Chương 59: 1.59 Sixth Stage

The second round followed a structured one-on-one elimination format. Twenty participants remained from the preliminaries, each granted two lives. A first loss dropped a disciple into the losers' bracket, but a second meant immediate removal from the competition. After each cycle of duels, the losers were weeded out, and the survivors were reshuffled for the next pairing. This steady grinding continued until only ten disciples remained.

The moment the field narrowed to ten, those survivors were officially recognized as the Top Ten of the tournament. From there, the format remained exactly the same, maintaining the strict two-loss rule until the final rankings were decided. Placement depended entirely on overall records; the fewer the losses and the more the wins, the higher the seat. In the event of a tie, head-to-head results broke the deadlock. Simply put, Ning needed to keep winning.

He managed exactly that for the next two stretches, fighting consecutive battles against a Fourth Stage opponent and a Fifth Stage cultivator. Both matches were entirely straightforward and uneventful, the sort of brief, unexciting exchanges that usually get skipped over in a single line of a report. The third match, however, shattered that easy rhythm.

"Next up: Jin Shu versus Ji Ning." The formation barrier rose slowly, humming with a heavy vibration that rattled the loose gravel around the ring. Across the stone platform stood Jin Shu, currently ranked second among the newcomers. She kept her right hand resting lightly on the hilt of her curved blade, her posture completely relaxed while her eyes burned with focused intensity. At her heels, a massive gray wolf prowled in a tight, impatient circle.

Its claws clicked sharply against the bluestone, its shoulders rolling with coiled, heavy violence. The beast was huge, easily outsizing most wild mid-stage Qi Condensation spirit beasts. Its iron-gray fur was thick, streaked with dark, faint patterns that shimmered whenever qi circulated beneath its hide. Its golden eyes never left Ning. Jin Shu grinned, her expression turning almost cheerful.

"I've been looking forward to this. Your matches have actually had some meat to them. I can't say mine have been nearly as satisfying." She rolled her shoulders once, loose and eager, looking more like an athlete stretching before a pleasant morning run than a cultivator entering a brutal sect duel.

"So yeah," she added, her fingers tightening on her grip, "I've been waiting. Don't let me down." Beside her, the gray wolf let out a low, vibrating growl from its chest, its gaze locked dead onto Ning's throat. Ning exhaled quietly.

"Let's both do our best." His tone was polite, perfectly neutral, but internally he was holding back a massive sigh. Why is this entire sect populated by absolute battle junkies? The presiding elder raised his wide sleeve. A brief, heavy pause hung over the ring. Then, his arm snapped down.

"Begin." Ning didn't waste a millisecond. His fingers formed a seal, and a sharp spike of cold qi surged from his core. The Hidden Ice Mist erupted instantly. The dense, frost-white fog rolled across the bluestone in a single, heavy breath, swallowing the platform and cutting visibility to zero. Thick frost spread across the stone like creeping white veins. Ning backed away into the expanding whiteout, unlatching the black bow from his shoulder.

He triggered his Turtle Breathing to drop his life signs to a dead stop, while his Shadow Steps carried his boots soundlessly along the perimeter of the ring. He didn't run far; he just wanted to establish a clean angle from the edge of the fog. Then, a deep, heavy sniff echoed through the mist. The wolf's chest expanded unnaturally. Its nose twitched toward the ceiling, and without a single moment of hesitation, it lunged straight toward Ning's blind spot. It wasn't guessing; it was tracking.

Ning caught the sudden shift in the air currents and loosed his first arrow. The shaft left the string with a sharp thwip. The wolf twisted mid-stride with explosive agility, its paws skidding sideways across the wet stone. The iron tip tore across its flank, drawing a thin line of red, but the angle was too shallow to pierce the dense muscle. It didn't even slow the beast down. Jin Shu's voice echoed out through the white soup.

"Did you think Hei Ya hunts by sight? You're heavily underestimating my family's beast-taming methods!" She blurred forward right behind her companion, her blade flashing through the dark. A sharp crescent of compressed wind sliced through the mist, targeted exactly where the arrow had flown from. Ning pivoted hard to the right. The wind blade whistled past his ear, slamming into the empty stone behind him. His second arrow was already on the string, aimed lower. He targeted the wolf's front leg.

The beast leapt over the shot, the iron tip grazing its shoulder and scattering gray fur in the air. Blood bloomed, but it was another superficial scratch.

"Still just scratching?" Jin Shu laughed, her voice moving fast.

