’Form Seven.’

Lin Xuan took two steps back.

He stopped moving.

Plain Steel descended along his right side, the point coming to rest a finger above the polished stone of the Arena floor. His left hand rose to settle against the base of the blade, fingers light along the spine. His shoulders dropped. His knees softened. His breathing slowed to a single deep cycle.

Then he stopped breathing entirely.

The crowd quieted.

Across the polished stone, Lei Yan straightened from his recovery and saw the stance. He had no information about what was about to come.

He brought the straight blade up into total defense, the Thunder Lotus guard he had practiced ten thousand times, the only answer he had left, lightning crawling defensively along the length of the steel.

In the patriarchal tribune, Lin Zhen sat up by a fraction. He had not seen this stance from his son. He had not seen this stance, period.

In the western sector, Su Qingyue’s hand closed on the wood of her cushion’s frame.

In the Heavenly Sword Pavilion tribune, Yan Wuji’s chin lifted a quarter inch. The first real motion he had made since the opening ceremony.

A full second passed.

The Arena went silent in a way arenas rarely went.

Inside the second, Lin Xuan’s cup emptied.

Sixty percent of his Qi flowed up through the meridians of the right arm, into the wrist, into the spine of Plain Steel, and concentrated at the core of the blade. The Sword Intent he had been carrying at thirty-eight percent layered over the Qi, threading along the edge in a thin gold line that the front rows of the lower ring would later swear they had seen with their bare eyes.

The blade did not move.

The world held its breath with him.

Then.

Plain Steel moved.

A single cut. Perfectly straight. Perfectly simple. The blade rose from its low rest position and traveled forward in a clean diagonal across the space between Lin Xuan and Lei Yan, the tip drawing a line through the noon air that left a trail of gold light behind it for the length of a heartbeat.

The shape of the cut, in the air it left behind, was a dragon.

A long, sinuous, gold-edged dragon, body coiling along the line of the blade’s travel, head reaching for Lei Yan’s defensive guard.

Lei Yan’s straight blade met the dragon at the apex of his guard.

The straight blade broke. It snapped along its length in three places and the upper two thirds of the steel separated from the hilt and traveled in three pieces past Lei Yan’s right shoulder. The third piece embedded itself in the wooden barrier at the edge of the platform. The lightning that had been crawling along its length scattered into the air in a cascade of dying sparks.

The dragon kept traveling.

The cut ended a finger from the front of Lei Yan’s robe, the point of Plain Steel resting against the embroidered crest at his chest, and the Qi behind the strike dispersing into the air around them as the gold dragon faded back into nothing.

Lei Yan stood very still.

His straight blade was a hilt with a stub.

His chest was untouched.

His knees, however, gave.

He went down to one knee on the polished stone, the broken hilt slipping out of his hand, the air leaving him in a single long breath. His cup was empty. The Lightning Qi that had surrounded him during Lotus Shatter had dispersed entirely. He could not have lifted a wooden practice blade if his life had depended on it.

Lin Xuan held Plain Steel where it was, the point an inch from the man’s chest.

"Yield."

His voice did not carry weight. He was offering the option.

Lei Yan’s mouth worked once.

"...I yield."

The Master of Ceremonies stepped onto the platform and raised his hand.

"Victory. Young Master Lin Xuan of Skyedge Sword Sect."

The Arena erupted.

The applause was not the polite applause of a tournament’s first round. It was the noise of fifteen thousand people who had just watched a Stage Four cut a Stage Seven’s signature blade into three pieces with one strike, and who had no clean word for what they had seen.

The lower ring rose to its feet first. The middle ring followed. By the time the upper ring had stood, the noise was loud enough that the banners above the highest poles trembled in their fastenings.

Lin Xuan withdrew Plain Steel and slid the blade into its scabbard.

He bowed once toward Lei Yan. The bow was correct, the angle exactly the depth that protocol required, and not a fraction more.

Lei Yan returned it without speaking. He was on one knee and his face had emptied of color. He lifted the broken hilt and looked at it for one beat before letting it fall again to the polished stone.

Lin Xuan turned away first.

In the patriarchal tribune, Lin Zhen rose from his seat and let out a laugh that started somewhere low in his chest and worked its way up into something the eastern tribune was not going to forget for a while. He was looking at the patriarch of Thunder Lotus Sect three seats to his left, Patriarch Lei Tianheng, who was sitting very still with the expression of a man who had just watched his son’s signature blade reduced to firewood by a Stage Four boy.

"Lei Tianheng. Old friend."

Patriarch Lei did not turn his head.

"Lei Tianheng."

Patriarch Lei closed his eyes for a count of three.

"What."

"That blade in the wood. Do you want it back, or are we leaving it as a souvenir for the Yuncheng officials? They charge for repairs to the platform, you know."

Patriarch Lei opened his eyes very slowly and gave Lin Zhen a flat sideways look.

"Lin Zhen."

"Lei Tianheng."

"I am not in the mood."

"If you are not in the mood. My condolences."

Lin Zhen clapped twice more, slowly, like very slowly, the corner of his mouth still pulled up in the private curve that everyone had not seen on his face in years. The patriarch of Skyedge had not laughed in public for at least five years. He was making up for it now.

Beside Lin Zhen, Madam Mei was not standing.

Her cup had stopped at the level of her chin a full minute ago and had not moved since. Her mouth had opened by a fraction at the moment the dragon had appeared in the air, and that fraction had not closed. Her eyes were fixed on the boy walking off the fighting floor, and the calculation behind them had stopped processing entirely.

She was not breathing well.

’...No. No, that is not. That is not possible. He was supposed to.’

Master Hu had charged her three thousand spirit stones for the quantity of inhibitor she had used. The substance had come with documentation. The documentation had been clear. The inhibitor was undetectable until activation, the activation was guaranteed at maximum Qi demand, and the duration was sufficient to incapacitate any cultivator below Foundation Establishment for the length of an entire combat round.

The boy on the fighting floor had drawn a dragon out of the air with one strike.

Her cup descended from her chin in three uneven stages.

’I have been swindled!’