A/N: In case you didn't go through the author's note. I have decided to reduce the daily update from two to one, because of stress and some... tasking issues that requires time. Note; it would only be temporary and I promise to retain chapter length and quality. Read, and tell me what you think of this change.
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Chapter 201: Su Tianhao
Sixteen.
The number hung in the air—unbelievable, yet too solid to dismiss. Su Tianhao looked nothing like a sixteen-year-old. By appearance alone he might pass for an eighteen-year-old saint son from a prestigious noble house. But the Bone Age Discernment Stele did not lie. It couldn't.
The way the crowd saw Su Tianhao shifted—not gradually, but all at once, like a lens snapping into focus on something that had been there the whole time. The expressions moving across their faces weren't awe anymore. They were something older than awe. Something closer to the instinctive unease that rises when you realise the thing you've been standing next to isn't what you thought it was.
It was like they weren't watching at a boy anymore, but a beast in human form. Which, given his dragon lineage, wasn't so far from the truth.
Hidden in the distant sky, Zhan Kuang's face settled into a quiet smile—one that carried both deep satisfaction and the particular pride of someone who had seen what was coming long before anyone else had thought to look.
Below, the atmosphere on the waiting ground had grown heavy. From the representatives of various powers down to the youngest participants, complicated emotions shadowed every face. Murmurs moved through the crowd in low, overlapping currents—speculations, unspoken implications, the kind of hushed uncertainty that settles when something happens that no framework quite accounts for.
Huo Changfeng stepped forward.
Whatever this moment needed, it wasn't more solemnity.
He clapped his hands together—the sound sharp and sudden in the charged air—and let out a laugh that had no pretence to it whatsoever.
"Well now!" His voice rolled across the waiting ground like a boulder finding its way downhill. "It seems the young man has decided to give us all a heart attack! Sixteen years old, Peak-stage Martial Adept Realm, and a talent that makes ancient stones explode?" He shook his head with the exaggerated woe of a man deeply aggrieved. "Back in my day, the most I managed at sixteen was a faint glow on a practice dummy before it fell over. My greatest achievement was convincing the beast hall cook I deserved a second serving of stew."
He winked, light-brown eyes sweeping across the now slightly less petrified crowd. "Some of us are simply born to shatter expectations. Don't let it rattle you too badly." His voice shifted—still warm, but with an edge now. "Aptitude and age are one thing. What truly matters is how one wields what they have. And speaking of which—"
He gestured broadly toward the assembled geniuses who had passed.
"Three hundred and ten of you have earned your place today. What comes next is a competition among yourselves—to determine your ranking among the new recruits and which Peak you'll be joining in the Outer Court."
The prodigies who had passed felt it immediately—a spark igniting behind their eyes, the particular kind of alertness that only competition can produce. They began sizing each other up without making it obvious they were doing so. The air tightened with electric anticipation.
"Lord Huo Changfeng."
The voice was calm. Precise. Impossible to ignore.
Su Tianhao.
"Is it necessary for me to participate as well?"
Before Huo Changfeng could respond, Bai Tianhu—who had been standing unusually quiet for the past several minutes, silver eyes fixed on Su Tianhao with steady, unreadable attention—chose this moment to intervene.
"Everyone is expected to participate." His voice carried no excess weight. It didn't need to. "Don't assume that being exceptional exempts you from the rules. The Qingyun Sect does not hand out privileges—they are earned."
"He's right," Duan Fei added, her voice carrying a warmth it hadn't had for most of the morning. "This is done to ensure fairness. Results alone can't tell us everything. I'm certain you're not unfamiliar with the concept of fighting above your own realm."
"I see." Su Tianhao nodded slowly. "So the Qingyun Sect values strength, not just potential."
Then, almost abruptly, his lips curved into a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes—the kind that made the air feel slightly less safe than it had a moment ago.
He turned toward the assembled prodigies.
"Which one of you wants to duel me?"
The silence that followed was thorough.
Su Lei met his gaze without flinching—and then shook his head with a small, self-deprecating smile. He knew the gap between them now. He didn't need to pretend otherwise.
Chen Mu watched without challenge in his eyes. Only quiet, clear-eyed acknowledgement of the distance between them.
The two sisters who had passed among the elites offered wry smiles and looked elsewhere. The two young men who had tested before them did the same.
Su Tianhao's gaze moved to Mo Qingxue and Xiao Fenghua.
"Don't look at me," Xiao Fenghua said pleasantly, tilting his jade wine gourd back. "Nobody would be foolish enough to fight you."
"Maybe another time," Mo Qingxue said, maintaining a smile that was doing more work than it looked like.
