Bao spent a week in the capsule. That took some of the shine off the tournament for me, reminded me just how 'fun' things could get, so I prepared as well as I possibly could.

I rewatched the fights of potential opponents, stocked up on stimulants, and picked the week when Gunther was competing.

On one hand, Gunther was an unbeatable star. On the other, he scared off more than half the fighters who actually had a shot at winning. Tournaments without him were more balanced, and the fighters tore each other apart.

But in the ones with Gunther, most cadets aimed for second or third place at best and surrendered more often.

I hadn't yet decided whether I would fight him, but I definitely wasn't burning with desire to go all the way this time.

Still, in addition to my shirt, I now had boxers with Palm Qi protection! Dropped 40,000 on them!

And I made a real effort to predict the registration so that we'd end up on opposite ends of the bracket. That way, we'd only meet in the final. I'd noticed that lately he'd been slow to sign up, usually landing in the second half of the list, so I registered as early as possible, basically right after the sign-up opened.

Spoilers: Gunther signed up 45th. The second half of the list. So we wouldn't clash before the final. The problem was that after Gunther signed up, nobody else wanted to. Just a few people, either very brave or very stupid, dared to enter.

Fewer participants meant fewer entry fees collected, which meant the prize pool ended up a little trimmed.

I got in at number four. Number three was Maria Skoryk, the same one who'd fought both me and the fake Sullivan in one of the semi-finals. A top-tier fighter, right from the start.

Maria's main strengths were speed and volume. She used to wear an entire arsenal of wooden needles with steel tips on her gloves, now she had more on her thighs and calves too. And she'd fully mastered the technique of hitting a single point with multiple needles, so my formation wouldn't stop her.

Plus, Point traditionally counters Fist's shields quite well.

The only difference now was that my shield had changed.

We got a sandy arena with almost no obstacles, just a few large boulders. On terrain like that, I felt like a fish in water.

"Begin!" the judge commanded.

Skoryk swept her arms, and a dozen needles launched from her gloves. They instantly lined up in two rows, one behind the other, and shot toward me.

But I was already running them down with the Chains in anti-air mode. Still, the main objective was to heat up the shield and keep moving.

I got lucky, managed to shoot down one volley.

The second slammed into my shield, leaving behind two holes and a mess of cracks. I was moving, so she couldn't land all the needles with perfect precision, and my shield no longer shattered from a single hit.

That was a nuisance for her, though not a major surprise. I wasn't the only Fist cultivator who had broken through using the Crystallised Black Lotus.

She swept her arms again, but this time didn't launch the needles. Three of them remained wedged between her fingers, clenched into a fist.

I'd seen that move before, so before she even raised her right hand and used a dash technique to launch herself into the air, I was already leaping after her.

She'd planned to dive at me like a hawk, but instead we ended up a few metres apart, facing each other mid-air, where, unexpectedly, the Chain Punches really shone.

They pounded against her formation barrier, but without solid footing, Skoryk began spinning around her right arm, which was still pulling her upward, and that exposed her unguarded right flank.

I smacked her with a pair of Hooks, one above the other, and made her spin even faster. Trying to force an aerial fight on an Air cultivator is usually a dumb idea. I'd completely disoriented her.

She plunged downwards just to escape my control. But it wasn't a dive, more like an uncontrolled spiral that ended in a crash rather than a landing.

Even before she hit the ground, I began activating techniques one after the other: A Thousand Sparks of Awareness, Mind Parallelisation.

I handed control of my legs to one mental stream, and my arms to the other. Before either of us landed, I was already executing Heavenly Fist.

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The first stream began generating faint counter-currents beneath my feet, so from the outside it looked like I just drifted down gently onto the sand. Though there was a lot more going on under the surface.

The second stream scooped up a massive amount of Qi from my core and channelled it through the channels of my right arm.

A massive silver projection, a giant fist, hung in the air above Skoryk.

I didn't see it, all my focus was on her.

She rose to her feet, and I lowered my right hand.

The fist dropped.

The silver projection crashed onto Skoryk like a bolt of lightning.

The blast cracked like a bomb, a plume of sand shot into the air and blotted everything out.

"Stop!" shouted the judge. "Victory to Sullivan!"

When the sand settled, the medics found my opponent sprawled at the centre of a small crater.

Her head was twisted at an odd angle, her helmet cracked, and the paint on the upper half of her armour had been scraped off like sandpaper.

She was alive, but they didn't move her until the helmet was carefully removed and her neck fully secured.

My next opponent just forfeited.

Perfect. So far, everything was going pretty smoothly.

After Skoryk came Zihao Tian. And so far, he was the strangest beast I'd ever faced.

I knew nothing about him. This seemed to be his first tournament, and yet he'd reached the third round easily.

