Chapter 252 — The Number One Remains

The afternoon sun hung high in the pale sky, washing the central arena in a harsh, white-hot glare. The usual rows of black-iron weights, stone training posts, and wooden dummies had been cleared from the perimeter, leaving only the massive square platform of reinforced granite exposed beneath the sun.

Surrounding the stage, the tiered stone stands groaned under the weight of thousands of disciples. Outer disciples jostled for standing room along the upper walkways; Inner disciples lined the middle tiers with arms folded tight over their chests; and Core Disciples occupied the front row benches, their eyes fixed on the empty stage. The ambient noise of the crowd—a low, electric hum of thousands of voices murmuring at once—vibrated through the stone flags.

Up in the elevated grandstand, the elders sat in broad redwood armchairs beneath the shade of the pavilion eaves.

A sudden hush swept outward from the front rows.

Two shadows descended from the upper airspace, cutting through the bright afternoon glare.

THUD.

Wang Tian and Luo Chen touched down thirty paces apart. The impact of their boots sent fine ripples of chalky stone dust outward across the flags. The space between them stretched instantly taut, the playful noise of the stands dropping into an expectant, breathless stillness.

Luo Chen stood with his left hand resting lightly on his scabbard. His dark hair was tied back with a simple cord, a few loose strands fluttering across his brow in the mountain breeze. With a slow, deliberate movement, his right hand closed around the longsword at his hip—its hilt wrapped in faded pink silk.

SHING—

The clean, metallic draw hissed like ice across stone. Luo Chen leveled the straight double-edged blade forward, the polished steel catching the sun to cast a sharp azure gleam across the floorboards. The tip hovered dead-level with Wang Tian’s collarbone.

A cold, razor-thin smirk pulled at the corner of Luo Chen’s mouth. "Arrogant Emperor," his voice carried through the quiet air, crisp and unhurried. "I challenge you for the number one seat in this sect."

Across the flagstones, Wang Tian’s broad chest swelled. He threw his head back, letting out a deep, booming laugh that rattled against the stone balustrades.

"Loud as ever, Luo Chen," Wang Tian sneered, his eyes gleaming with raw amusement. "It’s been far too long since I put that mouth of yours back in its place."

Wang Tian reached his right hand over his right shoulder. His fingers clamped around the purple-wrapped hilt of the longsword strapped across his back.

With one fluid, practiced sweep, he pulled the weapon free. The long steel blade whistled as it whipped through the air, carving a shallow, humming arc before Wang Tian rested the point casually against the stone flags, chipping the edge of a granite tile.

Up in the grandstand, Elder Wan raised his right hand. A yellow talisman slip pinned between his fingers flared into bright amber embers.

HUMMM—

From the four corners of the granite stage, towering beams of light shot upward. Interlocking hexagonal patterns of translucent spiritual energy rose from the perimeter, sealing the platform inside a heavy, reinforced dome of protective qi.

Elder Hua leaned back into the curve of her chair, a faint, wry smile touching her lips. "Those two... they aren’t going to leave a single unbroken flagstone on that stage by the time they finish."

Lin Shu smiled quietly, her fingers loosely folded in her lap, while Elder Liya rested her chin on her knuckles, watching the two figures below.

"Let them break it," Elder Liya said softly. "They’ve been itching to draw steel since the ranking scrolls went up."

On the battle stage, the heat in the air began to warp.

Wang Tian took a single, heavy step forward. A dense, crackling aura of royal purple qi seeped from his skin, coiling around his arms and shoulders like thick, living serpents.

Across from him, Luo Chen’s breath slowed. The azure energy beneath his boots burst into a pale, freezing flame, frosting the surface of the granite tiles in a widening circle around his heels.

WHOOSH—

The space where they stood vanished into two empty blurs.

CLANG! CLANG! BOOM!

The eye could barely follow the collision. Halfway across the stage, sparks erupted like blinding firecrackers. Steel crashed against steel with deafening, rhythmic violence—high-pitched rings of vibrating metal punctuated by concussive bursts of compressed air.

Wang Tian’s purple longsword hammered down in a brutal overhead chop; Luo Chen’s pink-hilted blade slid along the edge with a screech of shearing iron, deflecting the blow an inch wide before stabbing forward toward Wang Tian’s ribs. Wang Tian twisted his torso, driving his pommel down to parry the point, the kinetic rebound detonating in a shockwave that cracked the stone beneath their boots.

SKRRRRT!