The field had narrowed to two.
Wang Bing laughed. "Don't look at me either, Brother Tianhao. It would be pointless." The smile faded into something more firm. "And I wouldn't want to, regardless."
Su Tianhao had just allowed himself to relax when Jin Yulong's voice cut through the quiet like a blade finding a gap in armour.
"I'll fight you."
Su Tianhao raised an eyebrow. He looked at the blonde-haired noble—the fierce challenge burning in those piercing green eyes—and simply shrugged.
He turned to Elder Xie Ning. "Jin Yulong has agreed to be my opponent. Since no one else has stepped forward, I assume that's acceptable?"
Elder Xie Ning smiled faintly. "No problem at all."
From somewhere above the clouds, Lu Ruyi glanced at Jin Yulong and made a sound of quiet contempt.
"Ignorant. A tamed serpent trying to fight a sea dragon."
Elder Gu Lie's brows drew together. "Are you certain?" He kept his voice neutral, but the concern behind it was readable enough. Jin Yulong was most likely to join the Jadeclaw Peak, and he had no interest in watching a promising recruit get dismantled before he'd even joined.
"I am certain," Jin Yulong said, with the ironclad conviction of someone who had never been wrong before and hadn't updated that belief.
"Alright."
---
The waiting ground, which had held ten thousand participants that morning, now held two.
Jin Yulong stood opposite Su Tianhao with blue robes—deliberately similar to the Outer Disciple uniform—fluttering in the mountain wind. His expression was set and serious, the expression of a man who believed he was about to fight the most important battle of his life.
On the other side, Su Tianhao stood with his eyes half-lidded, bearing the quiet look of someone who had been hoping none of this would happen and was mildly put out that it had.
From the crowd, Su Jian watched Su Tianhao's expression and felt something tighten in his chest—it was the same face he had worn two months ago, facing him. Unhurried. Already finished.
Elder Gu Lie stepped between them, voice settling into the register he reserved for things that required being taken seriously.
"Introduce yourselves."
Jin Yulong stepped forward. "Jin Yulong. Heir to the Goldcrest Jin family." He offered a curt bow, jade earrings catching the light. "And you?"
"Su Tianhao."
No bow. No background given. No inflection worth measuring.
The name landed in the air and simply stayed there—earning curiosity and something close to respect from everyone within earshot, including the Martial Grandmasters above.
Huo Changfeng drifted closer. "Su Tianhao—are you by any chance connected to the Su family of Oakwood City?"
"I was their adopted second young master once," Su Tianhao replied, without any particular emphasis. "Not anymore."
The crowd absorbed this in the worst possible way.
"The Su family had a hidden dragon like this and chose to abandon him?"
"What recklessness. They must be regretting it now."
Above them, Su Huiqing's jaw tightened. He was the Patriarch. To stand on a flying sword and absorb these looks without responding was not something his dignity found comfortable.
Su Minghe's fists had closed at his sides.
Su Yuan offered a wry smile and said nothing.
Just as the atmosphere began working itself into something genuinely uncomfortable, Su Tianhao's voice cut through it cleanly.
"I wasn't forced out. Certain circumstances led me to leave on my own terms. I have no enmity with the Su family—we parted well."
"He's right," Su Huiqing added immediately, catching the lifeline with the speed of a man who understood exactly what was being offered. "My former son simply chose to walk his own path. What became of him reflects nothing but his own character."
The murmurs subsided—not all of them convinced, but they no longer voiced it aloud. The crowd's attention drifted back toward the ground.
Su Huiqing exhaled, he glanced at Su Tianhao with newfound gratitude and respect.
'Thank you,' he said, through telepathy.
Su Tianhao shrugged faintly. It was merely a small gesture, for a family that had once treated him with genuine care.
He turned back to Jin Yulong. The indifference in his eyes replaced by impatience.
"Let's get started."
Jin Yulong smirked. "I was about to say the same."
Elder Gu Lie looked between them and let the silence carry its full weight before he spoke.
"The rules are simple. No killing. No deliberate maiming. If your opponent concedes, you stop immediately." His eyes found Su Tianhao specifically and held. "This is a friendly match. Not a death match."
Both nodded.
Elder Gu Lie raised his hand, then brought it down with cold finality.
"Begin!"
---
Jin Yulong moved the instant the word left Gu Lie's mouth.
He didn't charge in the way most fighters would—no single explosive lunge, no attempt to overwhelm through brute force. Instead his movements became something closer to a dance: swift, impossibly precise, his jade-green aura sharpening around his fingers like points of a needle. Each digit glowed with concentrated inner light.
