The gong for the Anchor match sounded like a dying animal. It lacked resonance. Someone had struck it too hard during the morning rounds and cracked the brass.

  "Final exchange," the referee called out. The man’s voice was hoarse. He had spent the last three hours watching his sect’s elite disciples get systematically dismantled. "Iron Blood Vanguard, Vice-Captain Luo Jian. White Jade Sect..."

  The referee stopped. He looked at the parchment in his hand. He looked at the high dais where the Elder Council sat.

  "White Jade Sect representative," the referee swallowed hard, "the husband, Wei Tian."

  Ten thousand people can create a very specific kind of silence. It wasn't empty. It was pressurized. It was the silence of a massive crowd simultaneously realizing a terrible, undeniable joke was about to end in a public execution.

  Up in the eastern stands, Wei Tian stood up.

  His knee gave a dull, mortal pop. He brushed a stray piece of lint off his plain white scholar's robe. He stepped down from the wooden bleacher. His left heel hit the stone.

  The ugly, jaggedly stitched ox-hide patch on the bottom of his shoe held perfectly. The cold dampness of the stone didn't seep through to his skin.

  Good, Wei Tian thought. Xiao Mei’s sewing was aesthetically offensive, but structurally sound.

  He began the long walk down the aisle toward the central courtyard.

  Behind him, Xiao Mei was currently chewing on her right thumbnail. She had already chewed through the polish. A tiny bead of blood welled up near the cuticle. She didn't notice. She stared at his retreating back, her Sage-layer qi vibrating in her chest with a frantic, sickening hum.

  He's going to fall asleep, she had thought earlier. It had seemed like an absurd, hysterical delusion at the time. Watching him walk toward a man who casually crushed sword qi with his bare hands, it didn't seem funny anymore. It seemed like suicide.

  Wei Tian reached the edge of the white jade arena.

  The tiles were a mess. Dark, rust-colored stains tracked across the center where Chen Lin had coughed up blood two hours ago. Scorch marks marred the northern quadrant. The air smelled strongly of ozone, sweat, and hot copper.

  Standing in the dead center of the wreckage was Luo Jian.

  The Vice-Captain of the Iron Blood vanguard hadn't put a shirt on. The heavy, overlapping scars on his torso twisted as he breathed. He wasn't radiating a visible aura, but the ambient temperature in a ten-foot radius around him was high enough to distort the light. It made him look like he was standing at the bottom of a mirage.

  Wei Tian stepped onto the jade.

  His cheap cloth shoes made a soft dragging sound. Scuff. Drag.

  He stopped exactly twenty paces from Luo Jian. He didn't assume a martial stance. He didn't draw a weapon. He tucked his hands into his opposite sleeves to ward off the slight mountain draft crossing the plaza.

  Luo Jian looked at him.

  The Iron Blood elite tilted his head, cracking his neck. The vertebrae popped like snapping dry wood.

  "I thought the roster was a clerical error," Luo Jian said. His voice was a deep, gravelly rasp that carried easily across the silent courtyard. "Sovereign Mo said this sect was arrogant. I didn't realize it was suicidal."

  Wei Tian looked at the scarred man. Then he looked up at the midday sun. It was directly overhead. Glaring. Bright.

  It was exactly the time of day he usually took his nap in the Eastern Pavilion. The biological rhythm he had forced upon this mortal shell was demanding its routine. His eyelids felt heavy.

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  "Are we starting?" Wei Tian asked. His voice was entirely flat. Monotone. Bored.

  On the high dais, Elder Shen Mu leaned so far forward his chest pressed against the stone railing. His knuckles were white. The jagged ache in his primary meridian throbbed, but he ignored it. This was the payoff. Six months of political maneuvering, ruined by a marriage contract, finally being rectified.

  Kill him, Shen Mu thought, his eyes locked on Luo Jian. Take his head off.

  In the center seat, Bai Qian sat with one leg crossed over the other. Her hands were folded in her lap. She wasn't looking at Luo Jian. She was looking exclusively at Wei Tian. She was watching the microscopic shifts in his posture. She was waiting for the void to move.

  Down on the jade, the referee raised his hand. It was trembling slightly.

  "Begin."

  The referee sprinted backward, throwing himself behind the safety of the boundary wards.

  Luo Jian didn't draw a weapon. He grinned, exposing teeth that looked too sharp for a human mouth.

  "I'll make it fast," Luo Jian promised.

  He lunged.