Both men rebounded violently. Their boots skidded thirty feet apart, carving two deep, smoking furrows into the granite before coming to a dead halt.

Between them, the stage flags were scarred with dozens of jagged white scratches and fractured stone divots.

In the stands, disciples gripped the railings, their knuckles white.

"Did you see that parry?" an inner disciple breathed, his eyes wide. "He redirected the entire downward momentum in half an inch of space!"

Wang Tian bared his teeth in a wild grin. Without giving Luo Chen a breath to reset, he lunged forward, his boots shattering the stone beneath his push-off. He brought his longsword across his chest, swinging with the full rotation of his hips.

A roaring crescent of royal purple sword-qi detached from the blade, screaming across the flags like a scythe.

Luo Chen’s gaze remained dead-calm. He shifted his weight to his back foot, spinning the pink hilt within his palm to bring the blade down in an immaculate vertical cleave.

SHING!

A razor-thin crescent of pale azure qi sliced cleanly through the air.

The two slashes collided dead-center.

BOOM!

Spiritual light detonated in a churning cloud of purple and blue fire, scorching the stone and blowing the shockwave straight into the protective barrier.

Before the light even flickered, Luo Chen broke through the smoke. His sword was already thrusting forward in a vicious diagonal pierce.

Wang Tian surged upward to meet him, his purple hilt sweeping high.

CLANG!

The blades locked at the crossguards.

White-hot sparks sprayed into their faces. Inches apart, their eyes bored into each other, the raw pressure of their competing spiritual auras grinding together like two millstones.

"Backing down already, you loudmouthed dog?!" Wang Tian roared, his breath hot against Luo Chen’s cheek as he shoved his weight into the purple hilt.

Luo Chen’s jaw tightened, the azure flames along his arms flaring with freezing intensity against the purple qi. "Scared already, you arrogant fool?!"

BOOM!

A concussive blast of spiritual force detonated directly between their chests.

The explosion hurled both men backward through the air.

Neither hit the stage.

Mid-flight, both cultivators kicked off the empty air, using the recoil to launch themselves back into the fray. Their figures dissolved into two spiraling beams of blinding light—one deep royal purple, the other freezing azure—tangling and crashing through the upper dome like two dragons tearing through the sky.

BANG! CRACK! SHATTER!

They ricocheted off the glowing barrier walls, plunged back down to strike the floor, and clashed in mid-air in relentless, dizzying succession. Slabs of granite were torn from the floorboards by the sheer updraft, ground to gravel against the barrier before raining down in dust.

In the grandstand, Elder An Ning sat motionless, his arms tucked inside his wide sleeves. His dark pupils tracked the high-speed flashes of purple and blue across the dome without a single blink.

"Unyielding on both ends," An Ning murmured, his deep voice cutting through the noise. "Neither yields a single inch of ground. They have earned their place at the top of the disciple ranks."

High above the center of the arena, the two streaks of light collided one final time and froze.

Wang Tian and Luo Chen materialized face-to-face, hovering ten feet above the shattered stage. Blood leaked from the corners of their mouths, their sect tunics torn and singed, yet their eyes burned with manic, unbridled battle hunger.

At the exact same instant, their longswords swung out to the side, and both men pulled their left fists tight against their ribs.

Blinding golden qi erupted over their knuckles. The spiritual energy congealed with terrifying density, manifesting the roaring, spectral visage of an ancient golden dragon head over each of their fists.

"DRAGON FIST!"

Both voices thundered as one.

Their fists punched forward with everything they had left.

ROOOOOAAAR!

Two colossal golden dragons of pure condensed spiritual force tore from their knuckles, colliding head-on in the dead center of the stage.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A blinding sphere of golden, destructive energy expanded outward, swallowing the entire stage in a deafening tempest of light and heat.

The hexagonal barrier strained to its absolute limit, the translucent walls groaning audibly under the raw concussive blast.

Elder Wan’s hand snapped up, channeling a fresh stream of qi into the anchor talisman. "Hold the array!"

CRACK... CRACK...

Fine hairline fractures rippled across the outer barrier panels before the golden shockwave finally exhausted its momentum.

Slowly, the blinding radiance thinned into swirling veils of grey dust and scorching heat.

The once-pristine granite platform was completely unrecognizable. The entire center had caved inward, leaving a jagged, smoking crater littered with pulverized stone and glowing embers.

On the left rim of the crater, Wang Tian stood hunched over, his chest heaving with ragged, wet breaths. His longsword was driven point-first into a cracked slab, his bloody knuckles white as he leaned his full weight onto the purple hilt to keep his trembling knees from buckling.

