The colossal root descended like a falling mountain, a spear of condensed Yin Wood essence aimed to pierce Yan Shen through the center and pin him to the shattered stone below.
He did not evade.
The root struck.
A concussive THOOM shook the barrier. Dust and splinters of spiritual wood exploded outward in a violent halo. The platform stones beneath Yan Shen's feet cracked radially, sinking an inch from the force transfer.
For a breath, he was obscured by the debris.
When the dust cleared, he had been driven back a single step, a shallow trench scored into the stone behind his heels. The tip of the root, now shattered and smoldering with spent energy, had impacted just below his sternum. His robe was torn there, revealing not pierced flesh, but a dark, livid bruise already forming over unbroken skin. A single bead of blood welled from a shallow split in the skin, tracing a thin line down his torso.
The crowd stared, breath held.
He had taken the strike. Not on a technique. Not on a shield. On his body.
And he had barely moved.
Yan Shen looked down at the bruise, then up at Qin Shuren, who still stood elevated upon his living pedestal, a flicker of uncertainty now visible in his eyes.
"Is that all?" Yan Shen asked, his voice flat, carrying clearly in the sudden quiet.
Before Qin Shuren could reply, Yan Shen moved.
It was not the world-shattering speed he would later summon. It was a simple, devastatingly direct advance. He stepped through the shattered remains of the colossal root, fragments crumbling to dust under his tread. Two strides closed the distance to the base of Qin Shuren's elevated root.
Qin Shuren's eyes widened. He gestured sharply. The platform erupted again, a thicket of razor-edged vines and piercing roots lancing up to intercept, to bind, to flay.
Yan Shen ignored them. Thorns scraped against his skin, leaving white lines that reddened but did not bleed. A root speared toward his side; he turned his torso and let it glance off his ribcage with a dull thud, his forward momentum unbroken.
He reached the base of the central root. His right fist, held low at his side, shot upward in a short, vicious arc.
It was not a technique. It was physics. Mass, acceleration, and perfect structure.
The fist connected with the root where it met the stone, just below Qin Shuren's feet.
CRACK.
The sound was that of a centuries-old tree trunk snapping in a storm. The vibrant, Qi-infused wood splintered inward under the sheer physical force.
Before the shockwave could even travel up the root, Yan Shen was already moving. His body, coiled from the earth-shattering punch, unspooled into a second, fluid motion. The momentum of his fist became a pivot. He planted his leading foot, spun on the ball of the other, and his left fist, a compact hammer of bone and will, lashed out in a brutal, rising uppercut aimed directly at Qin Shuren's torso.
Qin Shuren's eyes, still wide with shock from the root's destruction, had no time to register the new threat. The disdain on his face vanished, replaced by a blank slate of alarm. He had no platform left. No defense.
Yan Shen's fist connected with a sickening, wet THUD just beneath Qin Shuren's ribs.
The air left Qin Shuren's lungs in a pained, explosive gasp. He didn't drop; he was lifted, his feet leaving the crumbling remnants of his root. The force hurled him backward in a shallow, helpless arc.
He flew across the short distance and slammed back-first into the shimmering curve of the arena barrier. The impact sent a visible ripple through the energy field. A dull BOOM echoed, and he crumpled at its base, sliding down to land in a heap, no longer in a controlled crouch but in a posture of pure, stunned defeat.
Yan Shen stood amidst the settling wreckage of the root, dust swirling around him. He slowly straightened, flexing both fists, the right knuckles raw from breaking the root, the left throbbing from breaking a body.
He looked at the form slumped against the barrier and stated, his voice cutting through the ringing silence, "Your foundation is rotten. All show. No substance."
The insult, delivered with such calm certainty, was the spark.
The dust from Yan Shen's counterattack had not yet fully settled, and yet already whispers raced through the crowd like sparks through dry grass.
Yan Shen should have been a bag of broken parts from the root strike. But he was not.
With a crackling sound of cartilage and will, Qin Shuren forced himself upright. The front of his elegant robe was in tatters, revealing what lay beneath: a garment of pure, liquid darkness, an iridescent second skin that drank the light and seemed to bleed oily colors. It clung to his broken frame like a parasitic leech, each thread a glistening strand of venom.
