Prince Edward stepped forward, the sound of his bare feet against the obsidian tiles of the floating arena. The air trembled faintly—Herja's aura distorted the very Qi currents around her, like gravity bending light. Yet the prince's stride was measured and sure, his noble bearing untouched by fear.
He took his battle stance in an almost lazy motion, "Ken Renzo was formidable," Edward said, his voice calm but carrying across the arena. "To erase his attacks so effortlessly… you've earned my respect, Lady Ichikawa."
Herja's eyes, half-hidden behind her bridal veil, flicked to meet his. "Respect is a sweet thing," she replied softly, "but useless if you lack the strength to defend it."
There was no arrogance in her tone—only a strange, cold certainty.
Edward circulated his intent directing his qi, and with a deep exhale the floating arena transformed. A pale green mist unfurled from Prince Edwards mouth, pale green mist rolled outward in soft waves until it swallowed the entire platform in an otherworldly haze. The mist interfered with the flow of Qi, shaped by lineage and honed by centuries of royal cultivation.
"Behold," he said quietly, "The Royal Mist Domain"
The royal audience, mostly Herja's family could no longer see inside the platform. Within the mist, faint silhouettes of Herja and Prince Edward stood.
My eyes narrowed through the golden sight of the Eye of Heaven. This wasn't merely mist—it was condensed bloodline Qi, an inheritance that turned atmosphere into territory. He could feel how it subtly rewrote the laws of balance and momentum within its reach. Herja stood still within the fog, white veil stirring as the green light haloed her form. "You would alter reality itself," she murmured, her tone even, "to fight me?"
Edward smiled faintly, hands clasped behind his back. "A king," he said, "always chooses the ground on which he wins."
The mist thickened until even light seemed to move slower through it—time itself bending to the will of royalty.
The pale green fog pulsed, then coalesced around Prince Edward like the drawing of a breath. The glow intensified until his silhouette wavered and dissolved into the haze itself. A ripple of astonished murmurs spread through the watching cultivators.
I watched, peering with the Eye of Heaven, Edward's Qi signature distort—his life force no longer fixed to a single body but dispersed, diffused, everywhere at once. He had turned himself into vapor, a cloud of royal essence bound by conscious will. A perfect merger of form and formlessness.
The fog surged—an emerald cyclone collapsing inward. From its depths, dozens of spectral arms formed, each one reaching, grasping, striking. It was like being attacked by the will of a storm. But as each arm met the white aura surrounding Herja, it dimmed, shrank, and vanished. Her subtractive Qi devoured it without a sound, erasing it like chalk wiped from a slate. In the next instant, Herja raised her hand, her calm composure unbroken. "So many shapes," she murmured. "Yet none with weight."
Her palm extended, and the mist recoiled as if the entire sky had inhaled. Edward's form flickered within the vapor—half-formed, half-dispersed. He tried to reform behind her, striking with a blade made of condensed mist, but she turned and flicked a single finger through the air. The blade met her finger and there was a grinding his before the condensed blade of green mist shattered, and the fog burst apart, dissipating like a dream at dawn.
I felt the impact reverberate through the Eye of Heaven. My mind raced. How could any additive force survive in the presence of something so perfectly subtractive?
As the mist thinned, Edward reappeared, a thin line of blood trailing from his lip. His mist armor flickered and died away. "Incredible," he whispered, eyes burning with awe more than defeat. Herja lowered her hand, veil drifting in the soft aftermath. "You fought with grace, Prince," she said evenly "But you are still no match for me."
Herja's veil drifted like a living thing as she stepped closer, her motion fluid, deliberate. Prince Edward stood ready, mist swirling around him in defiance — but Herja's eyes had already traced the subtle flows of his Qi. She saw it — the twin spirals of energy coiling through his shoulders, where the Ram Chakras governed the willful extension of Qi through the arms.
She raised her right hand, flicking two fingers — barely a gesture, delicate as tapping invisible glass.
Two faint ripples shimmered through the air, almost imperceptible, before striking Edward dead-on.
"—!"
The sound he made was half-gasp, half-choke. His aura stuttered, then his arms dropped like severed puppet strings, mist peeling away from his forearms in sluggish coils. His regal poise broke; for the first time, he looked stunned.
My eyes widened as I watched the flow of Qi inside Edward's body, specifically to his arms or 'ram chakras' knot and lock. Through the Eye of Heaven, it was like seeing a pair of radiant rivers suddenly freeze into black stone.
Herja's voice came soft and cutting, "Two subtractive origami seals — your chakra paths to your arms are closed."
Prince Edward strained, the mist around him flaring as his internal Qi tried to surge past the seals. His veins lit faintly under his skin, the pressure immense — yet nothing flowed. His mist-formed gauntlets flickered, then evaporated entirely.
"You—what did you do?" he hissed, taking a step back, his breath ragged.
Herja's answer was calm, almost kind. "I blocked key points of your chakra path with subtractive origami."
She turned her palm slightly, her aura pulsing once. A subtle shockwave rippled through the floating arena, brushing my hair back. The silence that followed was electric.
My mind spun. "She's not just using subtractive Qi as a destructive field — she's folding it just like I do with my additive arrays!"
She's using subtractive origami arrays to block pathways instead of obliterating them outright. That level of precision was terrifying. To do that required perfect understanding of Qi anatomy — and a mind sharp enough to fold subtraction Qi itself into an art.
Prince Edward fell to one knee, gasping, mist leaking from his lips like fog from a cracked vessel. "I yield," he forced out, pride burning in his voice even as his body trembled.
Herja inclined her head, the faintest sign of respect. "You've fought with dignity, You're Highness."
