The silver thread—the Life-Hazard Line—hummed with a vile intent. It was a constant, psychic tug, a compass needle in his opponent's mind always pointing toward Gen's bound ankle. It forced him into a frantic, defensive shuffle. He could not create distance. Every step back was met with a forward lunge, the tether keeping them locked in a cruel, shrinking orbit.
The swordsman, sensing the chokehold, abandoned any pretense of swordsmanship. He became a whirlwind of crude, hacking aggression. He swung his blade in wide, desperate arcs, his feet planted too heavily, his shoulders tense. He relied entirely on the invisible pull of the tether to guide his strikes and on the sharpened edge of his **Shidow** to do the work his poor form could not. He was a butcher with an enchanted cleaver.
A wild, overhand chop came down. Gen raised his bamboo rod in a diagonal parry. ***THWACK!*** The sharpened edge bit into the hardened wood, sending a shower of green splinters into the air. Gen's arms shuddered with the impact. Before he could recover, the man reversed his grip and thrust straight forward, the point aimed at Gen's throat. Gen jerked his head to the side. The blade passed so close it parted the air by his ear with a chilling *hiss*.
Seeing an opening, the man pivoted on his lead foot and unleashed a horizontal slash at waist level. Gen couldn't jump; the tether would yank his leg and ruin his balance. Instead, he slapped his free hand down, compressing the air beneath his palm into a solid disc. He pushed off it, his body sliding sideways across the smooth floor as if on ice. The blade whistled past, missing his ribs by a finger's breadth.
But the silver thread glowed. The man's eyes, following its pull, saw Gen's evasive path. He adjusted his swing in mid-motion, a crude, powerful correction that brought the blade arcing back up in a vicious uppercut. Gen saw it coming, a cold line of death rising from below. He had nowhere to go. He crossed his bamboo rod in front of his body, bracing.
The sharpened steel, shearing through the space where his shoulder had been, instead caught the raised bamboo and rode up its length. The force deflected the blow, but not entirely. The edge sliced a clean, searing line down the length of his left forearm, from elbow to wrist.
White-hot pain lanced up his nerves. Blood welled instantly, a bright red stream that dripped onto the flawless white floor in stark, rhythmic drops. Gen hissed through clenched teeth, stumbling back three paces, his right hand clamping over the wound. It burned with a cold, invasive fire—the residual energy of the Shidow sharpening eating into the gash.
Across the chamber, the man breathed heavily, his chest heaving. A smug, relieved smirk returned to his face. "See?" he panted. "You can dance all you like. The line finds you. The edge cuts you."
Gen looked from his bleeding arm to the man's face. A slow, fierce smile spread across his own lips, utterly devoid of mirth. It was the smile of a challenge accepted, of pain transforming into fuel. "Good," Gen said, his voice rough but clear. "I was starting to think this would be boring."
The man's smirk vanished, replaced by a flush of anger. "You need to learn when you're beaten! You can't always win! That's just how the world works! Your father's corpse in the dirt should have taught you that much!"
The words didn't just land; they detonated.
A white-hot fury, purer and more volatile than the pain in his arm, erupted in Gen's chest. It wasn't defensive grief. It was rage at the simplification, at the smug lesson carved from his father's sacrifice. It was the same, choking fury he'd felt facing Jun in the mountain hollow—the fury of being told his limits by someone who used tricks and stolen power to cover a hollow core.
Gen's **Shidow** burst out from him uncontrolled, a visible pulse of distorted air that rippled outward, making the silver tether on his ankle flicker and chime. "You think that's the lesson?" Gen's voice dropped, low and seething. He took a step forward, the tether stretching taut. "That because you can't control the sky falling, you just lie down and let it crush you?" Another step. "He knew he couldn't control the Divine General. But he could control his own actions. He could choose to shatter a Damocles and buy this wretched world five more years to *fight*. That's the difference between giving up and making a stand, you ignorant *worm*."
The memory was a ghost in the room. Jun, floating on the water, manipulating the current, mocking his direct strength. *Movement spells are easier with manipulation!* This swordsman was the same—all clever energy, no true foundation. A technique without a heart.
The swordsman's face darkened with pure rage. "Fine! Make your stand right here, then!" He planted his feet wide, gripping his sword with both hands. He began to draw in energy, a deep, pulling breath that made the air in the cylinder grow heavy. This was not for sharpening. This was for raw, annihilating force. The air around his blade warped violently, gathering into a visible, swirling vortex of grey and silver force—a single, finishing slash that the Life-Hazard Line would guide unerringly home. "It ends now!"
