The moment Tyrant Qi fully erupted,Lin Chen vanished from where he stood.
The ground he stepped on shattered.
He reappeared in front of Li Zhen like a red comet, sword already descending.
BOOM
The impact didn't sound like steel clashing.
It sounded like a mountain colliding.
Li Zhen barely managed to raise his blade in time. The shockwave burst outward in a ring, blasting dust and fragments of stone across the arena. His arms bent under the force. The bones in his forearms screamed.
Before the recoil could even settle—
Another strike came from the side.
No form. No pattern.
Just violence.
Lin Chen twisted his body mid-step, muscles swelling with explosive strength. His sword smashed horizontally, the air itself splitting with a sharp crack.
CLANG!
Li Zhen's boots carved trenches into the ground as he was driven back three full steps.
His fingers went numb.
His sword vibrated wildly.
This wasn't technique versus technique.
This was pure suppression.
Lin Chen advanced again, each step heavy enough to fracture stone. The red aura around him flickered like raging flames, ferocious and chaotic, crushing everything in front of it.
Another downward smash.
Li Zhen blocked—
His knees dipped.
The arena floor beneath him cratered.
He tried to circulate Sword Intent—
But there was no opening.
Strike after strike came like a relentless storm, each one heavier than the last, Tyrant Qi roaring around him like a beast tearing at its prey.
Sweat formed at Li Zhen's temples.
His calm expression cracked.
Lin Chen's eyes gleamed with savage focus.
"What happened to your Sword Heart?" he taunted, voice low but carrying. Another crushing blow slammed down, sparks bursting between them.
"If you can't even get a moment to think—"
He twisted his wrist and brought the blade down again with even more force.
"—what exactly are you going to use?"
Li Zhen's eyes flashed cold.
He suddenly broke contact and twisted his body back, one hand flashing to his storage ring. A jade talisman shattered between his fingers.
BOOM
A violent burst of compressed Qi exploded outward. The blast struck Lin Chen head-on, forcing him to slide back several meters, boots carving twin trenches into the arena floor. Dust and smoke surged up like a rising wall.
When the smoke thinned—
Li Zhen was no longer in a defensive stance.
He stood upright, feet planted firmly. His sword was held vertically before him, both hands gripping the hilt. His eyes were closed.
Behind him a colossal phantom sword began to form.
It was pure Sword Intent.
The air around the arena turned razor-sharp. Even from a distance, Lin Chen could feel the cutting pressure against his skin, like invisible blades brushing past him.
Li Zhen opened his eyes.
They were cold. Focused.
The phantom sword behind him solidified further, its edge stretching high into the sky, faint runic patterns flickering across its surface.
"Since you're so eager to test my Sword Heart…"
His voice was steady now.
"Then face it properly."
The phantom blade tilted forward.
Sword Intent locked onto Lin Chen.
"Heavenly Severance — One Thought Ends All."
The colossal sword behind him compressed into a razor-thin streak of blinding white light—then, in the very next instant, it fell.
The white arc of Sword Intent carved down like a falling guillotine, tearing the air apart with a shrill vibration that scraped against the ears.
Lin Chen's pupils contracted.
"Bloodstorm — Third Form: Final Desolation!"
He seized the sword with both hands. Crimson Qi erupted from his dantian and flooded the blade in a single violent surge. Crimson light crawled along the metal, swelling, thickening, until the sword looked less like steel and more like a slab of condensed fury.
The arena floor fractured beneath his stance.
He brought it down.
The crimson slash exploded forward, dragging broken stone in its wake. It didn't glide cleanly like Li Zhen's technique—it chewed through space, ripping a trench across the arena as it advanced.
The two forces collided.
White Sword Intent pressed downward with precision and edge.
Crimson Qi surged upward with weight and brutality.
The impact crushed the air between them. Stone tiles burst apart. Dust shot outward in a circular wave. For a moment the two attacks ground against each other, neither yielding, the arena trembling under the strain.
The crimson slash swelled, thickened, then smashed through the weakening white arc.
The explosion blasted outward.
