The moment the fight broke out at the inner vault, the whole armory garrison moved. Men flowed in from every corner, tide against the tide — Wei Feng pushing out against the current.
Nothing had been leaked. The garrison had not been told; Wei Feng was the only ambusher on site.
One man was enough.
The real strength was scattered across the city. Wei Lin had dangled the Nether Candle as bait, but he would never put all of Maple City at risk for it. The Trial had drawn most of the crowd to the Drill Ground, and that place was safe as stone. Pressure everywhere else dropped.
Guards who met Wei Feng turned and fell in behind him without a word. "Hold this post," he said. "Don't leave it."
The Candle was gone, but the armory was still the armory.
Two guards stood at the main gate. They had heard the turmoil inside, but until ordered, the gate was their post. They were watchful, poised — and never saw the thread of blood slip along the wall past them.
A richly dressed young man strolled by, waving a folding fan. He swept his sleeve wide, as if brushing off dust. The blood-serpent vanished into it.
He walked to the end of the street, past a tailor's shop, and at the corner brushed shoulders with a peddler carrying a shoulder pole.
On Xuanwu Street he walked easy, even humming a tune.
Two of the city's experts swept past him — and cut down a sect cultivator who had broken cover, right behind his back.
The young man seemed to notice nothing. He drifted on.
"Stop!"
One of the experts had his doubts. This young man was too calm.
The young man stopped with his back to them. His lips drew up, slowly, into a grin of murder.
He was about to go wild in the street when a long blade screamed out of the air.
"Kuaixue!" His eyes went wide. He looked down at the narrow, straight steel sliding out of his chest.
The blade was called Swift Snow. The man who held it was Wei Feng.
He knew he was dead. He did not ask how he had been found, or how he had been caught. The fear drained from his eyes and left a kind of feverish glee: "The thing... is not with me!"
Wei Feng sheathed his blade and left.
By then the peddler had reached Greenwood Avenue. Two bamboo baskets hung from his pole, each covered with a cloth, swaying with his step.
In one basket, among the odds and ends, sat something strange: a small, black candle, black as pitch.
...
On the viewing stand, Dean Dong and Wei Lin watched the field. No one knew their attention was elsewhere.
For Wei Lin, the day's real work was the net he had cast over the city. A simple trap, flawlessly sprung.
For Dean Dong: the trial's result mattered less than the city's safety, and he had faith in Zhang Yuan. Faith that had not shaken even when Lin Zhengren revealed sixth-rank power.
Two men at the top of Maple City, voices meant only for each other.
Wei Lin was smiling coldly: "The moment they smelled the Candle, they came running like dogs to a bone. Bone Path scum, as I guessed."
The Nether Candle was a treasure of the underworld — and Bone Path's own legacy. Wei Lin had dangled it precisely to test that guess.
Dean Dong frowned: "Bone Path's doctrine was stamped out two hundred years ago. The old emperor's nine-year purge killed them to the last. And there are still remnants?"
"A centipede dies but never stops twitching."
...
Lin Zhengren had beaten Fu Baosong without visible effort. Next: Zhang Yuan.
Zhang Yuan still held the handkerchief to his nose. "Can we clean this place up before we fight?"
His earlier win had been a squash — over in moments. Against Lin Zhengren he could not afford distractions.
The academy had proper sparring grounds, but none of them could hold a crowd this size. The plaza before the governor's mansion had no array engravings. The ground was wrecked: cracked brick, mud and water churned together, pits and hollows, blood splashed here and there. A battlefield of a floor.
Zhang Yuan's brow furrowed deeply. "This fighting surface is filthy."
Dean Dong did not lift an eyelid: "Say one more word and I'll throw you in a cesspit for three days."
Zhang Yuan tucked his handkerchief away at once, and smiled at the judge with perfect, mechanical courtesy. "I'm ready."
The judge gave the order. Lin Zhengren strode forward.
Thunder.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Lin Zhengren moved like a wave — Three-Fold Rising Tide — and behind him, three scorched craters smoked in the earth.
Zhang Yuan had many flaws. You could call him a clean freak, a stickler, a man who hated trouble and did exactly as he pleased.
What you could not call him was weak.
Everyone knew thunder arts were vicious. How many could actually command them?
Lin Zhengren's two instant-cast arts, engraved in his Celestial Palace, were Three-Fold Rising Tide and Vine Serpent Wall. He had chosen movement over defense on the opening exchange — because he meant to attack.
A seed broke earth. A bud opened. The flower's petals were teeth, hooked and hungry. It bit down.
Flower of Devouring. A low-grade Yi-rank art.
Zhang Yuan drifted over it, tossed a ball of lightning into its mouth as he passed, and rose into the air. Fingers formed seals against the sky.
Clouds gathered. Thunder murmured.
A Water Dragon Wave roared up — not at Zhang Yuan. It lashed its tail through the clouds and scattered them.
Water mist burst across the sky, lightning flickering in the shreds, then gone. A beautiful sight. The crowd gasped.
And Zhang Yuan's carefully prepared art dissolved.
The true gap between a Gate-opened master and cultivators below seventh rank: the master could wield low-grade Jia arts. A few prodigies learned one before sixth rank — Wang Hao, Zhang Yuan, both of them. Did that close the gap? What was the difference?
Lin Zhengren showed it.
A Gate-opened master lived half-merged with heaven and earth, could read the flow of essence in the world, and saw the holes in an art the moment it began.
In battle, that meant: he shattered Zhang Yuan's art while it was still being prepared.
It meant more. In the blink of an eye, Lin Zhengren stood before Zhang Yuan.
Only then did the crowd see the Water Dragon Wave under his feet. He had ridden an attack art — made it his transport.
After opening the Gate, every art he knew had new depths. Seals shortened. New variations opened.
Zhang Yuan was still in the air. Lin Zhengren's hand was already on him.
The outcome seemed fixed.