News of Senior Brother Ye’s challenge spread through the Great Void Sect like wildfire.
By mid-afternoon, ten thousand outer- and inner-sect disciples had flocked to the central mountain range and packed the stone bleachers around the Zenith Arena, an ancient amphitheater suspended over a churning sea of clouds.
At the center of the ring stood Senior Brother Ye in gleaming, gold-trimmed core-disciple armor. His hair whipped in the wind, and his eyes burned with bloodshot, frantic hatred. In his right hand he held a dark red high-grade spirit sword that thrummed with scorching, solar-element Qi.
Three inner-sect elders sat on raised floating platforms beside the ring, their faces grim. Above it hung the official duel scroll, a crimson parchment signed in blood.
"Adam Hale!" Ye’s voice, amplified by his Qi, thundered across the clouds and rattled the bleachers. "You hide behind your Decree Token and run shadow-market tricks like a coward! Today, before ten thousand disciples and the Grand Elders, I challenge you to a Life-and-Death Duel!"
The crowd gasped. A Life-and-Death Duel was binding. Once both fighters stepped in, the array barriers sealed until one of them was dead.
"Look! He’s actually coming!" someone shouted, pointing down the foggy mountain path.
Adam climbed the marble steps at an unhurried pace. He wore his plain blue robes with his hood pulled forward, his hands tucked into his sleeves. He carried no sword and gave off no terrifying aura. He walked with the ease of a scholar on an afternoon stroll.
He stepped into the ring and stopped twenty paces from Senior Brother Ye.
"Senior Brother Ye," Adam said, his calm voice cutting through the wind. "A Life-and-Death Duel requires equal wagers. You’re bringing your life, which is worth very little to me. What else is on the table?"
Ye sneered, drew a glowing, platinum-bound scroll from his storage ring, and slammed it onto the stone floor.
"This is the deed to the Sun-Fire Peak Resource Allocation!" Ye roared, his face twisted with arrogant triumph. "Ten thousand low-tier spirit stones a year, three medicinal gardens, and total mining rights to the southern copper vein! Survive three strikes from my sword and it’s all yours. But if you lose, you hand over the Decree Token and your head!"
"Deal," Adam said, without hesitation.
The presiding referee elder swept the deed and Adam’s pledge into the arena’s array pillar.
BOOM!
A translucent red barrier flared upward and sealed the arena into a death box.
"Hahaha! Foolish dog!" Ye burst into hysterical laughter as his solar sword ignited into a towering pillar of crimson fire. "You fell right into my trap! Did you think I was like that trash Gu Long? Three days ago I absorbed the Sun-Core Pill! I’ve forced my way up to Late Foundation Establishment!"
WHOOSH!
A heavy, suffocating pressure erupted from Ye’s body. A golden pillar of Qi surged above his head, radiating heat so intense that the stone beneath his boots melted into white-hot liquid.
The stands erupted in horrified murmurs.
"Late Foundation Establishment!" an inner-sect disciple yelled. "Three days ago he was only Mid! Adam has no chance!"
"Die!" Ye roared, lunging forward like a falling star.
His sword unleashed the Earth-Grade martial technique Solar Dragon’s Execution. A thirty-foot flaming dragon tore through the air, melting the stone as it closed on Adam’s chest in an instant.
Adam stood rooted in place. He didn’t draw a blade. He didn’t even call on his Decree Token.
He simply tipped his hood forward, his dark pupils reflecting the approaching flame.
’A Late Foundation surge forced up by a low-grade pill,’ Adam analyzed, his cold voice echoing in his mind. ’Fragile, unstable, and full of forty-seven fatal meridian gaps.’
He raised his right hand and made a single, casual pinching motion toward the dragon.
THUMMM!
The dragon froze in mid-air, six inches from Adam’s palm, as if it had struck an invisible iron wall.
Before Ye could understand what was happening, Adam’s voice drifted softly across the sealed arena:
"Sword Field: Void Compression."
BOOM!
Inside the three-foot Sword Field, every thread of the dragon’s solar Qi turned to sword Qi under Adam’s will and collapsed inward. The thirty-foot dragon was crushed into a tiny, dense red marble between his thumb and forefinger.
Adam flicked it back.
The marble struck the golden pillar above Ye’s head, and the unstable pillar detonated.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The pillar burst into golden dust. Ye’s solar sword shattered into a hundred jagged fragments. The shockwave drove him to his knees, his kneecaps splintering against the granite, and a fountain of dark blood sprayed from his mouth.
"AHHHHHH!" Ye shrieked, staring up at Adam in terror. "My foundation! My cultivation! What... what are you?!"
Adam walked up to the kneeling disciple, stepping over the broken fragments of his sword. He raised his right index finger, a pinpoint spark of black Chaos-Devouring Fire flickering on its tip.
"You brought the Law Enforcement Hall to my peak, tried to take it from me, and challenged me for my life," Adam said softly, looking down at him with icy indifference. "Did you really think you were the hunter?"
"Wait! My grandfather is Elder—"
SWISH!
The black spark touched Ye’s forehead. In half a second, his body was reduced to fine gray ash and scattered by the wind.
Silence fell over the ten thousand spectators.
The referee elder stared, his jaw hanging open. The red barrier flickered out, leaving Adam alone in the center of the melted ring.
As the array pillar released the Sun-Fire Peak deed and it drifted down, Adam reached out and caught it. He tucked it into his sleeve, turned his back on the horrified crowd, and walked toward the exit, his voice carrying over the quiet clouds:
"Ghost-Sword Peak takes official possession of Sun-Fire Peak as of today. Anyone with an objection... step into the ring."
Not a single person moved.