The enormous magical array hovering over the Soaring Dragon Arena flickered, turning the sky a deep, ominous violet.
"ROUND 2: DOMAIN SHIFT."
The ground rumbled. The flat sands of the arena began to churn like boiling water. Massive trees erupted from the earth, growing hundreds of feet in seconds. Vines tangled together like writhing snakes, and jagged rocks punched through the surface, creating a chaotic, multi-layered nightmare.
"ENVIRONMENT: THE VERDANT HELL.""OBJECTIVE: CAPTURE THE FLAG."
In the waiting tunnel, Gu Ling's face went pale.
She stared at the tangled roots and uneven terrain. Her knuckles turned white on her armrests. Her chair was a masterpiece of engineering, yes, but it hovered on a cushion of air. It needed relative flatness. In a jungle dense with hanging vines and sudden drops, she would be snagged, tipped, or stuck within minutes.
"I... I can't," Gu Ling whispered, her voice tight. "Jiang Fan, I can't maneuver in that. I'll be a sitting duck."
She looked down at her paralyzed legs, the old shame clawing at her throat. "You should forfeit. Or ask for a substitute. I'm just going to slow you down."
Jiang Fan didn't look at the jungle. He was busy inspecting a bag of dried squid he'd bought from the system shop.
"Substitute? Too much paperwork," he mumbled, tearing off a piece of squid.
"Jiang Fan! Look at the terrain!" Gu Ling snapped, her composure cracking. "This isn't a joke! If my chair gets caught in a root system during a fight, I can't dodge. I can't flee. I will die!"
"Excuse me?"
A shadow fell over them. It was Han Yu, the gentle giant from the Beast & Scrap Duo, clutching a wrench the size of a human leg. Beside him, Little Que was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her eyes gleaming with manic energy.
"Did someone say... terrain issues?" Little Que grilled, a wicked grin spreading across her face.
Han Yu stepped forward, looking shyly at Gu Ling's chair. "Senior Sister Gu... your levitation array is built for stability, not torque. But... uh... if we bypass the safety regulators and attach these..."
He pulled out two massive, spiked wheels made of rusted scrap metal. They looked like they belonged on a tractor from hell.
"...we can convert your hover-drive into a hybrid crawler system," Han Yu finished.
Gu Ling blinked. The engineer in her brain woke up, overriding the panic. "Bypass the regulators? That would increase the mana output by 400%. The chassis would vibrate apart."
"Not if we use Spirit-Gum!" Little Que chirped, holding up a jar of glowing pink slime. "It absorbs vibration! Come on, Senior Sister! Let us mod your ride! Please? We've never touched a Mk-5 before!"
Gu Ling looked at the two eager faces. Then she looked at Jiang Fan.
Jiang Fan shrugged. "Do it. Pimp her ride."
Fifteen Minutes Later.
The gong sounded.
"BEGIN!"
The jungle was hot. Oppressively hot. Steam rose from the damp earth, smelling of rotting vegetation and ozone.
But the silence of the forest was broken by a sound that shouldn't exist in nature.
VRRRRR-CRUNCH-VRRRRR-CRUNCH.
Gu Ling's chair tore through the underbrush like a tank possessed by a demon. The massive spiked wheels Han Yu had attached were tearing roots apart, throwing mud ten feet into the air. The delicate elegance of her Frost Forge design was gone, replaced by the brutal aesthetic of a monster truck.
"This is..." Gu Ling gripped the controls, her eyes wide. "This is incredibly unrefined!"
She smashed through a thicket of bamboo, flattening it instantly.
"...But effective," she admitted, a small, terrifying smile touching her lips.
"Keep it down," Jiang Fan yawned. He was riding on the back of her wheelchair, standing on the rear axle like a stowaway, holding onto the headrest with one hand and fanning himself with the Gale-Shadow Fan with the other.
"We are stealth operatives, remember?"
"We are a two-ton plow, Jiang Fan. There is no stealth."
Suddenly, the air shimmered.
[ System Alert: Killing Intent Detected. ][ Direction: 3 O'clock. High Elevation. ]
Jiang Fan didn't move his head. He didn't even open his eyes. He simply tapped Gu Ling's left shoulder twice.
Gu Ling didn't ask questions. They had established a code.
She yanked the control stick hard to the left.
THWIP. THWIP. THWIP.
Three dark green needles slammed into the mud exactly where her head had been a second ago. The needles sizzled, dissolving the rock instantly. Acid.
"Viper Squad," Gu Ling hissed, activating her shields. A blue dome of ice shimmered into existence around the chair.
From the canopy above, three figures dropped down. They wore camouflage robes and masks painted with snake fangs.
The leader, a lanky man with eyes like slits, landed on a branch ten feet in front of them. He held a jagged dagger dripping with purple liquid.
"The Cripple and the Slacker," the Viper laughed, his voice raspy. "We thought the jungle would finish you, but you brought... training wheels."
"Surrender the flag," another Viper hissed from the shadows. "And we might give you the antidote for the needles we're about to put in your neck."
Jiang Fan sighed. He hopped off the back of the wheelchair and stretched his back until it cracked.
"Poison," Jiang Fan muttered distastefully. "Cowardly. Messy. Requires washing."
"Get him!" The Viper leader signaled.
Two assassins blurred, rushing Jiang Fan from opposite sides. They were fast—Stage 4 agility specialists. Their daggers aimed for his hamstrings, intending to cripple him first.
