Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
The jarring, meaty impacts echoed sharply across the sky as the two figures clashed again and again in mid-air. The spectators below could only watch in stunned disbelief. They were witnessing a seemingly delicate-looking female cultivator trading raw, physical blows with a mountain of a man, a dedicated body cultivator.
And she was winning, decisively. She landed seven solid hits for every three of his.
"Yes, the woman holds a clear seventy percent of the advantage, while Liu Xinlou barely manages thirty," an observer noted, his voice full of awe. "A spellcaster, a renowned alchemist no less, going toe to toe with a dedicated body cultivator, and at a lower cultivation level no less, and she is dominating him?"
At that moment, everyone stared at Su Min as if she were some kind of primordial ghost. Their minds were screaming a unified, internal cry of, what the hell?!
Even Tian Yinzi was speechless, his face twitching with a mixture of pride and profound embarrassment.
"Grand Elder… your image… your dignified image!" he muttered under his breath, wanting to look away but unable to.
He watched helplessly as Su Min, growing more enthusiastic and unrestrained with every passing second, spotted a centuries-old spirit willow tree at the edge of the secret realm, uprooted it with a casual flex of her spiritual power, and started whacking the poor Liu Xinlou with the hundred-meter-long tree as if it were a giant club.
"Lin Daiyu uprooting a willow tree? This is… Grand Elder, you are the respected representative of Eastern Mulberry Province!" he lamented internally.
It was a truly bizarre and undignified sight. Their Grand Elder, the respected and feared representative of their entire province, was swinging an enormous, leafy tree like a common thug's weapon.
"I surrender!!!"
Faced with the humiliating spectacle of Su Min brandishing the giant willow for another swing, Liu Xinlou finally raised his hand high, his voice cracking with frustration. What kind of fight was this?! She had not cast a single elegant spell the entire time. She had just used him as a living, breathing punching bag to test her physical strength, and the worst part was, he could not even fight back properly. Her defense was as monstrous as her offense.
As the saying went, even a worm will turn. If he could not beat her, he could at least deny her the satisfaction of hitting him with a tree again. So the moment Su Min hefted the tree for another mighty swing, he vanished from the arena in a flash of light, teleporting away before anyone could react. He did not even wait for the official referee's call.
"Tch." A sound of disappointment escaped Su Min's lips.
The crowd's lips twitched in unison. They had to admit, if this had been the previous round, Su Min's reckless, all-physical approach might have backfired against a fresh opponent. But Liu Xinlou had exhausted all his trump cards and spiritual energy in his last grueling fight, leaving him utterly defenseless against such a brute-force assault. Against Su Min's unrestrained brutality, they could only laugh wryly in sympathy for the man.
Sighing as her opponent fled, Su Min clicked her tongue in genuine disappointment and tossed the massive willow tree aside. If someone wanted to run, she could not exactly force them to stay and be her training dummy. Still, the bout had given her a clear measure of her physical prowess. It was slightly inferior to her spellcasting in terms of versatility, but the raw power gap was negligible. The real limitation was the lack of dedicated, refined killing moves for close combat. Unless she resorted to her specialized, lethal pills, which she was saving for true life-or-death situations, her unarmed combat had its limits.
"Grand Elder," Tian Yinzi said, wiping a bead of cold sweat from his forehead as she floated gracefully back to her seat. "Perhaps… you could refrain from such… vigorous methods next time?" His expression was deeply pained, like a curator watching a priceless vase being used as a football.
"What is wrong with it?" Su Min asked, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow innocently. "I got a good sparring partner to test my limits. Do you want to volunteer for the next one?"
Tian Yinzi's neck seemed to shrink into his shoulders instinctively. Him? Fight her? She would pulp him into fine mist with one casual backhand slap. "No, no! That will not be necessary, Grand Elder!" he stammered quickly.
"Grand Elder Xie… where are you when we need you the most?" he silently prayed to the heavens. Normally, Xie Yingying was the only one who could and would spar with Su Min on equal terms. Their bouts were always intense, fast, and evenly matched, at least when they were not fighting to the death. But with Xie Yingying absent, no one in the entire sect, no, the entire province, could rein in Su Min.
