News, in a city of cultivators, traveled faster than light. By the time Li Yao was called for his second match, the story of the "Void Disciple" from Verdant Mountain had already spread through the contestant grapevine. The pitying glances were gone, replaced by a palpable tension. He was no longer an unknown; he was an anomaly, a problem to be solved.
His next opponent was a young woman from the Celestial River Sect named Shui Ling. She had watched his first match, and her strategy was immediately apparent. She did not rely on a single, overwhelming blast of power. As the match began, she began to flow.
Her movements were like water, evasive and constant. She wove around the arena, her hands tracing intricate patterns in the air. Dozens of shimmering, razor-sharp needles of condensed water essence materialized around her, humming with piercing intent.
"The Celestial River Needles!" someone in the crowd exclaimed. "She'll pepper him from a distance! He can't nullify what he can't touch!"
The needles shot towards Li Yao from all directions, a coordinated, inescapable net of attacks designed to test the limits of his defensive field.
Li Yao stood still, as before. But this time, he focused. The Warding Emptiness was a sphere, but the Void Scripture taught that a sphere was just a shape. Emptiness had no shape. He willed his nullification field to become less of a wall and more of a... presence. It clung to him, a personal atmosphere of negation.
The needles, upon entering this extended personal space, did not vanish instantly. They slowed, their sharp humming fading to a whisper. The water essence composing them lost cohesion, becoming mere water droplets that pattered harmlessly against his robes and the sand at his feet. It was as if a volley of crossbow bolts had turned into a light spring rain halfway to their target.
Shui Ling's eyes widened. She redoubled her efforts, summoning a whip of swirling water that snaked towards him, aiming to bind and constrict.
The whip entered his field and became a limp rope of water, splashing to the ground.
She tried a mist technique to obscure his vision and seep into his lungs; the mist dissipated into mundane humidity before it reached his face.
Frustration etched on her features, she gathered all her energy for a final, powerful torrent, a concentrated jet of water capable of punching through stone.
Li Yao watched the roaring pillar of water come towards him. He didn't strengthen his field. He did the opposite. He focused the principle of the void into a single point in front of his outstretched palm. He wasn't nullifying a large area; he was creating a pinpoint drain.
The powerful jet of water hit that point and simply... ended. It didn't splash. It didn't deflect. It was consumed, its energy and momentum siphoned into the void, leaving not even a damp spot on the sand behind him.
Shui Ling stood, panting, her energy reserves depleted. She had thrown everything she had at him, and he had not taken a single step. The look on his face was not one of triumph, but of calm observation, as if he were a scholar noting the properties of a rare insect.
"I... yield," she said, her voice barely a whisper. The humiliation was less than Feng Lie's; hers was the resignation of someone who had encountered a fundamental law they could not overcome.
"Winner: Li Yao."
The buzz in the stands was louder this time, tinged with a growing sense of unease. This wasn't a fluke. He had countered sustained, varied, and long-range attacks with the same effortless principle.
In the waiting area, the other contestants were now actively discussing him in hushed tones.
"It's a domain! He has an innate domain that negates energy!"
"No, it's too perfect. It must be a supreme-grade talisman he's hiding."
"Whatever it is, how do you fight it? You can't get close, you can't attack from afar..."
Li Yao ignored them. He was processing the fights. The first had confirmed his defense against direct assault. The second had refined his control, allowing him to adjust the "texture" of his emptiness—from a hard stop to a dissipating field to a focused drain. The Void Scripture was revealing itself to be incredibly versatile.
His third and final match of the day was against a disciple from the Sky Whisper Sect. This one, a lean boy named Feng Yi, had clearly learned from the previous failures. He did not attack at all. The moment the match started, he used his wind affinity to become a blur of speed, circling Li Yao at the very edge of the arena, waiting, watching for an opening, a flaw, a moment of inattention.
Li Yao almost sighed. This was tedious. He could stand here all day. His void required minimal energy to maintain; it was a state of being, not an active technique. But he had a point to make. The Unfoundation was not just about defense.
He focused on the Second Verse, the Unseen Ripple. He stopped thinking of his void as a shield and started thinking of it as a stone he had dropped into the pond of reality. He felt the "ripples" of the world around him—the flow of air displaced by Feng Yi's frantic movement, the subtle vibrations in the sand, the hum of the arena's formation.
He felt the pattern of Feng Yi's path. It was a circle, predictable in its unpredictability.
Li Yao didn't move his feet. He simply raised a hand and pointed to an empty spot in the air to his left.
A half-second later, Feng Yi, a blur of motion, crossed that exact spot.
As he did, Li Yao exerted his will. He didn't nullify Feng Yi's energy. He nullified the friction between Feng Yi's feet and the ground, and the purchase of the air law against his body for a single, critical instant.
It was a surgical application of emptiness, so subtle it was almost invisible.
The result was anything but subtle. Feng Yi's perfectly controlled movement became a catastrophic loss of control. His feet slid out from under him as if on ice, and the wind that supported him vanished. He tumbled head over heels in a comical, graceless sprawl, skidding to a halt in a heap at the base of the arena wall, dazed and confused.
The arena was silent once more, then erupted in a wave of laughter and astonished chatter.
Li Yao lowered his hand. "The wind is swift, but it must push against something," he murmured, though only he could hear it.
The arena master declared him the winner for the third time, his expression now one of deep, serious contemplation.
Li Yao had cleared the preliminary rounds without being touched, without throwing a punch, and without revealing anything but the most superficial aspect of his power. He was a black hole in the tournament bracket, sucking all conventional strategy into his silent, unmoving center.
As he left the arena complex, the whispers followed him like a tide. The "Void Disciple" was no longer a curiosity. He was a contender. And the other geniuses of Tai Xuan World now had a new, urgent question to answer: how do you fight a man who isn't there?