The second preliminary duel for the Azure Cloud bracket was scheduled for the early afternoon, under the pale, glare-free light of the high mountain sun.
The arena floor had been rapidly cleared by Precursor upkeep arrays. Underground bronze scrapers that emerged from outer edge slots to sweep away stone fragments and level the crushed flat stone slabs with fresh, tightly packed river gravel. The thirty-two sapphire warding pylons hummed with renewed vigor, sealing the combat space beneath their iron-hard energetic dome. The air smelled of clean ozone and wet river silt, circulating through ancient air-flow ducts carved into the mountain foundations.
Standing in the red corner was Lin Tao’s second opponent: Liu Yun of the Flowing Water Sect, known across the river prefectures by his moniker, Whispering Reed.
Liu Yun was the polar opposite of Bao Shan.
He was slender, lithe. Then he wore light traveling armor of flexible river-serpent scale dyed a pale cerulean blue. At his waist hung several small vials of cooling peppermint dew, and in his hands he carried an eight-foot spear forged from star-silver and flexible bamboo-iron. The spearhead was leaf-shaped, polished to a mirror sheen. Then he shook with a nonstop, high-hum that sounded like wind rustling through dry reeds along a lonely marsh.
