The pursuit and killing within Fenglin City, the traps and the madness that had unfolded there, seemed to have nothing to do with the martial exercise ground.
Here, the fighting went on as always.
The three victors who entered the rotation bouts were Zhang Linchuan, Lin Zhengren, and Fu Baosong of Wangjiang City.
The last was a man of tall, thin build with a stern, clear-cut face. He had only just managed to defeat the fifth-year student of Fenglin City, winning the final place.
Both of Wangjiang's fifth-years had entered the rotation, and the odds were squarely in their favor.
In truth, the contest between fifth-years was the crucial round, for only the fifth-year champion of the Three-City Dao Debate held the right to enter the National Dao Academy directly.
Every such debate tournament carried a number of these places, though they varied in count. The "North Wind Performing Snow," for instance, held two places — though it was a Five-City Dao Debate, in practice one merely had to win two out of ten, and the odds were far better than in the Three-City Dao Debate.
These places were likewise a distribution of resources, and more often than not they hinged on the strength of each city's Dao Academy. And what revealed an academy's strength was, above all, the cultivators it nurtured. So it was that once any cultivator rose to prominence, the city Dao Academy from which he came rose alongside him.
More places in the National Dao Academy, faster growth for one's cultivators — this formed a virtuous circle.
Whereas a place like Sanshan City, where the elite generation had been broken, where the debates could not be won, where resources shrank and the students' cultivation conditions grew harsher... this was a vicious circle.
Only by understanding the Dao Academy system of the Zhuang Kingdom could one understand why the cultivators of Sanshan City fought with such reckless abandon.
Back to the contest. The first bout among the fifth-years of the Three-City Dao Debate was an internal affair.
Lin Zhengren against Fu Baosong.
This battle held almost nothing worth watching. Everyone knew that the situation had already come down to Fenglin versus Wangjiang, and the real interest of the entire rotation lay in whether Zhang Linchuan could successively defeat both of Wangjiang's own — which, as matters stood, seemed to offer no hope at all.
As for the internal bout, it was no more than a formality.
Evidently Lin Zhengren thought so too, for when he saw Fu Baosong walking up to him, he said offhandedly: "Just concede, will you. I'll wound Zhang Linchuan with a heavy hand shortly, and then you finish him off and take second place."
He had, quite plainly, already arranged the rankings.
"Hey!" Zhang Linchuan clutched a handkerchief over his nose with an air of intense disgust. "Don't pretend I don't exist!"
Lin Zhengren turned his head to look at the waiting Zhang Linchuan, and smiled: "You could always withdraw right now, and spare yourself the bruises."
Since exposing his Sixth-Rank cultivation, the man seemed to have shed much of his whole manner, caring little for surface niceties.
And then...
"I won't."
He heard a voice say so.
Lin Zhengren whirls his head around, looking toward the source of the sound. That tall, thin Fu Baosong, who had kept his silence the entire day, had spoken his first sentence of it.
"You won't? Won't what?" Lin Zhengren found it beyond belief.
Lin Zhengli, for his part, cursed outright from off the field: "Fu Baosong, have you lost your mind? Don't you know your own weight?"
Fu Baosong heard nothing of it. He only looked at Lin Zhengren, his gaze very calm, very equal — no different from how he looked at anyone else.
He said: "I will give everything I have, whoever the opponent. That is the meaning of the debate."
Lin Zhengren smiled in pure rage: "Very well. Then go ahead and try."
An abrupt turn of fortune.
The Fenglin folk gathered to watch felt a jolt of spirit. If the two cultivators of Wangjiang were truly serious, did that not mean their own Zhang Linchuan might yet have a chance?
Lin Zhengren might be of Sixth-Rank cultivation, but if Fu Baosong could manage to wound him before going down... Zhang Linchuan was not utterly hopeless after all!
"Well done, Fu Baosong!"
"Unyielding and upright, unbending and unbreakable — a true model of the cultivator!"
