Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Elder Kuang Shan stood on the elevated ridge with a face twisted in rage as the humiliation burned in his chest and clouded his usual judgment. While the two sects usually acted as a couple that disliked each other but still stayed together, their dislike for each other was genuine.

The two sects never went overboard against one another but their drive to beat one another was real and was one of the driving forces that pushed them both further. He did not really mean for his disciple to kill and burn Li Yu into ashes as that would be going too far but in the heat of the moment, the words came out as such. Both him and Wuji were watching the battles and would never allow a true death or serious injury to happen.

Kuang Shan reached into his spatial ring and pulled out another large pile of resources to wager. He tossed them down onto the cracked stone floor near the boundary of the suppression dome once again for all to see. Three glowing stalks of earth ginseng landed next to the previous wagers. A thick slab of deep sea iron followed them. Kuang Shan was emptying his personal treasury just to force the Heavenly Sword Sect to keep fighting.

"Take all of it!" Kuang Shan roared while pointing a scarred finger down at the valley. "If your Holy Son can defeat my final fighter, you can have every piece of ore and every stalk of medicine. Gongsun Bao, get down there and break his bones. I want you to leave him bruised and begging for mercy. Show them the might of our sect and do not fail!"

A tall and leaner cultivator stepped forward from the ranks of the Sundered Peak Sect. Gongsun Bao did not wear the heavy chainmail favored by his peers. He wore fitted leather armor reinforced with dark iron plating over his vitals. He carried a long hafted battle axe that looked sleeker and faster than the weapons used by the previous challengers.

Gongsun Bao descended onto the plateau and walked into the glowing dome. The silver and brown runes washed over his Origin Awakening physique and suppressed his spiritual energy down to the peak of the Karma Severing realm just like the others. He rolled his shoulders to adjust to the sudden restriction and locked his eyes on Li Yu.

Li Yu looked at the newcomer and sensed a hostility radiating from the man. It was not just the standard factional rivalry driving this challenger. There was a personal grudge hidden deep within those cold eyes.

"You are Gongsun Bao," Li Yu spoke first while resting Star Abyss on his shoulder. "That surname holds a lot of weight in certain territories. You are from the same clan as Lian."

Gongsun Bao narrowed his eyes and gripped his battle axe tightly. "You act like you are a friend to our family but your grandfather ruined our traditions. The Zhan Clan overthrew our rightful leadership because we chose to govern ourselves the way we wanted. Your tyrant of a grandfather marched into our ancestral home and forced Lian's father onto the seat of power."

Li Yu listened to the accusation and maintained a calm expression. He knew the history well as he was there that day. The end result of his story wasn’t wrong but how it got there wasn’t quite the truth either. The Gongsun Clan had broken ancient pacts and attempted to betray their allies. Zhan Tian did not tolerate betrayal and he doesn’t let things like that go easily. He had single handedly gone into their territory and removed the clan leader and some of the elders before placing someone he deemed more honorable in charge. Lian's father was chosen to lead the clan into a better future but it was clear from this person that resentment still existed as he would have expected.

"Your previous leaders broke their oaths," Li Yu countered with a steady voice. "They brought that intervention upon themselves and only have themselves to blame. My grandfather simply cleaned up the mess they created to ensure the innocent members of your clan did not suffer for their greed."

"It was our clan to govern!" Gongsun Bao snapped back as his aura flared with heavy earth intent. "You outsiders had no right to intervene just because you are stronger than us. I might have left the clan to join the Sundered Peak Sect but the Gongsun Clan is still my home and birth place. I left to forge my own path but I know my roots and never abandoned them.”

Gongsun Bao then composed himself slightly and pulled back a bit of his aggression back in. “I know I cannot kill you today or else I would to avenge our leaders. The political fallout would bring the wrath of the Zhan Clan down upon my sect. I am not foolish enough to start a war for my own issues."

Gongsun Bao raised his axe and pointed the sharp edge directly at Li Yu's chest.

"But we are standing in a sanctioned duel," Gongsun Bao continued with a dark sneer. "Injuries happen in these exchanges and are fair. Broken bones are a natural consequence of testing martial paths and I am not to be blamed for you accepting such terms. I am going to break a few of your ribs and other bones today to vent the frustrations of my ancestors. I will make you bleed for the pride you stole from us."

