The first two rounds ended smoothly. Each Spiritual Construct Disciple of the great sects, win or lose, had displayed their talent and abilities to the fullest.
For the two great cultivators watching on the sidelines, it was already enough to judge how the later matches would unfold.
Huang Yan spoke first:
"In this round of the Fighting Fish Contest, the gap in strength is clear.
If my prediction is correct, the top four will be the Ying Clan, the Chongxuan Palace, the Kitchen God's Shop, and the Bamboo Mountain Sect.
"The Ying heir and the Kitchen God's current master-chef both have Spiritual Constructs of overwhelming strength. Their power is in a league of its own; this is beyond dispute.
"As for Chongxuan Palace and Bamboo Mountain, they've grown increasingly sophisticated. In recent years, their progress is plain to see; they've truly begun to understand the game.
"This generation's Spiritual Construct Disciple from Pure Yang Ruins is also exceptional. They should hold on to fifth place.
"Of the remaining three, the Compassionate Cihang Monastery and the Mirror-Cloud Shrine are not weak, but compared to the others, their combat power is less outstanding. They'll likely rank sixth and seventh.
"Only the Feathered Transformation Sect is the weakest. They are almost certain to finish last.
"In recent years, their decline has been so severe they may even fall from the Twelve Great Dao Lineages of the Academy altogether."
Within the Divine Dynasty, internal competition was ruthless. Even one of the Twelve Lineages could face extinction if its strength waned too far.
The old fisherman gave a soft laugh:
"That sword-wielding boy pleases me. He has something of the air of the old Pure Yangzi of Pure Yang Heaven."
"The Yingfu World has been lackluster for so many years. Other than the Ying Clan, who still maintain some standard, most of the other lineages barely manage to put forward true disciples of worth.
"You're too young, you never saw it with your own eyes. Back in the day, when the Ying Clan's Heir, the Yanfu Heir, and the Pure Yangzi fought for supremacy, that was a spectacle far beyond anything you see today.
"A band of lower-third-rank monsters slaughtering titleless fourth-rank Star-Seizers like chickens.
"And if they unleashed their hidden cards, even upper-third-rank cultivators would have to fight for their lives. Those beasts had the real chance to step beyond the bounds of the realm, to cast their hooks into the Void itself.
"But since the last calamity, Pure Yang Heaven was destroyed, Yanfu collapsed, and the great masters either died or fled. Two of the three legs of Yingfu World were cut away. That golden age will never return."
It was rare for the fisherman to speak so sentimentally. Huang Yan was taken aback, for even he knew little of these buried histories. The man beside him was a living fossil who had witnessed it all.
Seeing the fisherman's mood, Huang Yan probed further:
"Senior, this generation's Ying heir, Ying Hao, forged his life pattern with a third-rank Spiritual Construct. His foundation is beyond imagination. Even if I were to face him myself, I would not dare claim certain victory.
With such talent, is he still unworthy of the title Ying Clan's Son?"
The fisherman shook his head slowly:
"It is not so simple.
"The Ying ancestors forged the clan's foundation upon the Ying Clan Ancestral Temple.
"That temple is linked to five supreme Cave-Heavens, suppressing them as anchors, and nurtures a population of more than a hundred billion humans.
"Only the single most gifted among those billions is permitted to emerge from the temple and inherit the Ying Clan's Human Emperor Dao Lineage in the mortal world.
"This current heir's talent is, of course, beyond reproach. He was born with a complete life pattern, nine taels and nine qian in full. When he was ordained, he inherited the Heaven-Burning Heavenly Life Pattern, binding even the third-rank external moon Path Spiritual Construct, the Flame Demon Lord. Before reaching the upper-third rank, he will face no bottlenecks, sweeping forward unhindered.
"But to truly earn the title of Ying Clan's Son? He is still a few steps short.
"The Yingfu World has stood too long in unchallenged supremacy. Without rivals, even one as strong as the current heir cannot realize his full potential.
"Without the competition of the Pure Yangzi and the Yanfu heir, it is like steel untempered by fire, still a blade, but lacking the final brilliance."
The fisherman's words were full of secrets no one else could have heard.
...
The third round of battle was already ablaze.
This time, Jing Qian faced the Spiritual Construct Disciple of the Bamboo Mountain Sect, a bright-eyed young girl with a sultry figure, dressed daringly.
When she smiled sweetly, hands on her hips, and greeted him playfully, Jing Qian's sword almost slowed mid-swing.
It wasn't until a strand of sword-silk ripped her delicate face apart and countless tiny centipedes crawled wriggling out of the wound that Jing Qian snapped back to full focus, realizing he was up against a life-and-death fight.
