Screaming spectators scrambled over the wooden benches as the Iron-Hound raiders fanned out from the shattered southern gate.
The acrid stench of black powder and scorching pitch rolled across the arena sand.
Attendants fled in all directions, dropping brooms and prize banners as spiked maces smashed through the wooden turnstiles.
In the high VIP gallery, chaos erupted.
Baron Derrick Vance shoved his unconscious eldest son onto the velvet cushions, fumbling for his broadsword.
“Guards!” Derrick roared, his voice drowned out by the screaming crowd. “Form ranks! Protect the magistrate!”
The few city guards near the VIP box were already scattering, terrified by the ruthless reputation of the Iron-Hound Gang.
Beside Derrick, Magistrate Vane-Locke sat pale and rigid, his narrow eyes darting toward the hidden rear exits.
Madam Evelyn leaned against the railing, her silk sleeves trembling as she stared down at the arena floor.
On the central stone stage, Kaelen stood beside the open trophy chest, completely unbothered.
He held a small porcelain cup of roasted barley tea poured from his pocket warming flask.
He took a slow, leisurely sip, letting the warm grain fragrance wash over his tongue.
[The Fallow Slate] [Active Multiplier: 181x] [Burst Window Remaining: 52m 00s]
Nearly a full hour of his golden burst state still remained.
A man can’t even finish one cup of roasted barley tea in this county without some oversized dog in a wolf pelt kicking the doors off their hinges, Kaelen thought with weary irritation. Truly disgraceful.
He set his teacup down on the velvet cushion of the trophy chest and called out mildly across the sand. “Sera, start the stopwatch on Briggs’s page in the Grudge Ledger. Every minute he interrupts my post-match tea costs one Low-Grade Spirit Stone. Double the rate if he spills my cup.”
From the far end of the arena stairs, Hound-Lord Briggs tore through the perimeter guards.
The seven-foot bandit lord swung a pair of jagged steel claws, sending severed spears and splinters flying into the air.
“Raid the prize vault!” Briggs roared, his yellow teeth bared in a feral sneer. “Seize the Star-Iron! With that celestial metal, I will forge master-grade claws and conquer the entire southern valley!”
Two bandit captains with notched broadswords rushed the preparation tent, aiming to loot the medicinal chests.
Inside the tent, Old Barnaby grabbed his oak ladle, his knees shaking violently.
“They are coming!” Barnaby squawked, his face turning pale. “Mina, hide behind the dried angelica sacks!”
“Nobody is hiding,” a cold voice cut through the tent.
Sera stepped past the canvas flap into the open sunlight.
In her right hand, she gripped a heavy iron spear taken from an arena weapon rack.
Her left shoulder, completely restored by Kaelen’s Supreme Pills, moved with smooth, oiled fluidity.
Behind her, Deacon Vane snapped his brass fan open, flanked by twenty elite Ghost Market enforcers in black cuirasses.
“Deacon Vane!” Sera commanded, pointing her spear toward the western stairs. “Take your men and bottle them on the narrow steps! Do not let a single bandit reach the upper stands! Crossbows on the flanks!”
“At once, Miss Thorne!” Deacon Vane said, his voice sharp with mercantile fury. “Enforcers! Protect our investments! Every spent bolt goes onto Vance House’s tab! Anyone who kills a bandit gets a silver bonus!”
The Ghost Market guards raised their iron shields, locking ranks across the stone staircase.
Two heavy repeating crossbows clicked into position, sending steel quarrels whistling into the charging raiders.
Three raiders tumbled down the steps with bloodied limbs, screeching curses as iron bolts pinned them to the stone.
Sera surged forward like a gale of wind.
Her iron spear struck out in three blinding thrusts, piercing the lead bandit captain through the shoulder and sending him tumbling down the stairs.
She spun the heavy shaft, cracking the second raider’s spiked buckler in half with a resounding clang.
“Briggs’s stopwatch is running, Young Master!” Sera called back over her shoulder as she kicked a wounded bandit down the stone steps. “One Low-Grade Spirit Stone per minute, doubled if a single drop of roasted barley tea spills on the stone! His debt is climbing fast!”