Li Yu heard the threat and thought nothing of it. It would be weird if he greeted him with open arms and called him a brother. He slowly lowered Star Abyss and stored the dark staff back inside. He had already finished calibrating his physical strength at around this realm during the last fight. He now understood the boundaries of his body while suppressed to this specific realm.

This new challenger required a different kind of test and Li Yu would not give up the opportunity for a good fight to let him learn.

Inside his soul space, a violent storm was brewing. The Human Soul usually radiated a warm and peaceful light but right now it pulsed with a thick and suffocating killing intent once more. The blatant disrespect shown toward his grandfather triggered a fierce protective instinct within Li Yu’s soul.

Strange things had been going on within here and Li Yu’s senses to this area were still cloudy and foggy so he could not explore it besides being curious on what was happening. Across the soul space, the Fisherman Soul watched the rising anger with a wide and eager smile still. The dark figure thrived on violence and wanted nothing more than to unleash a bloodbath.

The two souls pushed for lethal retaliation that went far beyond what Li Yu was considering. They wanted to summon the swords and other weapons to tear Gongsun Bao to pieces.

'No,' Li Yu commanded his own self while forcing the violent urges down into the depths of his soul. He was growing more concerned about what was happening in his Soul Space as of late but there was nothing he could do but suppress what was coming from there for now. 'Killing him proves nothing. Letting anger dictate my actions is a failure of my own Dao. I need to practice restraint. I will not give in to my inner urges and turn this into a bloody brawl.'

Li Yu raised both of his hands and channeled his suppressed Qi. He activated his Nexus Mind and split his consciousness into multiple precise threads. A bright golden light illuminated the interior of the suppression dome as a dozen weapons materialized in the air around him.

The junior disciples of the Heavenly Sword Sect gasped in surprise. They expected him to summon a flying sword as he had done before in his other fights at the Sword Conference. The most scary of his sword was a bone sword that they had heard made even their leadership wary.

Instead, Li Yu summoned twelve weapons from the custom arsenal forged by Master Zhan Ku. These were not elegant blades or refined spears. They were heavy, brutal and incredibly ugly. They were specifically designed for extreme durability and blunt trauma rather than cutting.

There were heavy spiked balls where the spikes were rounded off into blunt nodes. There were four sided metal discs with flat unsharpened edges. There were thick iron javelins that acted more like flying battering rams more than actual projectiles.

Li Yu did not grasp any of the weapons with his hands as they were not meant to be used that way. He utilized his opalescent Qi and his divine sense to pull the dozen heavy weapons into a rapid orbit directly around his own body. They spun through the air at terrifying speeds and formed a physical perimeter that resembled a howling hurricane of metal.

For this specific duel, Li Yu did not restrict the speed of the orbiting weapons. He let the arsenal fly at high velocity to create a shrieking wind that tugged at Gongsun Bao's clothing. The challenge he set for himself was infinitely more difficult than simply slowing the weapons down. He chose to restrict the impact force at the exact moment they made contact with a target.

"You want to break my ribs to vent your anger," Li Yu stated over the sound of the howling metal storm. "I am going to strip you of your weapons and your armor without leaving a single scratch on your body!"

Gongsun Bao didn’t truly understand what Li Yu was trying to do but he was still angry nonetheless. He let out a furious roar and charged forward to begin his attack. He infused his battle axe with the Law of Earth and swung the weapon in a wide horizontal arc designed to smash through the orbiting weapons and strike Li Yu's waist.

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Li Yu did not move his feet because he believed that his whirlwind of metal was more than enough to keep his enemy at bay. He directed two of the four sided metal discs to intercept the strike while maintaining their extreme orbital velocity.

He recalled the theoretical debate he had shared with Feng Tianyi by the campfire. The top sword genius had talked about compressing martial intent into a single defined thread to sever the enemy's attack. Li Yu applied that exact theory to his flying blunt weapons as part of the training he was undergoing. He did not let his opalescent Qi bleed out into the surrounding air to create a flashy display and instead compressed his shifting energy tightly around the surface of the discs.

The battle axe collided with the two high speed discs and a sharp metallic crack rang out across the plateau.

Gongsun Bao felt a jarring vibration travel up the haft of his axe but the result was not what he expected. The blunt discs met his strike at full speed but the opalescent Qi absorbed its own destructive energy just before it could shatter the axe haft or blow Gongsun Bao backward. The weapons met his strike with compressed intent and ground his momentum to a halt but did not do anything else.