The bug-girl's fighting style was bizarre beyond measure.
She allowed Jing Qian's sword-light to tear her flesh at will, let the radiant strands scour her insides, and ignored the countless insects being shredded to pieces… yet her life force remained unbroken.
For her mana, her soul, her very consciousness, had long since fused with her swarm. So long as the bugs were not annihilated, she could not die.
Jing Qian cut for a long time, and though she had yet to counterattack, he remained on full guard.
The Bamboo Mountain Sect was famed for its mastery of poisons and parasites. Jing Qian took no chances. He purged all external matter from his surroundings, cut off even the inflow of ambient qi, drawing solely on the Void Realm for self-sustained energy.
He wasn't afraid of being overpowered, but he would never allow himself to stumble into some hidden trap.
Then, the girl spoke:
"Junior brother of Pure Yang Ruins, please, hold back your hand.
I only just advanced to the Longevity Realm, and my grandmother dragged me here before I could raise new insects.
These few treasures are just the scraps I saved from my Life Pattern and Dragon-Elephant stages; they can't withstand such abuse."
"I am the Bamboo Mountain Sect's newly appointed Spiritual Construct Disciple, named Yuzhu. My cultivation is shallow. Here in Zhuo Ling Cave-Heaven, without suitable insects, even if you gave me a hundred more years, I would accomplish nothing.
"Your sword is far too sharp. I cannot possibly win. But… I did bring with me a certain poison. Please allow me to offer it for your judgment.
"If you endure it, I'll admit defeat in this round. If fortune lets me topple you, then I ask your pardon—let there be no grudge once we leave this cave-heaven.
"Forgive my presumption."
It was the first time Jing Qian had seen someone use poison with such open candor. But his vigilance was already wound to the utmost.
He summoned the full might of his Sumeru Ghost-Skin, wrapping himself in layers of protective mana. He even drew forth a strand of Fate-Fire from his Life Furnace, letting it burn across his ghost-skin, blocking all possible avenues of contact.
Yet at that very moment, Yuzhu began to sing.
A strange nursery rhyme flowed from her lips:
"Creak, creak, the rocking horse grows fangs.
Gnawing on grandmother's silver hair.
Grandmother turns the brass key,
Unlocks the doll buried deep inside.
Bees peck my candy eyes!
Snakes bite my itching nose!
Toads lick my dangling ears!
Scorpions pierce my bleeding tongue!
Centipedes burrow into my heart!"
…
Her voice was soft and lilting, almost lovely.
Had one ignored the lyrics, it could have been a lullaby, perfect for soothing a child to sleep.
But the moment Jing Qian heard it, alarm surged through him.
A virulent toxin exploded within his flesh, ravaging his organs, dissolving his vitality at terrifying speed.
He sat cross-legged on the spot, pouring every effort into expelling the venom.
He had underestimated the Bamboo Mountain Sect. A lineage whose entire Dao was built on poison would never stoop to using simple physical venoms against high-level cultivators.
Yuzhu's lullaby was no ordinary poison; it was poison of sound and vibration, poison of emotion and causality.
At its core, it was a Star-Seizer-level memetic toxin.
Anyone who heard it, saw it, touched it, imagined it, remembered it, or even merely understood it would be poisoned.
It needed no physical medium. Just the knowledge of its existence was enough to infect.
For Jing Qian, there was no avoiding it. Only endurance.
But how could a mere Dragon-Elephant realm endure a poison at the fourth rank?
His body withered rapidly, skirting death.
At the brink, one of the fleshy buds on his chest burst apart, releasing an overwhelming surge of vitality that dragged him back from the grave.
His pallid face flushed with color in an instant.
Yet Yuzhu's song continued. The poison still spread. His newly restored body collapsed again toward death.
A second flesh-bud ruptured, reviving him once more.
Die revive. Revive die.
So the duel turned into a grotesque tug-of-war.
Jing Qian clung stubbornly to a single thread of life, refusing to expire.
Yuzhu herself was dumbfounded. In the last two rounds, both the Mirror-Cloud Shrine and the Feathered Transformation Sect's great disciples had died under her song.
Who could have guessed that this iron-headed swordsman would play such tricks?
Casting a Star-Seizer poison across realms was not without cost. Yuzhu was already pouring her all to sustain the lullaby.
But every time she thought him surely finished, he clawed his way back at the final moment, bloodline reborn.
How many times could he resurrect?
She sang for a full hour. Had she stood before a great city, her song would have slaughtered millions.
Yet Jing Qian endured.
He simply endured.