The golden mist below stirred, catching Edward's limp form as he collapsed backward, unconscious. The Emperor's unseen voice resonated once again through the arena. "Two down." The air grew heavier, charged with the presence of something both divine and terrible. I felt the Eye of Heaven pulse within me — but it wasn't excitement now. It was warning.
Seymour, the Endless Ocean cultivator, now stepped forward, the sea itself whispering behind his calm expression.
Seymour cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders as Prince Edward's form drifted away into the golden mist below. The atmosphere in the floating arena was tense — charged with awe and dread from Herja's display of precision.
But Seymour's grin was unbothered, even roguish. "Well, that's two down," he said, stepping forward with lazy confidence. "Guess it's up to the man from the Endless Ocean Path to cool things off."
Herja turned her gaze to him, calm, unreadable. "You won't find me as yielding as the tide, Seymour." He gave a mock bow, one hand sweeping across his chest. "You might be surprised what the tide can erode, my lady. Even mountains crumble with time."
A faint smirk ghosted across her lips beneath the veil. "Then let us see whether you can erode me before you evaporate."
He chuckled. "Cute. But you should know — I'm not one to tame, either. The sea answers to no one."
Herja tilted her head slightly, the silk of her veil fluttering. "Then I and the sea have that in common. I will not be tamed by anyone."
Seymour's grin sharpened. "Then I'll settle for being the storm that tests your shore."
Without further warning, he slammed his palms together. The air shimmered — his Qi flared outwards, liquid and alive. His entire body rippled, dissolving into a sphere of living water that hovered above the marble floor. The sphere gleamed translucent blue at first — the signature hue of his base element — then began to swirl with color.
My Eye of Heaven pulsed as I watched the transformation. The Water Body Technique. But Seymour's mastery was advanced — It was a sphere of pure defensive water qi, Seymour's new form flickered every color. Each color signified a defensive attunement.
When it turned deep red, it embodied Fire resistance.
When it flashed jade, it became earth resistant.
A streak of violet shimmered for Lightning resistance.
And when it pulsed white-blue, it was pure Water essence — fluid, regenerating, self-healing.
Herja observed in silence, her hands folded behind her back.
From within the sphere, Seymour's voice echoed like sound moving through a deep cavern. "I call this little trick ''Liquid Assassin''. Took me six years to perfect. Each color, a different resistance. Let's see if your pretty fingers can flick that away." Herja's eyes narrowed slightly — not in anger, but focus. "Fascinating," she said softly. "A shield made of everything, and therefore...perhaps nothing."
The sphere undulated slightly closer to her, light bending through it like sunlight through a lens. Seymour's voice carried an amused tone. "You talk big, bride. But let's see how you handle a wave that adapts faster than you can think."
The water sphere pulsed, and in a heartbeat, it launched forward — its outer layers shifting through a spectrum of color as it struck.
Herja didn't move — not visibly. But Ash, watching through the Eye of Heaven, saw it: her Qi field rippled inward like a vortex. Her subtractive energy flared in response to contact, and the front half of Seymour's water sphere hissed and began to unravel.
Yet the rear half reformed, the liquid spinning back on itself, trying to close the gap — adapting its Qi polarity. It was a battle of additive adaptation versus absolute nullification.
The air around the arena grew humid with steam.
My pulse quickened. 'This… this is a perfect test case" I thought. "Can additive Qi evolve fast enough to survive subtraction? Or is nothing immune to the void she carries?"
The shift happened so fast it was almost imperceptible — one moment, the air shimmered with the clash of Seymour's chromatic sphere, the next, everything went still.
Then came the sound — a brittle, crystalline crackle — as frost began crawling across the marble tiles. Herja's green eyes flashed faintly beneath her veil. She raised one hand — a simple, elegant motion — and with it, her subtractive Qi expanded outward like an invisible pulse.
My Eye of Heaven flared open, and what I saw nearly made my heart skip, Herja wasn't merely nullifying Qi this time. She was reaching deeper — into matter itself. Every heat-bearing particle, every flicker of thermal energy in the arena — was gone.
She had subtracted all of the heat out of the arena.
The air itself seemed to scream as it collapsed into silence, a vacuum of warmth. The radiant glow of the floating arena dimmed to a ghostly pallor, and in an instant, frost spidered across every visible surface. The mist below solidified into glassy sheets.
I staggered back, frost instantly blooming over my form, I was still in my Langot from the swimming race, I had to circulate my Ember coil flame barrier just to stay warm. "Subtractive thermodynamics…" I muttered under my breath.
Inside the Eye of Heaven, I saw the structure of Herja's Qi siphoning kinetic heat from the air, it wasn't cold in the normal sense. It was subtractive induced absence of heat.
Beside her, Seymour's shimmering water sphere convulsed violently. Its surface darkened from cerulean to dull grey. The adaptive color-shifting slowed… then stopped. The water sphere turned to solid ice. Seymour's voice gurgled once, muffled and distant, then faded entirely as his ''Liquid Assassin'' form froze solid, sealing him in a perfect sphere of frost.
Herja lowered her hand and exhaled softly, mist curling from her lips like smoke. Seymour's frozen form rolled to a stop beside the arena's edge. She regarded it without cruelty — just quiet finality.
"Even the ocean freezes in winter," she said simply, before delivering a flying kick, that sent Seymour still frozen in a sphere of ice sailing off into the golden mist below.
My flame flickered uneasily as I stared at her through the Eye of Heaven. The patterns of her Qi now looked bottomless.
I thought, half in awe, half in alarm, "She won that match without even attacking." The question that bloomed next made my spine shiver harder than the cold: "If she can subtract heat, what else can she take away?"
The frost didn't melt. Even the air still seemed afraid to move.