Wu Changkong gave his wooden sword a casual flick, tapping through every ice spike in turn and dissolving them all with ease.
In the same motion, he used the wooden sword to shatter the slash of light that Xie Xie had driven out — his spirit ring activated, Light Dragon Dagger in hand.
Tang Wulin then hurled his Thousand-Forged tungsten steel hammer again, this time sweeping horizontally with both heads at once, covering a far wider arc.
Wu Changkong gave a slight shake of his head. He detonated his spirit power in a sudden burst, wrenched himself free from the ground, and leapt clear of the encirclement in a single bound. All three attacks hit nothing.
The entire bout had been completely one-sided.
They had watched Wu Changkong fight Arthur before — but experiencing it firsthand was something else entirely. The pressure he imposed far exceeded anything they had imagined. The longer the fight went, the more helpless they felt.
"Stop." After landing, Wu Changkong called the session to a halt, summoned all three over, and ran through a brief, pointed critique of their coordination failures.
Then he turned to Arthur. "Arthur — how about a round with them?"
Wu Changkong wanted to observe a fight between them and Arthur from the sidelines. It would show him more than any drill could. He knew Arthur's style intimately — every strike aimed at the opponent's weak point, with an almost uncanny precision.
Even Wu Changkong himself, as one of the foremost Spirit Emperors around, always came away from their sparring sessions having found some new flaw in himself.
"Fine." Arthur walked forward without bothering to warm up. It wasn't going to take long.
Xie Xie felt a quiet surge of anticipation. One-on-one, he was no match for Arthur — but this was three against one. Whatever else Arthur might be, he was still only a Spirit Elder. The advantage was theirs.
Tang Wulin was different from Xie Xie. He was still turning over the fight against Wu Changkong and the critique in his mind, resolving not to repeat the same mistakes this time.
Gu Yue watched with open curiosity. How would Arthur handle all three of them?
Arthur took the wooden sword from Wu Changkong and swung it a few times to get the feel. "Ready? Same as Teacher Wu — I won't be using my martial soul or spirit skills."
"You're sure?" Xie Xie couldn't believe it. Was Arthur really that brazen? Going up against all three of them without even his martial soul?
He frowned. He could admit Arthur was strong — during regular training, Arthur traded blows with Wu Changkong on something close to even footing — but that didn't mean Arthur could do what the teacher did and swat them aside with ease.
"Begin!" Wu Changkong's cold voice cut through from the side.
Whoosh.
In an instant, Arthur launched himself straight at Xie Xie, his speed peaking in a fraction of a second.
Xie Xie's expression flickered in surprise, though inwardly he wasn't worried. He reversed his grip on the Light Dragon Dagger and kept the Shadow Dragon Dagger ready to deploy at any moment. He was an agility-attack type battle spirit master — Arthur coming for him first was picking the wrong target.
He locked his eyes on the incoming figure — then startled. He couldn't see Arthur clearly anymore.
Arthur's silhouette had blurred into layered afterimages. Xie Xie's speed bursts and footwork were genuinely impressive, but they weren't enough. The moment Arthur activated the Instant-Light movement technique, Xie Xie's defeat had already been written.
The figure ahead grew more and more indistinct, the cascading afterimages scrambling Xie Xie's sense of where to block. Even landing a clean parry became an impossibility.
Before Xie Xie could react, Arthur had slipped past both his blades like a ghost, the wooden sword grazing lightly across his throat.
It all happened in the span of a lightning strike. Tang Wulin's Blue Silver Grass came surging out — a beat too late.
Arthur shifted his footing by a hair, slipping around the entangling vines with exact economy. At the same time, he turned sideways and avoided the sweeping horizontal blows of Tang Wulin's Thousand-Forged tungsten steel hammer.
A subtle flick of the wrist — the wooden sword trembled in his grip, its tip landing precisely against the side of the hammer head.
A gentle, redirecting force bled away the hammer's momentum. Tang Wulin's wrist went slightly numb.
Then a second tap — and this time a sharp, explosive force followed through, soft and hard woven together in a single motion. Tang Wulin's grip involuntarily loosened, and the Thousand-Forged tungsten steel hammer crashed to the ground. He stood there, stunned.
