Chapter 20: What! Do! You! Think! You! Are!
The combat platform.
The two stood twenty paces apart.
The winner would claim a seeded spot.
The loser would be eliminated outright.
Thump—
The rousing drums sounded, and the entire square fell instantly silent.
And yet—
Li Qingwu didn’t gather her strength. Instead, she watched him with a mocking smile.
“I know your true cowardly nature. Feeling frightened now? Heart shaking?”
“Or would you rather just concede outright?”
She was trying to rattle Gu Lin’s composure with words alone.
Gu Lin remained unmoved, replying calmly with a question of his own:
“What do you even think you are?”
The smile vanished from Li Qingwu’s face in an instant.
She drew breath deep into her dantian, internal energy rapidly cycling through a Minor Cosmic Cycle.
Before everyone’s eyes, a faint green mark surfaced on her forehead, her strength surging violently, forcing her all the way up to Energy Condensation Sixth Tier!
“A secret art!”
The academy’s leadership stared in shock—the academy’s martial pavilion held no such art capable of forcibly boosting one’s cultivation.
The thirty-two Blade-Bearers, worldly and well-traveled, kept their expressions unchanged—a technique like this would be considered fairly ordinary out in Chu Province, but here at Shiyang Academy, it was more than enough to send her opponent Gu Lin’s confidence plummeting into an icy abyss.
The nearly ten thousand onlookers inside and outside the square reeled with shock—no one had expected Li Qingwu to unleash her trump card right from the opening move.
It seemed she hadn’t fought at full strength in her first two matches at all.
In this final battle, she was determined to claim the spot, no matter what!
For Gu Lin, at Energy Condensation Third Tier, facing Fifth Tier had already seemed near-impossible—let alone Sixth Tier now.
His journey would end right here.
In truth, this “parasite” from the Wilderness cohort had already given Shiyang County more shocks than anyone could have imagined, especially during the willpower assessment, which had pushed his reputation to its absolute peak—but in the end, his true cultivation remained only Energy Condensation Third Tier.
“Lin’er……”
Gu Changchuan’s heart pounded like a war drum, nearly choking him with tension.
In the very next instant—
his face washed with visible shock, the dread in his eyes growing thicker still.
On the platform, Li Qingwu’s internal energy erupted as she leapt into the air, her left leg sweeping out in a beautiful arc, wrapped in a shroud of blood-red light, the entire limb surging with tremendous force, as though it could shatter anything in its path.
This was nothing like any martial art from the academy’s own pavilion!
Gu Changchuan closed his eyes, unable to bear watching any longer.
Countless onlookers felt their scalps prickle—no one had realized just how badly Li Qingwu’s true combat strength had been underestimated!
Her father, Li Jisheng, wore a face full of smiles, already clenching his fists in preparation to cheer in celebration.
These two martial arts had come to him through pure fortune, discovered in a mountain cave dwelling belonging to his Fisherman’s Guild.
Especially that leg technique—though only two pages of a fragmentary manual remained, Qingwu had said herself that even the fragment could overpower techniques from the academy’s own pavilion. That alone spoke to its true power!
The greatest drawback of cultivating it was its enormous demand for blood-and-energy tonics—it cost a fortune in silver.
But every tael had been worth it!
Qingwu, radiant and brilliant, would claim her seeded spot—her future utterly boundless!!
Near the combat platform, Zhao Yao wore a cold sneer.
A cripple who couldn’t even claim a seeded spot, relying on some crooked art to steal first place in the willpower assessment—it was nothing short of an insult to him, Young Master Qilin himself!
Lin Yan’er and Liu Suifeng, having already secured their own spots, secretly counted their blessings—had either of them fallen into the Losers’ Bracket and faced this version of Li Qingwu, defeat would have been all but certain.
Even Zhu Yuting felt a flicker of genuine reflection—had he faced Li Qingwu going all-out in the very first round, he too would have come away badly bruised.
The thirty-two Blade-Bearers, faces calm as still water, moved with wordless synchrony, each drawing breath and preparing to intervene and save Gu Lin.
The killing intent behind Li Qingwu’s leg strike was unmistakable—if they didn’t step in, Gu Lin would surely die on the spot.
What a shame, to see such formidable willpower end this way.
Such was the cruel nature of cultivation—talent, willpower, none of it mattered if real combat strength couldn’t back it up. All of it was empty talk otherwise.
And yet, in the very next instant, every single Blade-Bearer’s pupils contracted violently!
Li Qingwu’s blood-shrouded left leg closed to within inches of Gu Lin.
