Chapter 227 - 189: There Is Another Master
In the heavy air, the third day of the tournament began.
The first match featured disciples of the Qi and Blood Second Transformation Realm. The Sword Storage Pavilion sent forth Huang Hao, a master ranked sixty-eighth on the Hidden Dragon List.
A rank of sixty-eighth might not seem high, but how many millions of Martial Artists were there in the entire Great Li Dynasty?
It wasn’t just a rank of sixty-eighth; he was ranked among the top sixty-eight Martial Artists under the age of thirty in the Qi and Blood Metamorphosis Realm.
Those on the Hidden Dragon List were the center of attention; every one of them could be called a prodigy.
To make it onto the Hidden Dragon List, regardless of rank, was in itself a tremendous honor and a testament to one’s strength.
As for the Sword Sect, they sent out a female disciple from Yao Yue Peak, Ning Zi.
Xie Yuan had often seen Ning Zi while working in the Back Hall of the main peak and had even spoken with her before.
She had a bright, striking beauty and a fiery personality. But what was most memorable was a figure as explosive as her temperament, one that often left people unsure where to look.
Ning Zi, much like Xing Zhi, dominated her peers of the same realm within the Sect and was considered a top prodigy.
The difference was that her cultivation already dominated the Second Transformation Realm. She also traveled frequently outside the mountain, so her reputation far exceeded Xing Zhi’s. Many had heard of this fierce and fiery female Swordsman. Though not on the Hidden Dragon List, her power was not to be underestimated.
As the radiant Ning Zi took the stage, Huang Hao lowered his gaze, cupping his hands somewhat shyly.
"Greetings, Junior Sister Ning. Please, do not hold back."
"You’re too kind, Senior Brother Huang."
Ning Zi replied coolly, leaving Huang Hao momentarily flustered.
The moment the match began, Huang Hao focused his mind. In an instant, the earnest young man who got flustered around beautiful women transformed into a relentless, sharp-edged Swordsman.
He was worthy of his reputation as a prodigy on the Hidden Dragon List. His first move unleashed a sky full of sword-shadows that completely enveloped the once-radiant Ning Zi. Like a delicate flower in a tempest, she vanished from sight in an instant.
With that single move, the crowd knew the outcome was decided and let out a collective sigh.
The gap between those on the Hidden Dragon List and those off it was truly immense, as if they belonged to two different realms of existence.
However, the situation on the stage suddenly shifted.
From within the storm, a butterfly struggled to fly free.
Ning Zi, having somehow escaped the storm of swords, suddenly appeared right in front of Huang Hao.
She was covered in blood. Scars crisscrossed her fair skin, and her clothes were ripped in numerous places, making her look like a butterfly with torn wings.
Though glimpses of her skin were revealed, no one paid it any mind. The audience held its breath, their eyes fixed on Ning Zi as she closed the distance and delivered a dazzling strike!
The sword light arced like a rainbow across the stage. At the last possible second, Huang Hao threw his head back, performing an "iron bridge" maneuver that brought him nearly parallel to the ground. He dodged the fatal strike, but it grazed his forehead, sending a stream of blood down his face.
Fortunately, it was only a superficial wound. Covered in a cold sweat, Huang Hao was about to counterattack when he saw Ning Zi sheathe her sword and say coldly:
"I concede."
Clutching her wounds, she walked off the stage on her own, leaving a trail of blood across the high platform.
Having failed with that one strike, she had no strength left to continue the fight.
Huang Hao stared blankly at her beautiful, retreating figure. He only snapped out of it after the referee called his name several times. As he left the stage, he couldn’t resist looking back at her one last time.
That match was the closest the Cloud Mountain Sword Sect had come to victory so far. Ning Zi’s strike had been a hair’s breadth from turning the tables and felling a "Hidden Dragon" with a single blow.
And though the blow hadn’t landed on Huang Hao’s body, it seemed to have pierced his heart. For a long time after leaving the stage, he remained completely distracted.
’It was just a friendly match. Why was she so desperate?’
Huang Hao glanced over at the Cloud Mountain Sword Sect’s disciples and saw that every one of them wore a solemn expression. A strange melancholy filled his heart.
Xie Yuan’s eyes shone as he watched, inwardly marveling at the spectacle. Ning Zi’s "Rainbow Piercing the Sun" was incredibly powerful, just a hair’s breadth from victory. What a pity. Even so, the stunning move made Xie Yuan’s blood boil, and he wished he could go up and have a go himself.
The next moment, he got his chance to go on stage.
"Zhang Mountain, go clean up that blood. Be thorough. Zhenyang is up next."
A supervisor ordered.
"Oh..."
Pulled back to reality, Xie Yuan dutifully grabbed a broom and mop, went up on the stage with a few other odd-job disciples, and started cleaning.
"That Ning Zi is really something else. She almost killed Huang Hao, a guy from the Hidden Dragon List!"
"Yeah, nobody saw that coming. If she’d been just a fraction faster, I’m afraid even the Grandmaster elders wouldn’t have had time to intervene. Huang Hao would’ve died right there on the stage!"
"The Cloud Mountain Sword Sect is really giving it their all. Such a beautiful woman, and she doesn’t care one bit about getting her face scarred..."
"The Sect must have top-quality healing salves, right? Still, it’s no small thing. I’ll never forget the sheer brilliance of that strike."
"Hey, you guys think... the person who went after Yao Tianchuan last night... could it have been this Ning Zi?"
"Huh? No way. She’s a woman..."
"No one ever said if it was a man or a woman. Maybe it was! Heh, maybe those rumors about his Sword Heart being shattered were wrong. Maybe it was a messy love affair... you know, ’one look at a beauty can ruin a man’s life,’ that sort of thing..."
"Don’t be ridiculous."
"Then you tell me, who could make Yao Tianchuan—the star of yesterday’s show—lose so badly he couldn’t even hold his sword straight? They say it was an expert of the same realm, but I think seduction by a female cultivator is a much more likely explanation..."
The crowd chattered for a while, their discussion circling back to the previous night’s events as they tried to guess the identity of the mysterious expert.
Situ Qin overheard the whispers from the nearby crowd. Then, she looked at Xie Yuan, diligently sweeping the stage, and found the situation inexplicably amusing.
’The mysterious expert is on this very stage right now... sweeping the floor!’
’He’s standing there in plain sight, yet no one gives him a second glance.’
No one would ever pay attention to an odd-job disciple. Besides Situ Qin, among everyone on and off the stage, only her eyes followed Xie Yuan, the corners of her lips curved into a slight smile.