Briggs heard the exchange and skidded to a halt on the bloody sand.
The bandit lord turned his massive head toward the central stage, his bloodshot eyes narrowing at Kaelen in disbelief.
Briggs threw his head back and let out a booming laugh that shook the canvas awnings.
“Third Vance brat!” Briggs yelled, his voice rough as grinding stones. “You knocked out your soft brother with a lucky trick, and now you think you are an immortal? I have slaughtered sixty cultivators in the northern barrens! I will rip your heart out through your ribs!”
Briggs bent his knees, the packed earth fracturing under his iron boots.
He vaulted fifteen feet through the air, his mangy wolf pelt whipping in the wind.
BOOM.
The bandit lord crashed onto the stone platform, kicking up a shower of masonry fragments.
Dark crimson Qi, thick and greasy with the stench of animal slaughter, erupted from Briggs’s pores.
His forearms swelled until the veins knotted into thick cords beneath his hairy skin.
On each massive fist, three-pronged steel rending claws gleamed with dark, greasy venom.
Tier 1 Martial Art: Blood-Hound Rending Claw.
Cultivation: Mortal Pulse Rank 9.
Briggs lunged without a word of warning.
His right claw tore through the air in a vicious three-blade rake, aiming straight for Kaelen’s throat.
The sound of shearing air was so sharp that spectators on the upper benches covered their ears in pain.
Kaelen did not run.
He did not duck behind the Star-Iron trophy chest.
He stood perfectly still, his eyes wide open, tracking every twitch of Briggs’s muscles, every angle of his wrists, and every current of Qi circulating through his forearms.
Active Multiplier: 181x, Kaelen thought.
His sea of consciousness flared into blazing white light.
[The Fallow Slate] [Martial Comprehension Initiated: Blood-Hound Rending Claw] [Observation Rate: 181x Real-Time Acceleration] [Minute 01: Deconstructing Form, Balance, and Kinetic Momentum...]
Kaelen tilted his head two inches to the right.
The steel blades ripped past his cheek, missing his ear by half an inch.
The wind pressure ruffled his collar, but Kaelen’s pulse remained steady at fifty beats per minute.
Plagiarizing another man’s technique right to his face is considered poor manners in polite society, Kaelen thought dryly. However, polite society does not have fifty bandits tearing up the cedar railings.
Briggs snarled, spinning on his heel to drive his left claw toward Kaelen’s ribs.
“Hold still, you slippery rat!” Briggs roared, his spittle flying.
Kaelen took a half-step back, letting the three iron blades pass through the empty air before his stomach.
[The Fallow Slate] [Minute 02: Synthesizing Kinetic Pathways with Existing Dao Intent...] [Equivalency: 362 Baseline Hours Absorbed]
In Kaelen’s mind, a ghostly silhouette of Briggs was dissected into thousand points of light.
Every flaw, every hesitation, and every crude habit Briggs had developed over thirty years of banditry lay exposed like grease on clean snow.
Briggs unleashed his second form—the Viper-Hound Flank Rip.
His arms blurred into a storm of red arcs, tearing chunks of stone from the platform floor.
Kaelen drifted between the blades like a dried leaf riding an autumn breeze.
His cloth slippers glided across the stone using minute shifts of Ash-Wind Footwork, slipping through the narrow gaps between the steel claws with effortless grace.
Briggs spent thirty years practicing this claw art, and he still cocks his wrist like a drunken butcher carving salt pork, Kaelen noted with silent amusement. If you are going to terrorize honest citizens, at least align your radial tendons.
In the VIP gallery, Baron Derrick watched the platform in stunned silence.
“He is dodging Rank 9 strikes... with his hands behind his back?” Derrick stammered, his fingers digging into the cedar railing. “How can his footwork be so smooth? That is not Vance footwork!”
Madam Evelyn’s face turned completely white.
She leaned over the rail, her fingers clutching the velvet drapes so tightly that her knuckles cracked.
“Kill him, Briggs!” Evelyn whispered under her breath, her voice frantic with venom. “Kill that little beast right now!”
On the stage, Briggs’s breathing turned ragged.
His fury reached a fever pitch as every strike hit empty air.