"Enough," Su Min said, shaking her head as if dismissing a trivial matter. "Let us focus on the other matches."
She turned her attention back to the central arena, her demeanor shifting back to one of calm observation. Over the next period, the battles progressed swiftly. Compared to the month-long slog of the first round, the second round concluded in just a week. The third round wrapped up even faster, in under three days.
This time, Su Min faced another late-stage Divine Transformation cultivator, whom she dispatched without any theatrics or trees. A quick Vermilion Bird Possession, a controlled explosion of flame, followed by a volley of sharp, condensed feather projectiles, was enough to overwhelm her opponent's defenses and send him packing with a respectful bow.
Now, the tournament had reached its final, decisive round. This event was fundamentally about resource allocation and demonstrating strength, not pure, elimination-style competition. Only four rounds would determine the final distribution of the precious Sealing Crystals, with the ultimate victors claiming the largest shares for their factions.
But when the glowing lottery wheel stopped spinning this time, the Eastern Sea Immortal Sect's seating area erupted in quiet chaos.
"Why her?!" someone gasped.
"Uh…" Another disciple was at a loss for words.
The crowd in the stands fell into a stunned silence. The wheel's spiritual display was unmistakable, the characters glowing brightly for all to see.
Su Min vs. Xuan Mengyin
A wave of immediate, electric excitement swept through the general audience. "Oh-ho! This will be fun. A real catfight!" a spectator exclaimed, rubbing his hands together.
"The last two top female cultivators in the tournament, pitted directly against each other!"
"Go all out! Show us what you are made of!"
While the spectators cheered gleefully at the prospect of such a dramatic matchup, the atmosphere around Su Min's faction turned glacial with worry.
Xuan Mengyin was the current sect master of the renowned Mystic Sound Valley, a genuine half-step Dao Comprehension expert. While others at her level were just starting their long journey into that profound realm, she was a hair's breadth from a full breakthrough. A single moment of epiphany could propel her into the true Dao Comprehension stage at any time.
But her formidable cultivation level was not the main problem. The Mystic Sound Valley was an infamous all-female sect, renowned throughout the land for two primary arts, Charm Magic and Illusion Magic. To make matters worse, Xuan Mengyin possessed a unique heavenly treasure, the Dreamweaver's Gale. Unlike combat-oriented divine objects, this one specialized in transformation and deception, synergizing perfectly with her already potent charm and illusion techniques.
As the ancient saying went, softness overcomes hardness. Against opponents weaker-willed than her, victims often found themselves trapped in inescapable, blissful fantasies, losing without ever realizing they were in a fight.
"Grand Elder…" Tian Yinzi leaned in close, his voice tight with nervousness. "Can you… can you break her illusions?" This, everyone knew, was the absolute key to victory.
Su Min rubbed the bridge of her nose slowly, her expression unreadable. "Hmph," was her only initial reply.
Illusions? She could handle those. When it came to fantasy realms and mental attacks, her past life's memories of countless video games and stories had made her basically immune to surprises. But charm magic… that was another story entirely.
She was not afraid of it, of course. No, never that. Such a thought was ridiculous.
She just… did not want to be remembered for all eternity as the genius alchemist, the Five Elements Holy Body, who got turned into a drooling, infatuated idiot in front of the entire cultivation world. If she fell victim to that kind of magic, the humiliation would be historic, a stain on her legacy that would never fade.
Her past life's memories had always served as her ultimate grounding rod, keeping her sober and detached while others chased fleeting pleasures and power. Those memories reminded her of what she had lost, and what she could not afford to want in this new life. But high-level charm magic did not care about rational thought or cultivated detachment. It went deeper, beneath the layers of discipline, straight into the soft, hidden underbelly of primal desire, especially the desires you worked the hardest to ignore and suppress.
And that was what truly worried her.
She had never faced a master of dedicated charm magic before. What if it actually worked on some level? What if she—heaven forbid—actually liked the feeling? What if, while everyone watched, she let out some embarrassing, involuntary sound and collapsed in a flustered, blushing haze?