Before Gongsun Bao could pull his axe back for another swing, Li Yu went on the offensive.

He directed a heavy spiked ball and a thick iron javelin to flank the challenger. The weapons moved with terrifying speed through the air but they did not aim for vital organs or exposed skin. The spiked ball struck the thick drake hide securing the left shoulder guard of Gongsun Bao's armor instead.

The blunt nodes hit with the speed of a falling meteor but Li Yu pulled the force back at the last possible fraction of a second. The impact triggered the glowing yellow defensive arrays inscribed on the leather and the arrays flared brightly for a brief moment before shattering under the precise wedge of the blunt nodes. The iron buckle cracked and the drake hide tore at the seam without bruising the shoulder beneath it at all. The guard clattered onto the stone floor and became a useless piece of scrap but left the Bai’s body unharmed.

The iron javelin swept low and struck the heavy plating guarding Gongsun Bao's right thigh. Again, the extreme velocity promised shattered bones but the compressed opalescent Qi acted as a buffer. The blunt impact overloaded the defensive runes etched into the metal and tore the securing straps away while leaving the leg unharmed. Another piece of armor fell away and left the challenger exposed to the cool mountain air.

Gongsun Bao stumbled backward with wide eyes because he could not believe what he was enduring. He looked down at his ruined armor and a seed of panic began to sprout in his chest. This hurricane of destruction and metal was clearly powerful enough to rip him apart but it was somehow delicately stripping him instead. He channeled more Qi into his battle axe and unleashed a flurry of rapid chops to defend himself against this perverted orbiting arsenal.

'Sundered Earth Cyclone!' Gongsun Bao roared within his mind while spinning his body to create a vortex of destructive energy of his own.

Li Yu remained focused and expanded his Nexus Mind. He directed all twelve blunt weapons to tighten their grinding perimeter around the Axe champion. The flying spiked balls, four sided discs and thick javelins maintained their howling speed in a flawless synchronized dance that left him as their orbit and began to orbit Bao instead. They intercepted every single strike thrown by Gongsun Bao as he couldn’t escape out from them. It looked like a tiny cyclone was being engulfed by a tornado of steel. Sparks rained down on the cracked stone as the blunt iron continuously met the sharp edge of the battle axe.

Li Yu treated the confrontation like a delicate surgical procedure and his control over his spinning death was tested again and again. He identified the weak points in the remaining armor and sent his high speed weapons to dismantle them one by one. His mind worked furiously to calculate the exact structural limits of the armor and iron versus human flesh.

A four sided metal disc slammed into Gongsun Bao's chest plate. The force was calibrated so precisely using just enough force that it caved the metal inward enough to shatter the central defensive array. Another weapon came by and snapped the leather bindings holding it together with another precision strike. The chest plate fell away and left Gongsun Bao wearing only a thin tunic underneath. A heavy spiked ball struck his left gauntlet and broke the iron knuckles while leaving his fingers uninjured.

The Sundered Peak champion swung his axe in a desperate overhead cleave and was fully panicked now. He tried to break out of the grinding perimeter using physical might but found no openings at all. How the bastard before him kept this up within the same realm as him was beyond his understanding. ‘He must be cheating somehow! They must have a method that allows him to have access to his full strength!’

Li Yu directed three thick javelins to meet the descending axe. They struck the flat side of the axe head simultaneously from different angles at full orbital speed. The combined force was carefully buffered by the opalescent Qi once more to rip the weapon right out of Gongsun Bao's hands without breaking his wrists. The heavy battle axe flew across the dome and embedded itself into the outer ridge.

Gongsun Bao stood in the center of the arena breathing heavily with this steel cage around him. His array inscribed armor lay in pieces all around his boots. He was disarmed and stripped down to his basic clothing in a greatly embarrassing fashion. He checked his arms and his chest for injuries but found none which made him stupified. Besides his physical and mental exhaustion, he was perfectly okay. There was no blood spilling from his body and there were no broken ribs or fractured bones.

The realization of what had been occurring hit him harder than any physical blow ever could.

