The silence of the first fight still echoed in the arena as Li Fen and Gao Jin took their positions. The contrast was striking. The imposing solidity of Gao Jin against the lightness of Li Fen.
Dong Zhen gave no time for hesitation and said.
"Begin."
Gao Jin went straight to the point. He wasn’t foolish, he had seen the overwhelming advantage of having blood intent. His only chance was to crush Li Fen quickly, before blood control came into play.
With a grunt, he advanced, his black-stone warhammer swinging in a powerful arc that made the air vibrate.
"Bloody Mountain Fall!" He bellowed, channeling his blood Qi, an opaque, heavy red energy, into the hammerhead, which glowed with a sinister light.
Li Fen did not retreat. But it was as if he had slipped. His body seemed to blur for an instant, twisting in an impossible way beside the devastating hammer.
The weapon passed mere centimeters from his torso but did not touch him. Meanwhile, his right hand, with long and thin fingers, brushed like a shadow against Gao Jin’s exposed leg.
There was no visible contact. No cut, no audible impact.
But Gao Jin shuddered. A sudden chill, as if a thread of ice had been inserted into his vein, shot up his leg.
He stepped back, his face showing confusion. The attack didn’t hurt, but something was definitely wrong.
Li Fen reappeared a few meters away, his narrow eyes fixed on the point where his hand had passed. He didn’t smile.
"What did you do?" Gao Jin snarled, shaking his leg. The chilling sensation persisted.
"Just a little trick." Li Fen answered, his voice an almost inaudible whisper that nonetheless reached everyone’s ears.
"Your blood is thick and slow. Like mud. I’m just... cleaning the channels."
Gao Jin felt a cold knot in his stomach. He looked at his leg. Nothing. But then a faint discoloration began to appear beneath the skin of his ankle. An abnormal paleness, as if the blood was withdrawing from that area.
Enraged, he attacked again, his hammer strikes forming a storm of destructive red Qi.
"I’m going to crush your bones, rat."
Li Fen danced across the arena. It wasn’t ordinary evasion, his feet barely seemed to touch the ground. He didn’t use wide movements, only minimal adjustments, glides that kept him always on the edge of impact, in the shadows of Gao Jin’s attacks.
Each time the hammer missed, Li Fen’s hand, or sometimes just the fingertips, touched Gao Jin. On the arm, the side, the thigh.
Kyrian watched the fight attentively. His eyes could see what others couldn’t. Kyrian saw the blood flow of both combatants.
Li Fen, every time he dodged an attack, had his blood flow speed up wildly for a fraction of a second. It had to be some kind of movement technique.
An interesting technique that Kyrian could not use. He felt a bad premonition about forcing his body in that way.
He also saw something else. Gao Jin seemed to cultivate a technique similar to Bai Zhu’s, his veins were thicker, and so was his blood. It also reinforced his body, but at a smaller scale.
Probably because he didn’t possess an innate natural affinity with blood. His blood Qi came from cultivation alone.
And so the fight continued. After each touch from Li Fen, the paleness spread.
A patch here, another there. Gao Jin began struggling to breathe. It wasn’t exhaustion, but as if parts of his body were falling asleep, disconnecting.
His blood Qi, which depended on blood circulation to move, began to grow erratic and weak.
"You’re... stopping my blood?" Gao Jin shouted, panic tinting his voice.
"Stopping is a strong word." Li Fen murmured, reappearing to his left after avoiding another strike.
"I’m just... persuading it to stay quiet for a moment."
Kyrian could see and realized something. It seemed Li Fen needed to touch Gao Jin in order to control his blood, that was only possible because of his blood intent.
If Gao Jin also possessed intent, this wouldn’t be possible. But Kyrian noticed a detail. It seemed none of them so far were like him, who could control the blood of others directly.
Dong Zhen, from the platform, watched with renewed interest.
’The Shadow Branch has always been subtle,’ he thought.
’They don’t dominate with brute force. But with absolute precision.’
The technique Li Fen used was terribly efficient against opponents who relied on brute strength.
Gao Jin, now with half of his right arm pale and heavy, attempted a final attack. He lifted the hammer with his left arm, but the movement was slow, uncoordinated.