Ten paces across from him, Luo Chen rested on one knee among the rubble, his left palm braced flat against the hot rock. Dark blood dripped steadily from his chin, staining the torn collar of his tunic, while his right hand held the pink-hilted sword, its tip trembling slightly against the stone.

Through the drifting ash, their gazes locked once more.

Across the packed stands, thousands of disciples held their breath, caught in a suffocating, dead silence.

Slowly, Luo Chen’s boots scraped against the broken gravel as he pushed himself up, forcing his spine straight.

Across the crater, Wang Tian let out a breathy, blood-flecked chuckle, slowly pulling his sword free from the stone and leveling the point right back at Luo Chen’s chest.

Wang Tian gave the purple-wrapped hilt a sharp, deliberate twist. With a crisp, metallic slide, he drove the longsword straight back into the scabbard strapped across his back. He rolled his broad shoulders, his thick fingers interlacing in front of his chest before he squeezed, letting out a series of sharp, popping cracks along his knuckles.

Across the broken crater, Luo Chen didn’t hesitate. His thumb guided the guard of his pink-hilted sword into its scabbard until it clicked shut at his hip. He rolled his wrists, shaking out the tension in his forearms as a razor-thin, blood-stained grin stretched across his bruised lips.

"No steel?" Luo Chen muttered, his voice raspy through the heat.

"No steel," Wang Tian growled back.

The spiritual auras wrapped around their frames simultaneously collapsed inward. The crackling purple lightning and freezing azure flames vanished, leaving behind only the raw, dense heat of their physical bloodlines and the sound of the wind sweeping across the gravel.

ROOOOOAAAR!

Both men roared at the top of their lungs, their boots tearing through the shattered granite as they sprinted straight across the crater.

Ten paces closed in a single heartbeat.

Wang Tian threw a straight right lead jab, aimed dead-center between Luo Chen’s eyes. Luo Chen mirrored him instantly, throwing a razor-fast right jab of his own.

BANG!

Their bare fists collided head-on in mid-air. The physical impact blew a ring of dust outward from their knuckles.

Without yielding an inch, Wang Tian stepped deep into the pocket, rotating his hips to drive a vicious left hook toward Luo Chen’s temple. Luo Chen anticipated the arc. He slipped to the right, ducking beneath the whistling knuckles while bending his knees, and uncorked a compact, explosive left cross straight into Wang Tian’s exposed chest.

THUD!

The force of the strike rattled Wang Tian’s ribcage, forcing a spray of dark crimson past his lips.

Instead of backing away, Wang Tian bared his bloody teeth. His thick left hand shot out like an iron clamp, snatching Luo Chen’s extended wrist. He yanked Luo Chen violently forward, pulling him straight into an explosive, rising right knee aimed dead into his stomach.

OOF!

Air exploded from Luo Chen’s lungs. Before Luo Chen could recover, Wang Tian planted his foot and drove a hard, chopping side kick into the outer meat of Luo Chen’s lead thigh.

Luo Chen’s teeth clenched against the searing pain. Knowing he couldn’t break the grip with raw leverage, he cocked his head back and drove his forehead violently forward into the bridge of Wang Tian’s nose.

CRACK!

Blood sprayed from Wang Tian’s nostrils, his grip loosening under the sudden shock of the headbutt.

Luo Chen capitalized instantly. He shoved hard off Wang Tian’s chest, planting his lead foot, spinning three hundred and sixty degrees on his heel, and launching a whip-like spinning back kick that slammed heel-first into the right side of Wang Tian’s jaw.

BANG!

The concussive blow whipped Wang Tian’s head sideways, knocking him back four paces. His boots dug deep into the pulverized gravel, churning up grey dust before he forcefully locked his back knee to arrest his momentum.

Wiping a smear of nosebleed across his forearm, Wang Tian surged forward again. He feinted high with a stinging left jab.

Luo Chen brought both forearms tight together into a defensive guard to absorb the high strike.

Wang Tian never intended to land it. His weight dropped low in a seamless, fluid pivot; his right leg whipped across in a vicious, sweeping low side kick straight into the back of Luo Chen’s knee joint.

CRACK.

Luo Chen’s leg buckled, his knee slamming hard onto the jagged granite.

Before Luo Chen’s torso could tilt, Wang Tian launched himself off the stone, driving an airborne flying knee straight toward Luo Chen’s exposed face.

SMACK!

