Mo Xuan's eyes widened slightly as the pieces started sliding into place. All things arise from unity...
The Demon Tiger roared, and Mo Xuan didn't move, didn't flinch, his attention entirely consumed by the thought unravelling inside him.
...divide into two... The killing intent crashed down over him again, thick and suffocating.
...dance among the myriad... His Cosmic Soul trembled somewhere deep in his chest, responding to something he couldn't yet name.
...and return to the One.
His eyes snapped open, a strange light flickering briefly across them. "That's it," he breathed.
He didn't need to force the two halves of his Cosmic Soul together after all. He needed to understand the relationship binding them in the first place. Yin and Yang had never truly been separate things fighting for dominance — they were two expressions of a single, unified whole, each one meaningless without the other.
The Demon Tiger lunged toward him without warning, and Mo Xuan turned sharply toward Jin Bao instead. "Defend me."
Jin Bao stared at him, incredulous. "What?"
"All your remaining formations."
Realisation dawned across Jin Bao's face. "Brother Mo, what are you planning?"
Mo Xuan closed his eyes, already sinking into focus. "Something I've never done before. Risking it all."
Jin Bao gritted his teeth, and something in his expression shifted — the usual playfulness draining away, replaced by a rare, steady dignity. "Fine." He forced himself upright despite his aching body. "If you're going to do something crazy..." He turned to face the Demon Tiger head-on. "...then we go crazy together. I'll at least make sure it can't interrupt you."
He slammed both hands together, and every remaining talisman tore free from his Storage Bag at once, scattering across the clearing in a wide arc. He bit down hard on his thumb and flicked the blood forward, letting it land across each talisman in turn.
Hum!
Formation after formation blinked into existence, golden light spreading rapidly across the ground in overlapping rings. The Demon Tiger charged, and the first barrier rose to meet it.
BOOM!
This time, the defence held stronger than before — the barrier cracked under the impact, but sealed itself shut again almost immediately, remaining sturdy even as the tiger pressed against it.
Mo Xuan sank to sit, his sword resting flat across his knees, and slipped into meditation. The Revolution Connecting Mantra began circulating through his body in slow, deliberate cycles, his Soul Power threading through his meridians with growing intensity. His Cosmic Soul stirred, beginning to move in response.
His breathing slowed. The world around him faded — the tiger's roar, Jin Bao's laboured breathing, the crackle of straining barriers, all of it dissolving into background noise until only one thing remained clear and present.
The rhythm of his own Soul.
A voice echoed steadily through his mind, over and over: Seeing the One within the Two...
Back at the sect arena, Han Long had appeared at some point without announcement, his presence noted only by the Sect Master, who reached out telepathically to remark, with quiet satisfaction, that he had indeed picked a rare gem for a disciple. Han Long said nothing in response, only smirking faintly as he took a slow sip from his drink before turning his attention back to the crystal screen.
Back in the forest, Mo Xuan remained deep in meditation, his eyes closed, as black-and-white energy began coiling and shifting around his body in slow, deliberate spirals. Somewhere deep within his Sea of Consciousness, something ancient and long-dormant began to crack.
The Demon Tiger's claws descended again and again, striking at the space where he sat — yet nothing happened. The barriers held, absorbing blow after blow without yielding. After enough failed attempts, the beast's patience finally snapped, its irritation boiling over into something close to genuine anger. For the first time since the fight began, it stopped holding back, unleashing an actual technique.
Massive, spectral claws materialised in the air, seeming to tear directly through space itself — Sky Sundering, one of the tiger's superior techniques, reserved for opponents it could no longer afford to underestimate.
The claws swept down toward the formation and passed through it as easily as a blade through soft tofu.
Every barrier shattered simultaneously. Jin Bao was thrown backwards again by the force of the collapse, his protective talisman flashing weakly as he slammed hard against a tree trunk, the impact driving the air from his lungs.
The Demon Tiger's crimson eyes turned toward him, and for just a moment, a flicker of calculated understanding passed behind them. It had pieced together, with unsettling clarity, that the human sitting motionless behind it was being deliberately shielded by the one now lying wounded against the tree. Reasoning that the meditating one posed the greater threat precisely because he was being protected, it abandoned its pursuit of Mo Xuan and turned instead toward easier prey.
