Kiyotaka and the others continued their steady climb upward, the path winding through increasingly thin air as they approached higher elevations.
When Kiyotaka, maintaining his position at the rear, crossed the 7500-meter mark, reality shifted without any warning.
Space twisted, and in an instant, all eight disciples were teleported to separate locations. The group of eight was split perfectly into four pairs, each duo finding themselves suddenly standing in an entirely different environment.
Kiyotaka's vision blurred for a fraction of a second, then cleared to reveal his new surroundings.
A small pocket dimension.
The space was perhaps five hundred meters in diameter. It was a circular arena with perfectly flat stone ground and featureless walls that rose up on all sides before terminating in an empty gray void overhead.
This was a battlefield, its sole purpose for dueling.
This trial was straightforward. One versus one combat. Just pure martial confrontation to determine who advanced and who failed.
Four disciples would leave the Sanctum while the other four would continue climbing the mountain.
Somewhere in another pocket dimension, Dong Mei faced off against Xun Liang, one of her remaining admirers. In a second arena, Yang Dong stood across from Zhang Feng in what was almost certainly a completely one-sided matchup. In the third space, Liang Ruxue and Hua Mingzhu prepared to test their respective cultivation paths against each other.
And here, in the fourth arena, as though fate itself had orchestrated this specific pairing to witness the continuation of their unfinished conflict, stood Kiyotaka and Zhao Wuying.
The teleportation had been instantaneous. The disciples had no way of knowing who their companions faced in the other arenas.
One hundred meters of empty stone separated the two combatants.
Kiyotaka's expression remained perfectly neutral, revealing nothing of his thoughts or intentions.
Zhao Wuying, by contrast, wore a vicious grin that split his face. Blood still stained his robes from where he'd coughed up that dark, corrupted fluid.
But his eyes burned with absolute confidence.
Despite losing their last exchange, despite being humiliated in front of witnesses, despite Zhang Feng's crushing intervention, he radiated certainty. Belief in his own superiority that was grounded not in delusion but in the objective reality of cultivation realms.
Foundation Establishment versus Qi Condensation. In a sanctioned duel with no interference possible, the outcome should be predetermined.
"Hahahaha!" His laugh echoed across the empty arena, harsh and triumphant. "Good, good, GOOD! Even fate wants you dead!"
His grin widened further, becoming something almost manic. "This time, there's no one to interrupt or save you. Just you and me, and one of us won't leave this arena alive!"
Kiyotaka said nothing. His expression remained unchanged, but something fundamental had shifted in his presence. Now that they were alone, isolated from witnesses, the faint traces of youthful provocation he'd displayed outside had vanished completely. The sky-gazing, the casual dismissals, and the subtle needling were all absent.
What stood in the arena now was something else entirely.
Something cold and empty. A monster wearing human skin.
"Aren't you going to beg your daddy here for—"
Kiyotaka moved. There had been no visible Qi activation or anything else. One moment, he was standing a hundred meters away. The next, he was directly in front of Zhao Wuying, whose sentence died unfinished as shock overtook his expression.
His eyes widened. His sword came up defensively—
Too slow.
Kiyotaka's fist crashed into his ribs on the left side, precisely where the solar plexus damage hadn't spread. The impact produced a wet crack as bones fractured beneath the strike. Zhao Wuying stumbled sideways, gasping.
Kiyotaka was already repositioning, his left hand lashing out in a palm strike aimed at the previously injured solar plexus.
Zhao Wuying barely managed to channel defensive Qi in time. The strike still drove him backward five meters, his feet carving deep furrows into the stone floor.
"You—!" He coughed violently, dark blood speckling his lips. "How are you this fast?!"
Kiyotaka didn't answer. Instead, he vanished again.
Shadows erupted across the arena, multiplying and spreading until dozens of dark silhouettes plagued the surrounding space. Each one moved independently, creating a maze of visual confusion.
Zhao Wuying forced himself to calm down, centering his breathing and preparing his defenses. He was familiar with the shadow arts from the sect. His eyes tracked the shadows, searching for the real threat among the illusions.