"You'll have to hit harder than that!" She delivered a heavy, diagonal upward slash, the wind from her blade carving a clean channel through the freezing fog. Her style was pure aggression, every single swing backed by the full-body momentum of her hips and shoulders. Ning kept moving, never planting his heels in one spot for more than a heartbeat. Constant motion was his only shield. His third arrow hit cleaner, embedding itself straight into the wolf's ribs.

The beast snarled, its golden eyes flashing with sudden fury through the haze, but it kept its charge perfectly aligned. A fourth arrow followed, but the wolf juked sharply from left to right, forcing Ning to adjust his release at the last microsecond. The shaft clipped its hind leg, drawing more blood but failing to take out its mobility. This thing is absurdly fast, Ning thought. He had done his homework before the bracket matches. The gray wolf line was the bedrock of the Jin family's influence.

Through generations of selective breeding, they had refined the bloodline into a breed whose physical foundations left wild spirit beasts completely in the dust. And according to the sect's rumors, this specific wolf was the absolute prize of their latest litter. The beast closed the gap in a blur of gray fur. Claws gouged the frost-covered stone as it launched its massive bulk directly at his chest.

Ning dropped flat onto his back, rolling hard across the platform as massive jaws snapped shut inches from his shoulder guard. The wolf hit the stone heavily, its thick leg muscles coiling to turn around for a second leap, but Jin Shu was already there to cover the recovery. Her curved blade came down like an axe. A sharp, metallic clang echoed through the mist. Ning abandoned the bow, his hands snapping his iron-headed spear into the path of her blade. The raw impact vibrated straight through his palms.

Jin Shu didn't give him room to breathe, her sword flowing into a relentless sequence of heavy cuts. Unlike conventional beast tamers who stood back and shouted commands from safety, she fought right alongside her beast like a frontline vanguard.

"You're awfully quiet," she taunted between exchanges, her blade clashing against his spear shaft.

"Getting nervous?" Ning didn't waste breath answering. He parried a heavy downward slash, twisting his hips to let the kinetic force slide off his weapon and down into his spine. He focused entirely on his footing.

"Oh, the silent type during a brawl?" Jin Shu muttered, pressing her weight forward. Suddenly, the air behind Ning's back grew cold. His spatial awareness prickled. He shifted his stance a fraction of a second before the wolf's claws tore through the empty space where his calf had just been. Ning retaliated instantly. He snapped his spear forward, activating the Scorching Purge technique.

A thin, highly concentrated line of crimson flame ignited from the iron spearhead, a focused stream of fire qi no wider than a man's wrist, shooting out like a laser lance. The localized heat was intense. The stream struck the wolf's injured shoulder dead-on. The beast recoiled with a painful yelp as its thick fur singed, a small, black burn mark smoking on its hide.

Unlike a standard Fireball, which expanded into a massive sphere designed for area denial and crowd control, the Scorching Purge condensed all its thermal energy into a single, piercing vector. It didn't look flashy, but its penetration power against defense-heavy targets was vastly superior.

"You'll have to do better than that to put us down!" Jin Shu shouted, her smile only widening as the pressure mounted. This is exactly why battle junkies are a massive pain, Ning thought. The harder you push them back, the stronger their fighting spirit gets. Jin Shu didn't wait for her companion to recover. Her blade whistled through the air, currents of wind qi spiraling around the steel edge. Every strike carried the brute force of her entire frame, hips driving, shoulders following, completely relentless.

She fought like a human battering ram. Ning met her first slash head-on. The impact rattled his grip, and before the vibration could even clear his wrists, her second strike was already coming down. She was deliberately suffocating his response time, choking out his space. And from his left, the wolf lunged back into the fray. It was burned and bleeding, but its coordination with Jin Shu was completely seamless. When she pressed high, the wolf attacked his ankles.

When she drove a straight thrust, the beast flanked from his blind spot. The double pressure was immense. Ning's vision sharpened. His Pure Eyes tracked the geometric lines of her blade, the exact placement of the wolf's paws, and the shifting tension in their muscles. He read the overlapping rhythms and adjusted his weight by fractions of an inch. But perfect calculation couldn't stop the physical toll on his body. Jin Shu suddenly broke her own tempo.

Instead of a wide, looping slash, she stepped deep inside his guard and drew a tight, vicious diagonal cut across his forearms. At that exact microsecond, the wolf surged from the opposite side. The space was too tight to cleanly evade both. The steel blade bit shallowly into Ning's upper arm, while the wolf's claws tore across his ribs a heartbeat later. Hot, sharp pain flared through his side, and dark blood began to stain his green outer-sect sleeve.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Ning didn't look at the injury. He redirected Jin Shu's sword with a violent, twisting parry, letting her momentum slide down the length of his spear shaft. She caught sight of the crimson tearing through his robes and grinned.

