The arena sand, freshly raked, felt like a stage. A thousand eyes watched the ring, where Ye Xingliu, the self-styled "Laughing Comet," stood facing his first opponent: Wang Pang. The name fit. Wang Pang was a mountain of a boy, a body refiner whose muscles had muscles. He cracked his knuckles, a sound like grinding rocks, and grinned, revealing a missing tooth.
"Pretty boy with a pretty name," Wang Pang grunted. "I'll break you in half."
From the stands, Feng Shui'er cupped her hands around her mouth. "Try not to get any mud on him, Pang! He just got clean!" The crowd tittered.
The elder signaled the start.
Wang Pang didn't bother with fancy footwork. He was a landslide in human form, a direct, brutal charge meant to end the fight in seconds.
A week ago, Ye Xingliu would have been flattened. But now, his Life Sensing flared. He didn't see a boy; he saw a symphony of straining tendons and pulsing blood. He felt the shift of weight in Wang Pang's hips a fraction of a second before the lunge, sensed the commitment in the brute's shoulders.
The Drunken Meteor stance took over.
Ye Xingliu didn't meet the charge. He flowed with it. As Wang Pang's fist whistled past his ear, Ye Xingliu dropped his weight, his leg hooking subtly around the back of Wang Pang's ankle. He didn't push or pull. He simply redirected the mountain's own momentum.
It was a trip, not a throw.
With a roar of surprise, Wang Pang sailed forward, his immense body suddenly airborne. He landed not with a dramatic crash, but with a wet, heavy splat face-first in a patch of mud left over from the previous bout.
The arena fell silent for a heartbeat, then erupted in laughter. It was too absurd, too undignified. The mighty body refiner, defeated not by a mighty blow, but by a misplaced foot and a puddle.
Wang Pang pushed himself up, sputtering mud, his face a mask of comic bewilderment. He looked at Ye Xingliu, who stood a few paces away, not even winded, a look of polite inquiry on his face.
"The match is over!" the elder declared, a faint smile playing on her own lips. "Victory to Laughing Comet!"
The crowd cheered, not for a display of overwhelming power, but for the sheer, entertaining cleverness of it. Zhao Ba, watching from his preparation area, scowled. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. The joker was supposed to be humiliated, not celebrated.
As Ye Xingliu walked back to the edge of the ring, he passed Zhao Ba.
"Lucky trick," Zhao Ba hissed. "Your next opponent won't be so easily fooled."
"I hope not," Ye Xingliu replied cheerfully. "That would be boring."
What Ye Xingliu didn't see was Zhao Ba pulling his next opponent, a lanky disciple named Liu with a reputation for sharp, precise spear work, into a shadowed alcove.
"Here," Zhao Ba muttered, pressing a low-grade spirit stone into Liu's hand. "The next round. When you face the 'Laughing Comet,' I want you to go for the legs. Break one. Make it look like an accident."
Liu's eyes widened, then narrowed with greed. He pocketed the stone and gave a sharp nod. "A leg-breaking accident. Understood."
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