"Exactly! Why on earth concede? Lin Zhengren has no extra head to spare you — knock him flat and you're the champion!"
The spectators erupted one after another, and with such righteous fervor, as though they truly adored Fu Baosong.
Jiang Wang especially had a vague feeling that the last voice sounded rather familiar.
He followed the sound and saw Huang Azhan, slipping furtively this way and that among the crowd.
Jiang Wang turned back, his face wooden.
He genuinely could not imagine what "special talent" this fellow, who had come into the little circle through Du Yehu, might have. A flatterer and a bootlicker, greedy for drink and fond of women — and now, stirring up public opinion to boot.
And yet, strange to say, the fellow seemed lacking in every regard, and still no one could bring themselves to dislike him.
...
On the field, Lin Zhengren had evidently been provoked to genuine fury, and opened with the Green Python Coil.
The great python broke through the earth and overturned the sky, coiling into a tight mass.
Bang!
The Green Python Coil wound onto a wall of vines.
The interwoven snake-vines knitted themselves into a circle, shielding Fu Baosong within its center. It was the Entangling Wall of Vine-Snakes that Lin Zhengren had used before.
But the Entangling Wall of Vine-Snakes, of mid-grade Grade-B, could in no way hold against the Green Python Coil of lower-grade Grade-A.
In the span of no more than three breaths, the Entangling Wall of Vine-Snakes shattered apart.
The green great python contracted with all its force — yet in the very next instant, it suddenly wilted.
A hand, jade green and bearing a sense of withered dryness, pressed against the python's body. Upon the great serpent's vast frame, rotting grey-white and jade green grappled together.
The art of upper-grade Grade-B — the Decaying Wood Art!
It could not collapse the great python with a single hand as Dong A had done, yet it still brought the python low with listlessness.
It was in this gap that Fu Baosong vaulted clear.
But how could Lin Zhengren give him the opening? His hand thrust forward, and the Water Dragon Wave he had long since prepared came howling out!
Only, behind the serpent's translucent body, his handsome face had already turned grim beyond measure.
Some Dao arts demanded inborn talent; others demanded a certain affinity. It was not a matter of the cultivation having arrived, of then being able to grasp the Dao art of the corresponding grade.
Take this Decaying Wood Art. Though it was only of upper-grade Grade-B, it was the exclusive secret art of the Wangjiang City Dao Academy's head, a secret that even he, Lin Zhengren, had never been taught! And the stated reason was... inadequacy of affinity?
Could that sour, poverty-stricken wretch, that hard turd of a rock at the bottom of a latrine, be considered adequately affined?
Self-conceited as he was, Lin Zhengren had long had his fill of those high-sounding false pretexts. Like inadequacy of affinity. Like, the so-called meaning of the debate!
Facing the Water Dragon Wave that had almost come as the answer to an idle hope, Fu Baosong had a swell of waves curl about his feet, ready to dart aside. Born of the Wangjiang City Dao Academy, the triple surge was naturally no stranger to him.
But Lin Zhengren simply pressed down with his left hand, and thereupon waves surged in a rush, mingling with the billows beneath Fu Baosong's feet, turning this dodge into a vain hope.
One simple Dao art, the Raging Surges — only with flawless timing and a position exact to a hair did it dismantle the triple surge, an art of three shifts in movement.
The Water Dragon Wave struck Fu Baosong without mercy, hurling him high into the air, sending him crashing down hard.
Lin Zhengren rode the waves across with a single leap, and planted one foot on Fu Baosong's head.
He bent slightly, and in a deliberately ostentatious, contemptuous tone said: "Do you think, with that much of you, you can beat me?"
Fu Baosong turned his head with difficulty beneath Lin Zhengren's foot. Looking at Lin Zhengren, there was no anger in his eyes — only a stubbornness that defied understanding: "I cannot prevail over you. But I cannot... lose without a fight!"
This man was truly... foul and unbending.
Foul enough to wrinkle one's brow, unbending enough to command respect.