Chapter 49: Chapter 49 - The Efficiency of Absolute Ice and the Unseen Trap

The grand sparring grounds of the Radiant Sky Sect were carved directly into the flattened peak of a secondary mountain.

The disciples of the sect had gathered swiftly following the Sect Master’s announcement. They stood in orderly, quiet rows.

Across the arena stood the delegation from the Myriad Swords Sect.

The rival disciples stood with their arms crossed, and their chins tilted upward. They looked at the polite, innocent-looking Radiant Sky disciples with poorly concealed disdain.

To the aggressive swordsmen, the Radiant Sky disciples looked like a flock of well-behaved sheep just waiting to be sheared.

Meanwhile, up in the grandstands, several Nascent Soul elders from the Myriad Swords Sect were covertly sending out invisible threads of Spiritual Sense. They were rapidly scanning the crowd.

They were desperately hunting for a hidden anomaly. The "true" supreme genius who had caused the Dao Manifestation.

Sect Master Li Xuanzong noticed the intrusive scans immediately. He simply took a slow, leisurely sip of his tea.

He didn’t bother to stop them because he knew they would find absolutely nothing.

"The atmosphere is excellent," Elder Jian Wuchen smiled. His ’Smiling Viper’ persona was in full effect. He turned to Li Xuanzong. "Sect Master Li, why don’t we let our junior disciples exchange pointers first to warm up the crowd?"

Without waiting for permission, Jian Wuchen signaled with his hand. Three junior swordsmen immediately leaped onto the massive stone platform. They drew their blades with flashy, aggressive flourishes.

They expected the Radiant Sky Sect to politely send up three equivalent juniors. Then they would initiate a long, drawn-out series of escalating matches that would allow their elders plenty of time to scan everyone.

Just then, Li Xuanzong gently set his teacup down.

"There is no need to waste time on children’s games," the Sect Master said. His voice echoed across the entire mountain with absolute authority.

He didn’t look at the three juniors. He simply turned his gaze toward the distant peaks.

"Ruyue. Step forward."

BOOM!

The temperature on the mountain plummeted instantly. A violent bolt of freezing, pure-white mist shot from the distant Silent Orchid Peak. It crashed onto the center of the arena platform like a meteor.

When the mist cleared, Ji Ruyue stood there. Her flawless, porcelain face was completely devoid of emotion.

Jian Wuchen and the rival elders visibly flinched in shock.

The Radiant Sky Sect had just completely shattered the unspoken rules of diplomatic sparring! Instead of starting with a warm-up, Li Xuanzong had immediately thrown out his absolute strongest disciple.

Even worse was Ji Ruyue’s reaction to her opponents.

She didn’t even look at the three junior swordsmen standing ten feet away from her. She slowly turned her head, then fixed her dead, emotionless eyes directly on the Myriad Swords elders sitting in the VIP pavilion.

"Send your strongest," Ji Ruyue stated in a perfectly flat, monotonous voice. "Or send them all at once. Please be efficient. I have to return to my cultivation."

Pfft!

One of the rival elders actually choked on his tea. Jian Wuchen’s face turned an ugly shade of purple. The sheer, unfathomable arrogance! To dismiss their elite juniors as insects and demand the strongest right out of the gate was the ultimate insult.

The three junior swordsmen on the stage turned red with fury. But before they could even shout a reprimand, Ji Ruyue simply blinked at them. A wave of Absolute-Yin cold washed over the platform. The three juniors shivered violently. Their legs gave out as they collapsed to their knees, completely frozen by her mere gaze.

"Elders, please do not blame this junior," Li Xuanzong’s warm, highly amused laughter broke the tension. "As you might have heard, she practices the Heartless Sutra. She does not mince words, nor does she understand the concept of ’face.’ She is merely direct. Surely, a grand sect like yours wouldn’t mind the bluntness of a child, would you?"

Jian Wuchen’s facial muscles violently twitched, but he forced his signature smile back onto his face. He was trapped by his own diplomatic facade.

"Of course not," Jian Wuchen’s voice was tight. "We appreciate efficiency. Chen Feng, step forward!"

A massive, burly young man leaped from the Myriad Swords formation. He landed on the platform with a heavy thud that cracked the stone.

The crowd gasped. Chen Feng radiated the intense, suffocating aura of a Golden Core Realm Stage 3 cultivator. Furthermore, the air around him distorted with intense heat. He was a Fire-attribute swordsman.

Ji Ruyue was only at Golden Core Stage 1, and her attribute was Ice.

It was a two-tiered disadvantage. A higher cultivation realm combined with elemental suppression. This was a perfectly crafted trap, a tailored assassin meant to humiliate the Radiant Sky Sect’s golden girl.

The Myriad Swords elders exchanged smug, cruel smiles. The match was already decided in their minds.

Li Xuanzong, however, did not look the least bit worried. He simply raised his hand and dropped it. "Begin."

"Burn!" Chen Feng roared.

He didn’t hold back. He unleashed his absolute strongest ultimate attack right out of the gate. His massive broadsword erupted in a towering pillar of heavy, crimson flames. He lunged forward like a blazing meteor, aiming to completely overwhelm Ji Ruyue’s ice with sheer, brute-force heat.