Finally, Arthur turned and moved through the web of interwoven elemental forces Gu Yue had thrown up around him, coming to rest with the wooden sword settled across her shoulder.
In the space of a few breaths, all three had been defeated by nothing but Arthur's footwork and his reading of the moment.
Xie Xie stood frozen, cold sweat beading at his temple, still feeling the phantom trace of the wooden sword across his neck.
Tang Wulin turned over the sensation of that force — yielding first, then steel — and his eyes were full of shock.
Gu Yue withdrew her elemental power and fixed her gaze on Arthur, thoughtful.
It had ended even faster than the fight with Wu Changkong. Against the teacher, they had at least exchanged several more exchanges. Against Arthur, the defeat had been this total.
That had a great deal to do with how Arthur fought.
Xie Xie couldn't match his speed, so Instant-Light ended him instantly.
Tang Wulin couldn't match his strength, so the Meteor technique ground him down without mercy.
As for Gu Yue — there was nothing to say.
"Good." Wu Changkong's cold voice carried across the yard. Just as he'd expected. Arthur's one-strike-fatal approach had laid bare even more problems for him to see. "Rest a moment. Then we continue."
By the time the session was over, Tang Wulin and Xie Xie were wrung out completely — mind and body both put through the wringer. Gu Yue was in comparatively better shape, but she blinked her large eyes, touched a fingertip to her lips, and let herself list toward Arthur.
"Ahh, I'm so tired," she said. "Arthur, help me back, will you?"
Could you make it any more obvious?
Arthur shook his head with a helpless sigh and reached out to steady her as they left.
Once everyone had gone, Wu Changkong tidied up and locked down the training ground. After a full day's work, he'd concluded that the natural talent of these three was somewhat higher than he'd initially given them credit for.
Starting the next day, Tang Wulin was excused from physical conditioning drills. The reason was straightforward: in Wu Changkong's estimation, ordinary conditioning was of limited use to someone as freakishly gifted as Tang Wulin. Better to spend that time on other forms of cultivation — refining his control over Blue Silver Grass, for instance.
The training days continued, one after another.
Then one day, after his daily sparring bout with Wu Changkong, Arthur had just set off toward the dormitory when he spotted a figure on the bench along the tree-lined path.
A broad-shouldered, middle-aged man sat there in complete stillness.
Somehow, the shadows beneath the trees nearby seemed a shade brighter for his presence.
"Uncle, what are you doing here?" Arthur settled onto the bench beside him, genuinely puzzled.
Since enrolling at East Sea Academy, he'd seen very little of his uncle.
Once Arthur had built a solid foundation and could make steady progress on his own, Su Wuyan had taken to traveling frequently — moving between the cities surrounding East Sea, hunting for traces of evil spirit masters. He never stayed away too long, and he never pushed any investigation to the point of all-out pursuit.
For now, the most important thing was Arthur's growth. He was waiting for this boy — a talent unlike any he had ever encountered — to come into his own.
"Arthur, my boy." Su Wuyan smiled, easy and warm. "How have things been lately?"
The little cowlick on top of Arthur's head stood straight up. Without a moment's hesitation, he rose from the bench and started walking away.
He knew this old man far too well. That particular smile never meant anything good.
"Hey now, don't rush off. Your uncle waited here a good long while for you." Su Wuyan's silhouette blinked into place at Arthur's side, keeping pace.
"Just say it. What is it."
"Arthur, my boy — if you ran into an evil spirit master at the Spirit King level, what would you do?"
Arthur's stride broke. He turned his head, interest plain on his face. "Are you saying...?"
"I tracked down an evil spirit master in the city next door. My first thought was to take care of him on the spot." Su Wuyan's eyes held a gleam of anticipation. "But then I noticed — he's only a Spirit King. Evil spirit masters are formidable for their level, yes, but compared to the best conventional Spirit Kings out there, this one doesn't even have battle armor yet."
"Want to try your hand?"
---
[Author Note]
East Sea Academy is getting dull — time to open a side quest.