Gu Lin twisted his body in a bizarre, unnatural motion, narrowly evading a strike that would have shattered his skull entirely.
He launched himself upward at his fastest possible speed, and from the arch of his foot to his knee, every tendon and sinew of his leg erupted with a sound like rolling thunder.
“I told you—WHAT! DO! YOU! THINK! YOU! ARE!!”
The words fell.
BOOM!
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—
The thunderous roar of his leg technique echoed through the air.
Nine Heavens Thunder-Runner Leg, unleashed at full mastery, erupted forth—eighteen consecutive kicks delivered mid-air, one after another in an unbroken chain.
Li Qingwu’s instincts screamed a warning, every hair on her body standing on end.
Bang!
The instant their legs collided—
The blood-mist around Li Qingwu’s left leg dispersed, her knee shattering with a sharp crack, her prized secret leg technique proving utterly incapable of standing against eighteen uninterrupted kicks delivered within three breaths.
With a heavy thud—she crashed to the ground.
The Blade-Bearers’ expressions turned to shock, scarcely able to believe what they’d just witnessed.
The orange-robed figure was first to react, stamping the ground hard and closing the distance onto the platform in an instant, the force so great it split two cracks across the ground itself.
A moment later, several other Blade-Bearers sensed it too, and moved in unison.
Gu Lin had used a completely silent, undetectable claw technique!
Without any trace of internal energy circulating at all!
‘How could there be no trace of internal energy at all?!’
In the very instant he’d unleashed Nine Heavens Thunder-Runner Leg, Gu Lin had curled his fingers into a claw, drawing on the last remaining dregs of internal energy within his dantian, and struck out toward Li Qingwu’s face.
Li Qingwu, crashing to the ground and screaming in despair over her shattered knee, had completely failed to notice the killing intent closing in mere inches away.
Not until the scorching heat washed over her face did she realize—a claw strike landed without warning against her cheek, splitting and searing flesh from forehead to chin.
Fortunately, the orange-robed figure’s reflexes proved lightning-fast.
He clapped a palm against the crown of her head, forcibly driving back that lethal, searing heat.
Had he been even a few breaths slower, the burning fissure would have spread all the way into her brain—and she would have ended up nothing more than a corpse.
“AAAAH……”
Li Qingwu let out scream after heart-rending scream, curling and thrashing on the ground, clawing at her own blood-soaked, mangled cheek with her fingers.
The sudden, shocking turn of events left everyone present stunned.
‘Li Qingwu had lost?’
A secret art forcing her cultivation up to Sixth Tier, a terrifying leg technique unleashed at full force—and still she’d lost to a mere Third Tier fighter?
Why was her face burned like that?
How had Gu Lin done it?
This scene left countless onlookers nearly unable to breathe, the entire academy falling into a silence so total not a single stray sound could be heard—nothing but Li Qingwu’s tortured, anguished wailing.
The orange-robed figure fixed Gu Lin with a cold stare and barked out sternly:
“I said—no lethal strikes!”
Gu Lin steadied himself and immediately cupped his fists in a bow.
“Reporting to you, honored sir—my own strength is meager, and in my desperation to claim the seeded spot, I simply couldn’t control the force behind my own strike.”
The orange-robed figure studied him for a long moment and said nothing further.
The other Blade-Bearers remained utterly silent as well.
‘How exactly was one supposed to punish this?’
The man was only at Energy Condensation Third Tier.
If the situation were reversed—Sixth Tier facing Third Tier, still insisting on delivering a lethal blow—that would be the true violation of the rules.
No one could have imagined that such a small county could produce a young man this terrifying.
That claw strike in particular, without a single trace of flowing internal energy—just whose teachings could this possibly trace back to?
Hearing the shrill screaming continue, the orange-robed figure waved a hand, signaling for healing pills to be brought at once for treatment.
But the disfigurement was already permanent fact—only some rare treasure from the Four Great Sacred Grounds could possibly restore her appearance now, and that was beyond even considering. Such divine treasures were far beyond the reach of ordinary people; even the Blade-Bearer Bureaus themselves could only dream of such things, reserved solely for the mightiest, most powerful figures within the Sacred Grounds themselves.
Gu Lin walked toward Li Qingwu, looking down at that mangled, charred, blood-soaked face, and spoke with a hint of apology in his voice:
“I’m sorry about that.”
Li Qingwu, her mind hazy with pain, wailed in agony—the instant she heard that voice, she curled up further in pain, her crimson eyes flooding with the purest, most absolute hatred imaginable.
Everything, ruined.
Her seeded spot, gone.
Her prized beauty, gone too.
‘Kill this animal.’
‘I will kill this animal!!!’
