Arena crews had rushed to repair the fighting floor, but nobody could remove the thirty-foot mound of black glass sand in the northwest corner. It remained there like a monument to demolition. Whenever the wind rose, black dust drifted over the lower seats.
High above the pit, Arbiter Ruan adjusted his brass speaking horn. White bandages wrapped his bruised fingers, and his hands still shook. His armor felt three sizes too heavy after Austin’s gravity flare.
He cleared his throat twice.
“ROUND ONE, MATCH ONE!”
“IN THE RED CORNER: FIRST HEIR OF THE BLAZING SUN SECT AND MASTER OF THE NINE-PHOENIX BLADE, YOUNG MASTER HUO YUN!”
“IN THE BLUE CORNER: FIRST-SEEDED QUALIFIER AUSTIN OF SUNSET PEAK FABRICATION AND REPAIR LLC!”
The crowd roared. Spectators stamped until the arena hummed. Crimson sun banners snapped above the southern stands. In the VIP boxes, Blazing Sun elders raised cups of spiced wine and smirked.
To them, this match would erase the shame of the preliminary round.
Huo Yun leaped thirty feet from the staging terrace. He landed in the center of the ring with a burst of red embers. Heat scorched a ten-foot black circle into the floor.
His first Earth-Grade sword had broken under Austin’s gravity. This time, he had brought the crown jewel of his clan’s vault.
He drew the Nine-Phoenix Solar Cleaver from his spatial ring.
The five-foot broadsword had been cast from thousand-year Nether-Flame Copper. White fire raced along its spine, and heat blurred the air around it.
Huo Yun’s eyes were black, his pupils huge. Ten minutes earlier, he had swallowed a forbidden Berserk Dragon Marrow Pill. It had forced his Peak Foundation power into a brief, violent state close to Golden Core. Red vapor leaked through his scarlet robes. The pit smelled of burned marrow, sulfur, and hot copper.
“Peasant!” he roared. “You used a cowardly trick to break the sacred pillar! Tricks won’t save you in open combat! I’ll carve those blue rags off your bones and take your head!”
Thirty paces away, Austin stood in the sand.
He had not drawn his pipe wrench or gathered any visible qi. He held a birchwood clipboard and leafed through a folded city booklet.
“Hey, pal,” he called. “Did you read subsection four of the Tournament Safety Guidelines before lighting that giant barbecue fork?”
Huo Yun’s sword stopped in mid-flourish. “What did you say?”
Austin tapped the clipboard with his grease pencil.
“Subsection four. Open flames and heat-producing weapons must stay thirty meters from flammable materials. You’re standing upwind of dry straw in the beast pens. That makes you a Class-B fire hazard.”
A strange silence spread through the stands. The hiss of Huo Yun’s blade suddenly sounded very loud.
Austin checked a box on his form.
“You also don’t have a ten-pound ABC extinguisher within ten paces. And untreated silk robes are a terrible choice around open flame. I can’t sign off on this duel until you fix the hazards.”
Huo Yun’s face turned purple.
Being lectured about fire code while holding his clan’s sacred weapon broke the last of his pill-clouded restraint.
“DIE, YOU CLOWN!”
His aura erupted.
A fifty-meter, nine-headed fire phoenix burst into shape behind him. Huo Yun shot forward at twice the speed of sound, a spear of white heat.
The Solar Cleaver swept toward Austin’s collarbone.
“NINE-PHOENIX HEAVEN-MELTING PURGATORY SLASH!”
The sand beneath him melted into green glass. People in the front rows covered their faces as the heat singed their clothes. The blast also struck the eastern gallery. A stone support cracked, and dust fell from the balcony above it.
Xiaoyao saw the crack. He left his seat and warned Ruan’s crew while the duel continued below.
Austin didn’t move his wrench. He didn’t dodge or drop his clipboard.
He sighed like a construction foreman dealing with the same rookie mistake for the hundredth time.
“No safety discipline. Every hotshot thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”
When the blade was a foot from his ear, Austin took one calm half-step.
Clomp.
His Tier 4 Stellar-Steel boot came down directly on the descending sword tip.
THUD.
There was no great explosion. Just the dull sound of a carpenter stepping on a scrap of wood.
The blade stopped against the floor, pinned by the impossible weight anchored in Austin’s White Dwarf Seed.
Huo Yun’s body kept moving at twice the speed of sound.
The universe did not care about his dragon bloodline.
CRACK-SNAP!
The five-foot copper blade broke in half. The lower eighteen inches stayed under Austin’s boot. The guard and upper section swung back into Huo Yun’s stomach.
WHAM!
“OOF!”
The air left him in a high wheeze. The giant fire phoenix vanished in a sad puff of soot.
Huo Yun folded over his own broken sword, rolled head over heels, and landed facedown at Austin’s boots.
Twitch. Twitch.
The Blazing Sun prodigy was out cold. A thin line of drool ran from his mouth into the black dust.
The match had lasted one point four seconds.
Austin lifted his boot and checked the toe. A smear of burned copper marked the leather. He scraped it off against his other heel.
Then he picked up the broken blade tip and examined the fracture.
“Bad casting. Impurities all along the spine. Poor grain. Probably quenched in a bucket of pond water. Fancy market junk with a gold finish. One hard hit and it comes apart.”
He dropped it into the dirt.
Austin pulled a pink carbon-copy form from the back of his clipboard and filled it out. He tore it free and tucked it into Huo Yun’s charred belt.
“Open-flame violation and failure to use heat-resistant protective gear. Fifty silver fine, payable at the city clerk’s office within thirty business days. Miss the deadline and we put a claim on your sect’s wagons.”
He put his pencil behind his ear and looked up at Ruan.
“Hazard secured and cited. Who’s next?”
Ruan stood frozen, his brass horn hanging from one hand. Across the stands, bookmakers dropped their ledgers. Three Blazing Sun elders spilled wine down their silk robes.
In the royal gallery, Governor Zhao’s hands shook so hard that his jade rings rattled against the arms of his throne.
Grandmaster Ouyang leaned close.
“My Lord... he never even drew the blue wrench. He stepped on an Earth-Grade ancestral sword and broke it like a dry twig.”