The protective runic barrier surrounding Ring Four instantly frosted over with thick, jagged layers of rime ice.

From the eastern stairs, Xie Wangchen stepped onto the black stone.

He didn’t walk. He glided, his boots leaving perfectly crystallised footprints of frost on the indestructible floor.

He wore his immaculate Ice-Silk robes, the silver crown resting flawlessly in his dark hair. But his face... his face was a mask of sheer, unfiltered, demonic slaughter.

Wangchen’s eyes weren’t just glowing blue; they were burning with an abyssal, freezing hellfire.

He didn’t look at the crowd, locking his gaze onto Mo Wuchen with the absolute, chilling certainty of a predator looking at a cockroach it was about to step on.

In the stands, Lin Ji’an stopped eating her melon seeds. She sat up straight, a shiver running down her spine.

’Oh no,’ Ji’an thought, recognising the look in Wangchen’s eyes. It was the same look he had given the Princess on the bamboo path, multiplied by a thousand. ’He isn’t going to spar. He’s going to execute him.’

Mo Wuchen’s coquettish smile faltered. For the first time, a flicker of genuine, un-manufactured alarm crossed the assassin’s amber eyes.

Wuchen had spent his life reading people. He knew how to manipulate pride, greed, and lust.

But looking at Xie Wangchen, he realised a terrifying truth: The Ice Genius possessed absolutely none of those.

"Match begin!" the referee shouted, scrambling backwards to the very edge of the ring to avoid the freezing aura.

Mo Wuchen didn’t maintain his sick act for a single second longer.

The instant the word ’begin’ echoed, Wuchen’s frail posture vanished. He exploded into motion, his speed defying human limits.

He became a blur of dark green and black shadows, drawing two wicked, poisoned daggers from his sleeves.

He utilised the Phantom Step, attempting to flank the Ice Genius, aiming to score a quick submission strike to the neck before Wangchen could unleash a wide-area spell.

He was fast. Perhaps the fastest disciple in the Outer Sect.

But against Xie Wangchen’s wrath, speed was irrelevant.

Wangchen didn’t even draw Winter’s Sigh. He didn’t need a sword for an insect.

"Domain," Wangchen whispered, his voice cracking the air itself.

BOOM!

A shockwave of Flawless Ice Qi erupted from Wangchen’s body in a perfect, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree dome. It wasn’t just cold air; it was the physical manifestation of freezing time.

The air inside Ring Four crystallised instantly.

Mo Wuchen, who had been a blur of motion, suddenly slammed into an invisible wall of hyper-dense, freezing pressure.

His momentum was entirely arrested. The moisture in his lungs began to freeze. His limbs grew heavy, sluggish, and unresponsive.

Wuchen gasped, his amber eyes wide with horror as he found himself completely paralysed mid-stride, mere feet away from his target.

Wangchen turned his head slowly. He looked at the paralysed assassin.

He took a step forward. The sound of his boots on the ice echoed like a death knell.

"You looked at him." Wangchen’s voice was a low, terrifying vibration that only Wuchen could hear over the howling wind of the domain. "You fell from the cliff, you walked out of the water, and you looked at him. How dare you..."

Wuchen tried to speak, tried to surrender, but his jaw was locked tight by the encroaching frost.

Fear, a genuine, visceral, primal fear, gripped the assassin’s heart. He was staring into the eyes of a monster that wore human skin.

Wangchen raised his right hand, but he didn’t form a fist; instead, he simply placed his open palm flat against the centre of Wuchen’s chest.

"He belongs to the Eternal Cloud Peak," Wangchen stated, his blue eyes blazing. "You do not touch him, do not speak to him, and do not exist in his world."

Wangchen unleashed the Qi.

A localised, concentrated blast of absolute zero exploded from his palm.

Mo Wuchen didn’t fly out of the ring, but he was violently, brutally launched.

He shattered through the thick ice of the domain, tore through the shimmering runic boundary of the arena as if it were wet paper, and sailed fifty feet through the air.

He crashed into the reinforced stone wall of the spectator stands with a sickening crunch.

The assassin slumped to the ground, entirely encased in a thick, immobilising block of solid ice, shivering violently, his lips blue, his weapons shattered.

The entire Jade Terrace was dead silent. The cheering had stopped. Even the sound of breathing had stopped.

The referee, his teeth chattering uncontrollably from the residual cold, raised a trembling hand. "M-Match concluded! Xie W-Wangchen advances!"

Inside the ring, the terrifying, apocalyptic blizzard instantly vanished. The frost on the floor evaporated into clean white steam.

Xie Wangchen stood in the centre of the ring, his white robes unwrinkled, his breathing perfectly even.

The demonic, murderous blue glow faded from his eyes, returning to their usual, bottomless black.

He didn’t look at the frozen assassin, nor did he acknowledge the terrified awe of the crowd.

He turned around smoothly, walking to the edge of the ring.

His eyes scanned the sidelines, instantly finding the grey-robed figure sitting on the stone bench.

The cold, ruthless monster vanished completely. Wangchen’s expression softened into one of quiet, expectant devotion. He tilted his head slightly, his dark eyes locking onto Ji’an’s.

He didn’t smirk, and he didn’t boast. He just looked at her, his posture conveying a singular, incredibly obvious question:

Did I do well? Are you pleased?

Ji’an, who still had a half-chewed melon seed in her mouth, stared at the terrifying prodigy who had just casually broken the laws of thermodynamics out of pure jealousy and was now looking at her like a golden retriever waiting for a head pat.

She swallowed the seed.

Slowly, fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands, Ji’an raised her hand and gave him a single, definitive thumbs-up.

Wangchen’s lips quirked into a faint, satisfied smile. He turned and walked down the stairs, ignoring the terrified path the crowd cleared for him, making a beeline directly for her bench.