She thrashed and clawed at the ground, blood streaming down her face.
Gu Lin’s expression remained utterly blank as he glanced around at the crowd.
Of course he held no grudge against the Blade-Bearers for stepping in to save this wretched woman—had his own life been in danger, they would have intervened to save him just the same.
It was simply a pity that this had bought the wretched woman a little more time to live.
No one who had wronged him would ever be allowed to walk away carefree and untouched.
‘Never. Not once.’
Holding back for now wasn’t forgiveness—it was the most terrifying form of vengeance imaginable.
Especially against this particular wretched woman—that night, she had lured a vicious woman from the Hehuan Sect to him, and he’d very nearly ended up nothing more than a desiccated corpse!
Meeting Gu Lin’s clear, unreadable gaze, every remaining contestant instinctively lowered their heads, a storm of shock crashing through each of their minds.
Zhao Yao’s eyes went wide, splitting with fury, his stare fixed on Gu Lin like a honed blade.
The entire academy remained locked in silence.
Every scalp prickled. Every heart trembled with dread.
What kind of world-shattering combat strength was this?
Li Qingwu had already been at the very peak of her radiance, forcibly ascending to Sixth Tier and unleashing her single greatest trump card the moment the fight began.
And yet her Third Tier opponent hadn’t so much as considered conceding—he’d met her head-on instead.
And what was the most humiliating part of it all?
The very same kind of leg technique!!
Overpowering Sixth Tier through sheer brute force!!
Such a victory alone would have been astonishing enough, utterly defying reason.
And yet it wasn’t even over—Gu Lin had still had strength left in reserve to unleash that bizarre, uncanny technique afterward.
Had the Blade-Bearers not been present, Li Qingwu would already have met her death!!
Li Qingwu had already been formidable—a heaven-blessed prodigy all but destined to claim her seeded spot—and yet she’d ended up disfigured and crippled instead.
Gu Changchuan watched, utterly dazed, as though drifting somewhere among the clouds.
‘This was Lin’er?’
“My son……”
“This is my son. A bit reckless, still rough around the edges.”
His lips trembled as he glanced around in every direction.
He was met on all sides with looks of envy and reverence.
Meanwhile, far off among the Fisherman’s Guild’s own party, the mood had turned to utter devastation. Li Jisheng’s face twisted into a horrific grimace, his whole body collapsing to the ground, a howl of boundless hatred tearing from his throat!!!
Seeing his own daughter’s face reduced to a bloody, mangled ruin, he felt as though he’d plunged straight into the eighteenth level of hell, wishing nothing more than to tear that surnamed Gu animal limb from limb!!!
Within the Wilderness cohort’s ranks, chubby Wang Mu had gone completely rigid, frozen like a clay statue.
‘We were supposed to be washouts together, and now you’re shaking the entire heavens, Jingming? How could you leave me behind and shine alone across all of Shiyang County?!’
Throughout the academy, countless minds churned with a thousand different thoughts.
In today’s selection trial, what had truly stunned them most wasn’t Young Master Qilin, nor even the hidden dragon Zhu Yuting—it was that Third Tier fighter, Gu Lin.
The orange-robed figure cleared his throat and announced in a solemn voice:
“Congratulations to Gu Lin for claiming Shiyang Academy’s seeded spot!”
Gu Lin bowed respectfully, then walked calmly down from the combat platform, returning to his corner to close his eyes and rest.
His only true goal remained joining a Sacred Ground.
Up on the platform, the Blade-Bearers continued the lottery.
Meanwhile, countless onlookers remained utterly absorbed in that battle they’d just witnessed—the single most stunning fight anyone present had ever seen, bar none.
Half a shichen later, the final four decisive battles concluded.
Liu Si, Li Jiuzhi, Wei Xuan, and Wu Tong, living up to every expectation, each defeated their opponents and claimed the final four seeded spots.
They couldn’t help glancing toward Li Qingwu in the distance, still wailing in agony as she received treatment—that mangled, charred face left every one of them shaken to the core, deeply grateful they’d never had to face that monster Gu Lin themselves!!
The orange-robed figure stepped to the center of the platform, unfurled an official document, and read it aloud in a ringing voice:
“The ten representing Shiyang County in the Four Great Sacred Grounds selection trial are as follows—”
“Zhao Yao!”
“Yan Shouxu!”
“Zhu Yuting!”
“Lin Yan’er!”
“Liu Suifeng!”
“Gu Lin!”
“Liu Si!”
“Wei Xuan!”
“Li Jiuzhi!”
“Wu Tong!”
