“Greetings, Sword Master. Apologies, but I don’t have a weapon,” Cade said, cupping his fist.

  They stood in the center of the arena, inside a transparent bubble formed by a third tier defensive formation. The floor was a smooth, white material, the same as in the puppet training chambers. Its surface reflected the strong light from the sunstones, highlighting the three figures. Among them, the Sword Master’s silhouette shone like a newborn star.

  Aleira stared at him without much change in expression. Although it occasionally happened, she couldn’t recall the last time someone wanted to fight without a weapon. “Do you understand your chances of winning are much lower without a sword?” she asked.

  Tiarsus, who stood a few feet away from his opponent, almost choked from rising anger. Yet, he clenched his teeth and held his tongue.

  “I don’t really need a weapon to win against him,” he gestured with his head in Tiarsus's direction, “and the rules don’t say anything about duelists requiring a weapon.”

  A series of murmurs passed through the stands, with occasional laughter, a few snorts, and several scoffs mixed in. Some people pulled out their booklets containing the monastery's rules. Jade frowned, unsure of what Cade’s goal was, and so did nearly everyone present.

  Tiarsus's composure finally broke, and his face turned red from suppressed fury. “Sword Master, this fu… peasant is making a mockery of an official Ladder duel! He should…” A single glance from Aleira was enough to silence his upcoming tirade. Swallowing nervously, he turned his seething gaze back to his opponent.

  The goldscale Sword Master nodded in agreement. “It’s not against the rules. You’re free to fight without a weapon, but I will advise you that it’s not the smartest decision,” Aleira declared, her voice echoing through the massive chamber.

  This was completely unexpected. Although most cultivators present weren’t experienced duelists, they still had a reasonable understanding of how duels worked. To fight without a weapon wasn’t just unheard of; it was placing oneself at a huge disadvantage.

  The Sword Master turned to Tiarsus, extending her arm. The Corax heir promptly passed his precious sword, resorting to throwing hateful glances at the young Asura. After briefly checking the weapon, Aleira returned it with a nod. “Everything is in order. Cade Ward, outer court, will duel Tiarsus Corax, inner court. Combatants! I remind you that blows to the head are not allowed, and neither is striking a downed opponent. Remember to restrain all killing blows or face expulsion from the Monastery. Assume positions.”

  Both men stood at marked spots, around two hundred feet away from each other, watching Aleira's glittering silhouette rise into the air.

  “Begin.”

  “Die!” the Corax heir roared, Terminus gleaming in his hand as it fell in a powerful overhead slash. A deadly arc of energy shot towards Cade, releasing a high-pitched hum and boiling the air in its path, but the Asura's powerful form was already a disappearing blur. He slipped out of the way right as Tiarsus finished the move.

  His opponent began chaining attacks, flowing smoothly from one form to the next in a well-practiced fashion. His longsword flashed like a stream of liquid silver, relentlessly shooting one burst of qi after another at Cade’s flickering figure. Each surge was imbued with powerful anti-law properties that would no doubt deal vicious damage upon landing. When it came to ranged attacks, Tiarsus definitely knew what he was doing, proving that his high position on the Low Ladder was no fluke.

  Cade powered through the torrent of incoming energy blasts in a preternatural display of acrobatics and spatial awareness. He occasionally pushed blood qi into the Blood Wing bumps on his back, allowing him to rapidly shift the direction he was moving in. His body twisted, turned, leaped, and uncoiled as necessary, leaving faint afterimages while evading Tiarsus’s attacks with effortless grace. One moment he was on the ground, legs and arms sprawled; in the next, he was shooting through the air like a crossbow bolt. In mere moments, he had greatly shortened the distance between them.

  The crowd, completely silent at first, now erupted with a cacophony of yells, screams, and cheers.

  “I had no idea humans could move like this,” an outer disciple blurted.

  “He's quick, boo-hoo. So what?! Look, that peasant might as well give up!” a young man from Tiarsus’s group yelled, his arm pointing forward. A scathing, horizontal arc hurled towards Cade, buzzing like a nest of giant hornets as it sliced the air apart.

  The Asura bent backwards at the waist, his upper back nearly touching the arena floor. He could feel the scorching heat of the discharge curl his hair as it passed a few inches above him. His hand slammed against the ground, and he used the rebound to spring back up into a spiraling aerial flip, evading yet another energy surge and landing a few steps closer to his target.