Jin Bao's expression crumpled. "No..."
The beast surged toward him, closing the distance in an instant.
Mo Xuan's eyes snapped open. "Jin Bao!"
The tiger crossed the clearing before Jin Bao could even raise his arms, and he hurled his final defensive talisman on pure desperate instinct.
BOOM!
A barrier flared into existence just in time. The tiger's claws struck it dead centre, and cracks spread instantly across the golden surface, spiderwebbing outward faster than the formation could reinforce itself.
Jin Bao gritted his teeth, watching the cracks deepen, willing the barrier to hold through sheer stubbornness alone.
CRACK!
It shattered completely, and the tiger's claws continued forward without pause, closing the last few feet toward him.
At that exact instant, Mo Xuan moved. His body crossed the distance between them faster than conscious thought could track, his sword already rising to intercept the incoming claws.
CLANG!
The collision sent both combatants staggering backwards, and Mo Xuan landed squarely between Jin Bao and the Demon Tiger, breathing hard, blood already seeping from a fresh gash along his arm.
Jin Bao stared up at him, stunned. "Brother Mo..."
Mo Xuan didn't look back at him. "Stay behind me."
"But—"
"No buts."
Jin Bao swallowed whatever protest he'd been about to make and simply nodded, understanding without needing further explanation.
Mo Xuan turned fully to face the Demon Tiger again, and something inside him had already begun shifting toward its final form, the transformation he'd triggered through meditation reaching the last stretch before completion.
The beast lowered its massive body, killing intent flooding the clearing once more in a fresh, crushing wave — but this time, something made it hesitate. A faint, unfamiliar threat seemed to radiate off the boy standing before it, something its instincts flagged as dangerous even though logic told it this human was still hopelessly outmatched. It paused, just for a moment, needing to reassess a situation that no longer added up the way it should have.
That single pause, that brief flicker of doubt, was precisely the opening Mo Xuan needed. Fortune, as the old saying went, favoured the brave — and in that suspended heartbeat, the transformation building inside him accelerated to completion, time itself seeming to stretch and compress around him as everything he'd been reaching for finally clicked into place.
The entire world went still.
Black and white light erupted around Mo Xuan's body, two distinct streams of energy spiralling around him like a pair of twin dragons chasing each other's tails. The sword in his hand began to vibrate, resonating with something far deeper than mere Spiritual Energy. Somewhere within his Sea of Consciousness, something shattered.
Crack! A sound like breaking glass rang out inside his own mind.
Then it reformed.
Boom!
A tremendous wave of Soul Power tore outward from his body, and the Spiritual Energy surrounding him underwent a transformation that went beyond simple growth — a qualitative shift, his Soul Power transforming from gas into something closer to liquid, dense and purposeful. His two half-formed souls — the Rune Soul and the Sword Soul — began, at long last, to merge.
Not one consuming the other. Not one bending to dominate its counterpart. Instead, something new entirely took shape between them — something complete, whole in a way neither half had ever been on its own.
Sensing the shift, the Demon Tiger abandoned all hesitation and drove its claws downward in a final, decisive strike.
A pillar of black-and-white light erupted from Mo Xuan's body and shot skyward, tearing through the canopy and lancing toward the heavens. The entire examination realm trembled from the force of it. The Demon Tiger was thrown backwards by the shockwave, and Jin Bao was sent tumbling through the air as well, his sect-issued protective talisman — the one that had stubbornly refused to activate throughout the entire encounter with the Tier Four beast — finally flaring to life on its own.
"Ahhh!" he cried out, and vanished in a flash of light before he could finish the sound.
Across the rest of the trial zone, every other battle stuttered to a halt in the same instant. Qin Hao's gaze snapped toward the distant sky, distracted by the pillar of light tearing upward in the distance. The Earthshaking Bear seized the opening immediately, slamming its paw into the ground the moment his attention wavered, and Qin Hao and his companion barely escaped the resulting devastation, their protective talismans flaring and pulling them both away in flashes of light.
Feng Yan looked up as well, distracted by the same impossible pillar of energy. The Frost Serpent's golden eyes tracked her gaze for a brief moment before it launched a final, decisive attack of its own — but Feng Yan and her companion's talismans activated just in time, both of them vanishing before the strike could land.