The rising knee caught Luo Chen flush against his cheekbone. The sheer physical momentum hurled Luo Chen backward through the air.

Yet even with blood streaming from his brow, Luo Chen’s spatial awareness never broke. He contorted his torso mid-air, tucked his chin, completed a clean backflip, and landed skidding on both boots, his fingers trailing against the hot stone flags to stabilize his balance.

Blood dripped steadily from the cuts across his jawline and forehead, sizzling against the hot floorboards.

Ten feet apart, their chests rose and fell in ragged, thunderous gasps.

Through the blood and sweat running into their eyes, their gazes locked.

Wang Tian grinned. Luo Chen smirked right back.

They collided once more.

The center of the arena vanished beneath a blinding flurry of raw martial fury.

Luo Chen stepped inside with his fingers hooked like iron crane beaks, striking twice in rapid succession toward Wang Tian’s throat and collarbone. Wang Tian snapped his palms up, slapping both strikes aside with hard, open-handed parries before coiling his right arm like a striking python. He thrust an open palm straight toward Luo Chen’s breastplate.

Luo Chen twisted his torso by a fraction of an inch, letting the palm graze past his ribs while his right elbow snapped up in a sharp, rising spear strike aimed directly at Wang Tian’s jaw.

Wang Tian caught the rising elbow in his left palm, the impact sending a concussive pop of air between them. Without losing momentum, he swept his right leg low, dragging the granite dust in a wide, scything sweep meant to shatter Luo Chen’s balance.

Luo Chen leapt clean over the sweeping shin. Mid-air, he snapped a double downward axe-kick with both heels.

Wang Tian crossed his forearms in a reinforced X-block, taking the full crushing weight of the double kick. The stone cracked beneath Wang Tian’s boots as he sank an inch into the rock, but his teeth locked tight. Grunting through the strain, he heaved his arms upward, tossing Luo Chen’s legs back into the air.

Luo Chen flipped backward, his boots grazing the ground for only a split second before he launched forward like an arrow. He unleashed a barrage of rapid-fire palm strikes—left, right, center—each palm whistling through the wind like chopping blades.

Wang Tian stood his ground, weaving his hands in tight, flowing circular deflections, redirecting the flurry of palm strikes into the empty air around his shoulders while driving heavy counter-punches into Luo Chen’s guard. Forearms banged against forearms with the dull, bone-jarring THWACK of seasoned wood clashing against steel.

Luo Chen slipped a straight fist, pivoted around Wang Tian’s flank, and drove a vicious palm strike right between his shoulder blades. The blow forced Wang Tian a step forward, a spray of crimson spitting past his lips, but Wang Tian immediately spun with the momentum, whipping a brutal backfist toward Luo Chen’s temple.

Luo Chen ducked underneath, rising instantly to drive a rising knee into Wang Tian’s ribs, only for Wang Tian to check the knee with his own shin, bone grinding against bone with a sickening crack.

Neither retreated. In a span of three breaths, they traded over thirty blistering strikes—clashing palms, snapping kicks, deflected elbows, and checking sweeps—each exchange shedding fresh droplets of blood that splattered across the scarred stone flags.

Luo Chen took a half-step back, shifting his weight to his back foot. His left shoulder coiled tight as he channeled a dense, concentrated knot of pure physical force and internal qi straight into his left fist, launching a thunderous straight cross aimed dead for Wang Tian’s chin.

Wang Tian’s battle instincts screamed.

Drawing on years of bloody war combat of previous life, Wang Tian dipped slightly to his right, his lead foot sliding diagonally outward to clear the centerline of the incoming punch. As Luo Chen’s fist whistled past his ear, Wang Tian’s left hand shot out like an axe, driving a brutal, open-palm chop straight down onto Luo Chen’s extended forearm.

SLAP!

The chop forcibly deflected the trajectory of Luo Chen’s punch downward into empty air.

Luo Chen’s eyes widened in realization as his balance was dragged forward.

Wang Tian was already inside his guard, standing flush against his flank.

His right hand ignited with a dense, crackling glow of royal purple physical force. He clamped his left hand down onto Luo Chen’s shoulder, wrenched him around to expose his ribcage, and hammered an explosive, point-blank right body jab deep into Luo Chen’s abdomen.

POW!

Before the air could even escape Luo Chen’s throat, Wang Tian gripped him with both hands and drove a second, pulverizing knee straight into his solar plexus.

CRUNCH.

