The Soaring Dragon Arena was a coliseum carved directly into the heart of the sect's central mountain. It was a masterpiece of architectural violence.
Massive stone bleachers rose in concentric circles, seating over ten thousand disciples. The air buzzed with the static electricity of a high-grade protective barrier, designed to keep stray fireballs from incinerating the audience. The smell of roasted spirit-meat, cheap ale, and nervous sweat hung thick in the air.
For most disciples, this was the most important day of their lives. It was the gateway to the Inner Sect, to wealth, to immortality.
For Jiang Fan, it was just a very loud place that was keeping him awake.
"Stop fidgeting," Jiang Fan muttered, leaning against the cold stone wall of the participants' waiting tunnel. "You're vibrating the floor."
Gu Ling sat in her modified wheelchair next to him. She was pale. Her hands were gripping the armrests so tightly that the Spirit-Wood was beginning to splinter.
"I am not fidgeting," Gu Ling hissed, her eyes fixed on the bright light at the end of the tunnel. "I am calibrating the gyroscopic stabilizers. And... there are so many people, Jiang Fan. I can hear them."
She was dressed in battle-robes of deep indigo, armored with silver plating that matched the mechanical spider-legs folded against the back of her chair. She looked regal, dangerous, and utterly terrified.
Jiang Fan sighed. He reached into his inventory and pulled out a small bag of Honey-Glazed Spirit Nuts. He offered one to her.
"Chew," he commanded. "It tricks the brain into thinking you're safe. Animals don't eat when they're about to be eaten."
Gu Ling hesitated, then took a nut and crunched it viciously.
"Excuse me?"
A hesitant voice drifted from the shadows of the tunnel.
Jiang Fan and Gu Ling turned. Standing there was a peculiar pair of disciples who looked like they had dressed themselves in the dark.
The boy, Han Yu, was huge—easily six and a half feet tall—but he hunched over as if trying to hide his height. He wore armor made of mismatched scrap metal and carried a massive, rusted coffin-lid on his back as a shield.
The girl, Little Que, was tiny, with wild messy hair full of twigs. She was barefoot, and crawling up her arm was a centipede the size of a baguette.
"Um," Han Yu stammered, looking at Gu Ling's chair. "Is... is that a Mk-4 Spirit Levitation Array? With a dual-core mana intake?"
Gu Ling blinked, swallowing the nut. The fear in her eyes was replaced instantly by the spark of an engineer. "It's a Mk-5, actually. I modified the intake manifold myself."
"Whoa," Little Que whispered, her eyes shining. She poked the centipede on her arm. "Did you hear that, Mr. Wiggles? Mk-5!"
Jiang Fan crunched on a nut. "Who are you guys? The 'Scavenger Sect'?"
"We are the Beast & Scrap Duo!" Little Que announced proudly, puffing out her chest. "I'm Little Que, and this big lug is Han Yu. We're from the Beast Taming Pavilion. We heard there was a team entering with a 'support mechanism' and we wanted to see it."
Han Yu rubbed the back of his neck shyly. "We... uh... we don't have much funding. So I built my shield out of scrap I found in the trash. Your chair is... it's beautiful."
Gu Ling's face softened. For the first time, someone wasn't looking at her legs. They were looking at her work.
"Thank you," Gu Ling said, her voice regaining its usual cool confidence. "If we survive the first round, come find me. I can show you how to reinforce that shield. Rust is a poor conductor for Qi."
"Really?" Han Yu beamed, looking like a giant, happy puppy.
"Friends," Jiang Fan interrupted, checking his system clock. "As touching as this nerd-bonding moment is, the announcer is screaming our names."
"AND NOW! INTRODUCING THE WILDCARDS!"
The magically amplified voice of the Sect Elder boomed through the arena, shaking the ground.
"FROM THE OUTER SECT: THE SLEEPING DRAGON, JIANG FAN! AND HIS PARTNER... THE HEAD OF THE FROST FORGE, GU LING!"
The crowd erupted into a mix of cheers and confused murmurs.
"Gu Ling? The Crippled Phoenix?" "Why is an Artificer in the arena?" "Is she rolling in? Hahaha!"
Jiang Fan stepped out into the blinding sunlight. He walked lazily, his hands behind his head, the Gale-Shadow Fan hovering by his shoulder.
Behind him, Gu Ling glided forward. Her chair hummed silently, floating six inches off the sand. She kept her chin high, staring straight ahead, her face a mask of icy indifference.
But Jiang Fan noticed her hand trembling slightly.
He slowed down until he was walking right beside her wheel.
"Hey," he whispered, barely moving his lips.
"What?" she snapped, looking straight ahead.
"See that guy in the third row? The one laughing with the big nose?"
Gu Ling glanced over. "Yes."
"I bet you 50 spirit stones you can hit him with an ice shard from here."
Gu Ling almost smiled. "Focus, you idiot. Look at our opponents."
Standing across the arena, looking very muscular and very confident, were the Twin Tiger Brothers. They were identical twins, shirtless, holding massive serrated sabers. They flexed their muscles for the crowd.
"Well, look at this!" The Elder Brother, Tiger One, laughed. "A lazy boy and a cripple! Did you get lost on the way to the infirmary?"
The crowd laughed.
"Go home, little girl!" Tiger Two yelled. "Don't break your pretty chair!"
Gu Ling's grip on her armrest tightened. The temperature in the arena began to drop rapidly. Frost started to creep across the sand around her wheels.
"Jiang Fan," Gu Ling said, her voice sounding like grinding glass.
"Yeah?"
"Plan B."
"Plan B? We haven't even tried Plan A."
"I don't care. I want to hurt them."
Jiang Fan sighed. He reached into his inventory.
