The crimson blade descended in a vertical arc that split the air with a shriek.
Han Yuze had poured everything into the strike his full Body Tempering Stage 6 qi, his killing intent, his humiliation, his rage and the spirit-forged saber responded by blazing with heat that singed the dust on the arena floor.
It was a strike meant to end the fight in a single breath.
It was a strike that would have cleaved a Body Tempering Stage 3 cultivator from shoulder to hip.
Lu Chen saw it coming before Han Yuze’s arms had fully extended.
[Trajectory analysis: Vertical descending slash.
Speed: 18 meters/second.
Impact zone: left clavicle to right hip.
Estimated force: 4,200 kilograms.]
[Evasion window: 0.4 breaths.]
[Optimal counter: Lateral step right, 45-degree angle.
Strike target: blade flat, center mass.]
The System’s analysis unfolded in Lu Chen’s mind like a map drawn in light.
He did not think.
He moved.
His left foot pivoted on the ball, his hips rotated, and his entire body shifted forty-five degrees to the right in a motion so fluid that it looked almost lazy.
The saber blade hissed past his left shoulder.
The heat of it scorched the fabric of his robe and left a thin red line across his skin, but the edge did not bite.
Lu Chen was already inside Han Yuze’s guard.
The Mountain-Breaking Fist was the most basic striking technique in the Lu Family’s limited arsenal, a crude qi-channeling method that concentrated force through the knuckles and the wrist and the bones of the forearm into a single concussive point.
It was a technique that even Qi Gathering cultivators considered beneath them.
Lu Chen had practiced it ten thousand times in the underground passage.
He drove his right fist into the flat of the saber blade.
He pulled the strike, just as he had pulled the rib punch earlier, dialing the force down to the upper limit of what a Body Tempering Stage 3 cultivator could theoretically produce.
Even restrained, the Mountain-Breaking Fist carried the weight of his true Stage 6 density compressed into a single point of impact.
The fist met the blade.
The sound was wrong.
It was not the clang of flesh against steel.
It was a deep, resonant crack that echoed across the silent market square like a tree branch snapping in a winter storm.
The saber blade bent.
A fracture line spider-webbed outward from the point of impact, racing along the steel toward the hilt and the tip simultaneously.
The crimson glow of the spirit-forged array flickered, stuttered, and died.
Han Yuze’s arms jolted as the shockwave traveled up the blade and into his wrists.
His fingers spasmed.
He did not drop the saber, but his grip loosened enough that the weapon drooped in his hands like a wilted flower.
The fracture line held.
The blade did not shatter not yet but the crack was deep and unmistakable, running nearly the full length of the steel like a scar that would never heal.
The arena was silent.
Six thousand people stared at the cracked saber in Han Yuze’s trembling hands, and not a single one of them could process what they had just seen.
A Body Tempering Stage 3 cripple had punched a spirit-forged saber and cracked it.
That was not possible.
That was not supposed to happen.
Spirit-forged weapons were reinforced with qi arrays that made them harder than mortal steel, harder than stone, harder than the bones of any cultivator below Foundation Establishment.
A Body Tempering Stage 3 fist should have shattered on impact.
The fist should have broken.
The arm should have broken.
Instead, the saber had cracked.
Lu Chen stepped back and lowered his hand.
His knuckles were red but unbroken.
The Cloudmist Jade Pendant pulsed once against his chest, and his aura flattened back to the unremarkable signature of a weak young master who had somehow gotten very, very lucky.
[Combat analysis: Opponent weapon integrity reduced to 34%.]
[Structural failure imminent within 2–3 additional impacts.]
[Host hand: Minor bruising.
No fractures.
Concealment maintained.]
Han Yuze stared at his cracked saber.
His face was the color of old ash.
His hands were shaking so badly that the blade rattled against the arena floor.
What did you do?
he whispered.
His voice cracked on the last word.
Lu Chen looked at him with those dark, calm, well-water eyes.
Your saber is low-grade, he said quietly.
The spirit array is poorly calibrated.
The qi reinforcement concentrates at the edge but neglects the flat.
I hit the flat.
The explanation was so simple, so matter-of-fact, that it landed harder than any boast could have.
Lu Chen had not claimed superior strength.
He had not claimed superior cultivation.
He had simply identified a structural weakness and exploited it with surgical precision.
Which was, of course, exactly what he had done.
The crowd erupted.
The sound was chaotic and disbelieving, a wall of noise that crashed across the market square and bounced off the surrounding buildings.
On the Han Family platform, the Han Patriarch stood up.
His Foundation Establishment Stage 7 aura flared involuntarily, pressing down on the arena like a physical weight that made the weaker spectators gasp and clutch their chests.
His eyes were locked on Lu Chen’s right hand.
On the unbroken knuckles.
On the fist that had cracked a spirit-forged blade.
On the Lu Family platform, Lu Qinghe was on his feet, his mouth open, his bruised eye wide with a mixture of shock and savage, burning joy.
Elder Lu Wei had both hands pressed over his mouth.
And in the back row of the Lu Family section, half-hidden in shadow, Lu Yuan sat perfectly still.
His tea cup was in his hands.
His expression was unreadable.
But his fingers were white around the porcelain.
Han Yuze raised the cracked saber with both hands.
His qi was surging now, wild and uncontrolled, and the killing intent rolling off his body was no longer theatrical.
It was real.
I’ll kill you, he screamed.
The broken saber came down again.
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