The heat wave washed over the arena. It singed the eyebrows of the disciples in the front row.

Ji Ruyue did not move. She didn’t even draw her weapon.

Her cold, analytical eyes locked onto the massive wave of fire bearing down on her. To anyone else, it looked like a terrifying, unstoppable inferno. But to Ji Ruyue?

Because of her disastrous alchemy sessions, Ji Ruyue possessed great understanding of how fire behaved, and more importantly, how it collapsed.

When the blazing broadsword was only three feet from her face, she finally moved.

She didn’t summon a massive shield of ice. She didn’t try to overpower the fire. She simply raised two pale fingers and executed a single, clinical, perfectly aimed strike of Absolute Ice directly into the structural weak point of the flame.

Snap.

It was the sound of a freezing pond.

The massive, roaring inferno didn’t just extinguish... It shattered. The thermal shock was so absolute and instantaneous that the flames literally crystallized and broke into frozen, black ash.

The Absolute Ice traveled up the broadsword and instantly encased Chen Feng.

The burly Stage 3 Golden Core cultivator was frozen completely solid in mid-air. He crashed heavily onto the arena floor like a block of marble.

The entire arena fell dead silent.

Crack... CRASH!

Thanks to his higher cultivation realm, Chen Feng’s internal Qi violently surged, shattering the ice block a second later. He gasped for air as his eyes went wide with terror and fury. He gripped his sword, ready to roar and re-engage.

But as the ice shards settled, he froze voluntarily.

A pale, slim blade was already resting gently against his throat.

Ji Ruyue stood beside him, holding her unadorned sword with one hand. Her expression hadn’t changed. She looked like she had just swatted a slightly annoying fly.

"Yield," she stated flatly.

The smug expressions on the Myriad Swords elders’ faces completely dissolved. Their jaws hung open in utter disbelief. A Stage 1 Ice cultivator had just effortlessly dismantled a Stage 3 Fire cultivator in a single, perfectly efficient exchange.

"Senior Sister Ji!"

"Senior sister is peerless!"

The Radiant Sky disciples erupted into deafening cheers. The sound shook the mountain. Li Xuanzong allowed the cheering to continue. He purposefully delayed the official announcement of the winner to let the humiliation truly sink into the Myriad Swords delegation. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Unable to accept this reality, one of the elders lost his composure. He desperately sent a highly invasive wave of Spiritual Sense directly at Ji Ruyue, determined to forcefully scan her foundation to see if she was using a forbidden artifact.

But before his Spiritual Sense could even touch her robes, it slammed into an invisible, terrifying wall of absolute zero.

BANG!

The elder shrieked. He clutched his head as he violently reeled backward, coughing up a mouthful of blood from the brutal backlash.

The temperature of the entire mountain range suddenly plummeted. The sky darkened.

A woman materialized in the air above the platform. She wore deep blue robes, and her eyes were like twin glaciers. It was Shen Youran, the Head of Law Enforcement and Ji Ruyue’s Master.

She stared down at the bleeding elder with a gaze so cold it could freeze the soul.

"I never realized the outside world had lost all its tact," Shen Youran’s voice echoed. It was completely indifferent. There was no anger and no fluctuation, just the absolute promise of violence. "How dare you be impolite to my disciple."

Even Jian Wuchen’s face paled to the color of a sheet. The elders of the Myriad Swords Sect began to sweat profusely. They might have believed the Radiant Sky Sect had fallen, but none of them were stupid enough to want to face Shen Youran in combat.

Seeing that the psychological terror had reached its peak, Li Xuanzong finally intervened.

He stood up, and acted as the perfect, understanding mediator.

"Now, now, Peak Master Shen, please don’t be rash," Li Xuanzong said smoothly. "I am sure Elder Jian and his esteemed colleagues meant no harm. It was merely... curiosity. Perhaps they just wanted to thoroughly prove if our sect is truly worthy of their generous collaboration and funding!"

Li Xuanzong turned to the Smiling Viper. His eyes locked onto the terrified elder. "Isn’t that right, Elder Jian?"

Jian Wuchen swallowed hard. He looked at the bleeding elder, then at the terrifying ice queen floating above, and finally at Li Xuanzong’s "warm" smile.

He had no choice. If he denied it, there was no telling how a practitioner of the Heartless Sutra might react. He could only silently curse the elder for acting so rashly.

"Y-Yes!" Jian Wuchen nodded vigorously. "Yes! It was merely a test of worthiness! The Radiant Sky Sect is truly peerless! The joint venture will proceed exactly as planned!"

The bout ended. The Myriad Swords delegation was hurriedly escorted back. Their heads hung low in utter defeat.

They never realized that every single moment of the morning had been a perfectly crafted, highly calculated corporate trap.

High above the arena, hidden within the clouds, the rest of the Radiant Sky Peak Masters were clutching their stomachs, laughing uproariously.

The "Good Cop / Bad Cop" routine had been executed flawlessly. Shen Youran’s terrifying appearance had completely terrorized the rival executives, and Li Xuanzong’s mediation had legally bound them to their own promises.

The Myriad Swords Sect was now locked into paying millions of Spirit Stones for the portal, they had lost all their ’face,’ and they were too terrified of Shen Youran to ever back out or spread rumors.

It was a geopolitical masterpiece.