The dust and the copper tang of blood hung heavy in the air as Shen Haoran turned his head slowly, his golden gaze falling upon the final figure remaining on the white sands.
Shen Xinye stood at the periphery, her slender fingers white-knuckled as they gripped the hilt of the white blade.
She was wary, her body coiled like a high-tension wire, her breathing shallow and calculated.
She was the Fourth Crown, the woman who had spent a decade refining her intent into a weapon of surgical precision, but in the shadow of this man, she felt as though she were standing before a sheer cliff face that reached into the infinite.
But...
So what!?
She is also a genius!
In a flicker of movement that blurred the very light of the arena, she vanished.
There was no sound, no displacement of air—only a sudden, lethal presence manifesting directly behind Haoran's blind spot.
