"Young Sword Lord, Lu Jianheng, stand up, and for the love of the Heavens, get a grip," Ji’an drawled, rolling her eyes so hard she nearly saw her own brain. "I said, as long as you withstand the attacks, you pass. You withstood the strike. You blocked the momentum, didn’t fold. You’ve already passed, so you’re in. Stop acting like a bratty young lord who lost his favorite toy and start acting like a qualified Vanguard candidate."
Jianheng’s head snapped up. His eyes, usually cold and sharp, were swimming with a mixture of profound, pathetic relief and deep, abiding shame.
"I... I passed?" he whispered, his voice cracking by an octave.
"Yes, you passed, you moron! Now stand up before I decide to change the criteria to ’whoever stops weeping first’!" Ji’an barked, turning her back on him.
She began counting the remaining participants in the arena. The tournament’s automatic logging arrays were pinging in her spatial ring, providing a live data stream of the dwindling field.
The chaos had been efficient.
Between her own villain-arc rampage, the protective barriers of the male protagonists, and the sheer lethality of the shrinking biome, the field had been decimated.
"Sixteen," Ji’an muttered, her silver-flecked eyes narrowing as she surveyed the remaining combatants huddled in the center of the arena. "Only sixteen survivors. We’re one exclusion away from the Grand Arena cutoff."
The air in the colosseum became heavy, viscous, and suffocating.
The remaining disciples, the foreign elites, the sect’s own prodigies, and the battered remnants of the Crimson Blade Sect, all realized the math simultaneously.
One person had to go.
It was a standoff of absolute, paralyzing tension.
And then, the mist at the edge of the arena completely vanished, incinerated by a sudden, terrifying surge of absolute zero.
A path opened.
Stepping forward was Xie Wangchen.
The Ice Demon had finally decided to stop watching from the sidelines. He glided onto the central jade platform with an ethereal, predatory grace that made the remaining disciples instinctively shrink back.
He wasn’t wearing a scratch. His white robes were pristine, and his silver hair shimmered with a cold, divine light.
His ruby-red eyes were locked on Lin Ji’an.
The other survivors, the foreign prodigies, the elite brawlers, immediately realized that the final boss had entered the arena. But for Wangchen, the other ninety-five participants didn’t exist. He didn’t see the tournament or the Ranking Board.
He saw his Chef.
He saw the person who had turned his cold, empty existence into a vibrant, chaotic, highly seasoned masterpiece.
"It seems," Wangchen murmured, his voice a low, melodic hum that resonated through the floor, "that we have reached the final threshold, Brother Ji’an."
He raised his hand, and Winter’s Sigh materialized, the legendary blade radiating a cold so profound that it caused the very air to distort.
"I have been waiting for this," Wangchen whispered, a slow, dark, victorious smile curving his lips.
Ji’an felt a jolt of pure, adrenaline-fueled electricity race through her veins.
’He’s not holding back at all today,’ Ji’an realized, her own spatula vibrating in her hand. ’He’s not playing the ’green flag’ partner anymore. Right now, he’s the Ice Demon. And he wants a heated duel with me, right? In that case, let’s satisfy his thirst for fight today!’
The clash began not with a roar, but with a silent, blinding flash of movement.
Wangchen lunged.
It wasn’t a sword strike; it was a physical manifestation of a blizzard. He moved with such speed that he left a trail of fractured light behind him, Winter’s Sigh descending like a falling star.
Ji’an didn’t dodge. She met him.
CLANG!
The collision of the iron spatula and the legendary ice-blade sounded like the ringing of a thousand temple bells. The force of the impact sent a shockwave through the jade floor, shattering the remaining pillars for a hundred feet.
Wangchen didn’t hesitate. He pivoted, his silver hair whipping around his face as he unleashed a relentless, high-speed series of slashes, each strike moving with the precise, cold intent of a master artisan.
Ji’an parried every blow, her feet sliding across the polished obsidian.
She felt like she was fighting a storm. Wangchen was fluid, relentless, and perfectly calibrated.
He was a master of the blade, his technique refined through centuries of isolation and obsession.
Clang. Strike. Parry. Shift.
The spark showers were so intense they lit up the arena like a fireworks display.
Wangchen used the edge of Winter’s Sigh to carve a path through the air, his movement fluid, his focus absolute. He wasn’t trying to maim her; he was trying to overwhelm her, to test the very limits of her Dao.
"Is this the limit of your heat, Brother Ji’an?" Wangchen whispered, his voice vibrating through the blades as they locked, his ruby eyes staring directly into her silver-flecked ones, his face flushed with the exhilaration of the duel.
"I haven’t even turned the stove on yet, you silver-haired menace!" Ji’an laughed, throwing her weight into a tactical kick against the flat of his blade, forcing him to take a half-step back.
She flipped her spatula, changing her grip, and launched a blistering series of strikes, a high-speed, multi-directional flurry that echoed the rhythm of chopping, searing, and folding dough.
It was a clash reminiscent of the great duel between the flame-user and the upper-rank moon; a spectacle of speed, power, and absolute dedication to their respective Daos.
Wangchen shifted, his movements graceful as he deflected a strike that would have leveled a skyscraper. He didn’t just parry; he used his ice aura to create floating shields of frozen air, forcing Ji’an to adapt her trajectory mid-air.
They moved with such terrifying velocity that the other fourteen survivors- the foreign elites, the brawlers stood in the periphery, unable to interfere as they were stunned by the overwhelming martial prowess on display.
"They... they are not fighting like rivals," an elite disciple from the Crimson Blade Sect whispered, his jaw dropped.