

[ Residue: none detected ]

═══════════════════════════════

The sensation arrived a beat before the panel finished closing.

It was not gradual. It was a bridge that had been blocked at one end and was suddenly open again, the full reservoir of his dantian pouring through the channels in the length of a single breath. The numbness in his fingertips ran out the way water ran off oiled stone. The cup at his ribs that had been sitting full and inert came alive.

Lei Yan committed the next attack.

A diagonal cut, weighted with the full force of Stage Seven, confident now because four exchanges had told him his rival was not going to answer with Qi. The blade traveled the way it had traveled the previous four times, fast and clean, expecting the same evasion.

Lin Xuan answered.

Plain Steel found the straight blade of Thunder Lotus at the midpoint of its arc. The cut was simple, redirected through the angle Cloud Step had already prepared, and reinforced by a release of Stage Four Qi that Lei Yan was not expecting because there had been no Qi to expect for the last twenty seconds.

The Thunder Lotus blade jumped sideways by two fingers.

Lei Yan had to throw his entire weight backward to avoid going to his knees on the polished stone.

The crowd drew breath as one.

The combat had changed inside a single exchange.

In the western sector, Su Qingyue’s shoulders eased. The small curve at the corner of her mouth came back the way the color in her cheeks did, both at once.

’Recovered. Well done, Lin Xuan.’

In the patriarchal tribune, Lin Zhen released the arm of his seat. He did not relax. The line of his jaw stayed set in the same position it had taken thirty seconds earlier. He did not know what had happened.

What he knew was that his son had been one exchange away from a humiliation in front of fifteen thousand people, and that whatever had been wrong had now been corrected. The patriarch’s eyes returned to the eastern tribune for the briefest motion, where his First Wife was still holding her cup, and then forward again to the floor.

’Thank the heavens...’

Beside him, Madam Mei lowered her cup at a controlled pace.

The faint curve at the corner of her mouth had gone. The line of her left hand, resting against her thigh, had closed by one degree more than was natural.

’...How. How is this possible? I paid a huge amount... and this is the result?’

Wei Tianming’s hands opened in his lap. He let out the breath he had been holding for what felt like a year.

On the fighting floor, Lei Yan recovered his stance with the small visible adjustment of a man who had just discovered that the fight he thought he was in was not the fight he was actually in.

Lin Xuan settled his weight into Cloud Step. Plain Steel held neutral at the ready. The face he showed the Arena was clean and composed. Inside, a slow heat had begun to climb the line of his ribs.

’Mira.’

[ I know. ]

’Tonight, we need to find out what happened. The kitchen woman, who paid her, how the inhibitor reached my cup. I want the whole chain. And I want proof strong enough to put Madam Mei’s name in front of my father.’

[ Tonight we will do that, Xuan. For now, win this fight. ]

’I am going to win it. No doubt about it’

He moved his feet.

Lei Yan raised his blade, and the first true exchange of the combat began.