Around the perimeter, the fighting slowed as bandits and spectators alike turned their eyes toward the central ring.
The sight of an untamed Rank 9 bandit lord flailing against a calm youth in scholar robes struck terror into every heart.
“Stop dancing, you little worm!” Briggs shrieked, red foam spraying from his lips.
[The Fallow Slate] [Minute 03: Full Mastery Achieved] [Three Minutes Expended = 543h Comprehension] [New Technique Study: 543h; Prior Fist Foundation: 905h (Separate Skills)] [Blood-Hound Rending Claw -> Transcendent Dao Intent Achieved (400% Output)] [Burst Window Remaining: 46m 00s]
A deep, resonant hum vibrated through Kaelen’s dantian.
The Blood-Hound Rending Claw was no longer just a crude bandit technique.
In Kaelen’s mind, the art had been stripped of its vulgar beast-frenzy and refined into the pure, lethal Dao of predatory rending.
Briggs drew both arms back, howling as he prepared his ultimate killing strike—the Twin-Hound Heart Ripper.
“Die, Vance scum!” Briggs shrieked, driving both claw gauntlets straight toward Kaelen’s chest with the full weight of Rank 9 Qi.
Kaelen stopped dodging.
He stepped directly into the path of the oncoming strike.
“Your technique is an embarrassment, Briggs,” Kaelen said in a calm, clear voice that carried above the arena din.
Briggs blinked in shock.
“First flaw,” Kaelen said, his left hand snapping upward like a striking viper. “You over-rotate your radial tendon when cocking your wrist, completely exposing your inner pulse.”
Kaelen’s bare fingers tapped Briggs’s left wrist bone with surgical precision.
Crack.
The impact struck the exact nerve cluster controlling Briggs’s grip.
Briggs’s left hand went completely numb, his iron gauntlet trembling as his strike veered six inches wide.
“Second wrist flaw,” Kaelen continued smoothly, stepping inside Briggs’s guard. “You tilt your right wrist too high on the downward rake, shedding twenty percent of your claw traction.”
Kaelen raised his right hand, his fingers curling into the flawless silhouette of the Blood-Hound Rending Claw.
Pure silver Rank 7 Qi coated Kaelen’s fingertips, sharpening into translucent talons humming with four hundred percent Transcendent Dao Intent.
SKRRR-TCH.
With a deafening screech of tearing metal, Kaelen’s bare hand sheared straight through Briggs’s right iron gauntlet, slicing the hardened blades into ribbons like damp parchment.
Briggs gasped, his eyes bulging in paralyzed horror.
“What did you just use?” Briggs choked, staring at his ruined right gauntlet. “That’s my signature claw art!”
“Third wrist flaw,” Kaelen whispered, leaning in until his breath stirred the wolf pelt on Briggs’s collar. “You lock your left wrist on the follow-through rake, leaving your guard wide open. An amateur mistake.”
Kaelen’s left hand flashed out with forty-five minutes left on his burst window.
His silver-sheathed fingers sliced Briggs’s left iron gauntlet to ribbons and raked straight across Briggs’s chest in a blinding arc.
RIP.
The four-hundred-percent claw counter sheared clean through Briggs’s iron-studded leather brigandine, slicing the heavy hide like butter.
Briggs cried out in agony as he was thrown backward across the platform, tumbling through the sand before crashing into the corner post.
Blood welled from three deep gashes across Briggs’s chest, staining his torn leather brigandine as a hush fell over the lower stands.
Even the Iron-Hound vanguard on the stone steps stopped swinging, staring in cold terror at their bloodied chief.
The bandit lord stared at his own ruined gauntlets, trembling from head to foot.
In three minutes, a teenager in silk robes had completely dismantled thirty years of his life’s work using his own signature martial art.
As the giant sagged against the corner timber, a small, square object slipped from his torn breast pocket.
It bounced across the stone platform, sliding to a halt directly against the toe of Kaelen’s cloth slipper.
It was a pocket-sized booklet bound in rich black velvet and edged with fine silver filigree, its cover stamped in crimson wax with Madam Evelyn Vance’s personal phoenix insignia.