  “The fuck…?! He's clearly cheating!” another of Tiarsus’s followers exclaimed, angrily slamming his palm into a reinforced armrest. A youth next to him rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

  "Oh? Are you saying Sword Master Aleira's eyes aren't as good as yours?" a sly smile stretched Jade's lips, and the black-robed man instantly paled, shutting up and shrinking back into his chair. Reeve chortled mockingly, and King grinned, giving the princess a double thumbs-up.

  Each time Cade narrowly dodged, Jade screamed at the top of her lungs, jumping excitedly on her tiptoes. Brickwall’s hoarse voice pierced through the ongoing pandemonium, his shouts divided equally between cheering for Cade and yelling obscenities at his opponent.

  Tiarsus began sweating. His qi expenditure was becoming an issue, and so far, not a single discharge had even grazed his enemy, who seemed to sense where each attack would land. “This fucker must be cheating!” he cursed madly, spittle flying from his lips. However, Sword Master Aleira continued to observe the duel in silence, a sure sign everything was in order.

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  So far Cade didn’t need to rely on his sixth sense, as law-severing attacks at this level were very predictable. Not only did they move in a perfectly straight line, Tiarsus had to physically slash at him with his precious sword first to borrow its laws. The Asura reduced the distance between them to less than twenty feet, and one of the energy blasts finally caught an edge of his fluttering gray robes. The short arc exploded in a quick flash of brilliant illumination, turning the fabric into blistering ash. Naturally, as he got closer to his opponent, the law-severing attacks were becoming harder to dodge, but he was almost upon his target.

  As Cade was about to land after another evasive maneuver, his sixth sense rang, and he pushed off the ground with his arm, twisting into a forward cartwheel. He narrowly slipped between two smaller surges released by his opponent in rapid succession. This infuriated Tiarsus to no end, and he snarled another string of curses in a bout of uncontrolled rage.

  Despite being the one with the weapon, the Corax heir was sweating at the thought of facing his opponent in close combat. Roaring in frustration, he feinted a diagonal law-severing strike, channeling spiritual qi into the blade to reinforce the illusion. Without waiting for the Asura’s reaction, he used more qi to instantly spin forward in a drill-like fashion, exploding into a vicious upwards slash at the end. Performed with a compatible spirit weapon, a strike like this could easily split an unprepared cultivator of comparable power in half.

  Cade grinned like a demon, recognizing the mistake as it formed. By inner court standards, it was obvious Tiarsus’s swordsmanship was good. Not as well-developed as his law-severing attacks, but he was far from inept. However, compared with the current level of the training puppets Cade faced, the heir's speed just wasn't enough. Tiarsus’s feint was a transparent gamble, a shallow assumption that his opponent would dodge as he had before. Worse, his body signaled a lack of commitment to the strike. Not to mention, Cade’s sixth sense had registered no danger from the initial move. The Corax heir had just provided him with the precise opening he needed to stop reacting and finally take control of the fight.

  Adjusting his position and wrapping his palm in a sheath of ignited blood qi, the Asura calmly faced the incoming blade, backhanding it aside like a noisy insect.

  The chamber reacted with a collective gasp.

  To Tiarsus’s utter astonishment, his full-powered sword strike was effortlessly pushed aside with a sharp, metallic smack that reverberated through his bones. Despite having much better leverage from his sword, he had no chance to win in this contest of strength. Pulled along the reflected blow’s trajectory, his body opened up.

  Cade’s figure suddenly warped, shifting into a perfect striking position. His palm, which carried blood qi primed by a complex diagram, tore straight through the air faster than an eye could track. It smashed right into Tiarsus’s sternum with unrelenting force. A complex formation circle flashed under the hand, and Tiarsus’s ribcage collapsed inwards with a gruesome crunch.

  “Oh shit,” an outer disciple in the front gasped out, while many others winced.

  Tiarsus’s lungs instantly flattened, and his heart stopped halfway through a beat, covered in faintly glowing cracks. He was sent hurling backwards with the force of a rolling boulder, a trail of blood marking his path. Terminus, his pride and joy, fell from his limp hand.

  Tiarsus flew for over a hundred feet before tumbling to the edge of the arena, his momentum halted by the protective barrier. He lay where he fell in a rapidly growing puddle of blood, mouth gasping for air.