"Got you." The wolf circled behind him once more, though its breathing had grown noticeably heavier. The burn on its shoulder was finally dragging its speed down by a tiny fraction. Jin Shu thrust straight for his chest, the wind qi at the tip of her sword condensing into a drilling spike. Ning parried the steel away, but the wolf was already airborne behind him, aiming for his neck. Ning pivoted sharply on his front heel and snapped two fingers backward without even turning his head.

The Golden Finger technique flared. A highly compressed burst of raw qi shot from his fingertips like an iron bolt, striking the gray wolf squarely between its golden eyes. The beast staggered mid-leap, its front paws folding as the heavy, focused impact rattled its skull. It wasn't enough to cause a severe injury, but it completely shattered the beast's momentum. Ning used that single stolen beat to slide backward across the frost-slick bluestone, disappearing back into the thickest part of the white mist.

"Haha! Still want to play hide-and-seek?" Jin Shu called out, her boots clicking as she pursued him.

"You can't hide now! Hei Ya has your scent, and you're leaving a trail!" She wasn't wrong. The cut on Ning's arm was dripping steadily, leaving dark droplets on the white frost. Ning didn't call back. Instead, he stopped his movement and began a deliberate, internal chant. Up until this moment, every spell he had utilized had been cast within a second or two, quick, efficient, and meant entirely to disrupt. They were tools to create space and force repositioning. But none of them possessed true, decisive lethality.

The reason was simple: most of his current arsenal consisted of modified spiritual farming techniques. They were designed for field maintenance and crop control, meaning their raw destructive output against an armored cultivator was naturally limited. His tactical use of them was clever, but cleverness wasn't enough in such a high level. But that didn't mean he hadn't brought something heavier. He had just been waiting for the proper setup.

"Found you!" Jin Shu shouted. With the scent of blood guiding them, the tracking was trivial. The wolf charged through the fog, its body low to the ground and coiled for a lethal strike. Jin Shu followed right on its flank, her blade gathering a massive vortex of wind qi for a finishing thrust. They closed the gap instantly. This time, Ning didn't step back. His hands snapped together, and his qi reserves emptied into his palms. The Fireball materialized.

A dense, roaring sphere of deep crimson flame formed between his hands, pulsing violently as the heat spiraled outward. The ambient frost on the floor evaporated into steam within a millisecond. He thrust his hands forward. The sphere shot into the gap, detonating directly in the path of the oncoming pair. BOOM! A violent column of flame erupted across the platform, swallowing both figures whole.

The explosion rattled the stone foundations of the ring, flash-melting the remaining ice and launching a heavy wall of boiling steam and black debris into the air. The gray wolf had sensed the sudden spike in thermal energy first. Mid-charge, it had violently twisted its massive body, throwing itself directly in front of the young mistress to act as a living shield.

"Wai-" Jin Shu managed to gasp out before the beast's bulk obscured her view. The inferno engulfed the wolf's left flank, roaring through its thick fur. The raw heat blistered the underlying stone, turning the damp platform into a scorching furnace. A pained, guttural snarl tore through the roar of the fire. The weight of the blast slammed the wolf into the dirt, and it slid across the scorched bluestone, keeping Jin Shu partially shielded beneath its heavy frame.

Thick, black smoke billowed toward the sky, completely hiding them from sight. Damn it, Ning thought, his eyes narrowing through his Pure Eyes. The feedback through his qi hadn't felt like a clean kill. He clutched his bleeding ribs, forcing his ragged breathing to steady. When the black smoke finally thinned, the gray wolf was still on its feet. Its left flank was completely scorched black, the skin beneath raw, red, and blistered by the blast. Its chest heaved violently with ragged, agonizing breaths.

But its legs remained locked. Behind its massive shoulder, Jin Shu emerged. Thanks to her companion's sacrifice, she carried nothing more than a few minor singe marks along her arm. She clicked her tongue sharply.

"That actually had some bite to it." The wolf growled low in its throat, and a faint, metallic sheen suddenly rippled across its damaged skin. Body of Steel. It was the wolf's primary bloodline talent, and the sole reason it had survived a direct detonation. Its flesh condensed, the skin tightening until it took on the durability of tempered iron. The physical pain dulled, and its defensive capabilities surged. Combined with Jin Shu's own offensive power, the pair were a nightmare for anyone in the same tier.

They hadn't just been raised on wealth; they had been forged with clear tactical intention. Jin Shu's eyes gleamed with a wild light.