A cultivator of Wood and Palm. He carried a long, flexible staff that could channel Palm Qi.

That alone was intimidating, but he also had a bandolier full of things that looked like avocado pits. And those things acted like living grenades, or mines.

He'd won his first fight in seconds, just tossed one of those under his opponent's feet.

He didn't hit the legs directly, but the seed released tendrils that tangled around his opponent's ankles.

Much like the red scarves on Seo-yeon's armour, the tendrils tore easily, so they didn't slow the opponent down. But they did pull the seed core tight against one leg, and the very next moment, it flared with golden Palm Qi.

The opponent dropped to one knee and a hand, just as the flexible end of Zihao's staff wrapped around his helmet.

"Surrender?" Zihao asked.

The opponent chose to fight, and was instantly knocked out by a fresh surge of golden Qi that travelled through the staff.

In his second match, Zihao had a tougher time.

His tricks had already been caught on camera, so they weren't a surprise anymore, but he still ended it in nearly the same way, forcing his opponent to retreat right into the spot where a seed had been tossed in advance.

Our match took place on an arena strewn with stones, from football-sized to refrigerator-sized. Not the kind of place to showcase Iron Head, but a decent playground for Monkey.

When the judge gave the signal, Zihao didn't even move. He simply tossed three seeds straight onto the rocks between us. They hit the stones, cracked open, and clung to the points of impact.

I spread my hands, like — what is this nonsense?

But Zihao wasn't done. He gripped his staff closer to one end and began waving the other through the air, and something thin and fuzzy started sprouting from it.

In seconds, the staff had transformed into a massive dandelion stem, complete with a full, blossomed head.

That hadn't appeared in his previous matches.

I caught myself just standing there, letting him prepare.

That was stupid.

I snapped out of it and started acting.

A few single, well-aimed Chain Punches flew toward the seed-mines on the rocks. The seeds exploded in golden flashes, bursting apart into fragments of thin green tendrils as soon as my projections touched them.

With the mines cleared, I launched a full barrage at their owner.

A dozen, two dozen, three dozen Chain Punches poured out in turret mode, flying at Zihao in a relentless stream.

Of course, he began dodging, but not only that, he raised his staff horizontally, and the entire fuzzy bloom shielded him like a white, semi-transparent veil made of a thousand fine filaments.

The first projection that touched it burst on impact. So did the second. And the third. And the fourth.

My Chain Punches were reduced to nothing but flashes, tearing tufts from the fluffy mass. The ripped pieces scattered into the air, and caused other projections to detonate on contact.

Something was wrong with that fluff.

At first glance, it looked far too soft to destroy a Qi projection. But then a faint echo of Wood Qi reached me.

That was what was detonating my projections.

Smart...

Zihao played defensively, favouring tactics and calculation over pressure and aggression. His countermeasures completely nullified my range advantage.

I hadn't faced an opponent like this before.

I tested him with some Hooks — he dodged them effortlessly, as if inviting me to come closer. And I didn't want to get closer. I wasn't sure he hadn't managed to drop a few seeds into the rocks between us while I was tearing through that fluffy shield of his.

Since he wasn't in a rush to attack, I decided to use the time to plan.

I could try to take him out with a Heavenly Fist.

There was a seventy percent chance he'd dodge, but at least it should clear the mines, if he had time to set them.

The problem was, Heavenly Fist drained energy reserves fast. And I still had three more rounds ahead of me, each one likely harder than the last.

I could try an aerial assault... but it wasn't a guaranteed win. I still hadn't seen his defensive formations in action.

Damn it! If I wanted a real shot at this, I had to hit him with Heavenly Fist, then follow up from above.

"Apologies," Zihao called out, peeking out from behind his dandelion bloom. "Will you be attacking? I'm afraid I can't do so myself."

At least he was polite.

"Give me a minute," I replied. "Just trying to find a reliable way to do it."

I took the stance for Heavenly Fist.

Well, more of a neutral stance, really, since the technique didn't require a specific foot position.

I scooped up a good chunk of Qi from my core and pushed it into the air through the channels of my right arm, coordinating the motion with precise movements of both hands in front of my abdomen.

A massive silver fist began to form in the air, closer to Zihao, though more in front of him than above.

Zihao glanced at it, and started waving his staff.

"I surrender!"

What? What the hell?

"I surrender," he repeated, and I released the half-formed technique. Didn't save me much energy, I'd already poured almost everything into it.

"Why?" I asked.

Zihao swung his staff, and the fluffy bloom just fell away from it. He took a few steps forward and bent over a crack between the stones to pick up a seed.

"Anything I say will be on record," he said. "So I'd rather not answer."

Then he walked over and picked up another seed.

It was a strange fight.

But I won, and got through without any real damage.

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