The board flipped with a sound like thunder. Top 8 names burned under the morning sun. A roar rolled around the terraces and came back as pressure. Qin Ye's name sat among the favorites like a needle among hammers. On the dais, Inner Gate scouts leaned closer. Their whispers didn't carry; their attention did.
The System acknowledged the climb.
[Ding! Optional Objective completed: Reach Top 8 using ≤1 additional talisman today.]
[Reward: Technique Cache (advanced, locked).]
It opened in his mind. Two silhouettes. One added weight to stance. The other bent time. He chose the latter—Ghost Thread. Not force. Not flash. A single step inside ten breaths that would arrive a half-beat early. A scalpel, not a hammer.
⸻
He cut across the platform toward the great Banner Mast. Colors snapped overhead; the pole hummed in the wind. A prompt surfaced.
[Daily Sign-In available.]
[Location: Banner Mast.]
[Sign-In? Yes / No]
Yes.
[Ding! Sign-In successful!]
[Reward: Standfast Token (1 use — prevents 1 forced ring-out) + Rhythm Thread (Lv.1, 20 breaths).]
A coin of anchored certainty slipped into his storage; a thinner timing strand settled behind his eyes. Final Day wasn't about heroics. It was about breath and beats.
He ran Spiral Breath once. Inhale four. Anchor four. Exhale two. The rhythm set like bone.
⸻
His opponent waited at the rope—Yan Cheng, iron fan folded along his forearm like a blade pretending courtesy. He was all soft wrists and clever feet. His reputation walked ahead of him: fan-gusts to make eyes blink, subtle heel-hooks to take toes, and a habit of filing questions with the judge between exchanges until a fight became paperwork.
As Qin Ye stepped into the chalk, Duan Qi drifted by the aisle with a small, tired smile. "The wind changes quickly at the top." Polite. Hollow. From the dais, He Rulong didn't speak at all. His gaze pressed like weather.
The judge tested the bell—one bright strike that sheared the noise.
It rang for real.
Yan Cheng opened with a fan snap. Air cracked. The gust wasn't a breeze; it was a shove for eyelids, a nudge for stance. He moved laterally with it, herding, letting the fan's clack hide little heel clips that hunted ankles. After each pass he raised two fingers and a question: "Clarification on fan angle?" "Is a blink an interference?" Tiny pauses. Paper cuts.
Qin Ye refused to bleed. Silent Step erased his feet; Quiet Pivot kept angle without giving ground. He held center, a still point inside moving air, waiting for the first real sentence inside the chatter.
It came disguised as courtesy—a half-bow of the fan and a smile that wasn't. The fan flicked high for eyes; the heel scythed low for toe. Two lines. One truth.
Qin Ye touched Rhythm Thread. The world stacked into pulses. The gap between the flash and the scythe appeared—thin as paper, enough to slide a will through. He shifted cleanly—
—and found the fan's gust thicker than forecast. Air hit fabric and pushed him a hand's breadth too far. Rope hummed near his heel. The crowd inhaled all at once.
He spent Standfast.
It was not a wall. It was a nail. Something in him planted and would not budge. His heel hovered a thumb from the line and stopped. The judge's slate took the mark. Legal. Logged.
Yan Cheng expected the warning, not the halt. A half-beat of triumph died on his face.
That was the window.
Inside Rhythm Thread, Qin Ye triggered Ghost Thread. One step, and time miscounted by half. He arrived before Yan Cheng's recovery believed he could. He burned his last Swift-Step not as speed but as angle: three tight inches twice, a knife-edge cut that slid him inside the fan's reach.
His fingers tapped the shoulder seam. Not force. A decision laid where rules would recognize it.
The bell rang.
[Ding! Micro-Goal: "Slip the Beat."]
[Reward: +500,000 Spirit Stones; Tempo Sense +5% (situational).]