Luo Chen coughed up a heavy spray of blood, his vision blurring as his legs turned to water. He threw his arms forward, trying desperately to push off Wang Tian’s chest and create distance.

Wang Tian gave him no room to breathe.

Planting his left foot firmly into the granite, Wang Tian threw his entire body weight into a blinding, full-rotation jump. His right leg whipped through the air like a heavy steel scythe in a devastating, textbook tornado kick.

BOOM!

The instep of Wang Tian’s boot slammed dead-center into the left side of Luo Chen’s jaw.

The sheer, concussive force lifted Luo Chen entirely off the stone. He flew ten feet across the arena, his body skipping and flipping three times across the jagged gravel before finally coming to a dead stop, lying flat on his stomach with his face turned against the rock.

A suffocating silence descended over the packed stands.

Luo Chen’s fingers twitched against the dust. His bloody palms pressed flat against the broken stone, his trembling arms straining to push his upper body off the flags. His knees dug into the gravel, lifting his torso a few inches from the earth.

He forced his heavy, swollen eyelids open.

Through the haze of sweat and blood, his eyes met Wang Tian’s standing across the clearing.

Wang Tian stood tall, blood dripping from his chin, his lips pulled back in a wide, triumphant grin.

Luo Chen’s bloody lips curved into a faint, exhausted smile in return.

Then, his strength gave out entirely.

Luo Chen’s eyes closed, and his body slumped forward, resting motionless against the stone floorboards.

Wang Tian let out a long, shuddering exhale through his bruised lips, shaking his throbbing knuckles.

Up on the grandstand, Elder Wu stepped to the front railing, his booming voice carrying across every corner of the mountain:

"The victor is Wang Tian! He retains his seat as the Number One Disciple of the Sanatan Flame Sect!"

ROOOOOOOOAAAR!

Thousands of disciples in the stands leapt to their feet, their collective cheers and wild roars shaking the very pillars of the arena.

Down on the stage, the protective barrier dissolved.

A flash of movement darted across the flags. Su Quan rushed straight toward Luo Chen’s fallen figure, her eyes brimming with worry. She dropped to her knees, sliding her arms beneath his shoulders to lift his upper body carefully off the jagged stone.

"You reckless, stubborn idiot!" Su Quan scolded through trembling lips, wiping the blood from his cheek with her silk sleeve even as her hands checked his pulse. "Did you really have to fight until your bones cracked?!"

A few paces away, Muo Qian descended smoothly onto the stage, landing with a light, quiet step beside Wang Tian. He raised a hand and patted Wang Tian firmly on the shoulder.

"You were incredible as always, Wang Tian," Muo Qian said, a soft, rare smile touching his lips.

Wang Tian squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head slightly sideways as an awkward, uncharacteristic flush crept over his bruised ears. "Hmph... it was just a warm-up."

Up on the grandstand, Elder Wu turned toward the cheering disciples packed in the stone tiers, his stern gaze sweeping across the crowd.

"Alright! The show is over!" Elder Wu barked, his voice cutting cleanly through the shouts. "Clear the stands and return to your training grounds! If I catch anyone slacking on their daily weight quotas, you’ll be running the outer ridge with triple bands!"

The disciples scrambled, laughing and chattering in high spirits as they began filing out of the arena.

Thousands of miles away, over the apocalyptic, smoldering ruins of the fallen Cloud Peak Sect.

Silence reigned over the twelve-kilometer crater. The air was cold, thick with the lingering stench of ozone, blood, and burnt marrow.

Down near the molten core of the smoldering chasm, thick ribbons of deep violet energy suddenly began to coil outward from the rock. The ambient spiritual pressure spiked, the dark purple qi swirling faster and faster until it formed a violent vortex at the bottom of the abyss.

Sitting cross-legged in the center of the vortex, Liu Tong snapped his eyes open.

BOOM!

A torrential wave of pure, voilet aura detonated from his frame, blasting the surrounding debris into dust.

His shredded wounds were now bound by thick, dark scabs; his swollen eye had opened, gleaming with an unholy, rejuvenated crimson hunger.

Liu Tong rose slowly to his feet. He rolled his neck until it popped with a sharp CRACK, shaking out his broad shoulders as his fingers closed tightly around the heavy shaft of his war-axe.

A broad, jagged grin spread across his blood-stained face as he looked out toward the distant northern horizon.

"Sanatan Flame Sect..." Liu Tong murmured, his dark chuckle reverberating through the empty abyss like distant thunder. "Get ready. Your death is coming."

To Be Continued...