"Jade Finger Art—Piercing Gale Strike!"
Su Tianhao's smiled with amusement. This was his first time seeing such fighting style. Jin Yulong's strike might have been lightning-fast to those within his realm, but Su Tianhao could see every move. Each finger sharpened with jade colored energy, yet he chose to meet it instead of invade—driven by curiosity not arrogance.
Swiish! Swiish! Swiish!
The crowd watched with anticipation as Jin Yulong's attack descended like a whirlwind of perfectly placed strikes.
What followed wasn't an attack designed to break bones or overwhelm defences. It was a cascade of precisely placed touches—a strike near Su Tianhao's shoulder, not hard enough to cause pain but deep enough to find the pressure point beneath. Another grazing the side of his neck. Then a rapid sequence across chest, wrist, and thigh—too fast to count, too deliberate to be random, each contact sending a cold, foreign sensation threading directly into Su Tianhao's meridians.
This was the foundational technique of the Goldcrest Jin Clan—invented by its founder centuries ago and never abandoned, because it never needed to be. The Jade Finger Art targeted vital points and energy pathways, numbing them in sequence, steadily dismantling an opponent's ability to channel spiritual energy from the inside out. It wasn't a technique for instant kill. It was a technique for making your opponent helpless before they understood what was happening.
Su Tianhao frowned.
He felt it almost immediately—the disruption moving through him like a current cut off mid-flow. His spiritual energy wouldn't answer cleanly. His full strength had been reduced by at least half.
Jin Yulong's green eyes flashed with vicious satisfaction.
'Your arrogance will be your undoing.'
He didn't wait to let the feeling settle. The moment he saw Su Tianhao's frown—that single crack of visible reaction—he moved. His entire reserve of spiritual energy compressed into two fingers, shining with an intensity that edged toward white at its core. He launched forward like an arrow loosed from a divine bow—a blinding streak of jade and emerald aimed precisely at the base of Su Tianhao's neck, where the head met the spine, where the convergence of Qi flow and nerve pathways made it the single most vulnerable point available to the Jade Finger Art.
This was not a finishing strike meant to injure. It was meant to sever. To leave Su Tianhao standing but hollow—unable to channel so much as a trace of spiritual energy, a body with no engine left inside it.
"Brother Tianhao!"
Wang Bing's voice cracked through the crowd's silence, her eyes wide with alarm.
The spectators jolted—those who hadn't understood what they were watching suddenly did. The Elders who recognised the technique felt it land in their chests like cold water. The murmurs and the detached curiosity of moments ago evaporated completely, replaced by a breath held collectively, suspended, waiting.
"You brought this on yourself!"
Jin Yulong brought the strike down.
It never landed.
A heartbeat before impact—not a step back, not a dodge, not a technique deployed with a name—Su Tianhao simply raised one hand and caught Jin Yulong's fingers.
No flourish. No drama. Just a hand, open, closing around the attack as though it had announced itself early.
Boom!
The jade energy detonated against his palm. The force sent a sharp gust across the space between them, fluttering Jin Yulong's hair and sending the earrings swinging. Su Tianhao's arm absorbed the impact without moving.
His grip held.
"What—"
"You did well," Su Tianhao said. His voice was quiet and without emotions. "But you're not worthy."
He released the fingers. Then, without ceremony, drove his fist into Jin Yulong's stomach.
Even at half-strength, the gulf between them was massive.
An ordinary Peak-stage Martial Disciple's maximum output was the Martial Mark, the supposed physical ceiling of the mortal body—was 10,000 pounds. Jin Yulong, at 5th level Martial Adept Realm with sixfold amplification, could bring that to 60,000 pounds. Formidable. Exceptional, even, for his age.
But Su Tianhao's foundation was not ordinary.
At Peak Martial Disciple Realm, before a single level of Martial Adept amplification, his base strength had already reached 20,000 pounds—the product of the Supreme Dragon Transformation Technique applied to a physique that hadn't started from the same baseline. The Supreme Dragon Vein Awakening Art had then rebuilt the amplification scale from the ground up: threefold at the 1st level, fourfold at the 2nd, compounding with each breakthrough until at the 9th level. His amplification reached elevenfold. At full power, his effective output was beyond anything his peers could imagine standing beside.
At approximately half-power, with fivefold amplification still available against a body that could sustain 20,000 pounds of base force, he was operating at 100,000 pounds—the full ceiling of what a normal Peak-stage Martial Adept could ever achieve at that realm.
Jin Yulong never had a chance. Not from the moment he stepped forward.
He flew several metres before hitting the ground, the impact raising a cloud of dust from the stone floor.