Li Fen saw the opening. This time, he did not touch and retreat. He advanced.
His body accelerated and blended into a shadow of crimson energy, reappearing inside Gao Jin’s unbalanced guard.
Li Fen’s right hand, now with fingers stained such a dark red it looked black, gently touched the center of Gao Jin’s chest, over the heart.
"Shadowed Rest!" Li Fen whispered.
Gao Jin froze. His eyes widened. He felt no pain. He felt emptiness.
A sudden silence where the constant beat of life should have been. His heart did not stop forever, but it was as if the command for it to beat had been momentarily severed. Like a distant whisper.
Gao Jin found himself lost in the haze that Li Fen had injected into his system.
The hammer fell from his numbed fingers, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Gao Jin remained standing for a second, a statue of confusion and terror, before his knees buckled and he collapsed to the side, unconscious, his skin marked by large patches of deadly pallor.
The fight had lasted perhaps a minute. There was no blood spraying, no bones shattered with thunderous force. Only a progressive silence, a paralysis from the inside out.
Li Fen stepped back, wiping his fingers on a dark cloth he pulled from inside his robes. His face was as impassive as at the beginning.
"Winner, Li Fen of the Shadow Branch." Announced Dong Zhen. There was a slight respect in his voice. Li Fen’s art was cruel but, used with precision and control, worthy of the court.
As the servants removed Gao Jin, the stands whispered. Li Fen’s method was frighteningly different from Bai Zhu’s brutal crushing but no less effective.
Kyrian watched, his crimson eyes capturing every tiny detail. He saw how Li Fen used blood intent not to dominate with strength, but to suggest to the opponent’s blood to create flaws.
It was a different angle of the same power. Kyrian filed the information away.
Dong Zhen looked to the remaining participants and spoke.
"Third match. Kai, of the External Missions Branch, versus Chen Lu, of the Shadow Branch."
Both descended into the arena. Kai, with his weathered face and slouching posture. Chen Lu, younger and sharper, had the narrow eyes of his branch, but lacked Li Fen’s deep coldness. He took a defensive stance, short daggers ready.
Dong Zhen had barely finished saying.
"Begin."
When Kai acted.
Without ceremony, he brought his thumb to his mouth and bit down hard, opening a deep cut.
A stream of dark, thick blood gushed out. Instead of letting it fall, he stretched his arm toward Chen Lu, as if pointing.
The line of blood shot forth. It wasn’t a continuous jet but a solid, elongated projectile, extremely fast and absolutely silent.
Kai announced nothing, his expression remained bored as his blood acted.
Chen Lu, trained by the Shadow Branch, reacted instantly. His body became faster, almost like a dark blur, attempting to dodge with a high-speed movement.
But the blood dart, controlled by Kai’s fierce and practiced intent, did not fly straight. It curved in the air, adjusting its trajectory.
Chen Lu staggered, horrified by the speed, and tried to raise a Qi barrier. A stable, opaque red wall appeared before him.
But it was useless.
At the moment before impact, the blood dart split in two. One projectile pierced the barrier as if it were cloth, dissipating it with a hiss.
The other dart, taking advantage of the opening, passed through the exposed space.
Then a wet, sharp sound emerged.
Chen Lu froze in the middle of his evasive motion. A small, almost imperceptible hole appeared in his shoulder.
It wasn’t a severe wound by itself. But Kai’s blood was not only inside him, the infection was, too.
Kai closed the hand that had launched the dart.
Inside Chen Lu, the invading blood stirred. Then it dissolved, blending into Chen Lu’s bloodstream, and guided by Kai’s intent, rushed straight toward crucial circulation points near the heart.
Chen Lu let out a muffled scream. A sharp, crippling pain, as if a needle of fire was being twisted inside his chest.
His vision darkened at the edges, he felt his legs give out, his control over his own Qi vanishing as the foreign blood sabotaged his Qi channels.
He fell to his knees, the daggers slipping from his numb fingers.
His breathing was ragged and full of panic. He tried to raise his hand, but the arm didn’t respond properly.
Kai watched without approaching.
"Surrender." He said, his voice flat and bored.