Leng Xin shot to her feet, her chair clattering backward. The color drained from her face, leaving it the pale white of a tombstone.
"That… that's the Shroud of the Silent Widow!" The words were a blade drawn against the silence. "Woven from the silk of Abyss Netherweb Spiders… A Low Spirit Rank treasure!"
Her voice, usually so controlled, held a tremor of genuine horror. "It can mute a killing blow from a Golden Core elder. He wasn't touched. Not truly. His body… it's just a puppet. The Shroud took the hit."
The crowd's murmur was the sound of a beast stirring, hungry and confused.
"A Spirit Rank treasure? For a Core Formation junior?"
"The Sect Master's favor… it's obscene!"
"So he is just a pampered prince in a suit of shadows."
On the elders' platform, Lan Xue's serene composure shattered. Her eyes, chips of winter ice, cut upward toward the Sect Master's secluded peak. Her thought was a shard of frozen fury, aimed at the heavens:
You gave him this, Sect Master? You arm your pet viper with the fangs of a dragon. What madness are you brewing?
Yan Shen exhaled through his nose, the faintest wisp of humor touching his lips.
Naïve. I should have known he'd come armored in something I've never encountered before. But so what? Treasure or no treasure… I'll break through all the same.
He stood like a statue carved from wrath and granite. His knuckles were raw, skin split and weeping blood onto the stone. His gaze, cold and absolute, remained locked on Qin Shuren.
And then, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a smile that held no warmth, only the promise of a grave.
"Do you have anything stronger?"
The words weren't a question. They were a scalpel, flaying away pretense and privilege, leaving only raw nerve.
Qin Shuren blinked, then his own smile was a bloodless slit on his pale face.
"Unfortunately no, junior brother." The words were a soft poison. Then his pupils flared, the green light in them not a glow but a sickly, necrotic pulse.
For a heartbeat, Yan Shen felt nothing. A void.
Then it hit.
Not a blow. An unmaking.
Agony detonated deep within his core, a white-hot star of pure anguish that had nothing to do with flesh. His chest cavity seized, muscles locking in a rigid spasm. A geyser of hot, coppery blood erupted from his mouth, painting the shattered stones in front of him in a violent crimson arc. His body didn't crumple; it was erased from underneath him. He crashed to one knee, the impact cracking the stone. His hand, clawed and trembling, scraped against the ground, nails tearing on the rock. It felt like a spectral beast had sunk its fangs into the very fabric of his soul and worried a piece loose. A cold, gnawing void echoed where a part of his essence had been, a phantom limb of his spirit now gone, leaving only icy absence.
The air was ripped by a collective, sharp inhalation.
"His soul! By the heavens, he's bleeding from his soul!"
"A soul art! A forbidden art!"
"He didn't even move!"
Leng Xin's face was a mask of dread. "This is an abomination. A disciple at this stage cannot wield such power… his own spirit should be devoured for it!"
On the Alliance platform, Su Cheng leaned forward, his eyes gleaming like honed razors in the dark. His whisper was the dry rustle of a snake through bones:
"The Green Willow heir feasts on souls. Interesting. But a pup cannot control a starved wolf. Will it obey him… or will it turn and eat him alive?"
Lan Xue's mind raced, a storm of cold calculation. A treasure to shield the body. An art to devour the soul. Sect Master… you are not raising an heir. You are forging a blade, and you care not if the hilt is lined with thorns.
Below, Yan Shen shuddered. Every breath was a ragged saw through broken glass. He forced his Qi to rise, the heavy, gray currents of his power surging over his skin like primordial armor. But it was thinner. Weaker. The gray light flickered, a guttering candle where a bonfire had roared. Thirty percent of his strength, gone. Swallowed by the void.
The sound that tore from his throat was not a name. It was the roar of a primordial beast, given voice.
"QIN SHUREN!!!"
He looked up. His face was a blood-spattered death mask, pale beneath the gore. But his eyes, his eyes were twin suns of incandescent fury.
He didn't step. He erupted.
For the first time, his Qi didn't just surge; it exploded outward in a concussive wave of pure force, a pressure that hammered the audience back in their seats. The very stage beneath him screamed, fracturing into a web of deep fissures.
