The Azure Lantern Festival raged on around the makeshift arena, thousands of blue lights hovering over the lake as the crowd slowly gathered around the two young cultivators.
Lin Mei stood with her feet apart and her shoulders loose. The nervousness that had plagued her at the start of the fight had not vanished completely, but it had stopped dictating her movements. Her eyes remained on Zhao Kai, tracking the way he held his arms and the way he weighted his feet.
Across from her, Zhao Kai rolled his shoulders and gave her an amused look. He had expected Ao Kuiba to choose someone far more fearsome, someone among the elder cultivators standing nearby. Instead, he had drawn a sixteen-year-old girl who looked more at home in an alchemy shop than on a fighting platform.
He made the mistake of letting the thought settle in his expression.
