“What do you want to bet?”
White Tiger smiled as she watched Santai’s wary expression and waved her hand casually. “If I win, you help me with something someday. If you win, I’ll help you with something someday. Simple as that.”
Santai thought it over for a moment and realized it wasn’t an unacceptable wager.
As if she could refuse if White Tiger asked for her help even without the bet.
“Sure. It’s a deal.”
Santai nodded in agreement.
……
Chen Guan leaned back in his chair, watching the two people in the arena. “Baal, who do you think will win?”
“Heh heh. Do you really need to ask?”
Baal’s voice echoed in his mind, brimming with undisguised schadenfreude.
“Of course it’s the little girl. That kid named An Changqing may have a decent sword technique, but his style is too orthodox—so orthodox it’s practically straight out of a textbook. Boring. Far too boring.”
“Besides, that little girl could be considered the Hero’s successor. If she’s going to lose, it’ll only be to you.”
At the center of the arena, An Changqing rested one hand on the hilt of his sword and gave Su Yuehe, standing ten meters away, a gentle smile.
“I won’t hold back.”
His voice carried clearly throughout the arena. The words came from a place of genuine respect.
Su Yuehe smiled as well. Her eyes, usually filled with starlight, shone with astonishing brightness at that moment.
“Neither will I.”
Just as Santai had said, she had never won a sparring match.
So this time, she wanted to win.
The instant her words fell, An Changqing moved.
Clang!
A clear sword cry rang out like a dragon emerging from an abyss.
His figure left behind an afterimage as he appeared in front of Su Yuehe, his longsword transforming into a silver bolt of lightning that shot straight toward the center of her brow.
The sword was impossibly fast. Even the wail of the air being torn apart couldn’t keep up with its edge. The blade had already reached her eyes.
This was An Changqing’s sword—a pure thrust forged through countless trials, merging speed and strength into one.
Facing this strike, powerful enough to pierce through anything, Su Yuehe was fully prepared.
“Stop.”
The instant that gentle word fell, time was forcibly frozen.
The silver bolt of lightning, the unstoppable longsword, halted abruptly just three inches from Su Yuehe’s chest. The tip of the blade trembled in place, humming with unwillingness, but it could not advance another inch.
The entire arena fell silent.
Everyone stared wide-eyed at the unbelievable sight before them.
In the box overlooking the arena, the wine in Santai’s glass swayed, nearly spilling over.
“Not again… Another one of those completely unreasonable tricks.”
She stared at the frozen scene below, her voice thick with envy.
Was she really going to lose?
Santai didn’t care about the wager itself, but she did care about the emotional satisfaction of winning or losing.
White Tiger lounged on the sofa, watching the scene with an increasingly radiant smile. “See? What did I tell you?”
In the arena, An Changqing could feel that his sword wasn’t being blocked by any tangible force, and yet it simply could not move forward.
An invisible, indestructible wall stood before him.
So this was the power of an Incantation?
Rather than becoming discouraged, An Changqing’s fighting spirit burned even more fiercely in his eyes.
His wrist flicked, and the imprisoned blade instantly shattered into a sky full of stardust. His figure then appeared like a ghost behind Su Yuehe. As the stardust reformed into a sword, he seized the hilt and swept it horizontally.
One attack and one defense, one feint and one real strike—the transitions were as smooth as flowing water.
Yet facing this lethal slash from behind, Su Yuehe remained unhurried.
“Reverse.”
Another single word.
The longsword, which should have swept through everything in its path, suddenly twisted around at an impossibly strange angle just before touching the hem of her clothes. It turned back and slashed toward An Changqing himself.
An Changqing’s pupils contracted sharply.
He lightly tapped the ground with his toes, his entire body becoming as weightless as a feather as he drifted several meters backward, narrowly avoiding the sword he had been certain would hit its mark.
Two attacks. Two failures. He had even nearly wounded himself.
An Changqing finally stopped attacking. Hovering in midair, he looked down at the unharmed Su Yuehe, his expression more solemn than ever.
This style of attack was undeniably a headache for him. The invisible attacks he could neither see nor touch made it extremely difficult for him to find a way to strike back.
Su Yuehe raised her head to look up at him, an apologetic smile on her face.
An Changqing made up his mind. Since he couldn’t hit her, he would drag the battle into a war of attrition.
The two of them understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses better than anyone. Su Yuehe’s greatest predicament remained her lack of mana.
An Changqing drew a deep breath and slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his entire presence had undergone a sudden transformation.
The An Changqing from moments ago had been a sharp sword hidden within its sheath, its edge restrained. Now, he had become a vast and profound night sky, filled with an unknown majesty.
Specks of silver light appeared along the blade of his longsword, resembling countless stars being born and dying within it.
An Changqing slowly swung the sword, tracing profound trajectories through the air. Each trajectory drew down the phantom of a star from beyond the heavens.
Sword light intertwined, forming a magnificent star map between him and Su Yuehe.
The Big Dipper, the Six Stars of the Southern Dipper, the Twenty-Eight Mansions…
Countless brilliant stellar phantoms emerged above the arena, transforming the entire space into a true domain of stars.
“Stars Shift, the Heavens as My Boundary.”
Beneath this starry sky, An Changqing was the sole master. He was everywhere.
A moment later, An Changqing’s figure flickered amid the starlight. Every time he swung his sword, a star descended with terrifying force.
Su Yuehe began weaving through the rain of falling starlight and sword qi.
She knew An Changqing intended to fight a war of attrition.
It was the choice she had expected.
The spectator stands were deathly silent. Everyone had forgotten to breathe, their eyes completely seized by the battle woven from starlight and sword qi.
Su Yuehe moved through the airtight storm of starry sword rain, every evasion executed with breathtaking precision.
But everyone could see that the space available to her was rapidly shrinking.
“An Changqing’s sword is too overwhelming.” In the box overlooking the arena, Santai watched intently. “He’s turned the entire arena into his home ground. Within this domain, his expenditure is far lower than that of conventional spellcasting, while every dodge and subtle adjustment of her Incantations is consuming Su Yuehe’s mental strength.”
“The balance is shifting. She won’t last much longer.”
White Tiger lounged on the sofa, smiling without a word.
In the arena, An Changqing’s assault grew fiercer. He had seen the predicament Su Yuehe was in, but he still showed no mercy, because that was the greatest respect he could offer his opponent.
Another enormous stellar phantom was drawn down from beyond the heavens, crashing toward Su Yuehe’s last foothold with the force to crush everything in its path.
Su Yuehe was on the verge of being forced into a dead end. There was nowhere left to retreat, nowhere left to dodge. Every spectator’s heart tightened to the breaking point.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