Footsteps echoed from his left. Zhao Wuying whirled and thrust forward with his sword, channeling Metal Qi through the blade. A massive greyish bull materialized from the strike's energy, charging forward with earth-shaking force to obliterate the shadow.
But then—footsteps from the opposite direction.
Zhao Wuying pivoted immediately, executing a more powerful technique. "Mountain-Cleaving Strike!" His sword blazed with concentrated Metal Qi as a massive blade projection erupted outward, twenty meters long and crackling with devastating cutting power.
A loud scream sounded as the technique tore through one of the shadows.
"Haha!" Zhao Wuying laughed, watching the shadows dissipate. "You seriously thought that would work?"
He lowered his guard slightly, confident he'd landed the hit—
A pair of apathetic, emotionless eyes watched him from directly above.
Then, a massive scythe with a crescent moon blade infused with compressed Metal Qi descended from overhead like a guillotine.
Zhao Wuying's eyes widened dramatically. He'd felt nothing until the weapon was already less than a meter from splitting his skull.
He reacted on pure instinct, activating a defensive technique. 'Metallic Guardian's Embrace!' Silvery gauntlets materialized around both hands. Those were not physical items but constructs of pure condensed Metal Qi. He thrust both arms above his head, forming an X-shaped block.
The scythe met the first gauntlet and carved through it like paper, the compressed Metal Qi in the blade overwhelming his hastily formed defense. The blade buried itself deep into his left forearm.
"ARGHHHHH!" A scream of pure agony erupted from Zhao Wuying's throat. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc as the scythe cleaved through muscle and scraped against bone.
But the gauntlet had done its job. It slowed down the attack enough that it didn't reach his head. The scythe was stopped, caught partway through his arm.
Kiyotaka reacted instantly. Without releasing the scythe, he raised his right leg, pivoted on his left foot, and drove a devastating kick directly into Zhao Wuying's solar plexus.
The impact sent Zhao Wuying flying backward across the arena, blood trailing behind him.
He's strong, Kiyotaka assessed, watching his opponent tumble. If it had been one of the weaker Foundation Establishment cultivators, they would've been seriously injured or killed by that ambush.
Zhao Wuying crashed onto the stone ground, still screaming, his left arm hanging at an unnatural angle with blood pouring from the deep laceration. But despite the injury, he forced himself to stand as Kiyotaka burst forward again.
"Impossible!" Zhao Wuying shouted, genuine disbelief mixing with pain and rage. "You're Qi Condensation! You shouldn't be able to—"
The scythe answered him, sweeping horizontally with tremendous force.
Zhao Wuying barely got his sword up in time to block. The impact sent him flying backward again, his feet leaving the ground entirely as he tumbled across the arena floor.
"You damn ant! How DARE you?!" Zhao Wuying released a burst of concentrated Foundation Establishment Qi—a shockwave that rippled outward and forced Kiyotaka to halt his advance momentarily.
"Seventeen Stellar Thrusts!" Zhao Wuying roared, executing one of his most powerful techniques.
His sword became a blur of motion as he executed a rapid stabbing sequence that created dozens of afterimages. The weapon thrust forward seventeen times in less than two seconds, and each successive strike carried more power than the last.
Kiyotaka swayed through the first eight strikes like wind through grass, his body moving with minimal effort to avoid each thrust by the smallest possible margin.
The ninth and tenth strikes met his scythe as he spun the weapon defensively, deflecting both attacks in a single fluid motion.
Strikes eleven through thirteen passed through empty space as Kiyotaka shifted position.
But fourteen through seventeen, each significantly more powerful than what came before, all found their mark.
Kiyotaka had infused Metal Qi not just into his scythe but also into specific points on his body where he'd predicted the attacks would land. Black metallic patches appeared across his torso and shoulder, attempting to create defensive barriers.
But the defense wasn't strong enough.
The fourteenth thrust shattered the metallic patch on his left shoulder and drove into flesh. The fifteenth broke through his right side's defense. The sixteenth carved across his ribs. And the seventeenth, the most lethal strike, penetrated deep into his abdomen, just barely missing vital organs.
The scythe was knocked from his grip. The black patches of Metal Qi dissipated instantly, unable to maintain cohesion under such overwhelming force.
Blood erupted from multiple wounds as Zhao Wuying's sword pierced through Kiyotaka's body.