Li Yu had systematically dismantled him while operating under the same cultivation restrictions. The Holy Son had controlled a dozen heavy flying weapons at extreme velocities with such terrifying precision that he destroyed the beast hide and iron plating without harming the fragile flesh underneath. It was a display of martial superiority that shattered Gongsun Bao's confidence into dust and nearly broke his Dao Heart even though that wasn’t the intention of Li Yu.

The grudge he held against the Zhan Clan felt incredibly small compared to the towering strength standing before him. He had walked into this fight thinking that Li Yu’s superior background was what was preventing him from ever getting revenge. That Li Yu’s backing greatly surpassed his own and that was the only reason he could not get revenge. The truth before him couldn’t be clearer though, even with the backing, Li Yu was so far out ahead that he couldn’t even see his back.

The canyon fell silent as the heavy weapons ceased their howling orbit because the duel was over. They returned to Li Yu and hovered in a calm circle around his dark robes while radiating a soft opalescent light.

Up on the outer ridge, Elder Kuang Shan looked like he had swallowed a bitter poison. His strongest fighter and in turn their entire sect had been humiliated without a single drop of blood being spilled. The Axe elder could not claim cheating and he could not accuse Li Yu of using excessive force. His champion had been stripped of his pride in front of the gathered assembly in such a way that left no rooms for conversation.

The Heavenly Sword Sect disciples watched the aftermath with wide eyes and were equally stunned. They were stunned by the sheer dominance Li Yu had displayed and stunned by how easily it all looked. The unassuming man that was cooking and laughing with them not long ago was actually a monster beyond words.

"He did exactly what he promised," Lin Xue whispered while staring at the scattered pieces of drake hide. "He did not leave a single scratch on the man. He controlled a dozen heavy weapons at full speed and controlled everything perfectly on every single strike to negate the lethal damage while breaking everything down."

Zhou Ming swallowed hard and nodded. "His personality is so relaxed when he drinks tea and cooks with us. He acts like a polite farmer who prefers peace and quiet. But the moment he steps onto the battlefield, he fights in such a domineering way. He dictates the flow of the entire exchange and forces the enemy to submit to his will. We judged him far too early based on his gentle smile."

Feng Tianyi gripped his sword hilt and his eyes burned with intense admiration. "He restricted the impact instead of the velocity to break those arrays without hurting the body. Do you understand how difficult that is? It is like trying to stop a falling boulder a hair's breadth above a fragile egg over and over again. His understanding of Qi control is incredibly deep."

The junior disciples realized a lesson as they watched Li Yu lower his hands and dismiss the custom forged arsenal back into his Koi Sanctuary. A calm demeanor did not mean a cultivator lacked strength. True power did not need to shout or boast and could be hidden very deeply below. True power could smile warmly by a campfire and then dismantle an enemy with cold precision the very next day.

Li Yu brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve and looked at the terrified challenger standing in the center of the ring.

"You can keep your broken ribs. I prefer perfectly cooked ones." Li Yu spoke softly with a smile but his voice carried across the silent plateau. "Do not let ancient grudges cloud your future path because it will only lead you to ruin. My grandfather, the Worldkeeper, is more honorable than anyone else. If he took action, there was a reason behind it and you should go find that out for yourself. Disrespect him or anyone in my family again and you will not live to see the next morning."

Gongsun Bao lowered his head and offered a trembling bow of submission. He did not say another word as he turned and walked out of the suppression dome. He retrieved his battle axe from the ridge and retreated to the back of the Sundered Peak ranks in total disgrace but also in deep thought.

Li Yu turned toward the glowing pile of resources sitting outside the boundary and smiled. He had successfully calibrated his control and his fine tuning using the heavy weapons within this general realm. He had pushed down the violent urges of his internal spirits and achieved a flawless victory through restraint. What was happening internally though, he needed to figure that out as well.

"I believe the rest of those wagers belong to the Heavenly Sword Sect now," Li Yu called out to the high pavilion while gesturing to the mountain of Dragon Vein Ore, Void Steel and earth ginseng. "Someone should probably collect them before the weather ruins such fine materials."

The Sword Sect elders burst into joyous laughter while the junior disciples resumed their uproarious cheering. Li Yu had defended their home and elevated their morale to unprecedented heights. He had proven that their sacred ground was not a place to be mocked by uncultured brutes. That their Holy Son, while not walking the same path as them towards the Dao, still had plenty to teach them and was actually a monster hiding in plain sight.