Then he was gone.
The air itself died four times.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Four successive thunderclaps, each one a physical assault that vibrated in the teeth and bones of every disciple. He wasn't moving through air; he was obliterating the distance between them. A blur of vengeful motion trailed by the shattered ghosts of sound.
The crowd reeled as if struck.
"He's not human!"
"His body is tearing reality apart!"
"Monster! A true monster!"
Even the elders' faces were grim, etched with a reluctant, fearful respect.
Inside the barrier, Qin Shuren's smug veneer finally cracked. His eyes widened in genuine, pants-shitting terror as Yan Shen materialized before him not like a man, but like a force of nature, a falling star of vengeance, fists raised for divine retribution.
"IT ENDS NOW!" The roar was the voice of the storm itself.
Both fists, wrapped in annihilating gray light, pistoned forward. They carried the weight of mountains, the momentum of four sonic devastations, the absolute fury of a ravaged soul.
The barrier didn't just quake. It wailed. A piercing shriek of stressed energy as the dome bulged inward, light fractaling into a million desperate lines, dimming to a dying ember.
CRUNCH.
On the platforms, silence was murdered by chaos.
Leng Xin's voice was a thin wire of panic. "Yan Shen... Interesting kid, but I'm afraid he shines too bright, too quickly!"
Lan Xue's knuckles were white where she gripped her sleeve. The stone in the river does not erode. It shatters the riverbed itself. Sect Master… your game has unleashed something you cannot put back in its cage.
Su Cheng's laugh was a sharp, delighted crack of sound.
"Good! YES! To have his soul bitten and not just endure, but use the pain as a whetstone! Hah! A magnificent monster! Let him rage!"
His companions flinched back from his fervor. One muttered, voice thick with dread, "If that body reaches Nascent Soul… the very world will struggle to contain him."
The thought hung in the air, too terrifying to finish.
Qin Shuren's arms crossed in a pathetic, last-ditch defense. Rotten, grasping vines of Yin Wood Qi vomited from the stone beneath him, coiling around his arms in a feeble palisade. The Shroud of the Silent Widow shimmered, its abyssal threads constricting like a panicked heartbeat.
It meant nothing.
Yan Shen's fists were judgment. They tore through the rotten wood like it was mist, shredding it to black pulp, and landed home.
The sound was not a boom. It was the sound of a mountain being struck by another mountain. A deep, visceral CRUMP of utter annihilation that beat against the ears and the soul.
The barrier flared one last, violent time, and then the light died completely for a fraction of a second, the shockwave bleeding out and whipping the robes of the front-row disciples like a hurricane wind.
In the heart of the destruction, Qin Shuren's world ended. The impact was a universe of pain. Blood and spittle exploded from his mouth in a spray. The sound of his ribs and sternum collapsing further was a wet, sickening crunch, audible even over the din. He was hurled backward, a broken doll, and smashed into the barrier wall with such force that the crystalline surface cracked, a spiderweb of fractures spreading out from the point of impact.
The Shroud of the Silent Widow flickered and dimmed, its oily sheen turning dull and flat, overburdened to the point of failure.
Yan Shen remained. Chest heaving, steam rising from his blood-soaked fists, his form a stark silhouette against the settling dust of the ruin he had made.
The ground between them was gone. Only a crater remained, dusted with pulverized stone and the dark, ichorous splatter of Qin Shuren's blood.
Silence.
A thick, choking silence, heavy with the smell of ozone, blood, and shattered stone.
Su Cheng's eyes were wide, pupils dilated with a hunter's ecstasy.
Yes. Break him. Break it all.
Lan Xue exhaled, a slow, shaky breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. Her gaze was once again drawn to the highest peak, her question now a silent scream.
And in the arena's heart, Qin Shuren slumped in a broken heap against the cracked barrier, his chest a ruined, concave mess, each wet, gurgling breath a fight he was losing. His precious treasure was a dull, dead thing against his skin. Across from him, Yan Shen stood, a god of war born from pain, his aura a turbulent, wounded storm, but his will an unbreakable diamond, burning in the devastation.