Nix descended to the sandy arena floor, his landing a silent negation of impact. He looked out at the now-deadly quiet crowd, a mocking smile visible beneath the rim of his damaged helm. "I did not expect so many of you to come out to meet your dead," he said, his voice a condescending drawl, metallic and bored. "Such commendable… punctuality."
A murmur of outrage rippled through the terraces, but it was hushed, fearful. No one dared shout back. The powerful figures in the pavilions—the stern Li Zhan, the cloaked elders of the Doom College, even Prince Juo Si with his placid mask—watched with expressions of granite seriousness.
From the Doom College pavilion, Duo Yi stared, her mind a whirlwind of cold calculation. *I have never felt this insignificant. Not even in front of the False Deity. Is this the monstrous power Gen felt that day when his father was fighting?* Her instinct pulled her gaze across the void to Gen's pavilion.
Gen wasn't afraid. His fists were clenched on his knees, his knuckles bone-white. He fidgeted in his seat, a caged animal. His eyes, fixed on Nix, were slowly turning a burning, solar red. Yet he bore it, muttering to himself, a desperate mantra. *Varja will win. Varja must win.*
On the arena, Varja had said nothing. He simply observed his opponent, his placid eyes moving over the Divine General's armor as if assessing the fit of a suit of clothes.
Nix frowned slightly. "Are all the cultivators of this world this arrogant? I recently annihilated a sect passing by. The 'Floating Leaf' sect, something like that. They dared to look at me. They were so… weak." He flicked a finger, a gesture of dismissing dust.
In the crowd, a young cultivator in the colors of a minor water sect shot to his feet, face purple with rage. He cursed, gathering Qi to leap into the arena.
Varja moved. He didn't look at the youth. He simply raised a hand in that direction and made a gentle, pressing-down motion. A wave of calm, heavy intent—not an attack, but a profound, pacifying pressure—washed over that section of the crowd. The young cultivator sat down hard, his anger doused in a sudden, cool clarity. The arena settled.
Varja then stretched his arms overhead, then touched his toes, as if preparing for a morning jog. He straightened.
"Three minutes," he said, his voice a low rumble that carried perfectly in the silence.
No one understood. They looked at him with confusion.
"Three minutes," he repeated, rolling his shoulders. "That is all I need to win. If I cannot in that time frame, then…" He left the sentence hanging.
Before he could finish, Nix started laughing. It was a wild, grating sound, so hard it turned hoarse within his helm. "That," he wheezed, "was a good joke. Die now."
He didn't even aim. He flicked his wrist. A blade of nullification energy, not held in his hand but fired as a condensed beam of annihilating grey light, tore across the space between them. It moved faster than sound, the *hissing-tear* of its passage reaching the spectators a heartbeat after the attack itself.
The crowd recoiled. The barriers draped by the strongest cultivators present—the Li family elder, the Doom College elders, General Mearl and Prince Juo Si company—glowed violently as they absorbed the shockwave.
Varja didn't dodge it. He let it strike him square in the chest as he finished a hamstring stretch.
***THWUMP.***
White smoke and displaced sand erupted around him. When it cleared, Varja was unharmed. He looked down at the faint smudge on his golden skin, tapped it with a finger, and the slight wound closed seamlessly. To the observing cultivators, this was nothing extraordinary. Any adept user of **Shidow** paired with **Zhidow** could manipulate their own flesh for rapid healing. Varja was no different.
Nix himself wasn't surprised. After what he had seen Jiang do, he expected some resistance from this world's champion. But he didn't like the five years Zeph had given them. In Nix's heart, he refused to believe another person like Jiang existed. He didn't like to admit it, but Jiang was another level. This bulky figure could never compare.
Thus, Nix summoned his nullification blade once more, this time grasping its hilt. He moved.
It was a speed that hurt the eyes. He left a blinding trail of grey light and struck.
Varja didn't stand still. He took a single, measured step back, arching his torso with an impossible, fluid grace. The blade of light passed so close it singed the air an inch from his skin, landing instead on the barrier at the arena's edge. The shield, created by the combined power of the present masters, cracked with a sound like breaking ice.
Varja leaned forward.
"The three minutes," he said, his voice now pure, focused intent, "start now."
His fist, which had been pulling back during his lean, shot forward. It was a simple, straight punch. No flourish, no named technique. Just his body, perfected by **Jingdao**, propelled by will.
It landed on Nix's chestplate.
***CLANG—BOOM!***
The sound was not metallic, but deeply organic, like a mountain being struck by a falling star. At the point of impact, a strange, dense golden light enveloped Varja's fist—the visible manifestation of the **Unbreakable Varja**.
The impact lifted Nix off his feet. He staggered back two heavy, stumbling steps in the sand, a shocked, wet gasp rasping from within his helm.
The scene felt unreal to the onlookers. The panic was gone, replaced by a surge of wild, disbelieving hope. "See! That's the Unbreakable Varja! I told you!" shouts began, conversations bursting out.