  This was the Heartbreaker from Feral Path, a no-nonsense killing technique that could also serve to teach someone a lesson. As per instructions, Cade cut down the amount of primed energy to a mere sliver, using only one part of the diagram; otherwise, Tiarsus’s heart would have exploded, likely taking most of his upper torso with it. And while his life wasn’t at risk, he definitely wouldn’t enjoy the lengthy recovery process.

  “Cade Ward, first blood,” Aleira’s steady voice preceded the incredible eruption from the gathered cultivators. Even some inner court disciples couldn’t help but scream in excitement at the immense power hidden in that deceptively simple strike. However, a few figures among them sat deathly still. These were all experienced body refiners, and they knew very well how much force was required to send a cultivator flying like a ragdoll, and what that force would do to a body.

  As the Sword Master glided down towards Tiarsus, the Asura unhurriedly walked towards the silver blade, hands clasped behind his back. He stopped right next to the discarded weapon, slamming his heel into the ground. The rebounding force sent the sword flying into the air, and his hand swiftly caught Terminus by its hilt. Tilting his head, he turned the weapon in his hand before raising his gaze towards his immobilized opponent.

  “Good fight! Subjectively, of course.” A flicker of amusement crossed Cade’s face as his other hand firmly grabbed Terminus by the blade. “Oh, and Tiarsus… fuck your sword.”

  A surge of ignited blood qi rippled through his upper body, and he snapped the silver weapon in half like a dry twig. The resounding metallic crack thoroughly silenced the onlookers, so much that a dropped pin would not have escaped notice.

  Aleira stood up from Tiarsus’s unconscious body, gesturing towards two men in dark green robes who were observing the fight from the comfort of their cushioned chairs. The healers worked in shifts, ensuring there was always someone looking after the duelists.

  “Cade Ward wins. Congratulations on advancing to the inner court,” she said, a small smile finally gracing her lips.

  The stands erupted. The outer court disciples whooped and cheered, giving him a standing ovation, while many of the inner court disciples quickly retreated to the transportation formation, no longer interested in associating with Tiarsus. Some of his previous friends stared at the heir’s unconscious form with poorly concealed satisfaction, though a few did look at Cade with hate in their eyes.

  As the Asura stepped off the dueling platform, a short figure immediately shot up to him. “Congratulations! You were awesome!” Jade gave him a brilliant smile.

  Cade responded with a wide grin of his own, and then Reeve arrived next to him, slapping his back with his massive, calloused hand. “Well done, Brother! You just wait until my fight. You might have shown these qi cultivators what body refiners are all about, but my first duel will give them nightmares!” he laughed boisterously.

  King arrived right next to him, munching on a fried potato, proud as if it was he who had won. “Very nice, Boss! I reckon nobody who was here today would even dream about challenging you, not after witnessing what you did to that poor fellow,” he said, chuckling impishly. He then carefully looked around before leaning in. “We should have what you asked for in three days,” he whispered, raising three fingers.

  “Perfect. Thank you,” Cade nodded gratefully.

  “Boss, I don’t mean to pry, but are you sure you need all that… stuff? You could do so much more with these crystals,” King asked with a greedy glint in his eyes, his mind already working on some get-rich-quick scheme.

  Cade chuckled on the inside—the young ex-bandit might have corrected his course, but it hardly changed his opportunistic nature. “If I didn’t absolutely need it, I would’ve definitely found a better way of becoming destitute,” he answered with a pained smile. “Alright, let’s get out of here.”

  As the trio walked towards the transportation circle, the pressure from his sixth sense increased momentarily. Cade took a quick glance around, but there were far too many people here to tell the source of this brief surge in danger. It didn't feel like it was directed entirely at him either.

  Shrugging, he proceeded into the formation. If someone wanted a piece of him or his friends, they’d better be ready to reincarnate in an expedited fashion. With the threat of Darkheart on the horizon, the Asura was in no mood to play around. Anyone foolish enough to block his path would quickly learn how the ‘death’ rune was meant to be drawn.

  Only 9 chapters left in Book One. Three weeks to go!

  State of Cade:

  Book Three is around 40% finished. Due to lack of time (got to pay the bills) I've done very little editing on Book Two this week. Looks like I'll have to catch up over the weekend, which is about as fun as dragging bare arse over concrete. Other than that—everything is progressing smoothly :)