"This has been a blast," she said honestly, her blade leveling with his throat.

"But let's finish this properly." Tempest and Wild. It was their family's trademark Earth-grade combination technique. The wolf would launch itself like an iron projectile to shatter the opponent's guard, while she followed a split second later with a wind-amplified execution strike. Ning felt the atmospheric pressure around them compress. He didn't try to back away. The wolf exploded forward. Given Ning's bloodied condition and torn ribs, it looked like a definitive checkmate.

But mid-leap, the wolf's front leg violently locked. Its entire body convulsed, its muscles twisting into unnatural knots. Instead of crashing through Ning's guard, the beast lost all momentum and slammed heavily into the bluestone, fracturing the tile beneath its weight. The wolf thrashed, trying to force its hind legs to lift, but they trembled uncontrollably before going completely limp. It was paralyzed. Jin Shu froze mid-stride, her sword dropping an inch.

"Hei Ya?" The wolf's golden eyes burned with raw confusion and fury, but its nervous system refused to respond to its will.

"Hmm?!" Jin Shu's rhythm shattered completely. The Earth-grade combination required the absolute synchronization of her companion's momentum. Without it, she was stranded in the open. Ning moved instantly. His Shadow Steps closed the five-meter gap in a heartbeat, his iron spear driving forward along a straight, lethal trajectory. Jin Shu reacted purely on instinct, snapping her curved blade up to force a surge of wind qi around her guard. Clang! Their weapons collided.

She tried to gather her spiritual energy for a counter-sweep, but the sheer panic of seeing her beast collapse disrupted her internal circulation. Her focus was entirely broken. Ning pressed the advantage. His first thrust was blocked, but he immediately adjusted the angle, the iron spearhead clipping her wrist on the second loop. Her grip loosened, the curved sword trembling in her palm.

On the third beat, he stepped directly inside her guard, transferring power from his back heel, through his spine, and straight into his shoulder. The heavy wooden spear shaft slammed directly into her ribs. The air exploded from her lungs in a sharp gasp, and she staggered backward three paces. Ning followed her stumble without a single breath of delay, delivering a final, controlled thrust. The cold iron tip of the spear stopped a millimeter away from her bare throat. A heavy silence fell over the platform.

Behind her, the massive gray wolf lay rigid on the stone, its breathing shallow but conscious. Jin Shu stared at the iron tip resting against her neck, then slowly looked down at the thin, shallow cuts covering Ning's own body.

"…Poison," she said, the bright excitement completely vanishing from her voice.

"Every single arrow?" Ning exhaled softly, lowering the weapon.

"It took long enough to kick in. That wolf of yours is an absolute monster. Any lesser beast would have folded three exchanges ago." The elder's voice boomed across the arena.

"Winner: Ji Ning." Hearing the official announcement, Jin Shu let out a long breath and slumped her shoulders. She let out a soft laugh that carried a bitter edge.

"Hey… poison isn't fair. I thought we were going to have a proper, head-on fight." Her tone was entirely sour. She had spent the match expecting a glorious, muscle-against-muscle clash, only to watch her ultimate combination unravel because of a hidden toxin.

"It's called a strategy," Ning replied, his lips twitching faintly as he wiped a line of blood from his cheek.

"And a head-on fight? You were literally fighting two-on-one from the moment the gong rang." From the very beginning, Ning knew a direct, honorable confrontation was suicide. Even if he burned through every drop of his qi and pushed his physical body to its absolute limits, the sheer difference in their foundational strength meant he would have been worn down and decisively overwhelmed. When facing a target with that much raw utility, he had to rely on his own specific strengths.

Poison was his standard tool when hunting high-tier beasts in the mountains. Fortunately, Jin Shu's battle-hungry nature had worked in his favor; she wanted to play around and enjoy the rhythm of the brawl first. If she had unleashed that Earth-grade combination within the opening ten seconds of the match, he wouldn't have stood a chance.

"But I'm a beast tamer," Jin Shu grumbled, rolling her eyes as she sheathed her blade.

"That's just my class mechanic. It's fair."

"Well," Ning said, adjusting his rumpled outer-sect robes, "I'm a certified spiritual farmer. It's only natural that I utilize the crops I harvest."

"Ugh. That is completely uncool," she complained, her brow furrowing deeply.

"But even if you grow your own stock, Hei Ya's Body of Steel gives him a massive natural resistance to common toxins. How did you even manage to bypass his defense? And what kind of spiritual farmer fights like a frontline vanguard anyway?" The frustration seemed to break a dam inside her, and she began firing off questions in a rapid, continuous stream. Ning simply sighed, reaching into his spatial pouch.