Gen didn't wait for the charge. He closed his eyes for one fleeting, centering breath. The world narrowed to the flow of his Qi, to the **Shidow** he could command. He couldn't harden his skin. He couldn't out-muscle the gathering storm. But he could listen. He could feel the currents.
He began to pull, not with force, but with a gentle, persistent will. He gathered the ambient Qi of the chamber—the disturbed air from their clash, the spent energy of their techniques, the very warmth of their bodies—and drew it toward himself. He didn't condense it into a wall. He spun it, weaving it into a thin, shimmering sphere of gently moving air that surrounded him, a personal weather system three paces across. Within this sphere, every disturbance became a ripple, every intention a shift in the breeze. The pull of the tether was a distinct current tugging at his ankle. The gathering menace of the charged blade was a thickening, greasy pressure on one side. It was a map of his opponent's will, written in the language of the air itself.
The swordsman finished his charge. His blade glowed with a dangerous, unstable grey light. "A little breeze won't save you!" he roared, and surged forward, his basic Jingdao reinforcement glowing dully around him like worn bronze. He plunged into the edge of Gen's air-sphere.
To the spectators in the great hall, it looked like madness or surrender. The wounded Gen had dropped his bamboo rod. He stood empty-handed within his faint, shimmering bubble as a vortex of destruction barreled toward him.
Inside the sphere, the world changed. Gen's eyes snapped open. He didn't see a man; he saw a constellation of pressures entering his domain. He saw the shift of weight to the back foot, the tightening of the shoulder, the slight curve in the blade's path dictated by the tugging silver thread.
The Mantis Hammer was not a move of strength. It was a geometry of motion, a way of channeling all potential into a single, precise point of release.
Gen's hands came up, his fingers curling into the unique, poised form—the praying mantis ready to strike. His body, guided by the perfect information of his air-sphere, moved not with speed, but with an impossible, fluid economy.
The swordsman crossed the threshold of the sphere, his murderous swing descending. Gen didn't jump. He *let* the tether pull his leg, using the external force to pivot his entire body sideways in a spin so tight it seemed his feet never left the ground. The monstrous grey slash seared past, so close it parted the fabric of his trousers and left a burning line on his thigh. He didn't flinch.
The man was over-committed, his massive swing leaving his center wide open for a single, glaring instant.
In that instant, Gen struck.
His mantis-form hand didn't lunge. It *flickered*.
To the naked eye in the hall, it was a single, blurry backhand strike to the man's center mass. But Prince Jou Si, watching, saw the truth, and his polite smile froze. "Not one blow," he murmured, almost to himself. "Ten. In the space between one breath and the next."
What Gen's Shidow had gathered, his Mantis Hammer released. He didn't punch through the man's Jingdao reinforcement. He vibrated his hand at a speed that pure muscle could never achieve, each micro-strike guided by the air-sphere to land on the exact same point—the solar plexus. It was like tapping a crystal with precise, rapid rhythm until it sang… and then shattered.
***PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PA-CRACK!***
The sound was a rapid, sickening series of impacts culminating in a final, wet snap. The swordsman's eyes bulged, not with pain, but with sheer, uncomprehending shock. All air left him in a silent gasp. The glowing blade fell from nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor, the Life-Hazard Line dissolving into wisps of silver smoke. He was lifted off his feet and hurled backwards, crumpling against the curved wall in an unconscious heap before sliding down into a motionless pile.
Silence in the cylinder.
Then, an uproar in the great hall.
"What was that?"
"He didn't even use his weapon!"
"His hand moved… I couldn't even see it!"
"He shattered reinforced ribs with his *bare hand*? How? His Jingdao is sealed!"
Prince Jou Si turned to Madame Su, his earlier calculation replaced by genuine, wary reassessment. "He doesn't need deep Jingdao for that," he said, his voice low. "The strength isn't in the muscle. It is in the speed. The momentum." He looked back at the screen where Gen stood, panting, clutching his bleeding arm over the fallen foe. "To most, it looked like a single retraction of his arm. But it was a cascade of blows, each landing on the same weak point in his opponent's crude shell. He didn't break a wall. He found the cracked brick and tapped it until it turned to dust." A faint, appreciative sigh escaped him. "A most… economical brutality."
In the chamber, Gen looked at his unconscious opponent, then at his own bloodied hands—one cut deep, the other aching from the force it had just unleashed. He flexed the fingers of his striking hand, feeling the echo of the vibration in his bones. The Mantis Hammer wasn't just a technique. It was a new language for a body that could no longer speak in thunder. One he was just beginning to truly understand.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, the roar of the distant crowd nothing but a faint buzz against the quiet settling in his bones. The first gate was passed.