Shen stepped onto the stage to face a very large and angry woman in her mid thirties. Shen had asked Danka about the woman before the match so that she would know what kind of opponent she would be facing. He knew more people in town than she did, after all. The woman’s name was Li Tan, and Danka knew her from the two times he had helped in her arrest over the last year.
The first time was at the outer city Mission Hall. She had returned from a mission, when one of the mercenaries had decided it would be a good idea to sexually harass the woman by grabbing one of her oversized breasts. Normally, if she had simply punched the man the guard would have ignored it, but by the time they got there she was sitting on the man’s chest, her weight stopping him from breathing, while she used his face as a punching bag. The man was already unconscious long ago and when the guards managed to drag her off of the man they had to take him to the nearby clinic where the healer had to put the bones of his face back into place before healing seventeen fractures in his jaw and skull. It was only the fact that the mercenary asked for them to go easy on her that got her charged with excessive assault instead of attempted murder.
The second time was after Shen had started selling Body Cultivation items. This woman had bought the best version Shen produced and used it to its limit, making her large but softer muscles far more dense. One of the people on her team had a disagreement of some sort with her concerning how they should split the payment for a job, and to settle it they decided to have an arm wrestling competition. A few minutes later the clinic was forced to reattach a severed limb, but no one involved was willing to tell the guards the details of what happened, so no charges stuck and they had to release her.
In short, she was the type of woman that had muscles between her ears instead of brains. It was that fact that stopped her from being able to break through to the next realm, as she wasn’t smart enough to figure out the weakness of her own divine sense, nor patient enough to practice until she got better. Shen knew she would have to win this fight by outsmarting the woman, not in a contest of strength. If Shen tried to choke her out like she had the last woman she would likely either laugh or get so angry that she would throw Shen into the stage’s barrier.
The field master signaled the start of the fight and the woman ran at Shen, shoulders lowered for a tackle. Shen jumped out of the way at the last moment, but underestimated the woman’s speed, their legs briefly colliding, sending Shen into a bit of a spin. She landed and slid to a stop and the woman struggled to do the same. Shen could tell from just that impact that, despite having far more chi than the other woman, she only had a quarter of the woman’s physical strength. The woman had both far larger and far denser muscles, after all, as she had been willing to take her body cultivation of muscles to its limit rather than stopping at a comfortable level like Shen.
Ignoring the pain in her leg from the impact, Shen decided to use her divine sense to target the woman. She could even use it to attack the woman’s insides. While that would normally be an extremely dangerous attack, more than was generally allowed in competitions, she knew that with the woman’s durability it would do no more than slightly overheat her organs, causing pain and slightly impeding their function, but not causing serious harm. She sent a four height long string into the woman’s abdomen and sent a surge of Fire chi down it, trying to form a fireball inside the woman’s stomach.
A large explosion appeared in front of the woman, making her stumble backwards slightly from where she was facing Shen for a second charge. Shen instantly knew why the attack had failed. The woman had a Formation Barrier item, likely a ring. It most likely wasn’t one Shen had made, as she had only created seven, but Master Chen and the other relic crafters in the city had produced hundreds as a result of the demand her Gathering Barrier rings had caused. At the Formation level a barrier could block divine sense and divine sense based attacks from passing through it. The person that made this barrier item had likely went with the easier form which only blocked Formation attacks but not the sense itself. That would cut costs and let them produce the rings at least thirty percent faster.
Shen noticed the woman’s fist in her peripheral vision and rolled sideways from where she was crouched. She had gotten distracted from thinking about her craft and almost left herself open for attack. The woman seemed a bit upset from missing, but Shen wouldn’t let her land a blow just to be nice. Doing so would likely result in several broken bones if it didn’t cost her the match.
The woman lunged at Shen and she moved the string of divine sense to the woman’s face before firing off another Fireball. This distracted the woman enough that Shen was able to get some distance from her. The barrier seemed to have only been slightly weakened by the attack, and Shen knew that it would take most of her Fire Chi to get through it just with fire balls.
While she didn’t have a formal technique to do so, Shen did have the various Kinesis abilities for moving elements, and could make her next idea work. When the woman charged Shen grabbed cones of stone from the platform and pushed them out of the ground before flipping them over and setting them onto their former holes. She knew this was far from the proper ‘stone spike’ ability, but hoped it would work. Also, the fact that it used Earth chi instead of Fire meant that she wouldn’t use her best type on a technique that might not work.