But the technique didn't just pierce—the accumulated force from all seventeen strikes unleashed in a devastating shockwave that rampaged through Kiyotaka's body, destroying tissue and rupturing blood vessels.
Even though my battle power exceeds normal Qi Condensation standards, Kiyotaka thought distantly, I'm still bound by the fundamental limitations of my cultivation realm and body. Against a Foundation Establishment cultivator's full-power technique, my physical durability is still just that of an above-average peak Qi Condensation cultivator.
He ignored the pain, but he couldn't prevent coughing up multiple mouthfuls of blood.
With his left hand, he caught the scythe as it fell, transferring it to his right hand to get a better range of motion.
And in that same fluid motion, he deliberately angled the weapon so that it pierced through his own torso, where Zhao Wuying's sword had already created wounds.
The pain was inhuman. Beyond what many cultivators could even comprehend enduring.
Kiyotaka's expression didn't change.
'Bloodfire Ascension,' he commanded mentally.
Then, still in motion, Kiyotaka began to spin, rotating his entire body with Zhao Wuying's sword still embedded in his flesh, creating new, devastating wounds as the blade carved through internal tissues.
The force of the spin tore the weapon from Zhao Wuying's grip.
Mid-rotation, the scythe underwent a dramatic transformation. The metallic silver blade shifted, turning deep crimson as blood from Kiyotaka's wounds channeled directly into the weapon. Flames of condensed Blood Qi erupted along its edge.
And the same transformation occurred in Kiyotaka himself.
His eyes turned blood-red, and portions of his hair shifted from brown to deep red, as though dyed in his own blood. Finally, a crimson aura surged outward from his body.
The Crimson Sacrifice Method's third stage: Bloodfire Ascension.
Converting life force and spilled blood directly into combat power, temporarily elevating cultivation effectiveness at a massive cost to the user's body and mentality.
Zhao Wuying had no time to feel pleased about his successful attack.
His mind screamed at him. It was a primal warning that every cultivator developed when facing a genuine mortal threat.
Despite the cultivator in front of him still emitting only Qi Condensation realm aura, the power radiating from that crimson-wreathed figure was every bit his equal. Perhaps even superior.
Zhao Wuying, now weaponless, immediately activated a movement technique to retreat and create distance—
But Kiyotaka, in his current state, was far faster.
The blood-flame scythe swung in a massive horizontal arc from the left. Zhao Wuying tried to dodge, tried to activate defensive Qi, tried to do anything—
The blade carved into his body from the left side, cutting through defensive Qi layers like they were paper, driving through flesh and bone until it had penetrated approximately one-fifth of the way through his entire torso.
Blood exploded from the wound like a broken dam. Internal organs were exposed, some partially severed. Intestines began to spill from the massive laceration.
"ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
A scream that would terrify even demonic cultivators erupted from Zhao Wuying's throat. Pure, undiluted agony.
Kiyotaka stood motionless, watching with those blood-red eyes as the young man collapsed to his knees, both hands desperately trying to hold the wound closed while simultaneously activating every healing technique he knew.
"AHHHHHHHH... HA.... ARGHHHHHH!" The screaming continued without pause, sounding across the empty arena.
Kiyotaka remained perfectly still, the blood-flame scythe held loosely in his right hand, crimson aura still pulsing around him.
Seconds passed. The screaming didn't stop.
Finally, Zhao Wuying looked up through tears of pain, and terror began filling his once-arrogant eyes as they met those emotionless blood-red orbs.
"Why—ARGH?!" Zhao Wuying managed to force out between screams. "Why can you.... ARGH... fight like this?! You... you're just Qi Condensation!" He panted desperately, the pain too extreme for coherent speech.
What terrified him even more was that Kiyotaka, who had sustained serious injuries, who had deliberately impaled himself, who should be in similar agony, showed absolutely no reaction to pain. Nothing. Like pain simply didn't register in whatever inhuman thing stood before him.
"HOW ARGH!!! The gap should be—!"
Kiyotaka's boot caught him in the chest while he was still kneeling, sending him sprawling backward onto the stone.
