The dust kicked up by Iron-Tooth’s heavy fall slowly drifted across the gray expanse of the Slate Plateau. On the northern perimeter, the air was thick with a tense, breathless silence. The Lin Clan members could scarcely believe what they were witnessing. Two consecutive victories against older, physically superior opponents from the Iron-Bear Clan had tilted the balance of the sanctioned skirmish entirely in their favor.
Yet, among the leadership, there was no celebration.
Patriarch Lin Feng’s brow was deeply furrowed, his piercing gaze fixed entirely upon his grandson. He could see what the cheering guards missed: the subtle, involuntary tremor in Lin Xuan’s left hand; the pale, bloodless tint of his lips; and the ragged, shallow cadence of his breath. The violent backflow of Qi from the first match and the systemic strain of redirecting Iron-Tooth's kinetic mass had pushed Lin Xuan's ten-year-old meridians dangerously close to structural failure.
"He shouldn't fight the third round," Second Elder Lin Shan muttered, his hand twitching toward his sword hilt as a dark shadow detached itself from the southern perimeter. "His internal circulation is operating at less than forty percent. One heavy impact will shatter his core."
"He knows that," Patriarch Lin Feng replied quietly, his voice heavy with solemn resolve. "Look at his eyes, Shan'er. The boy is no longer fighting for pride. He is fighting because stopping now means forfeiting everything."
Across the plateau, a tall, slender figure stepped out from the Iron-Bear Clan’s vanguard.
Unlike Xiong Ba or Iron-Tooth, who relied on crude muscle and heavy body-hardening tonics, this third representative moved with an eerie, predatory silence. He was nearly fifteen years old—the absolute age limit for the skirmish—and carried no visible weapons. Dressed in tight, dark-gray traveling leathers, his skin possessed an unnatural, sickly pale tone, and his eyes were completely devoid of warmth.
Xiong Gu—the eldest and most dangerous of Patriarch Xiong’s direct nephews.
Whispers rippled through the Iron-Bear mercenaries as Xiong Gu stepped into the central stone ring. Unlike his peers, Xiong Gu had not spent his youth brawling in the mountains. He had spent the last three years training with a rogue wandering cultivator in the western valleys, mastering a lethal, venom-infused predatory art known as the Severed-Shadow Palm. This chapter was copied from novelping . com without permission.
He stood firmly at Qi Gathering, Level 1, Sub-Level 7.
Xiong Gu stopped ten paces from Lin Xuan, a thin, cruel smile touching his pale lips. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like dry leaves scraping across stone.
"They call you a genius," Xiong Gu whispered, his eyes scanning Lin Xuan’s blood-stained robes and trembling hands with clinical detachment. "A prodigy who calculates everything down to the last decimal. But math doesn't bleed, little rat. Flesh does."
Lin Xuan did not answer immediately. He stood with his feet planted shoulder-width apart, his internal Qi channels screaming in protest as he forced his breathing into a steady, controlled loop.
Qi Gathering, Level 1, Sub-Level 7, Lin Xuan’s mind analyzed, running diagnostic calculations with sluggish, exhausted speed. His energy volume is nearly four times mine. His technique utilizes corrosive, dual-element poison Qi that bypasses external armor to rot meridians from the inside out. My lateral pathways are already fifty percent compromised.
The analytical model flashing across his mind delivered a stark, brutal conclusion: Direct engagement equals catastrophic structural failure. Probability of survival in a prolonged exchange is less than twelve percent.
For the first time in his second life, Lin Xuan felt a cold, sharp spike of genuine fear. Not the arrogant panic of his infancy, but the cold, paralyzing terror of a strategist realizing his calculations have run out of variables.
"Third and final round!" Patriarch Xiong’s voice boomed across the ridge, dripping with malicious anticipation. "Begin!"
Xiong Gu did not charge like a beast. He vanished.
A sharp hiss of displaced air was the only warning. Utilizing a high-speed movement technique, Xiong Gu closed the distance across the stone in a single heartbeat, leaving a faint, shimmering gray afterimage behind him. His hand lashed out, shaped like a razor-sharp claw, gleaming with a sickly green-black Qi that hissed as it bit into the open air. This story is hosted at novelping(.)com.
Lin Xuan’s eyes widened. Too fast!
He threw himself backward, attempting to execute his usual fluid evasive slide, but his damaged meridians lagged behind his command by a crucial fraction of a second.
Rip!
Xiong Gu’s claw raked across Lin Xuan’s right shoulder, tearing through his white-and-gray robes and slicing deep into the flesh. A hiss of corrosive poison Qi immediately sank into the wound, turning the surrounding skin a bruised, blackened purple and sending a searing wave of agony straight to Lin Xuan's brain.
Lin Xuan staggered back, his right arm going completely numb as the poison began to lock his shoulder joint.
Across the plateau, Lin Chen screamed in horror, while Second Elder Lin Shan finally drew his blade, taking a fierce step forward before Patriarch Lin Feng’s heavy hand locked onto his shoulder, stopping him.
"Not yet," the old Patriarch commanded, his face like carved stone, though his eyes burned with fierce intensity. "It is his fight."
In the center of the ring, Lin Xuan dropped to one knee, spitting a mouthful of dark, coagulated blood onto the gray slate. He stared up at Xiong Gu, who walked toward him slowly, savoring the kill like a cat playing with a wounded mouse.
The absolute, untouchable arrogance of the child prodigy had been entirely burned away, replaced by something much darker, colder, and infinitely more dangerous.