The final match of the tournament was something no one had expected.
Lin Feng, the orphan with the trash soul, against Qingyun Chenwei, the third son of a secondary branch elder and the second-highest rated talent in the age group.
Qingyun Chenwei had a Storm Eagle Martial Soul at Profound Rank High Grade, and unlike Qingyun Zhao, he was not a simple power fighter.
He was technical. He had studied three different movement arts and had access to a wind-aspected technique that let him channel strength into bursts of sharp, cutting force. He was, by any objective measure, the most dangerous opponent in the bracket.
Lin Feng stood across from him in the ring and did a quiet assessment of his chances while suppressing his cultivation.
Qingyun Chenwei was calm and not overconfident like Qingyun Zhao had been, but genuinely composed. He had watched Lin Feng's previous matches with focused attention. He was not underestimating anyone.
That was actually more useful. It meant Lin Feng could judge the match more cleanly.
The elder raised his hand. The crowd in the gallery leaned forward.
"No weapons are allowed. Begin!"
The hand dropped.
Qingyun Chenwei moved immediately, faster than Qingyun Zhao by a notable margin, using the wind technique to add speed to his footwork. He crossed the distance between them in less than a second.
Lin Feng was already moving sideways, but he was not fast enough. Chen Wei adjusted mid-sprint with an agility that clearly came from the Storm Eagle Martial Soul's influence on his body, and his strike caught Lin Feng on the forearm with a burst of wind-aspected force behind it.
The force traveled up Lin Feng's arm and threw his balance off by half a step.
Half a step, but Qingyun Chenwei was already pressing the advantage.
The next forty seconds were the hardest Lin Feng had worked since he had started hunting the deeper forest. Qingyun Chenwei was fast, precise, and his attacks carried Qi-enhanced force that made purely physical defense increasingly costly.
Lin Feng took three solid hits in the exchanges, two to the torso and one to the side of his head that made his vision flash white briefly.
But he was learning and quickly improving.
Every exchange gave him new information. Qingyun Chenwei favored his right side in the follow-up after a blocked strike. His wind-Qi bursts had a recovery interval of roughly two seconds between full-power uses. His footwork relied on the same two patterns when pressing forward.
Lin Feng catalogued all of it while absorbing damage and giving ground. The gallery had grown very quiet as everyone was invested in the fight.
After a minute and a half, Lin Feng switched his approach.
Instead of giving ground, he started giving time. He began timing his retreats to coincide with Qingyun Chenwei's recovery intervals, which compressed the space between exchanges and forced Qingyun Chenwei into shorter, less powerful attacks.
Instead of trying to break Qingyun Chenwei's technique from outside, he started working inside it, taking the reduced-force hits deliberately to eliminate the distance that made the wind technique effective.
Qingyun Chenwei realized what was happening about twenty seconds too late. By the time he tried to reset his range, Lin Feng was already inside the reach of the wind technique, where body mechanics mattered more than force output.
At close range, Lin Feng's years of combat conditioning and the quiet strength gained from months of devouring became the dominant factor.
He worked Qingyun Chenwei's body systematically. Not with the full force available to him, but with the efficient precision of someone who understood anatomy and knew exactly where controlled pressure created maximum effect.
Qingyun Chenwei's responses became increasingly defensive.
Then came the moment Lin Feng had been building toward. Qingyun Chenwei, under sustained pressure, shifted his weight the way he had shifted it twice before when switching from offense to defense. It was a small tell, the kind that only appeared when someone was being pushed hard enough to fall back on instilled habits.
Lin Feng used it to his advantage.
He stepped forward and dropped his knee across Qingyun Chenwei's sternum, pinning him firmly against the stone. One hand pressed Qingyun Chenwei's shoulder down while the other controlled his arm.
The entire sequence had taken less than two seconds.
Many of the disciples watching had not even realized what had happened until Qingyun Chenwei was already pinned.
The elder overseeing the match rose slightly from his seat. His eyes swept over the position, seeing that Qingyun Chenwei had lost, he announced. "Match decided. Lin Feng wins..." His voice echoed across the arena.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The tournament grounds fell into a deep, stunned silence.
Then the gallery erupted in confusion.
"What just happened?!"
"Chen Wei lost?!!!"
"He's the second-ranked talent of our age group. How's he lost to trash-soul kid?!"
"How did that orphan beat him?!"
"What!!!... How did the trash-soul orphan win the internal tournament?"
"His martial soul wasn't even graded!"
"He defeated two main-branch disciples… and Qingyun Chenwei too?"
"How has someone with a low-level, in fact, ungraded martial soul defeated two main-branch disciples and the second-ranked talent of their age group?"
"What kind of joke is this?"
The murmurs grew louder, spreading through the watching disciples like ripples across water.
Lin Feng stood up from Qingyun Chenwei and helped him to his feet with a steady hand. Qingyun Chenwei took it without complaint, his expression that of someone who had just encountered something genuinely puzzling.
"How?" Qingyun Chenwei said quietly to himself, not to anyone in particular.
Lin Feng heard him, but didn't know what to say. So he just shrugged his shoulders.
Years of quiet conditioning and early-morning labor alongside his secret training. It was enough of an answer to be unremarkable.
Qingyun Chenwei nodded once in acknowledgment, then slowly walked away with his dignity intact. At least, he wasn't a sore loser.
Lin Feng left the tournament ring after receiving his first-place prize, a Qi Condensing Pill. He then found a quiet corner behind the supply hall where he could sit alone and let the adrenaline finish clearing from his system.
He had shown too much and he knew that. The win over Qingyun Zhao had already drawn attention. And now, the win over Qingyun Chenwei had crossed a line that polite dismissal could not easily cover.
People were going to start asking questions. Not that he cared, but it was going to be a hassle finding a reasonable excuse.