Yun's sword was trapped, held fast not by metal or force, but by a conceptual prison. His face, once a mask of glacial arrogance, was now a canvas of stunned fury and dawning horror. He strained against the invisible bonds, his knuckles white around the hilt, but his own sword intent, reflected and turned against him, had become his cage.
This created a precarious balance. Wang Chen was holding the enemy's strongest player, but it demanded his near-total focus. The core pulsed rhythmically in his hand, a visible strain evident in the tightness around his eyes. "The others!" he gritted out, the words strained. "I have him. Handle the rest!"
Across the labyrinth, the battle had splintered into two frantic duels.
Kael found himself cornered between two monoliths by a Heavenly Sword disciple whose blade moved with piston-like precision. Each strike wasn't aimed to kill, but to exhaust, to batter down his legendary defenses. The disciple's face was a study in cold efficiency, his sword a silver blur seeking the chinks in Kael's earthen armor. A shallow cut opened on Kael's shoulder, then another on his thigh. They were minor, but they were a message: even a mountain can be eroded.
"Your defense is formidable," the disciple stated, his voice as emotionless as his swordplay. "But static. It cannot adapt forever."
Kael, breathing heavily, didn't reply. He simply took the blows, his feet planted, a bastion refusing to fall. He was buying time.
Li, meanwhile, was a whirlwind of frustration. His opponent was a master of misdirection, using the monoliths as perfect shields. Li's wind blades shattered against stone, his sonic attacks dissipated by some unseen barrier the disciple projected. He was being led on a futile chase, his agility neutralized by the cramped, complex terrain.
"Hold still, you slippery eel!" Li snarled, flipping backward to avoid a razor-sharp riposte.
It was Jian who faced the most dangerous situation. Isolated in a narrow canyon of blades, she was dueling the second most powerful disciple after Yun. Her opponent was a woman with cold, calculating eyes, whose sword style was a mirror of Jian's own—precise, fast, and lethal. But where Jian's was born of solitary focus, her opponent's was clinical, practiced, and backed by the full, oppressive weight of the Heavenly Sword Sect's legacy.
Their blades—one visible, one not—clashed in a staccato rhythm of sparks and shivering air. They were a perfect match, a stalemate of supreme skill. But Jian was fighting alone, with no room to maneuver, while her opponent knew reinforcements were nearby. A flicker of desperation, cold and sharp, began to needle at the edges of Jian's focus. She was the team's scalpel, and she was being blunted.
Back with Wang Chen, the strain was showing. A thin trickle of blood escaped his nostril. Holding Yun was like trying to contain a thunderstorm in a teacup.
We are one weapon. Kael's words from their training echoed in his mind. The load must be shared.
He couldn't break his focus on Yun. But he didn't need to use his hands to communicate with his team.
He reached for them not with Qi, but with the bond they had forged. He pushed a thread of his awareness, a simple, raw feeling of their shared resolve, through the chaotic noise of the battle. It wasn't a command. It was a reminder.
In his stone prison, Kael felt it—a warm, stubborn pulse of confidence amidst the pounding strikes. He wasn't just a shield. He was the anvil. And it was time for the hammer to fall.
He stopped purely defending. With a roar that shook the very monoliths around him, he took a stomping step forward, ignoring a shallow cut that opened on his chest. He didn't block the next piston-thrust of his opponent's sword. He let it come.
And he caught it.
The blade bit deep into the meat of his palm, but his fingers, reinforced by a lifetime of earthen Qi, clamped down like a mountain's vise, trapping the steel. The disciple's eyes widened in shock for a single, fatal second.
That was all Li needed.
Seeing Kael's monumental sacrifice, understanding the opening it created, Li didn't throw a wind blade. He didn't have the angle. Instead, he did something utterly unpredictable. He slammed both his Gale-Fans together.
THUUUM.
A single, concussive blast of pure, undirected sonic force erupted from the point of impact. It wasn't aimed at the disciple. It was aimed at the monolith behind him.
The polished stone, vibrating at its resonant frequency from the precise sonic attack, exploded inward. A hail of razor-sharp stone shrapnel peppered the disciple's back, shattering his concentration and his defensive Qi. He cried out, his grip on his sword faltering.
Kael, with the sword still lodged in his hand, used the man's momentary imbalance, yanking him forward and driving a forehead smash into his face with the sound of a cracking nut. The disciple crumpled.
The chain of their trap had just been broken. Kael and Li were free.
Their eyes met across the battlefield, a silent message passing between them. Then, as one, they turned. Their gazes were not on the remaining Heavenly Sword disciples.
They were on Jian, still locked in her deadly stalemate.
And they began to move. The unstoppable mountain and the untamable wind, converging on the isolated blade. The pack was reforming, and its prey was the one who had dared to separate their heart from their soul.
(To be continued...)