The Verdant Mountain Sect's temporary compound in The Convergence was a modest affair, a rented courtyard with a few rooms, overshadowed by the grand embassies of the major powers. When Li Yao returned, he found Liu Mei already there, her face pale and her robes slightly torn. She had lost her third and final match, eliminating her from the tournament.
She offered him a weak smile. "Senior Brother Li. I hear you advanced. Without a single scratch."
"It is easier to remain unscathed when one does not engage in the scathing," he replied, sitting across from her. "Your matches?"
She sighed. "I won the first. The disciple was from a minor wood-aligned clan. My Earth foundation was stronger. The second was against a disciple from the Sky Whisper Sect. I lost. I was too slow, too rooted. He wore me down with a thousand cuts." She gestured to the tears in her robe. "The third... was against a disciple from our own sect."
Li Yao raised an eyebrow. "Zhang Fan?"
She nodded. "He was... furious. Humiliated that you had taken his place and were succeeding. He took it out on me. He didn't just defeat me; he made a spectacle of it. Shattered my earthen defenses easily. Said the sect had grown weak, pandering to... to freaks." She didn't look at him as she said the last word.
Li Yao's calm expression didn't change, but the air around him seemed to grow stiller, colder. "I see."
"He's changed, Senior Brother. The ambition, the resentment... it's consuming him. He's broken through to the early Essence Refinement realm, but his energy feels unstable, violent."
"He is trying to fill a void with fire," Li Yao observed. "It is a messy process."
Just then, the courtyard gate slammed open. Jian stood there, his sharp aura seeming to cut into the room. He had a shallow cut on his cheek, but his eyes blazed with focused intensity. He had advanced as well.
"Your sect-mate," Jian said without preamble, his voice like chilled steel. "Zhang Fan. I observed his match against the Lotus Heart Clan alchemist. He did not simply win. He crippled her. Shattered her dantian. The overseers intervened too late. He claimed it was an 'uncontrolled surge of power.'"
Liu Mei gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. To cripple a fellow cultivator was a heinous act, a violation of the tournament's spirit.
Li Yao closed his eyes for a moment. The void within him, usually a placid, depthless lake, stirred. It wasn't anger, not in the conventional sense. It was a cold, absolute recognition of a imbalance. Zhang Fan's path was one of destructive excess. His own was one of absolute negation. They were two ends of a spectrum, and the spectrum was bending towards a breaking point.
"He will come for you, Li Yao," Jian stated. "You are the source of his humiliation. He will try to do to you what he did to that alchemist."
"I am not an alchemist," Li Yao said, his voice quiet but clear.
Jian studied him. "No. You are not. But can your... emptiness... protect against someone who does not just throw energy, but seeks to shatter your very vessel?"
"That," Li Yao said, opening his eyes, "is the question, isn't it?"
The tournament bracket was posted that evening. The field of thousands had been whittled down to the top 256. Li Yao's name was there, a stark contrast to the illustrious names of major sect heirs and legendary independent cultivators. And as fate, or perhaps the manipulating hands of the tournament organizers, would have it, his first match in the main bracket was against Zhang Fan.
The announcement sent a new wave of excitement through The Convergence. The internal strife of the Verdant Mountain Sect, the strange "Void Disciple" versus the brutal, rising star. It was a narrative the spectators and gamblers loved.
The match was scheduled for the following day in one of the central arenas, guaranteeing a massive audience.
That night, Li Yao did not meditate on the void. Instead, he sat in the quiet courtyard, under the alien constellations shining through Nexus Peak's glow, and he thought about foundations.
His Unfoundation was a rejection of the conventional path. It was a void. But what was a void's relationship to a flawed, cracking foundation like Zhang Fan's? Could the absence of something interact with something that was poorly built?
The First Verse of the Void Scripture spoke of becoming the vessel. The Second Verse spoke of creating ripples. He needed a Third Verse, one that dealt with interaction, with the application of absence upon presence.
He thought about the Earthstone he had unraveled, the way its simple structure came apart. He thought about the chaotic, unstable energy Zhang Fan now wielded. A complex, unstable structure was even more vulnerable to a well-placed suggestion of nothingness.
A concept began to form in his mind, not from the scripture, but from his own comprehension born of necessity. He didn't have a name for it yet, but he understood its principle: he would not just defend against Zhang Fan's attacks. He would use his void as a lever, to find the cracks in Zhang Fan's foundation and encourage them to widen. To help his opponent's own power unmake itself.
The next day, the central arena was packed to capacity. The air crackled with anticipation. This was more than a match; it was a grudge fight, a clash of ideologies.
Zhang Fan entered first, to a mix of cheers and boos. His aura was indeed a raging inferno, laced with the jagged, unstable edges of the Earth Law. He looked larger, more muscular, but his eyes were bloodshot, his smile a rictus of arrogance and spite.
Li Yao entered to a respectful, wary silence. He looked the same as always: calm, unassuming, his robes neat, his steps measured. He was an island of tranquility in a sea of roaring emotion.
They stood facing each other in the center of the grand arena.
Zhang Fan's voice was a low growl, amplified for all to hear. "This ends now, freak. I will break you in front of the entire world and show everyone what happens when you betray the true path of our sect!"
Li Yao looked at him, his gaze deep and unsettlingly peaceful. He said only one word, so softly it was almost lost, yet it carried through the hushed arena with the weight of a mountain.
"Try."