  A Peak Sage-layer cultivator moving at maximum velocity does not cross space; they delete it. Luo Jian closed the twenty paces in a fraction of a second. The white jade beneath his boots shattered from the sheer kinetic launch.

  He threw a straight, right-handed punch aimed directly at the center of Wei Tian's chest. It was a strike designed to cave in a sternum and liquefy the organs behind it.

  Wei Tian didn't dodge.

  He didn't raise his hands from his sleeves.

  He closed his eyes.

  The sun was warm on his face. The ambient noise of the crowd faded into a dull, distant ocean roar. The tension in his shoulders released. It was actually quite peaceful here, despite the smell of copper.

  He fell asleep.

  Not a metaphor. His breathing dropped instantly from twelve inhalations a minute to a slow, deep, rhythmic six. His chin dipped a fraction of an inch toward his collarbone.

  Luo Jian’s fist arrived.

  It carried the force of a falling boulder, wrapped in deep purple, armor-crushing qi.

  It stopped exactly two inches from the fabric of Wei Tian’s white robe.

  There was no sound. There was no explosion of clashing energies. There was no visible shield.

  The kinetic force simply ceased to exist. To the universe, the space Wei Tian occupied was a structural absolute. Attempting to apply physical force to it was like attempting to convince a mountain to turn into a cloud. The physics of the lower realm recognized the paradox, gave up, and bled the energy into the path of least resistance.

  The white jade floor beneath Luo Jian’s feet exploded, cratering outward in a spiderweb of pulverized stone.

  Luo Jian’s wrist snapped backward. A sharp, agonizing jolt shot up his forearm, the sudden deceleration tearing at his own muscles. He gasped, stumbling a half-step back.

  He stared at his fist. Then he stared at the scholar.

  Wei Tian had not moved. A soft, rhythmic breath escaped his lips.

  Up in the stands, someone dropped a water skin. It hit the wooden bleachers with a loud, plastic thud. Nobody looked at it. Ten thousand disciples were staring at the arena, their brains failing to process the visual data.

  On the dais, Shen Mu stopped breathing.

  "A talisman," Shen Mu hissed, his voice frantic, desperate. He grabbed the sleeve of the elder sitting next to him. "He has a high-tier absolute defense talisman hidden in his robes! It absorbed the kinetic shock!"

  Bai Qian didn't turn her head. "A talisman requires a qi trigger to activate, Elder Shen Mu. The man has no qi. You proved that yourself yesterday with the Ancestral Core."

  Shen Mu's mouth opened. He had no counter-argument.

  Down in the crater, Luo Jian shook his numbed right hand. The arrogance bled out of his face, replaced by the cold, calculating instinct of a veteran killer.

  "A trick," Luo Jian snarled.

  The purple aura around him flared, darkening into a toxic, bruised black. He didn't hold back this time. He engaged the heavy, crushing gravity of his cultivation technique.

  Strike two. A sweeping crescent kick aimed at Wei Tian’s knees, designed to sever the legs.

  It stopped two inches from the cloth shoes. The air shrieked, tearing itself apart to disperse the force. Luo Jian’s hip popped painfully.

  Strike three. A vicious, two-handed downward hammer blow to the skull.

  It stopped two inches above Wei Tian’s ink-black hair. The atmospheric pressure blew outward in a ring, stripping the dust from the entire courtyard, but the loose thread on Wei Tian’s collar didn't even flutter.

  Luo Jian staggered backward. He was panting now. Sweat beaded on his scarred chest. The bones in his arms ached fiercely. Hitting the invisible boundary around the scholar was like punching a wall forged from condensed gravity.

  He looked at Wei Tian’s face.

  The scholar's eyes were still closed. His chest rose and fell in a slow, steady cadence.

  Snore.

  It was quiet. Barely audible over the ringing in Luo Jian's ears. But it was unmistakable.

  The Vice-Captain of the Iron Blood Vanguard, a man who had slaughtered entire rebel camps single-handedly, realized the mortal standing in front of him wasn't meditating. He wasn't focusing a defense art.

  He was taking a nap.

  A heavy, suffocating wave of pure, unfiltered humiliation crashed over Luo Jian. His eyes bloodshot instantly. The veins in his neck bulged, thick and corded.

  "Wake up!" Luo Jian roared. The sound tore his throat.

  He drew back both fists. The black qi surrounding him condensed, pulling inward until it formed two hyper-dense spheres of rotational gravity around his knuckles. It was a killing art. A technique designed to shatter siege gates.

  Strike four.

  Luo Jian launched himself forward, throwing his entire body weight behind a double-strike aimed straight at the sleeping scholar's face.