“The Sacred Ground selection trial is exactly one month away. In twenty-three days, all of you are to gather at the academy.”
“Anyone who fails to appear will be considered to have forfeited their place!!”
The moment the words fell, the orange-robed figure pressed an official seal onto the document.
Then, under the weight of countless envious gazes, ten Blade-Bearers each brought forward a token, presenting one to each of the ten seeded contestants.
The orange-robed figure spoke, his voice resounding like a great bell:
“For this coming month, every seeded contestant stands under the protection of the Blade-Bearer Bureau, with the full backing of the Sacred Grounds themselves behind them. Anyone who dares deliberately trouble a seeded contestant makes themselves an enemy of the dynasty itself—their entire extended family shall be put to death, and they themselves shall suffer countless tortures!!”
Watching the ten figures standing spirited and triumphant atop the platform, the entire academy erupted in thunderous, unending applause, wave after wave.
Seven of the ten had matched everyone’s predictions before the trial began.
Liu Suifeng had simply enjoyed extraordinary luck—an unbeatable string of favorable draws—the only one among them whose true strength ranked somewhere in the teens, and yet who still walked away with a seeded spot.
As for Zhu Yuting and Gu Lin—they had been, without question, dragons lying dormant in the depths, and in a single stroke, they had broken free into the sky with a ferocious, world-shaking roar.
The academy’s students couldn’t help glancing toward Li Qingwu, her face now utterly ruined—once celebrated as one of the three great beauties, now reduced to such a wretched state—while Wei Xuan and Lin Yan’er had both smoothly claimed their own seeded spots. Going forward, one would rise to the very heavens, the other cast down into some dark, filthy gutter.
Many of the Heaven cohort’s students found themselves recalling words Li Qingwu had once spoken so often, so casually—
“Gu Lin is nothing but a lowly lapdog, a filthy rat scurrying through some rank sewer, only fit to gaze upon my radiance from below. That he’d dare imagine standing beside me as an equal just because he throws money my way is nothing short of the greatest insult imaginable!”
And now—who truly possessed unrivaled radiance?
Who was the filthy rat now?
The answer needed no words at all.
Up on the platform, Magistrate Lu and Headmaster Yan walked together toward the orange-robed figure.
“Honored Blade-Bearer Xie,”
Headmaster Yan said, bowing with cupped hands.
Blade-Bearer Xie nodded slightly, then exchanged a bow with Magistrate Lu as well.
Magistrate Lu lowered his voice and asked:
“In Blade-Bearer Xie’s estimation, how many from Shiyang Academy might actually secure a place at a Sacred Ground in this coming trial?”
The orange-robed figure smiled and said lightly:
“In my view, even Zhao Yao isn’t guaranteed—it all depends on what he decides to do.”
Magistrate Lu understood the implication at once.
In other words, even with his current strength, Zhao Yao could hardly be assured of breaking through and securing a place at a Sacred Ground.
But there was still a month left.
Zhao Yao’s own elder brother was none other than Zhao Can, a member of the Martial Extremity Palace itself, one of the Sacred Grounds!
Should Zhao Can be willing to lend a hand, and should Zhao Yao be willing to accept such “forced growth,” his strength could see enormous gains within that single month.
This so-called “forced growth” meant relying on special methods to forcibly boost one’s cultivation ahead of schedule—it inevitably carried lasting side effects, but so long as it secured a place at a Sacred Ground, the trade-off would be more than worth it in the end.
Magistrate Lu wasn’t surprised by this at all—he’d already known Zhao Yao was Shiyang County’s sole realistic candidate. He pressed further:
“And how many might become Blade-Bearers?”
Blade-Bearer Xie smiled.
“Under the Sacred Grounds’ selection rules, anyone who secures a place at a Sacred Ground may bring along three Blade-Bearer spots with them.”
“Should Zhao Yao secure a place at a Sacred Ground, he may select three from the academy to join a Blade-Bearer Bureau.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
Shiyang Academy could truly rely on Zhao Yao alone—unless Zhu Yuting’s luck proved so unbeatable that he drew nothing but weak opponents the entire way through, granting him a real shot at becoming a Blade-Bearer purely on his own merit.
As for Yan Shouxu, the odds were vanishingly slim.
And though Gu Lin had defeated a Sixth Tier opponent, that Sixth Tier had been artificially and unstably inflated through a secret art—his true combat ceiling likely sat somewhere around the peak of Sixth Tier itself.
He himself simply remained too weak, in the end.
As for the rest, they were, quite plainly, there to fill out the numbers.
Sign up to join the discussion...
Already have an account? Log in
No comments yet. Be the first to discuss this chapter.