"The gap," Kiyotaka finally spoke, his voice completely flat and emotionless, devoid of any human warmth, "is a myth you tell yourselves to feel superior."
"ARGHHH!" Zhao Wuying cried out as he landed hard on his back, the impact aggravating his devastating wound.
"You keep asking 'why,'" Kiyotaka said, walking toward him with slow, measured steps. Blood dripped from his own wounds with each movement, leaving a trail across the arena floor. "Why I can fight you. Why I can match you. Why I can hurt you."
He stopped a few meters away, looking down at Zhao Wuying's prone, bleeding form with those empty crimson eyes.
"The answer is simple: you're weak."
"I'm not— ARGHHHHH!" Zhao Wuying tried to push himself up but collapsed immediately, his body too damaged to support the movement even without Kiyotaka's interruption.
"Foundation Establishment means nothing if you don't know how to use it," Kiyotaka continued in that same dead voice. "You have more Qi than me. Stronger Qi than me. So what? You waste it on poorly executed techniques and moves. You have a higher realm than me. So what? You've never actually learned to fight. You just relied on cultivation advantage to overwhelm weaker opponents who couldn't resist."
Zhao Wuying was shaking violently now, but not just from the pain. Something in his eyes had started to crack. The foundation of his entire worldview was beginning to fracture.
And it wasn't just from terror.
Seeing that psychological shift, Kiyotaka pressed forward with his mental assault.
"Every time we've fought," Kiyotaka stated with absolute certainty, "I've read you perfectly. Every technique was predictable. Every response exactly what I expected. You're not a cultivator. You're just someone who absorbed enough Qi to reach Foundation Establishment and thought that made you special."
He crouched down, bringing his face close to Zhao Wuying's, those blood-red eyes boring into the other man's soul.
"It doesn't."
Normally, those words wouldn't have such a devastating impact. Zhao Wuying could have countered them—after all, the statement about every technique being predictable wasn't entirely true, since Kiyotaka himself had been injured by the Seventeen Stellar Thrusts.
But in his current state... logic had no chance. The words bypassed rational thought and struck directly at the core of his identity.
They began destroying his belief in everything he'd once thought was certain.
Kiyotaka watched him struggle to breathe, making no move to finish him. Just observing with clinical detachment, like a scientist studying an interesting specimen.
"You've never actually fought someone who matched you effectively, have you?" Kiyotaka continued. "You've just overwhelmed people with raw cultivation advantage. So you never learned and never improved. You never had to."
Zhao Wuying looked up at him, and genuine fear entered his eyes, not just fear of death, but something deeper. Fear that everything he'd built his identity upon was false.
"What... what are you?"
Kiyotaka's response was to vanish.
One moment, he was crouched there, the next, he was gone, as though he'd never existed.
Zhao Wuying's panic intensified immediately. His head whipped around frantically, trying to locate his opponent despite the agony of movement.
Sounds began emerging from the shadows.
To Zhao Wuying in his current physical and mental state, isolated in this pocket dimension with a monster, this was psychological torture beyond anything he'd experienced.
"Zhao Wuying..." A cold voice emerged from directly behind him.
Despite his catastrophic injuries, Zhao Wuying managed to spring to his feet through pure terror-fueled adrenaline and leap forward, putting distance between himself and that voice.
"Your time is up..." This time, the voice came from somewhere else entirely—left? Right? He couldn't tell anymore.
"STOP IT!!" Zhao Wuying screamed, his voice breaking.
"It's time for you to meet the Yellow Springs." Again from a different direction—or was it the same direction? The arena seemed to be spinning.
"PLEASE STOP!" Zhao Wuying's composure shattered completely.
He didn't try to dodge or defend himself anymore. He simply collapsed onto the ground, curling into a fetal position.
And not from the injuries, but from a complete mental breakdown.
His Dao Heart, which hadn't yet fully formed and solidified, began cracking apart like glass under a hammer. The foundation of his cultivation path... built entirely on superiority, on being stronger than those beneath him... was crumbling.
"Spare my worthless life! I was blind!" He screamed the words while pressing his face against the stone floor, not even trying to maintain dignity anymore.
"Here..."
The voice came from directly in front of him this time.
Zhao Wuying slowly raised his head, tears and blood mixing on his face.