The woman ran through the spike field, stumbling a bit, but didn’t look particularly injured. At most Shen had caused her some foot pain. Shen ran to another section of the field beside the barrier and the woman took the opportunity to pull a few tiny rocks out of her bare feet. She charged at Shen again and this time Shen threw Water chi at the ground before causing it to freeze. While it wasn’t strong enough to cause moisture to come out of the air and form actual ice, the chi could mimic the effect well enough.
The woman hit the slick chi and slid into the barrier. Though she took only slight damage from the impact, Shen targeted the ground under her feet and sent most of her Fire chi into it. “Infernal Tornado” she called as a vortex of fire swirled around the woman. The woman called out from the pain and tried to leave the tornado, but Shen put a barrier around it, made of Metal and Earth chi. Without the ability to build up momentum, Li Tan was forced to punch and kick the barrier rather than slam into it.
Shen saw several large cracks form on the barrier and knew the woman would break through it in a few seconds. This hadn’t been an elegant solution, she realized. She was basically just trying to overload the woman and her shield with a massive amount of chi, beating her with the strength of her chi the same way the woman tried to beat her with the strength of her body. It might be working for now, but if the woman broke out she would almost certainly win.
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And to make it worse, maintaining two techniques at once was taxing Shen’s brain, even with it’s superior performance from body cultivation. The situation made it obvious why most cultivators stuck to using one technique at a time. Still, Shen couldn’t risk letting the woman break through before taking serious injury, so she dumped the rest of her Wood and Fire chi into the inferno. It rapidly grew twice as hot and more dense and Shen could see the woman’s barrier start to dissolve, letting the fire touch her directly instead of just the heat it put off. As second degree burns started to form on the woman’s skin Shen noticed that the woman was gasping for breath and started to collapse. Not wanting to kill the woman, Shen ended the two techniques, letting the chi dissipate into the environment.
The Field Master declared Shen the winner as two people from the medical staff ran over to check her out. Shen heard one of them say something about ‘burnt lungs’ and start to channel Wood chi into the woman to start healing her. Shen knew she should have realized what would happen. She expected the woman to just get her skin burnt and either surrender or pass out. Few people could keep going after receiving third degree burns, after all. But the woman had tried to breathe while her barrier was down. That had caused her to breath in superheated air, which burnt the inside of her lungs.
Shen was about to volunteer to give the medics some of her Wood Chi to heal the woman, but realized that she had used all of it to do that to the woman. Shen watched for a few seconds, not bothering to leave the field, before the woman started being able to breathe well enough for the medics to take her to the clinic. Again, Shen wanted to do something to help, like helping carry her, but with as little chi as she had left in her dantian she was currently physically weaker that before she started making the Body Cultivation devices during the Gathering realm.
Shen walked off the stage and returned to the waiting room. There weren’t many cheers from the stands. Most of the people there knew how dangerous her actions had been despite how impressive of a display it was.
“You okay, Shen?” asked Danka. “I saw the fight. Quite an impressive finishing move.”
“Quite a dangerous one.” Shen corrected. “She burnt her lungs trying to breath in there, and I almost killed her.”
“There were medics on sight to fix her, and she should have just held her breath.” he responded. Anyone at Foundation would know that a Foundation level cultivator can hold their breath for an hour or more, as long as they had chi left, as their body would just recycle the air that was used. Shen wasn’t sure of the science behind it, as few cultivators studied such things, preferring alchemy to chemistry, but she knew that if you held your breath for more than fifteen minutes or so you would start to exhale or spit out soot once you started breathing again. If the woman had just held her breath she wouldn’t have been injured like that, but she wanted to scream in pain, and that had emptied the air out of her lungs, forcing her to breathe again.
Shen nodded at his comment, then started meditating. She had used so much chi in that last battle that it was unlikely she could fully restore it before her next match, and would barely gather any if she relied on her bracelet. She stretched out her divine sense as far as it could go from her and ordered all of the chi around her to come to her. A few seconds later the chi started to flow into her. She didn’t bother checking the elemental balance. She had only a small amount of Earth and Metal left, and a large amount of Water, so any chi she got could be useful. Her second dantian layer and bracelet could balance out the types for her.