Jing Qian died and revived seventy-six times in a row, nearly exhausting all the flesh-buds above his heart.
When he was finally on the verge of despair, convinced he would lose this match, Yuzhu's lullaby stopped.
The duel ended with Jing Qian's victory.
It was Yuzhu who could not withstand the drain of sustaining such venom. Her energy burned out first, her lamp of life sputtering to nothing.
The third round officially concluded. Jing Qian had won three consecutive matches.
This was already better than his most optimistic expectations.
The illusion shifted. His toxin-ravaged body was perfectly restored, but Jing Qian still lingered in the aftereffects of that lullaby, unable to fully pull free.
Even the Angler himself might not be able to completely purge such a memetic poison. If Jing Qian failed to erase its traces, then once he left Zhuo Ling Cave-Heaven, the venom could hunt him down in reality.
Closing his eyes, he calmed his spirit. A thread of sword-light circled once around his Dao-heart. Only then did he truly forget the lullaby, forget even the memory of the poison's existence.
This fight had laid bare his weaknesses. For Jing Qian, it would be a lesson of immense importance for his future cultivation.
After three rounds, the situation of the Dharma Contest grew clearer.
The four undefeated contenders were:
The Ying Clan heir,
The Cook of the Stove-King Pavilion,
The Mech-warrior of Heavy Profound Palace,
And Jing Qian himself.
These four stood in a league of their own, by both strength and fortune.
That Jing Qian had survived Yuzhu's attack surprised even Huang Yan.
In his eyes, the Bamboo Mountain Sect's memetic poison was troublesome even for him, a Star-Seizer cultivator. To purge it would take significant effort.
Yet this disciple of Pure Yang Ruins, with terrifying vitality, had endured and won.
On the cultivation path, truly, anything was possible.
The old Angler, however, never doubted Jing Qian.
In his eyes, since Jing Qian had accepted something from the Eyeless One, he was already a potential Yanfu Heir.
If another Yanfu Son rose within the Yingfu World, who knew what chaos might erupt?
The Angler only looked forward to the spectacle.
...
The fourth duel began right on time.
Though Jing Qian's strength had not changed, spiritually, he felt he had gained immensely.
Each of his three opponents had shown remarkable qualities. Every victory he earned had been hard fought.
He realized he had underestimated the world.
These great sects had prepared meticulously for Zhuo Ling Cave-Heaven. None could be dismissed as easy prey.
And that made it all the more enjoyable.
True competition, a serious struggle, was what would force him to continue to grow.
His next opponent emerged: a resplendent Chain-Link Automaton, gleaming with intricate design.
It was the mech-warrior of Heavy Profound Palace, the very same mechanical cultivator who had ambushed him upon entering the Cave-Heaven, leaving him gravely wounded.
Now, at last, they faced one another. A reckoning.
Compared to a century ago, the automaton had grown far more refined.
Its every component was broken down into finer and finer chains, interwoven into a new whole.
Back then, its Chain-Links numbered in the tens of thousands.
Now, after decades of polish, the number had surpassed one million.
And so its power had soared.
When Jing Qian's sword-silk descended, laced with thunder and storm, the automaton shifted. Half its chains wove together into a vast metal shield, wrapping tightly around itself to meet the strike head-on.
Jing Qian's probing sword-silk carved deeply into the shield. The twenty-one following sword-shadows nearly pierced it through.
His battle-spirit surged. He loved nothing more than opponents who fought head-on.
At once, his sword-silk flared in a frenzied storm, shredding the shield apart in an instant.
But as he pressed forward to exploit the breach, the sight behind the shield froze his blood.
Three cannon barrels, each a meter thick, formed a massive turret, their muzzles aimed directly at him, glowing with a chilling, lethal light.
Chain-Link Automaton: Multi-Cannon Mode!
In that instant, Jing Qian transformed into a streak of light, fleeing laterally at supersonic speed.
By instinct, he dodged toward the one direction the barrels had not yet locked.
With the blessing of his Bian Yuan Weiyang life pattern, his flight was triple the speed of sound, faster than most cultivators' divine sense could track.
But Ye Chong of Heavy Profound Palace, the mech's pilot and a newly minted Thousand-Forge Master of the Third Workshop, was no ordinary man.
He pulled out three specialized shells, each distinct, and loaded them into the triple barrels.
Any one of these shells was a Star-Seizer Shell, a weapon equivalent to a full strike from a fourth-rank powerhouse.
Without hesitation, he fired. Three devastating projectiles, each bearing unique properties, streaked toward Jing Qian.
The illusion amplified all participants equally.
But compared to the others, Ye Chong's infinite supply of ammunition was absurdly overpowered.
