Master Yuan's hand hung suspended mid-gesture, power coiling around his fingers like serpents preparing to strike. His attention shifted from the wounded elders to Xiaolong with the predatory focus of something that had just identified more interesting prey.

"The unusual disciple speaks with unexpected authority," he said, his tone shifting from the harmonious warmth of their previous conversation to something sharper-edged. "Tell me, Xiaolong—what exactly do you believe ends now?"

"Your performance as sect leader. Your pretense that corruption feels like enlightenment. Your assumption that power alone determines outcomes." Xiaolong moved forward with measured steps, her spiritual pressure beginning to unfold like morning mist rising from still water. "Also, your mistaken belief that I'm merely Li Feng's eccentric guest rather than something considerably more problematic for your current condition."

The hall's remaining occupants pressed against walls, disciples and servants alike frozen by the tension crackling between Xiaolong and their corrupted sect leader.

Li Feng had moved to support Elder Wei, one hand steadying the elder while the other remained on his sword hilt. Elder Liu stood ready to resume combat, her fan positioned defensively despite blood seeping through her robes where Master Yuan's technique had torn through.

Master Yuan laughed, the sound wrong in ways that made cultivated water in the hall's pools shudder. "More problematic? You believe yourself my match?"

His eyes, those deep blue depths now carrying sickly undertones, studied her with renewed interest. "I wondered about you during the Azure Convergence. Wondered what could make our sacred pool respond like it recognized lost royalty returning home. Should I be flattered that you've revealed yourself specifically to oppose me?"

"Flattered seems inappropriate given the circumstances. Concerned might serve better." Xiaolong stopped three zhang from where Master Yuan stood, distance sufficient for observation while remaining close enough for immediate response. "The corruption threading through your cultivation—did they promise it was breakthrough? Evolution beyond orthodox limitations?"

"They promised truth." Master Yuan's spiritual pressure flared, Ocean Depth Realm power flooding the space with weight that drove lesser cultivators to their knees. "Truth that orthodox cultivation chains authentic expression beneath pretty lies about harmony. Truth that real power requires shedding the weakness others call virtue."

"They promised madness dressed in philosophical language." Xiaolong's own pressure rose to meet his, different in fundamental nature—older, deeper, carrying qualities that water recognized on instinctive levels humans couldn't consciously perceive. "But madness can be cured if the patient retains enough self to want healing."

"I don't want healing." Master Yuan's hands moved in the opening sequence of Tsunami Breaking Mountains, a master-level technique requiring years to learn and Ocean Depth cultivation to manifest. "I want you to stop pretending mortal limitations apply to whatever you actually are."

The technique erupted from his body in torrents that tore apart stone pillars, smashed decorative sculptures, sent disciples who hadn't yet escaped diving behind walls seeking cover.

Xiaolong's spiritual pressure exploded outward, her presence filling the hall like storm clouds descending to caress rooftops. Her eyes shifted, subtle prismatic glimmers appearing within irises that had previously appeared solid black. Subtle scale patterns emerged across her cheeks and temples, hints of draconic nature she'd kept suppressed during months at the sect, revealing themselves.

She didn't dodge. Instead, she extended one hand as if welcoming the attack into her embrace. Water that should have smashed through her gathered, swirling into an orb that hung quivering above her palm, its shape warped by the corruptive energy suffusing Master Yuan's technique. She turned her palm slightly, and the technique imploded, its power folding in on itself, crumpling as if devouring its own existence.

"The problem with shedding weaknesses," she said calmly, lowering her hand, "is that the line between strength and self is thinner than it seems."

Master Yuan paused, surprise flickering in those sickly blue eyes. "You... really aren't human, are you?"

"Technically correct." Xiaolong inclined her head. "And based on that technique, you really aren't actually a master of water's true essence anymore, are you?"

His face contorted, anger mingling with envy and something that almost looked like grief.

Master Yuan moved.

Not with the cautious circling of opponents testing range and capability, but with the explosive speed of someone who'd decided conversation had concluded. His sword flashed from its sheath, tracing silver arcs through air made heavy by conflicting spiritual pressures, carving complex patterns that gathered surrounding water into shaped attacks that mirrored his strikes.

He'd abandoned earlier's restraint. Abandoned concern about appearing his old orthodox self. Abandoned any pretense of still occupying his proper station as sect leader of Azure Waters.

His form, perfect.

His intent, pure aggression.

Xiaolong, a step ahead of perfection, flowed around his attacks like mist evading raindrops. Her feet danced across stone floors as if they were her throne room, her hands moving in gentle curves and subtle angles, each gesture shaping her defensive weaves.

Ethereal draconic essence spiraled out from those deftly flowing hands, met his attacks with all the tangible impact of morning fog catching moonlight. In contact, her draconic essence tore apart his formations, shredded the very concepts of his techniques down to their fundamental qigongs, leaving trailing eddies in their place, then dissipated.

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He pressed her, unleashing combinations he'd honed across centuries of dedicated cultivation. She evaded, diverted, neutralized his efforts with apparent simplicity—each response to his technique arriving fractions of a heartbeat before the attack would have landed.

Their dance wove across the hall, tracing spirals around pillars, between statues of founding masters, under arches and past windows that showcased the now-turbulent river beyond the walls.

And slowly, inexorably, his strength eroded beneath her onslaught of elegant avoidance and deconstruction.

His face, already contorted with anger and grief, took on a different shade: Frustration.

"Stand still!" he shouted, voice tight with the mounting strain of constantly attacking with no result. "Face me properly, whatever you are!"

"If I stand still," Xiaolong replied, her voice holding its customary calm, "then this will be a brief encounter."

