He pulled out his jade slip. "Outer sect participants—prepare to enter the stage!"
The first stage, which had been perhaps two hundred meters across, suddenly began expanding. It grew larger and larger, stretching to accommodate the sheer number of combatants. By the time it stopped, the platform was easily three kilometers in diameter—a floating battlefield hovering a hundred feet in the air.
"All outer sect participants—enter now!"
Ten thousand disciples surged forward. Some flew on swords. Others leaped impossibly high using movement techniques. A very selected few teleported directly onto the stage using short-range spatial jumps, but to Azrael, it looked clumsy.
Azrael took to the air using his electromagnetic flight, rising smoothly and landing near the edge of the massive platform. Around him, disciples were spreading out, eyeing each other warily, forming temporary alliances, or preparing to attack.
He drew his jian sword. The blade gleamed in the sunlight, runes glowing faintly along its length.
This would be his first real battle. Not a demonstration of power, not a casual defeat of arrogant disciples. A true melee against thousands of opponents.
His plan was simple: suppress his strength, senses, and reflexes to sharpen his sword techniques and combat instincts. Use this as training, not domination.
Apart from that one time he'd been shooting aliens while escaping on Earth, he'd never actually fought for his life. This was new territory.
"BEGIN!" Elder Han's voice thundered.
Chaos erupted instantly.
Explosions blossomed across the stage as cultivators unleashed their strongest techniques immediately. Fire pillars. Lightning strikes. Ice shards. Earth spikes. The air filled with clashing qi and the screams of eliminated disciples being teleported off the stage by safety formations.
It looked like a battlefield. Ten thousand combatants trying to eliminate each other in a confined space.
A Foundation Establishment Layer 6 cultivator spotted Azrael standing calmly at the edge and decided he looked like easy prey.
"Die!" the cultivator roared, his sword wreathed in flames as he charged.
Azrael raised his jian sword and met the attack.
Their blades clashed. The Foundation Establishment cultivator's eyes widened—he'd expected to overpower a Qi Condensation opponent, but Azrael's defense was solid as a mountain.
Azrael analyzed the attack pattern. Aggressive, but telegraphed. He commits too much to each strike. Leaves his left side open.
He stepped aside, letting the flaming sword pass harmlessly, then countered with a precise thrust aimed at the cultivator's shoulder.
The man barely blocked it, his face showing shock.
They exchanged blows for thirty seconds. To the Foundation Establishment cultivator, it was a desperate fight. To Azrael, it was a learning experience. He absorbed the rhythm of combat, the flow of attack and defense, the way openings appeared and disappeared.
His Heaven-Defying Comprehension was working overtime, cataloging every movement, every technique, every principle.
Sword techniques are about efficiency. Minimal movement, maximum impact. Each strike should flow into the next. Energy conservation is key.
His movements became smoother. More refined.
The Foundation Establishment cultivator swung wildly, running low on qi.
Azrael stepped inside his guard and tapped him on the chest with the flat of his blade—a controlled strike infused with just enough qi to trigger the elimination formation.
The man vanished in a flash of light, teleported to the waiting area below.
"Next," Azrael murmured.
Another opponent appeared immediately—this one an unstable Core Formation Early stage, wielding a spear. Stronger, faster, more experienced.
Perfect.
They engaged.
Azrael found his rhythm accelerating. The Core Formation cultivator offered new insights—different attack angles, feints within feints, the use of spiritual pressure to disrupt opponent concentration.
One minutes into the melee, something clicked in Azrael's mind.
It felt like he'd rediscovered himself. Like sword fighting had always been part of him, just buried under years of academic focus. His body moved instinctively, his blade becoming an extension of his arm.
In his Consciousness, something awakened.
Sword Law comprehension—a law he hadn't even known he was cultivating—began crystallizing from all the blade techniques he'd memorized.
What is the sword?
The sword was extension. It reached where hands couldn't.
The sword was precision. It struck exactly where aimed.
The sword was versatility. It could cut, thrust, parry, deflect.
The sword was philosophy. The way of the blade reflected the way of life—direct, honest, efficient.
His Sword Law comprehension shot upward.
30%. 45%. 60%. 70%.
Within five minutes of combat, it reached 79%—matching his Space Law comprehension.
But Azrael immediately suppressed its aura, preventing the wisps of Sword Law from descending and giving away his advancement. He couldn't afford that kind of attention right now.
His opponents kept coming.
Foundation Establishment. Core Formation. Even a few Golden Core cultivators who'd used treasures to hide their cultivation realm and snuck into the outer sect competition for easy contribution points, but they couldn't hide from Azrael eyes.
Azrael defeated them all.
Each fight lasted only as long as necessary to extract new insights. When an opponent could no longer teach him anything, he swiftly eliminated them with a precise strike and moved on.
His battle instincts evolved at an astonishing rate. Predicting attacks. Reading body language. Sensing killing intent. Adjusting his stance for optimal defense and counter-attack.
He was becoming a swordsman before his own eyes.
The battlefield around him gradually cleared as he moved through it like a scythe through wheat. Disciples saw him coming and fled. Others tried to gang up on him—five, ten, twenty at once—only to be systematically dismantled.
By the time the melee entered its final phase, Azrael had personally eliminated over eight thousand disciples.
The remaining combatants started running from him. Word had spread across the stage: "Avoid the masked swordsman. He's death incarnate."