Nix felt a cold air pass through his core. Not because of the pain—that was nothing to him. But because of what that blow *meant*. The force, the density, the flawless transmission of power… To even have a chance of winning against this, he would have to fight with all his energy. Perhaps even more than he had used testing Jiang back then. He had accepted he couldn't win against Jiang. But this Varja? *No. No. No.* His mind went berserk with insult and fury.
Nix stepped forward. His aura, which had been contained, now *spread* like a bruise across reality, a palpable wave of malice and nullifying intent. "You all piss me off!" he roared, loud enough to silence the burgeoning cheers. "Now feel the power of a Divine General!"
He summoned it immediately—the domain spell he had used against Jiang.
**"Domain: Tomb of the Fallen God!"**
The sky above the arena changed, darkening as if a storm of blades was about to rain. Swords of condensed nullification energy, thousands of them, materialized in the air, floating in a lethal, shifting forest. Nix floated at its heart. "Now," he hissed, "let's play."
Varja smiled. It was a real smile, fierce and bright. He looked not at Nix, but up toward his pavilion. "Gen! You always wanted to see the Unbreakable Varja, right?" he called out, his voice booming with a challenge and a promise.
Before Gen could answer, Varja brought his palms together in a sharp *clap*.
His aura shifted.
The very air of the arena bent inward toward him. His skin, from the feet up, transformed. It didn't glow. It *became* a seamless, living gold, as if his flesh had been replaced by polished, divine metal. Only his face remained its normal tone, making the contrast stark and terrifying. This was the full release. The **Unbreakable Body**.
Nix smirk inside his broken helm. "Pitiful." He commanded the swords to fall, a converging hailstorm meant to trap and flay even fallen gods.
Varja moved. With incredible speed, he became a blur of golden motion. But he never left his spot. He weaved, swayed, and pivoted, evading blade after blade by millimeters. His evasions were so precise they seemed predictive. Then, he struck forward, not at Nix, but at the air.
His fist, a golden comet, shot out. The concussive shockwave from the punch alone blasted a dozen of the nearest null-swords into dissipating mist. But it wasn't enough. The Tomb created more, faster than he could destroy them.
*Although the swords cannot harm me alone,* Varja thought, his mind cold and clear, *a conventional avalanche on me might become a problem. I can't let that happen.*
He stopped evading. He shot *toward* Nix, a golden projectile cutting through the rain of blades. They screeched and sparked as they deflected off his skin, leaving faint white scratches that healed instantly.
Nix was fast, but Varja in this state was faster. Nix twisted in the void, evading the fist that missed his helmet by a hair's breadth. As Varja passed, Nix waved a hand, summoning a thick, coagulated layer of nullification energy that filled the space between them like grey mud.
Varja bit his teeth and barreled through it.
The effect was immediate and brutal. The null-energy wasn't strong enough to stop him, but it was anathema to life. Where his golden skin touched it, fine, blackened lacerations appeared. On his unprotected face, thin lines split open, tracing his cheekbone and jaw. Blood, shockingly red against his gold skin, welled and flowed as he tore through the attack like a madman.
He emerged from the grey cloud and caught Nix's extended arm.
He pulled.
Nix's armored form lurched forward, off-balance. Varja's other fist was already there, driving upward for the helmet's jawline.
Nix's heart raced. He tilted his head back desperately, but not enough.
The golden fist grazed the lower edge of the helm.
***CRACK.***
A piece of the ornate faceplate sheared off and spun away into the sand. It revealed, for a flash, the lower part of a chin and mouth—and the livid, smoldering burn scar that webbed the skin there. The mark left by Immortal Jiang.
The crowd trembled. Rumors became visceral truth.
Even Varja couldn't help a grim smile. *That fellow was indeed of another level,* he thought. *Even my full Unbreakable Body barely broke through his armor.*
But that was fine. Today, he would win.
Nix, now openly revealed and humiliated, snarled with pure, animal fury. Annoyed beyond reason, he gestured wildly. The Tomb of the Fallen God constricted, every single sword re-orienting to point inward at the center of the arena—at both of them. A sphere of certain death.
Varja let go of Nix's arm and shot upward. He didn't fly; he *ran* on the air itself, a breathtaking application of **Jingdao** and **Shidow** that used solidified atmosphere as stepping stones. He evaded the converging sphere, putting distance between himself and his enraged enemy.
Both landed, facing each other across the river. Their eyes burned—one with cold excitement, the other with incandescent fury.
Nix tore off his damaged helmet completely, revealing his charred, hate-contorted face once more to the world. The sight caused many to tremble in their hearts.
"Since you want death so badly," Nix rasped, his voice raw, "you shall be served."
Varja wasn't fighting here to lose today. He knew what was in the balance. It wasn't just the Four Kingdoms. It wasn't just a Damocles. It was more. It was the soul of the path itself.
He settled into a ready stance, the blood on his face already drying. The three minutes were not yet up.