"Fine. Aggressive negotiation it is."
"BEGIN!"
The gong sounded.
The Twin Tigers didn't hesitate. They roared, their bodies exploding with red Qi. They charged across the sand like bulldozers, kicking up a storm of dust.
"Thunder Tiger Slash!" "Flame Tiger Strike!"
They aimed directly for Gu Ling. It was a cowardly but smart move—take out the mobility-impaired support first.
The crowd screamed.
"They're going to kill her!"
But Gu Ling didn't move. She didn't even flinch.
Just as the Tigers reached within ten meters, Jiang Fan took a single step forward. He didn't draw a sword. He didn't assume a stance.
He pulled a Luxury Reclining Beach Chair out of thin air and slammed it onto the sand in front of Gu Ling.
Then, he sat down.
"What the—?" Tiger One faltered, confused by the sudden appearance of furniture.
In that split second of confusion, Gu Ling moved.
"Activate: Fortress Mode."
CLANK-HISSS.
The four mechanical spider legs on the back of her wheelchair snapped out, stabbing deep into the arena floor, anchoring her in place.
Her hands moved in a blur of hand signs.
"Formation: Glacial Gatling."
The air around her distorted. Six floating crossbows made of pure, translucent ice materialized in the air above her head.
"Fire."
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
It wasn't a battle. It was an execution.
Hundreds of ice bolts rained down on the Twin Tigers. The barrage was so dense it looked like a solid wall of white death.
"Defend! Defend!" Tiger One screamed, raising his saber.
PING-PING-CRACK!
His saber shattered under the relentless hail of ice. The bolts didn't pierce his skin—Gu Ling was using blunt-force ammunition—but they hit with the force of sledgehammers.
"OW! MY RIBS! OW! MY LEGS!"
The Tigers were forced to dance, hopping around desperately to avoid being turned into bruises.
Meanwhile, Jiang Fan lay in his beach chair, holding his Gale-Shadow Fan.
"Missed a spot," Jiang Fan commented, pointing to the left.
"Shut up, I'm calculating windage!" Gu Ling yelled over the roar of her ice cannons.
Tiger Two saw an opening. "Ignore the girl! Kill the boy!"
He dove under the barrage of ice, rolling across the sand, and lunged at the reclining Jiang Fan.
"Die, you lazy trash!"
The saber came down toward Jiang Fan's neck.
Jiang Fan didn't open his eyes.
[ System Alert: Hostility Detected. ][ Skill: Sleepwalker Step (Assisted) ]
Jiang Fan simply... slid.
It looked like he was coated in oil. He didn't stand up. He just slid down the reclining chair, his body going limp like a liquid. The saber chopped into the wood of the chair's headrest.
"What?" Tiger Two gasped.
Jiang Fan, now lying flat on the ground, raised his leg.
"Uppercut."
He kicked the bottom of the beach chair. The heavy wooden chair snapped upward, folding shut violently.
WHACK.
The chair folded right onto Tiger Two's face, sandwiching his head between the wooden slats.
"Mmph!" Tiger Two stumbled back, blinded by the beach chair stuck to his face.
"Gu Ling! Target acquired!" Jiang Fan called out lazily from the floor.
Gu Ling swiveled her chair. Her eyes glowed blue.
"Frost Hammer!"
A massive, two-ton hammer made of solid ice formed in the air above the blinded Tiger Two.
"Goodbye," Gu Ling whispered.
She dropped her hand.
BOOM.
The arena shook. Dust billowed outward.
When the dust settled, Tiger Two was buried up to his neck in the sand, unconscious. The beach chair was still stuck to his face.
Tiger One stood alone, trembling. His saber was broken. His brother was a lawn ornament. And facing him was a crippled girl with six floating cannons and a boy who was currently trying to find a comfortable spot to nap on the sand.
"I... I surrender!" Tiger One screamed, dropping to his knees. "Please don't shoot!"
"WINNERS: JIANG FAN AND GU LING!"
The silence in the arena was absolute. Then, slowly, the clapping started. It wasn't the raucous cheering for a hero; it was the terrified applause for a monster.
Gu Ling retracted her spider legs. The ice cannons dissolved into mist.
She looked at the crowd. They weren't laughing anymore. They were staring at her chair with wide, fearful eyes.
For the first time in her life, the fear wasn't because she was "cursed." It was because she was powerful.
She looked down at Jiang Fan, who was dusting sand off his robes.
"You broke my beach chair," Jiang Fan complained, picking up the splintered wood. "That cost me 50 Idle Points."
Gu Ling felt a bubble of laughter rise in her chest—a genuine, hysterical laugh.
"I'll build you a better one," she said, her voice shaking with adrenaline. "One with armor."
"Deal."
As they walked (and rolled) out of the arena, Han Yu and Little Que were waiting for them at the tunnel entrance.
"That was AWESOME!" Little Que screamed, jumping up and down. "The ice! The chair-smash! You guys are monsters!"
Han Yu was looking at Gu Ling with stars in his eyes. "Senior Sister! That anchoring mechanism! The stability was perfect! How did you handle the recoil?"
Gu Ling smiled—a real, genuine smile that made her look breathtakingly beautiful instead of cold.
"It's a magnetism array," she said, glancing at Jiang Fan. "My... partner gave me the idea. Come, walk with us. I'll explain the schematics."
Jiang Fan trailed behind them, watching Gu Ling happily explaining engineering to the two nerds.
[ System Quest Complete: The First Slap ][ Reward: +1000 XP ][ Relationship Update: Gu Ling (Trust Level: High) ]
Jiang Fan smirked. He checked his inventory.
"System, buy a self-refilling bag of popcorn. This tournament might be fun after all."