Li Zhen was hurled back, sliding across broken stone before barely catching himself with his sword. Blood traced down the corner of his mouth.
He barely had time to lift his head—
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
Lin Chen's sword spun toward him like a crimson comet.
Li Zhen reacted instantly, raising his blade.
Clang!
The impact rang out, sparks bursting as he blocked the flying sword.
But the instant sword met sword, Lin Chen vanished without a trace.
Before Li Zhen could process it, a shadow formed behind him.
Lin Chen reappeared as if he had torn through space itself.
His fist was already mid-swing.
Boom!
The punch crashed straight into Li Zhen's jaw.
The crack of bone was sharp and ugly.
Li Zhen's head snapped sideways, his body lifting off the ground before spinning through the air and smashing hard into the arena floor. Stone fractured beneath him.
He rolled, forced himself upright.
Blood poured from his mouth like a broken dam. Several teeth scattered across the ground.
His face was no longer handsome. It was swollen, twisted, smeared in red.
Rage swallowed whatever composure he had left.
"You dare—!"
Essence Qi exploded outward from his body.
Lightning erupted around him in violent arcs, and behind his figure, a blazing phantom began to form.
A phoenix made of sword light and thunder unfurled its wings.
Each feather shimmered with condensed Sword Intent.
"Thunder-Phoenix Execution Array!"
The phoenix let out a piercing cry. Its wings snapped open.
And thousands of lightning-forged feathers shot toward Lin Chen like a storm of blades.
Each feather carried cutting intent sharp enough to split stone.
Lin Chen didn't dodge.
He stood his ground.
The sword that had been knocked into the ground earlier trembled violently—then shot back into his hand as if pulled by invisible threads.
At that same instant, Aiva's calculations flooded his vision. Angles. Velocity. Trajectory. Impact points.
The storm of lightning feathers descended.
He moved.
Not wildly.
His sword drew arcs through the air—clean, efficient, brutal.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Each swing shattered a feather mid-flight. Lightning exploded around him in bursts of white-blue light. Sparks rained down. The arena floor cracked under the impact of missed strikes.
But none touched him.
Not one.
His feet advanced step by step, crushing broken stone beneath his boots.
Li Zhen's eyes widened.
"How—?!" Li Zhen's voice cracked with disbelief. "You can block all of them?! Just die already!"
Lin Chen's lips curved.
"Because I'm cheating."
Instead of meeting the next lightning feather head-on, he angled his blade at the last instant. Steel kissed lightning—just enough to change its path.
The feather shrieked through the air.
Straight at Li Zhen's throat.
Li Zhen's expression twisted. He snapped his sword up to intercept it, the collision exploding in a burst of white sparks that forced him half a step backward. That half step cost him everything.
The Qi detonated beneath Lin Chen's feet, shattering the stone as he shot forward. He didn't give Li Zhen space to breathe, didn't give the sword-heart genius time to think.
Distance vanished.
Li Zhen barely had time to refocus when Lin Chen's knee rose viciously and drove upward into his lower abdomen. The impact was brutal and direct, knocking the air from his lungs in a violent gasp. His body folded slightly from the shock.
Before he could recover—
A fist wrapped in dense, violent Qi smashed upward into his chin.
The crack was unmistakable.
Li Zhen's head jerked back as blood arced through the air, his body lifting off the ground and spinning before slamming into the arena floor, skidding across the stone and carving a shallow groove before coming to a dead halt—unconscious.
"Fuck… good thing his cultivation was suppressed," Lin Chen muttered.
The violent Tyrant Qi around him faded as he stopped the Tyrant Body Arts. His aura dropped back to the Ninth Stage of Essence Forging, and a wave of weakness followed immediately. His meridians felt strained, his ribs still aching from earlier clashes.
If Li Zhen had been at his original Seventh Stage of Pulse Convergence, this fight wouldn't have lasted this long.
Even with both suppressed to the same realm, he had to go all out—no hesitation, no breathing space, just constant pressure. If Li Zhen had gotten even a single clean moment to unleash a full sword technique with his true cultivation behind it, Lin Chen knew he would have been the one lying on the ground.
*****
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