What if, in that vulnerable haze, her mind tricked her into thinking it was Xie Yingying touching her?
Her thoughts began to spiral into a quiet panic. "Maybe I should just trade blow for blow from the start and overwhelm her with my sheer pill reserves?" she wondered desperately, contemplating a very expensive and flashy victory.
The last Divine Transformation expert who had fought Xuan Mengyin had surrendered before the match even began, his expression glazed and his thoughts clearly somewhere very pleasant. And that was a hardened late-stage Divine Transformation veteran, a man reputed to have an ironclad will, to whom feminine beauty was supposed to be fleeting smoke. Yet he had folded instantly. That spoke volumes about Xuan Mengyin's terrifying charm prowess.
The only small silver lining was that both high-level illusions and charm magic were primarily single-target. The onlookers would see nothing of the internal struggle, only the external results.
Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the arena, Xuan Mengyin was not exactly celebrating her draw either.
"Why her… of all people?" she groaned inwardly, her perfectly composed mask faltering for a fraction of a second.
Her sect's charm magic was technically unisex, but against Su Min, she knew it would be largely useless. Despite being only at the early Divine Transformation stage, Su Min had three heavenly treasures, had defeated the legendary Yao Xian'er (someone Xuan Mengyin secretly admired and idolized), and was renowned for her flawless, diamond-hard Dao heart. In short, charm magic preyed on primal desires and spiritual weaknesses. But against someone like Su Min, who seemed to have the emotional range of a polished jade statue? It would be like trying to tickle a stone boulder.
So while Su Min was having a quiet, internal meltdown about possibly becoming another charm-victim statistic, Xuan Mengyin was staring at her from across the arena as if she were an ancient, immovable stone tablet, completely devoid of handles to grasp.
"It seems charm magic is out of the question," Xuan Mengyin concluded, a little bitterly. "I will need another approach entirely."
She began rapidly formulating a new battle plan in her mind. This would be a rare, hard-fought match where she could not rely on her greatest strength. In gaming terms, she had "anti-male super effectiveness." Since male cultivators outnumbered females several times over, she usually held an overwhelming advantage in most tournaments. Today, she had drawn the one opponent who was practically immune to her primary skill set.
"Hahaha! Serves her right! No more bullying men with that tricky charm magic!" one of the male half-step experts laughed in open relief, not bothering to hide his glee.
"Exactly! Let us see her try being a 'seductive vixen' in front of Lady Su. All she will get is a metaphysical slap in the face!"
"Heh. Poetic justice."
The other half-step Dao Comprehension experts nodded and shared the sentiment. Facing Xuan Mengyin was a personal nightmare. Losing to Su Min was just embarrassing, but losing to Xuan Mengyin? That was social and spiritual suicide, a story that would follow you for centuries. Now that these two were paired together, the rest of them could finally relax. With only four rounds total, they would thankfully avoid both landmines.
"Oh, for f—" Su Min swore silently, cutting off her own internal curse as she descended into the arena. Her mind was racing. Her inner world was chaos. Her spiritual sea churned with half-formed panic and vivid, embarrassing hypotheticals. So her instincts, honed from a lifetime of facing unexpected threats, did what they always did when things got psychologically bad.
"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form…" she chanted quietly, the ancient, familiar words of the Great Sun Tathāgata Sutra coming to her lips without conscious command.
A brilliant, serene, and utterly chaste Golden Buddha light erupted from her body in radiant, pulsing waves, surrounding her like a divine halo.
A visible ripple of shock and amusement passed through the crowd. Across from her, Xuan Mengyin had landed lightly on the arena floor, but she promptly froze mid-step, her perfectly shaped eye twitching uncontrollably.
The Great Sun Tathāgata Sutra, a powerful heaven-grade cultivation method specifically designed to sever earthly desires and attachments, had activated all on its own, a pure, reflexive defense mechanism.
Xuan Mengyin's lips moved, forming silent words that were easy to read. "You have got to be kidding me."
"Is Grandmaster Su becoming a Buddha right before our eyes? I almost forgot she also practices the core techniques of the Great Thunder Temple!" a cultivator shouted in amazement.