She heard Danka be called into the field, but didn’t bother stopping to watch his match. He was a competent fighter, winning the Outer Disciple match last year, so she wasn’t worried. A few minutes later she heard cheering and soon Danka returned to her side, inside her divine sense where she could almost see him. Her divine sense got slightly better during this time, but she barely noticed it, only using the improvement to expand the size of the field around her so she could gather chi slightly faster.
Danka moved just outside her range and she could feel that the chi density in the direction he went was slightly lower than the other directions. He was likely refilling his chi reserves, but as his divine sense was weaker than hers his field of effect was much smaller.
Almost an hour later all of the other contestants had finished their rounds with half of them being defeated but not required to leave the waiting room. Shen had completely refilled her reserves of Water and Earth chi, and mostly refilled the others when an announcement was made. “Next fight: Mo Shen and Din Danka.” They weren’t as pure as she would like, but they would have to do.
Shen ended her meditation and brought in her divine sense. This much use of it, plus the mental strain of using two Formation techniques at the same time had left her mentally exhausted, but she would still try her best in the next fight.
She nodded to Danka and the two of them walked onto stage together, both taking their starting position and drawing a sword. The field master signaled the start and both of them ran forward and swung their swords.
Shen quickly realized that she was outclassed. While she had been practicing relic crafting he had been practicing his swordsmanship, and was at least as good at it as she was with a relic crafting. She threw several fireballs at his feet to force him to step back, then changed weapons. If she couldn’t win the fight with superior skill, she would win it with superior equipment. The Fire flying sword returned to her storage ring and a different sword appeared in its place, one with a white Draconic Serpent hide scabbard. She put the scabbard in her belt and drew the blue blade. There was a murmur from the crowd as several people there realized the quality of the sword.
“Nice blade.” said Danka. “Did you make it?”
Shen smirked and shook her head. “It was a gift. But hopefully I can make one like it soon.” She remembered the Fire beast core she had bought off of Danka a year ago and hadn’t done much with. She could make a Blood Steel sword of the same design as this one and put a nice Fire technique on it with that core. Maybe she would start on it tomorrow.
Danka nodded, then ran at her. They both swung their swords, but Shen appeared to be concentrating on defense rather than offense, letting her hold him off. This showed Danka just how much better his swordsmanship was than hers and encouraged him to push even harder. Shen continued to back up, but after thirty seconds and dozens of blows Danka started to feel like something was off. It only took him a few seconds and a few more swings before he realized that she was blocking by hitting the same part of his blade almost every time. As the blades clashed he looked at that part of the blade to figure out why, and noticed that, while the edge was severely damaged from the multiple edge-on impacts, her blade was undamaged. It must have been made of something far stronger than steel. Was she trying to ruin the edge of his blade? Surely she didn’t think she could cut through it.
A few more swings later and he realized that the sound of clashing blades was off. That part of the blade had lost most of its flexibility and, when he looked, he noticed that a crack had started to form. Had she been slowly freezing the blade to make it brittle? That was an Ice, and therefore Water attack. He would have expected her to heat it and make it weak instead, as Fire was her best element. He swung again, this time aiming for her legs instead of her body to try and throw off her blocking technique, and she seemed to swing much harder, like using Release to boost her strength. She jump backwards as the end of her sword hit the middle of his sword on the side, where it had been frozen, and the blade snapped in half.
Shen and Danka jumped away from each other and he swung the remaining half of his sword several times, sending out waves of yellow energy that she was forced to dodge. She recognized this as Sword Chi from the previous competition and knew that it was likely strong enough to get through both her armor’s barrier and her Dragon Scales.
Shen responded by throwing several fire balls back at him, followed by Earth and Metal bolts. He managed to dodge or parry all of the bolts, but as the last fire ball exploded from his cut a blade swung at his face. He knew that she had aimed to cut open his cheek and not his throat, and was grateful for the consideration, but was able to dodge it. Seeing that Shen had overextended herself with that swing he grabbed her wrist and twisted, making her release her grip on the sword and almost breaking her arm.
He threw her on the ground and she yelled in anger, running at him with a punch. He had been trained in hand to hand combat as well as sword combat, though, and dodged, countering with an uppercut. She staggered backwards and he launched a kick at her stomach, throwing her into the barrier.
Shen got up and staggered a bit before realizing that she couldn’t focus, then a few seconds later everything went dark as she collapsed onto the field.
