The brief pause shattered.
Gen launched himself at Yan, not with brute force, but with a relentless, pressing aggression he'd never needed before. He became a barrage. A jab to the face forced Yan's head back. A low kick to the knee made Yan shift his weight. Gen pressed the advantage, a flurry of elbow strikes and driving palms—each blow aimed not to kill, but to overwhelm, to force a mistake, to give Yan no room to set his precise, ruby-tipped counters. Yan defended flawlessly, a fortress of calm technique, but for the first time, he was taking steps backward, his serene expression tightening into focused concentration.
The crowd's attention, however, was slowly stolen by the other duel.
Yuan was becoming a catastrophe. "Pathetic, Anchor!" he spat, a blur of motion. "You're just a weight! A drag on everyone!" His laughter was cruel. "You'll always be in the shadow of the 'Young Master', won't you? Even when he falls, you'll just be the weak spot he left behind!"
Each word was a knife, twisting in the wound of Liang's deepest fear. He didn't speak, didn't retort. He evaded. A razor-edged wind-kick grazed his chin, drawing a line of blood. He rolled under a spinning back-fist that cracked the air where his head had been.
From the sidelines, Madame Su watched, her face a mask, but her mind raced. "Yuan's technique," she murmured to Li Fen. "He's not just using wind to move. He's compressing and spinning the air around his limbs into a Scalding Tornado. The friction alone could tear flesh. The faster it spins, the faster and deadlier he becomes."
Li Fen nodded, her cool eyes tracking the blurs. "It's a feedback loop. After two minutes at full acceleration, even I would struggle to track him. Your disciple needs to end this before Yuan reaches terminal velocity. He cannot win a battle of attrition."
"He knows," Madame Su said softly. "He has always known his own weaknesses better than anyone."
On the stage, Liang's world was narrowing to the screaming wind and the silver tracery of energy he saw with his Master's Eyes. He could see the whirlpools of air gathering around Yuan's feet and fists, could predict the general vector of the next attack—but seeing it and dodging it were different things.
THUD! A spinning heel kick, sheathed in cutting wind, slammed into his ribs. Liang gasped, stumbling back, blood blooming on his lips.
"Just stay down!" Yuan roared, a tornado-fist aiming for Liang's temple.
Liang ducked, the wind tearing at his hair. He tried a counter, a desperate push of force from the Kalash. Yuan swatted it aside like a gnat and swept Liang's legs out from under him with a low, wind-enhanced crescent kick.
Liang fell backwards, the hard stone rushing up. Yuan was already in the air above him, a devastating axe-kick descending like a guillotine of air.
No.
The thought was cold,clear.
Not like this. Not just a casualty in Gen's story.
With a raw shout, Liang thrust both hands up. He didn't summon an element. He summoned the Kalash itself—a shimmering, semi-transparent outline of the sacred vessel materialized above him like a shield.
BOOOOM!
Yuan's axe-kick shattered the construct into a million shards of light, but the impact was diffused, buying Liang a fraction of a second. He rolled aside, the kick cratering the stone where his head had been.
As he came to his feet, panting, something clicked. He'd seen it—the brief, almost imperceptible flicker in Yuan's wind pattern as he recovered from the shattered Kalash. A microsecond of instability.
Yuan frowned, feeling the shift. "A lucky block. Let's see you do it again!" He charged, a human tempest.
This time, Liang moved. Not a desperate scramble, but a fluid sidestep, his body slipping through a gap in the raging wind currents he could now see. The crowd, which had been writing him off, gasped. The dodge was clean, almost elegant.
From the corner of his eye, even Yan and Gen broke their furious exchange for a split second, noting the change.
Madame Su allowed herself a small, proud smile. "Well played."
Li Fen's brows rose slightly. "He adapted."
The awe directed at him, the shocked silence, was like fuel on the fire of Yuan's pride. Rage replaced amusement. "ENOUGH!" he bellowed. He planted his feet wide, and the air around him exploded into a screaming vortex. The Scalding Tornado reached its peak, spinning so fast it began to pull in loose dust and pebbles, generating violent static sparks that crackled blue-white around his form. The stage groaned under the pressure.
"Final Form: Thundering Gale Kicks!"
He vanished. Not in a blur, but in a streak of crackling blue light, too fast for normal eyes to follow.
In Liang's silver-enhanced sight, the world became a single, terrifying line of condensed lightning and fury aimed at his heart. He knew, with absolute certainty, he could not dodge it. Despair, cold and final, washed over him.
Weak. Always the weak one. The anchor. The shadow.
Then, a hotter, brighter fire ignited beneath it.
No. Not today. Today, I stand with him. Not behind him.
As the crackling blue streak filled his vision, Liang did the only thing he could. He crossed his arms in a last, desperate Reinforced block over his chest.
CRACK-BOOM!
The Thundering Gale Kick connected. The sound was the splintering of bone—Liang's left forearm snapping under the impact. White-hot agony seared through him. But he didn't cry out. He gritted his teeth, anchoring his feet to the stone.
And with his free, right hand, he didn't strike. He opened his palm toward the storm that was Yuan.
From the deepest, most desperate core of his being, from the abyssal layer of the Kalash he had only just sensed, he didn't summon. He released.
It wasn't blue lightning. It was white.
A bolt of pure, silent, annihilating light erupted from his palm. It didn't crackle; it screamed a high, tearing sound that hurt the ears. It coiled around Liang's broken arm like a protective, furious dragon made of stark daylight, and then lanced forward.
Yuan's eyes, inches away, widened in primal shock. He crossed his own arms, his Scalding Tornado spinning into a frantic defensive vortex.
The white lightning met the spinning wind.
For a heartbeat, there was a terrible, sucking silence as the two forces consumed each other.
Then, the white won.
It didn't overpower. It unmade. It dissolved the tornado into harmless, dissipating air and punched through Yuan's guard with the quiet finality of a star's death.
The impact made no sound. Yuan simply… left. He was there, and then he was a ragdoll hurtling backward so fast he was a blur until he slammed into the barrier at the edge of the stage with a sickening thud and slid down, unconscious.
The screaming of the white lightning faded into a ringing silence.
The entire arena was frozen. Jaws hung open. Even Yan and Gen had stopped, staring at the smoking, broken-armed boy standing alone in the center of the stage, tendrils of white energy still flickering around his fist.
Only one sound broke the quiet.
Gen let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. Not surprised. Triumphant. "That's my buddy!" he grinned, a fierce, sun-bright smile. He turned his full attention back to Yan, all traces of playfulness gone, replaced by a deadly, focused seriousness. "Now," he said, his voice cold and clear. "Your turn."