"That woman's face must be absolutely priceless right now. Her greatest weapon just got spiritually neutered!"
"Hahahaha! This is too good!"
The crowd burst into uproarious laughter. Su Min's deep ties to the Great Thunder Temple were well-known. After the monumental Land and Water Dharma Assembly, any pretense of secrecy was impossible. Moreover, public acknowledgment and support from high-profile figures like the Arhat Liao Jie had cemented her status as their staunch ally.
Xuan Mengyin exhaled a sharp, frustrated breath, watching the radiant, and now utterly charm-immune, Su Min. She had already decided. There would be no charm magic used today. Even trying would get her turned into an instant laughingstock. She could already hear the nicknames forming in the spectators' minds. "The temptress who could not tempt." "The siren who met a stone Buddha." No, thank you. Her pride would not allow it.
She would fight clean, using her other skills. While this decision crippled more than half of her combat strength, she was not completely helpless. As a bona fide half-step Dao Comprehension expert, she still had other potent means at her disposal.
And Su Min, radiating divine, desire-suppressing light and chanting silent sutras like a devout monk who had been unexpectedly cornered at a brothel, stood across from her with a look that seemed to silently scream, "Please, for the love of the heavens, do not awaken anything weird or embarrassing in me."
It was going to be a long, strange, and psychologically complex match.
"Begin!"
The shimmering barrier around the arena fell.
In a flash of movement, Xuan Mengyin summoned a beautifully crafted, dark wood guqin into her arms. It was a rare earth-grade treasure and one of her sect's most priceless heirlooms. While swords and sabers were commonplace, crafting a spiritual musical instrument required esoteric, almost lost knowledge. Very few cultivators understood the arcane harmonies and spiritual resonances needed to forge such a treasure. This particular guqin was the lifework of a past Mystic Sound Valley elder, who had aimed for heaven-grade but had to settle for a peak earth-grade result.
Yet it was more than powerful enough for her needs.
With the first, deep, resonant pluck of its strings, Su Min's surroundings warped and dissolved. The empty, defined arena vanished, replaced in an instant by a vast, oppressive landscape of towering, jagged mountain ranges that scraped against a blood-red sky. But these were not ordinary peaks. Even a mountain like Mount Everest would be insignificant, a mere stepping stone, to a Divine Transformation expert. Yet now, Su Min found herself genuinely, physically trapped and constrained by the sheer, tangible pressure of the peaks.
"These are not mere illusions," she realized, her expression darkening with serious focus. "My spiritual sense is at least equal to hers. This is a physical formation, laid down with the guqin's music as the catalyst. So she is also a master formation artist. This is… troublesome."
This woman was far more formidable and versatile than she had initially anticipated.
Meanwhile, outside the arena, the spectators gasped in unison.
"What kind of illusion is this? Why can we all see it too?!" a young disciple cried out, pointing at the transformed battlefield.
They watched, mesmerized, as the entire circular battlefield was visually replaced by a dense, mist-shrouded mountain forest. High-level illusions were supposed to affect only the primary target's mind. The fact that everyone could see the change meant one thing.
This was not a simple illusion. It was a large-scale, tangible, and incredibly sophisticated formation made manifest.
"She has been hiding her true skills! She is a formation master all along!"
"Combining physical formations with layered illusions, blurring the line between reality and fantasy. This is mental and physical torture combined!"
Even the other half-step Dao Comprehension experts paled at the display. Had any of them faced her, they would have been utterly lost, played to death like mice in a maze. As the crowd murmured in shock and admiration, Su Min, inside the formation, was forced into a desperate, harried retreat, constantly assailed and cornered by the inescapable, shifting terrain and the haunting, disorienting melody of the guqin.
===
LOL, Su Min... Are you that scared??? Anyway, only our beloved Yingying that can reign her wild side
"林黛玉倒拔垂杨柳" → "Lin Daiyu Uproots the Willow Tree" (A playful twist on the Dream of the Red Chamber character)
"色即是空,空即是色" → "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" (Heart Sutra quote)