Fifty meters away stood Kiyotaka, the blood-flame scythe held in one hand, crimson aura still wreathing his body. Blood from his own wounds dripped steadily onto the arena floor.
He looked like the Grim Reaper himself, come to claim a soul.
Kiyotaka began walking forward slowly. Each step was perfectly paced. The footfalls sounded in the empty arena like a death knell.
And each step was absolute torture for Zhao Wuying.
"No, no, NO!" Zhao Wuying's voice climbed in pitch with each word. "You are the devil's reincarnation! I didn't recognize your esteemed identity! This junior was blind—completely blind! Please, senior, p-please spare my useless life! I BEG YOU!!"
Desperate, incoherent pleas poured from his mouth. All pride, all arrogance, all sense of self had been completely stripped away.
Zhao Wuying had lost his sanity.
But Kiyotaka wasn't finished. He continued walking forward with that same measured pace, each step bringing him closer to Zhao Wuying's cowering form.
Zhao Wuying couldn't even think to use his sect status, his family connections, or his Foundation Establishment realm—none of the things that had always protected him before registered in his shattered mind.
Finally, Kiyotaka stood directly in front of him, looking down with those blood-red, emotionless eyes.
To Zhao Wuying's broken psyche, the devil himself stood before him.
The devil spoke quietly, almost thoughtfully: "So this is what happens when someone's Dao Heart breaks."
It was true. Zhao Wuying's Dao Heart had been completely destroyed.
Because it hadn't yet fully formed and solidified when it shattered, there was a possibility of eventual recovery, but that would depend entirely on Zhao Wuying himself. It was equally possible that he would remain in this vegetative psychological state forever, never able to progress in cultivation again. Never able to function as anything more than a broken shell.
Kiyotaka looked down at the whimpering, broken thing that had once been an arrogant Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Then he raised the blood-flame scythe.
"NOOO! NOOO PLEASE!" Zhao Wuying shrieked, covering his head with both arms as though that would somehow protect him.
But Kiyotaka didn't strike.
Instead, his free hand reached into Zhao Wuying's robes and withdrew the emergency medallion that guaranteed extraction from the Sanctum in life-threatening situations.
Zhao Wuying looked at it with completely blank eyes, not even recognizing what the object was, and continued his screaming.
Kiyotaka pressed the shaft of the scythe against Zhao Wuying's chest to hold him in place, then forcibly infused his own Qi into Zhao Wuying's body, taking control of the other cultivator's Qi and directing it into the medallion.
With a final mental command, brilliant white light erupted around Zhao Wuying's form.
And then he vanished, teleported out of the Sanctum to safety.
The screaming was cut off abruptly, leaving only silence.
Kiyotaka stood there for a moment, looking at the space where Zhao Wuying had been lying just seconds before.
With a thought, he dismissed the blood-flame scythe. The weapon flowed back into his palm, disappearing as though it had never existed.
The Bloodfire Ascension technique began to fade. His eyes slowly returned to their normal color. His hair darkened back to brown, and finally, the crimson aura dissipated.
And as the technique's effects wore off, the full weight of his injuries finally registered.
Multiple sword wounds. Internal damage from the Seventeen Stellar Thrusts' accumulated force. Self-inflicted trauma from the scythe impalement. And the substantial cost of the Bloodfire Ascension itself.
Kiyotaka looked down at himself dispassionately. He swallowed a few pills that he withdrew from his spatial pouch before he started walking toward the center of the arena, where he could sense the dimensional barrier beginning to shift.
Zhao Wuying was eliminated. Broken beyond repair, possibly permanently.
And with that, Kiyotaka passed the second trial.
***
A/N: I hope you have liked this chapter! My original plan was to wrap up this arc here, but well, it looks like I'll need at least two more chapters, possibly three, or even four, once I include the aftermath.
In any case, this feels like a good point to temporarily shift my focus to my other fic. I'm going to work on an update for ACAtR, which I hope to finish this week. If all goes well, CotP should be back next week.
Anyway, my schedule for the foreseeable future has eased up a bit, so I (probably, lol) won't vanish for a few months again.
P.S.: How are you finding this arc so far, and which was your favorite chapter till now?