Yan Cheng stared, fan throat-tight. He lifted his hand to appeal, words forming—"boundary—"
The judge didn't bother to look bored. "Standfast Token logged. Parity maintained. No infringement."
Paperwork closed around the protest and filed itself.
⸻
The crowd noise changed key. On the board, brackets snapped to Top 4. Heat rippled from the stone; incense from the dais thickened and then thinned, as if even smoke held breath.
[Main Quest updated — Final Day: Top 8 → Top 4.]
[Optional Objective unlocked: "Enter Top 4 without using Re-Center." — Reward: Technique Chest (intermediate, locked).]
Qin Ye's breath stayed even. He ran his toe in a small circle within the chalk. Not a flourish. A measurement. Rope tension hummed back a thin note; he counted around it. Inhale four. Anchor four. Exhale two. The circle closed. The center held.
⸻
He did not leave the ring immediately; the crews drifted close with rope checks that were suddenly meticulous. Micro-Perception charmed a tell out of their hands—one coil of rope had lived a little longer than the others. He watched the clerk swap it out by the book, no request needed. Someone on the dais was reading logs now. Procedure wasn't merely a shield. It was a light.
Yan Cheng exhaled sharp and low. He folded his fan with a careful click, bowed the precise degree loss required, and left with his pride arranged flat. Duan Qi watched him pass and smoothed his expression from anger into civility. Training could polish anything that wasn't broken.
Qin Ye rolled his wrists once. Tape Bind held fine; no heat in the tendons, no shake in the fingers. The Pain-Dulling Salve stayed capped. He inventoried without looking.
Threads: Rhythm Thread drained to quiet. Ghost Thread—spent for that half-beat step. Tokens: Standfast—gone; Re-Center—registered and waiting. Talismans: Swift-Step—empty for the day. Tools: Quiet Pivot in muscle; Silent Step in silence.
A runner slapped a new sheet on the announcement board. Two names on one lane. Two on the other. The wind turned a corner and pushed banners hard enough to make poles sing. On the dais, a scout wrote three words and underlined one.
Qin Ye didn't try to read them.
He let the noise pour past and go harmless.
⸻
He walked the ring's edge once—an arm's length inside the rope, eyes soft, hearing for the difference between creak and sing. A rope can tell a secret if you ask the right way. This one told him it would behave if no one lied to it. Good.
He stepped back to center. Chalk dust lifted around his heel and sat down again.
A Patrol Hall functionary drifted by with a ledger, wary of being useful. "Report filed: Standfast Token exercised," he said, as if the report were an accusation.
Qin Ye looked at him and said nothing. The silence said and?
The functionary found nothing on his page that the judge hadn't already stamped. He moved on.
In the high shade of the equipment balcony, Liu Shan watched without appearing to. His slate carried small, square characters: tempo manipulation observed; boundary compliance perfect. He didn't underline anything. He didn't need to. The lines themselves had weight.
⸻
Noise swelled for someone else's fight and receded. Time arranged itself into the shape of a waiting semicircle. Qin Ye let it. He neither stretched nor shrank it. When the bell for the next bout pealed far from him, metal rang the exact note his breath expected. Consistency, then. Good.
A boy—too young to be anything but fast—stopped near the rope to stare. "How did you not step out?" he blurted, then flinched as if words could be a rule breach.
"Standfast," an older disciple murmured behind him, half awe, half envy. "He used it like a nail."
Qin Ye neither nodded nor shook his head. He had no interest in teaching through speech.
He stepped off the chalk to let crews chalk again over chalk, brightening lines that did not need brightening. The gesture had a meaning. Rules, like rope, behave better when you let them be seen.
⸻
The bell on a neighboring ring clanged a finale. Applause ran like a wave and broke. The boardman lifted a ladder and climbed. Top 4 shifted from potential into schedule. Qin Ye read his lane once. He put the reading away.
He touched the rope once with a knuckle. The note came back true.
He stood still and counted four, four, two.
The circle was complete. The center was his.