"TIME UP!" Elder Han's voice cut through the chaos. "Remaining participants—freeze!"
The fighting stopped immediately.
Azrael looked around. Including himself, exactly fifty disciples remained on the stage. The others were scattered across the massive platform, panting, bleeding, but victorious.
The crowd of spectators—inner and core disciples who'd been watching—erupted in angry murmurs.
"That's impossible!"
"One person eliminated eight thousand?!"
"He must be a supreme elder in disguise!"
"It's happened before—elders coming out of seclusion to bully outer disciples!"
"This is completely unfair!"
Even Elder Han looked shocked. His spiritual sense had been monitoring the entire fight, but the sheer scale of Azrael's elimination count was unprecedented.
The enforcement elder floated down to the stage and approached Azrael directly, his expression grave.
"Disciple," Elder Han said, bowing his head slightly—a sign of respect despite his higher position. "Please present your sect identity token for verification."
The crowd held its breath.
If this was truly a supreme elder playing games, there would be serious consequences. The sect had rules against such interference.
Azrael reached into his space ring and withdrew his outer sect identity token—a simple jade slip with his name, cultivation level, and sect status engraved on it.
He handed it to Elder Han.
The elder infused it with qi, checking for forgery. His eyes widened slightly as he read the information.
"Outer Sect Disciple. Qi Condensation Layer Six," Elder Han read aloud but didn't say his name, his voice amplified across the arena. "Identity confirmed. No deception detected."
The crowd erupted again, but this time with different emotions.
"Qi Condensation?!"
"He eliminated eight thousand disciples at Qi Condensation?!"
"That's... that's the definition of a dark horse!"
"No, that's beyond dark horse. That's a hidden dragon!"
The inner sect and core sect disciples in the stands were staring at him with expressions ranging from awe to disbelief to calculation. Some were already planning how to recruit him. Others were evaluating him as a potential threat.
Azrael accepted his token back and sheathed his sword, ignoring the attention.
His plan had failed spectacularly. He'd aimed for top twenty-five—solid but unremarkable. Instead, he'd dominated the entire outer sect competition and become the center of attention.
Got distracted, he thought ruefully. The feeling of combat was too... engaging.
He was starting to suspect he might be a battle maniac. The sheer enjoyment he'd felt while fighting, the way his blood sang with each clash of blades—that wasn't normal scientist behavior.
"Outer sect qualifiers—remain on stage for the final announcement!" Elder Han commanded. "Inner sect—prepare for your battle!"
The inner sect stage began expanding to accommodate five thousand disciples. The scale was similar, but the power level would be higher. Core Formation through Golden Core cultivators.
Then came the core sect stage. One thousand participants, all Golden Core realm.
The battles that followed were brutal.
Golden Core cultivators unleashed attacks that could destroy entire states. Sword strikes that left spatial tears in the air. Palm techniques that generated shockwaves visible from kilometers away. Elemental techniques so powerful they looked like natural disasters.
BOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound was deafening—continuous explosions echoing across the arena like artillery barrages. Disciples fought both in the air and on the stage, moving at speeds measured in multiples of sound. Sonic booms overlapped until they became white noise.
BAAAAAAAANG!
BAAAAANG!
BOOOOOOOOOM!
A Golden Core Peak cultivator swung his sword. The attack carved a line through space itself, the displaced energy creating a temporary void that imploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb.
Another cultivator countered with a palm strike that compressed air into a visible projectile. When it hit, the resulting explosion flattened everything within a hundred-meter radius.
To most spectators, the movements were blurs. The techniques were too fast to follow. It was like watching gods fight.
But Azrael saw everything.
His enhanced perception let him track each movement in slow motion. His Heaven-Defying Comprehension analyzed every technique, every principle, every application of law and qi.
Combat techniques. Attack patterns. Movement arts. Defensive formations. Counter-techniques. Combination attacks.
The amount of knowledge flooding into his Myriad Spiritual Library was staggering. Each fight was a treasure trove of insights that would take normal cultivators lifetimes to accumulate.
Azrael stood on the outer sect stage, seemingly watching casually, but internally his consciousness was working at maximum capacity—recording, analyzing, categorizing, comprehending.
This gain, he thought, is massive.
The battles continued for hours. By the time the core sect competition concluded, the sun had moved significantly across the sky.
Finally, Elder Han rose into the air, his voice cutting through the exhausted silence.
"The qualifiers have been selected! Fifty outer sect disciples, fifty inner sect disciples, fifty core sect disciples, and five true disciples—a total of one hundred and fifty-five cultivators will enter the Ancient Formation Sect secret realm in three days! Gather at the sect gates in 3 days."
He gestured toward the waiting disciples. "Use this time to prepare. Gather supplies, study maps, form alliances if you wish. When the realm opens, you'll have one month to explore, harvest resources, and attempt the inheritance."
His gaze swept across the crowd, lingering briefly on Azrael.
"Dismissed!"
The disciples dispersed, some celebrating, others nursing injuries, many casting sidelong glances at the masked swordsman who'd eliminated eight thousand opponents without even seeming to try.
Azrael activated Dimensional Shift and vanished in a flicker of distorted space, leaving only faint shimmer of space cracks behind him.
He had three days to prepare for the secret realm.
And a lot of new techniques to study.
[END CHAPTER 11]