She twisted away from his latest strike, her fingers skimming the blade's edge and scattering the technique that followed in its wake, and smiled.

"If this is the sum of your capabilities after sacrificing natural principle, I suspect the Black Dao Sect will have difficulty living up to your philosophy."

The shift in Master Yuan's demeanor happened instantly. Gone was any pretense of emotion, of frustration, even of aggression itself. In their place lay only cold resolve—the decision of a man who'd embraced corruption to achieve a higher form of power.

His spiritual pressure changed.

Before, the weight of his Ocean Depth cultivation had carried notes of water's essence: depth and breadth, the flows and ebbs of tides, the gentle fall of summer rain.

Now, his pressure lost those hints of natural water, becoming heavier, sharper, colder. It reminded her not of flowing streams or gathering seas, but of a glacier creeping across a landscape—slow, implacable, and crushing everything beneath its irresistible force.

"You think you understand power," Master Yuan said, his voice eerily flat. "You believe that mastery means perfecting orthodox forms. But what if there are deeper currents than even an ancient creature like you dares grasp?"

He drew himself to full height, his posture shifting into the steady rootedness of someone prepared to tear the earth itself asunder. And from him, tendrils of sickly energy emerged like smoke, winding their way across the room. They touched every drop of liquid, every fragment of ice, every splash of moisture from his previous techniques, and dragged them back, inward and down, to join that cold, cold core at his center.

Every trace of corruption on his robes, skin, and hair grew deeper, more pronounced. The swirls of darkness within his eyes expanded, drowning out hints of sky-blue in pools of black abyss.

That energy she'd felt upon their reunion returned, only now unrestrained by his earlier facade—dark, powerful, insidious, its presence a pressure on her senses and its tendrils reaching, prying, searching for cracks to exploit.

The tendrils reached toward her across the intervening distance. She deftly dodged, a simple step to the side. But the tendrils followed. Each step she took, each graceful twist and evasion, they matched with effortless certainty, seeking entry through her aura.

"What's wrong, mysterious creature?" Yuan's face stretched in a smile, the expression both mocking and somehow detached, as if observing rather than actively engaging. "You seem unsettled."

"Your intent is unsettled, Yuan Shuilong," she answered, the use of his full name a deliberate statement, a setting of boundaries and roles. "I can see it in your eyes—you've embraced madness and believe it enlightenment."

"Call it madness, if you wish. Call it anything! It doesn't matter. Words can't define this." He spread his arms, tendrils writhing around him. "I know this power in my soul. It is absolute."

He stepped forward, one hand clenched in a beckoning gesture, and all those gathered threads of power surged toward Xiaolong.

No words, no chanting of techniques or announcing of styles, just a primal command that his energy obey his will—an inversion of nature that her instincts recoiled against.

She stepped forward, not away. Forward into and through the surge, his tendrils meeting her dragon's aura head-on.

They pushed, she resisted. They reached, she rebuffed. And her expression darkened slightly.

"You are lost in this perversion, and I pity your condition," she spoke, each word slow and heavy. "But whatever your beliefs, however far your fall into this abyss, some things are immutable." Her eyes flashed, prismatic scales shining along her cheeks and temples. "And one thing, above all others, is this."

Her aura flared, radiance meeting the coiling tendrils that reached to ensnare.

Dragons did not bow to inverted principles.

The collision sent shockwaves through the hall that cracked stone floors, shattered remaining windows, and drove every watching disciple flat against walls or to their knees. Elder Wei threw up hasty barriers to protect the wounded, his face pale with the effort of maintaining protections while his spiritual energy depleted.

Master Yuan's tendrils met Xiaolong's radiance and burned.

He screamed, not in pain but in fury, and yanked his power back before more of it could be consumed. The tendrils retreated, coiling around him like serpents guarding a corpse.

"You dare—" he began.

She moved.

Not the flowing evasions of moments before, but direct assault—closing the distance between them in a blur of motion that left afterimages trailing prismatic light. Her palm struck Master Yuan's chest with enough force to crack the stone floor beneath his feet, driving him backward through a decorative fountain that collapsed in an explosion of marble and water.

He recovered mid-flight, twisting in the air to land in a crouch, water from the shattered fountain rising around him like a dozen serpents answering their master's call. The corrupted technique wove those serpents together, braiding them into a hydra that lunged with twelve heads seeking twelve different angles of attack.

Xiaolong didn't bother evading. Her hands rose, fingertips touching the nearest head as it reached. Draconic essence flared, dissipated the head and the entire strand of energy it was woven within, leaving the others to disintegrate in sympathy.

Master Yuan's eyes widened fractionally. "What are you?"

"Currently? Annoyed." Xiaolong's next movement covered ten zhang in a single step, her presence suddenly behind him, one hand already moving toward the corruption points threading through his meridians. "Originally? Considerably more impressive. Now hold still—this would be easier if you weren't actively resisting salvation."

He spun, his sword technique manifesting in defensive spirals that created whirlpools of cutting edges. The River Cutting Sword Art, performed at master level with corruption enhancing each rotation into something that could shred spiritual barriers alongside physical matter.

She withdrew, her hand bleeding where the technique's edge had grazed her palm. The wound sealed immediately, but the corruption in Master Yuan's attack had left traces—small dark threads that tried to burrow into her essence before her draconic nature burned them out.

Interesting. The corruption could actually harm her diminished form where normal attacks would simply fail to connect with anything vital.

"You bleed," Master Yuan observed, his voice carrying satisfaction. "Even ancient things can be cut."

"Everything can be cut if the blade is sharp enough." Xiaolong examined her healed palm, then met his gaze again. "The question is whether the cutting achieves anything meaningful beyond demonstrating the blade exists."

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