"You do realize I hold a spiritual farmer certificate, right? I cultivate specialized high-grade poison for this. Naturally, the concentration is high enough to affect a spirit beast's nervous system."

"Spiritual farmer certificate?" Jin Shu tilted her head, looking genuinely blank. It was clear she hadn't bothered to gather detailed intelligence on his background before stepping into the ring.

"Anyway," Ning continued, pulling out a small, dried purple bud and holding it out to her.

"Here's the antidote. The toxin is purely paralytic. It won't leave any permanent damage, but it's best not to let him sit in that state for too long." Jin Shu stared at the tiny bud, the literal reason her tournament run had just taken a hit. For a brief second, sharp annoyance flickered across her features. But as she heard Hei Ya's breathing grow heavier, the pride vanished. She snatched the bud from his hand without another word and hurried over to her wolf, carefully crushing the medicine into its jaws.

Her hand rested gently against the beast's head, her eyes fixed on its chest until the ragged breathing finally began to smooth out. Competitive nature aside, the wolf was her lifeline. After a long minute, she let out a sigh of relief.

"Fine. Fine," she said, waving her hand dismissively as she stood up.

"A win is a win. Strategy counts." She stepped closer, extending her hand toward him with zero lingering hesitation.

"But next time we match up, no underhanded toxins." Ning accepted her grip, his bloodied hand shaking hers firmly.

"I'll try my best." By the time Ning returned to his private courtyard, the chaotic roar of the main stadium had faded into a distant murmur. He closed the heavy wooden door, bolted it, and sat down directly on the cool stone floor of his meditation chamber. The moment his breathing stabilized, he felt it clearly. The restriction inside his core had loosened. The stubborn bottleneck that had bound his cultivation base for weeks was no longer rigid.

It hadn't vanished entirely, but the invisible barrier had grown thin, like winter ice worn away by a fast-moving current. The brutal exchange hadn't been wasted. Every single rapid circulation of qi under Jin Shu's double onslaught, every forced burst of energy under the threat of those iron claws, had ground away the inefficiencies in his meridians.

The swollen, unruly spiritual energy left over from his consumption of the Dragon Qi Grass was finally integrating into his body, flowing in perfect harmony with his core. The Pure Qi Sutra began to rotate within him in steady, disciplined cycles. The spiritual energy no longer lunged chaotically against his pathways; instead, it meshed smoothly, like iron gears that had finally been oiled and aligned. As expected… real combat is the best catalyst.

In the heat of a life-or-death struggle, the spirit and the body are forced to converge under intense pressure. When survival is on the line, the fluff is burned away. Qi refines itself out of absolute necessity. Ning had felt that shift the moment Jin Shu pressed her final assault. Her relentless, two-pronged attack had forced him to draw upon reserves he couldn't access during quiet, peaceful meditation. As for why he hadn't forced the breakthrough right there on the platform?

The reason was entirely practical: it was stupidly dangerous. Unless a person was a fated protagonist blessed by the heavens themselves, attempting a cultivation breakthrough mid-combat was a guaranteed way to destabilize a foundation. A single error during that vulnerable transition could lead straight to a crippled meridian network rather than an advancement. Besides, no real opponent was going to stand around politely waiting for you to finish ascending.

Ning closed his eyes, deliberately guiding the flow of the Pure Qi Sutra. Once. Twice. Ten times. The refined spiritual energy gathered deep within his dantian, compressing tighter with every complete circuit. He didn't force the pace. Impatience left microscopic fractures in the foundation, and fractures led directly to energy deviation. He gathered the dense mass of qi and directed it steadily against the thinning barrier. The wall resisted, a dull pressure throbbing behind his navel.

He maintained a steady, unyielding push. The internal pressure mounted until his meridians began to vibrate from expansion. The qi within him was vastly denser than it had been that morning, heavier and more cohesive. It pressed relentlessly against the boundary separating the Fifth and Sixth Stages of Qi Condensation. Before the match, that wall had felt like solid, immovable granite. Now, it felt like brittle clay. One more circulation. One final, heavy compression.

The spiritual energy folded inward, condensing into a weighty, singular point. Then, with a silent, internal snap, the barrier dissolved like mist under the morning sun. The refined qi surged through his expanded pathways, smooth, deep, and entirely unimpeded. His spiritual pressure rose perceptibly, casting a brief, cold ripple through the quiet room. Ning opened his eyes slowly, a long, clear breath leaving his lips. Finally, the Sixth Stage of Qi Condensation.... Thanks for reading~