These shells were not his personal property, but prototypes forged by the Third Workshop of Heavy Profound Palace, experimental treasures not yet finalized.
He had only been permitted to carry them here so that, within the Cave-Heaven's illusory battlefield, he could test them repeatedly and return the combat data.
He was, essentially, a glorified test pilot, a mere toolman.
Placed in the real world, if Ye Chong dared to fire even a single one of those shells so recklessly, he'd be pressed into the workshop, sentenced to a thousand years of black-labor penance.
But here, within this illusion, he could cut loose seven full barrages, twenty-one Star-Seizer Shells in total. That alone was enough to make half of Heavy Profound Palace green with envy.
After firing three rounds, however, Ye Chong's Chain-Link Automaton was nearly melted, left half-crippled. The strain of channeling such ordnance was too much. Without half a year's repair, his machine would never recover.
With his automaton ruined, Ye Chong's strength fell to its weakest state.
Yet as he gazed at the blossoming fireclouds in the distance, his lips curved in a cold smile. He simply waited for the illusion's reset to mend him.
But the restoration never came.
At the heart of the explosion, Jing Qian's body lay like a half-cooked steak, seven-tenths charred.
This was the worst injury of his life. His cultivation and mana had been utterly destroyed, his face burned into an unrecognizable lump, his organs seared into charcoal. He couldn't even speak.
But somehow, he was still alive.
When he had instinctively fled at the first barrage, he realized too late that it was the wrong move.
That was fear speaking. A lingering shadow from his past life, the terror of heavy artillery.
The correct choice, the only correct choice, would have been to answer with his own strongest root sword-qi, meeting fire with fire.
By fleeing, he had surrendered the initiative.
No matter how fast his flight, once targeted by fourth-rank shells, escape was impossible.
The result: desperation. He was forced to shatter his Qingping Sword Casket, unleashing his root sword-qi to break the bombardment.
The first shell, the Light-Chasing Shell, was the fastest of the three, impossible to dodge. It collided head-on with his root sword-qi before he could even trigger the Ghost-Devouring Art.
His strongest strike was wasted against a single shell. A loss beyond words.
The second shell, Dragon-Slaying Shell, was the most destructive.
Thankfully, when it arrived, his root sword-qi's twenty-one sword shadows struck in tandem. The clash consumed both forces, leaving him only lightly injured.
But when the third came, the Heavenfire Shell, his root sword-qi was spent.
With nothing left, he had no choice but to rely on his lesser sword-qi from Qingping's End. Without a century of nurturing or the casket's blessing, its power was barely a hundredth of his root sword-qi.
It was hardly enough to kill a Longevity Realm cultivator, let alone counter a fourth-rank shell.
He hurled all the mana he had left, a feeble attempt to block the oncoming inferno.
It was utterly useless.
The Heavenfire Shell exploded. Unbounded celestial flames consumed him whole, searing him alive.
Jing Qian's flesh turned to charcoal. His body collapsed into ruin, his organs burned to ash. Again, he could only rely on the collapse of his flesh-buds to trigger revival.
But the Heavenfire's flames were relentless, no weaker than Yuzhu's venom.
Each time his flesh-buds burst and released their vitality, it was like tossing dry twigs into a roaring furnace. They were devoured in an instant.
His consciousness flickered between pain and haze. In a trance, he saw his meridians flowing not with blood, but molten magma, burning his viscera into hollow, blackened cavities.
"If this continues… I really will die."
With his last thread of will, he summoned forth the Void Furnace, using its life-furnace power to devour the raging Heavenfire.
But this flame's magnitude dwarfed his previous Toad's Purifying Fire a hundredfold greater.
The Void Furnace swelled red-hot, glowing like crystalline ruby glass, on the verge of cracking apart.
Even so, the flames continued to sear him.
He burned for a full hour.
Only when his consciousness had nearly collapsed, teetering between life and death, did the Void Furnace finally swallow the last remnants of the Heavenfire.
Jing Qian had survived the triple bombardment of Heavy Profound Palace's Star-Seizer Shells barely.
But he was left like overcooked meat, incapable of movement, incapable of speech, his life hanging by a thread.
This bitter loss was the price of his hesitation. Jing Qian admitted it.
Yet since he had managed to cling to half a life, this battle wasn't over.
With the last of his divine sense, he sent out a single thought:
"All yours now. Avenge me."
From his Life Furnace, a small black cat emerged, receiving the message. It bared its fangs, claws flashing, and shot toward the source of the bombardment.
"Finally, it's my turn to shine!"
Its steps were light, its speed like black lightning.
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