"Jiang Fan!" Gu Ling shouted, turning her cannons.
"Focus on the leader," Jiang Fan said. His voice was different. It lacked the usual sleepy drawl. It was flat.
The first assassin struck.
Jiang Fan didn't dodge. He simply... ceased to be there.
[ Skill: Sleepwalker Step (Overdrive) ]
To the audience watching via the projection crystals, it looked like a glitch in reality. The assassin's blade passed through Jiang Fan's chest, but hit nothing but afterimage.
Jiang Fan reappeared behind the man, so close he was practically hugging him.
"You have a knot in your shoulder," Jiang Fan whispered.
He raised his hand. He wasn't holding a weapon. He held his Gale-Shadow Fan—closed.
THWACK.
He brought the fan down on the assassin's pressure point—the bundle of nerves where the neck meets the shoulder.
It wasn't a hard hit. It was precise.
The assassin's eyes rolled back into his head. His nervous system short-circuited. He collapsed face-first into the mud, twitching.
The second assassin froze. "What?"
Jiang Fan turned. His eyes were half-open, looking bored, but there was a coldness in them that made the assassin's blood freeze.
"Nap time," Jiang Fan said.
He took a step. The mud didn't splash.
He appeared in front of the second assassin. The man panicked, thrusting his poisoned blade wildly.
Jiang Fan caught the man's wrist. Not with a grip of strength, but with a soft deflection, guiding the blade away. In the same motion, he swept the man's leg.
As the assassin fell, Jiang Fan spun the fan in his hand and tapped the man's temple.
Pop.
Lights out. Two Stage 4 cultivators, neutralized in three seconds. No blood. No wasted movement.
The Viper Leader on the branch stared in horror. "You... you're not an Outer Disciple. That movement technique... it's Ghost Tier!"
"Gu Ling," Jiang Fan called out, ignoring the man. "The bird."
"On it."
Gu Ling's chair whirred. The modifications Han Yu made held firm as the spider-legs anchored into the mud.
"Formation: Frost-Web!"
She fired six ice bolts, but they didn't aim for the leader. They aimed for the trees around him. Upon impact, the bolts exploded into sticky, freezing nets of Qi, binding the branches and sealing the Viper Leader's escape route.
The Leader panicked. "You think ice can stop me?"
He gathered his Qi, preparing a massive poison mist technique. "Toxic Cloud—!"
Jiang Fan was already in the air.
He had kicked off the wheel of the wheelchair, launching himself upward. He floated for a second at the apex of his jump, framed against the violet sky.
He opened the fan.
SNAP.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
"Fan Art: A Little Bit of Wind."
He swung the fan.
It wasn't a technique. It was just a massive amount of wind pressure generated by the absurd strength of his cultivation base, focused through the Master-Rank artifact.
WHOOSH.
A localized hurricane blasted the Viper Leader. The "Toxic Cloud" was blown right back into the Leader's face.
"ARGH! MY EYES!"
The Leader choked on his own poison, stumbling backward. He slipped off the branch and plummeted thirty feet.
CRUNCH.
He landed in a patch of bushes, groaning, covered in his own toxic sludge.
Jiang Fan landed softly on the ground, his robes fluttering. He checked his fan for dirt. Clean.
"Self-inflicted damage," Jiang Fan shook his head. "System, log that as an assisted suicide."
He walked over to the groaning Viper Leader and fished the Red Flag out of the man's pocket.
"Match complete?" he asked, looking back at Gu Ling.
Gu Ling was staring at him. Her cannons were still smoking (steaming cold mist).
She had seen him spar in the lab. She knew he was fast. But seeing him dismantle a team of killers in a real environment was different. He was terrifyingly competent when he decided to move.
"Match complete," she whispered.
Jiang Fan walked back to the wheelchair and hopped onto the rear axle again.
"Okay. Let's go turn this in. I'm hungry. And I think I saw a fruit tree back there."
The Aftermath: The Waiting Room
As they exited the arena, the silence from the other participants was heavy.
Disciples parted ways to let Gu Ling's monstrous, mud-caked wheelchair pass. They no longer looked at her legs with pity. They looked at the spiked wheels and the ice cannons with dread.
Han Yu and Little Que came running up, holding towels.
"That was amazing!" Little Que squealed. "Did you see the suspension hold when she fired the recoil shots? The Spirit-Gum worked!"
Gu Ling wiped a smear of mud from her cheek. She looked at her dirty, brutalized chair, then at Jiang Fan, who was already eating a peach he had stolen from the jungle.
For the first time in years, she felt... alive. Not just surviving. Alive.
"Han Yu," Gu Ling said, her voice commanding but warm. "The left tread pulls slightly to the right on uneven terrain. We need to adjust the differential."
Han Yu saluted. "Yes, Senior Sister! I have ideas!"
Jiang Fan watched them geek out over the machinery. He smiled faintly.
[ System Notification ][ Reputation Upgraded: "The Monster of the Outer Sect" ][ Hidden Quest Unlocked: "The Jealousy of the Elites" ][ Warning: Your performance has attracted the attention of the Inner Sect Elders. Expect interference in the Finals. ]
Jiang Fan dismissed the notification with a thought.
"Interference?" he muttered to himself. "Sounds like effort."
He took a bite of the peach.
"Hey, Gu Ling," he called out.
"What?"
"Can we install a cup holder on the mud-tires? My peach juice is dripping."
Gu Ling rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward.
"I'll see what I can do."