The tournament preparation area was a tent city of chaos. Disciples stretched, meditated, chattered. Healers moved between aisles with water and basic stamina pills.
Zhou Kai stood at the entrance, breathing slowly. The silver leaf's energy was a steady hum in his veins. The poison signature Water had detected was a faint, bitter scent on the air—like burnt sugar and iron.
He followed it.
It led to a secluded corner behind the main tents. A lone disciple sat on a crate, head in his hands. Li Chen. A gentle-faced Earth-Warder Zhou Kai knew vaguely. Li Chen was scheduled to fight soon. His opponent? Zhang Wei's cousin, a brutish Striker named Hong.
Li Chen looked pale. A clay cup sat empty beside him.
[Target identified: Li Chen, Earth-Warder, Stage 18.]
[Toxin analysis: Refined Soul-Scorch variant. Delayed action. Suppresses earth Qi affinity for 4-6 hours.]
[Administered via drinking water 23 minutes ago.]
[Current effect: Core destabilization. Combat efficacy reduced by 70%.]
Sabotage. Clear and cruel.
Zhou Kai approached. "Li Chen. You look unwell."
Li Chen looked up, forcing a smile. "Nerves. I'll be fine."
"May I?" Zhou Kai picked up the empty cup. He brought it to his nose. The residue was unmistakable. "Who gave you this water?"
"A server. I didn't see his face. He was just handing out cups." Li Chen's eyes widened. "Why?"
Zhou Kai didn't answer. He reached for the Water Blade's new sense. He focused on the cup's interior, on the molecular memory left in the ceramic pores.
[Activating Alchemical Insight.]
[Residue pattern reconstruction: possible.]
A faint, ghostly image formed in his mind's eye. A hand pouring from a special flask. The hand had a distinct scar across the knuckles. And on the wrist, a leather band with a red iron bead.
Zhang Wei's trademark.
So. The bully was gone, but his friends weren't finished.
"You've been poisoned," Zhou Kai said quietly. "A variant of Soul-Scorch. It's targeting your earth affinity."
Li Chen's face went from pale to grey. "But the match… I'll be slaughtered."
Zhou Kai calculated. He could try to cleanse it. But doing so openly would reveal his water abilities beyond "minor cleansing." And the poison was already deep in Li Chen's meridians.
But Water wasn't just about cleansing. It was about adaptation.
"Give me your hand," Zhou Kai said.
Li Chen, trusting out of desperation, complied.
Zhou Kai placed two fingers on Li Chen's wrist. He pushed a thread of Water's essence—not to purge the poison, but to alter its expression. He couldn't remove it in time. But he could convince Li Chen's body that the poison was a stimulant instead of a suppressant.
It was a dangerous gambit. Like convincing a fire it was water.
He used the principle of the silver current—the balance. He nudged Li Chen's Qi, making it resonate with the poison's corrosive energy instead of resisting it. He turned suppression into overclocking.
[Improvised technique: Toxin Inversion.]
[Success rate: 58%.]
[Attempting.]
Li Chen gasped. His body shuddered. His earth Qi, which had been sinking, suddenly flared. It became jagged, unstable, but powerful. His skin took on a rough, cracked texture. His eyes glowed faintly amber.
"What did you do?" Li Chen whispered, clenching his fists. "I feel… volatile."
"You're not cured," Zhou Kai said. "The poison is still there. But now it's fueling you instead of choking you. It won't last. Maybe one round. Use it. End the fight fast."
Li Chen stood up. The ground beneath his feet cracked slightly. "Thank you. I… I won't forget this."
"Don't thank me yet. Go win."
Li Chen nodded, a new, fierce light in his eyes. He strode toward the rings.
Zhou Kai watched him go. The intervention was another risk. But letting a disciple be crippled for a tournament victory felt worse.
He turned. Ling Yue was standing nearby, holding a healer's satchel. She'd seen everything.
"You rewrote a poison's purpose," she said, her voice low. "That's not cleansing. That's alchemy at a soul-deep level."
"It was necessary."
"I know." She stepped closer. "The server with the scarred hand—I saw him too. He's with Hong's group. They're not just cheating. They're trying to send a message: cross Zhang Wei's legacy, and we'll break you."
"Message received," Zhou Kai said. "And ignored."
A bell rang. His match was next.
His opponent was a girl named Mei, a Mist-Weaver from the illusion track. Stage 20. Her symbol was a delicate fan.
She bowed gracefully as Zhou Kai entered the ring. "I saw your matches," she said. "You don't attack. You endure. That must be exhausting."
"It has its moments."
The flag dropped.
Mei didn't move. She opened her fan and sighed. A visible mist poured from her lips, spreading across the ring. It wasn't water vapor. It was condensed confusion—an illusionary fog that muddled sight and sound.
Zhou Kai lost her. The crowd's cheers became muffled, distant. Shapes moved in the fog, false silhouettes.
[Environmental hazard: Mental Mist.]
[Effect: Sensory disorientation. Time perception distortion.]
[Counter: Enhanced non-visual senses. Or dispel.]
He couldn't dispel without exposing Water. So he closed his eyes.
He listened. Not with his ears. With Stone's earth-sense, transmitted through his feet. The stone of the ring felt the pressure of steps. Mei was light, but she still touched the ground.
There. Left. Eight feet.
He stepped toward her. A phantom image appeared in the fog—a copy of Mei, lunging. He ignored it. The real Mei was circling.
She struck from his blind side. Her fan wasn't a weapon. It was a focus. She tapped his shoulder.
A wave of mental static crashed into his mind. Memories jumbled. For a second, he was back in the Awakening ceremony, feeling the empty sheath's weight. Then in the mines. Then in the marsh.
Disorientation.
But the void at his center, the quiet lake where his Blades rested, remained calm. It was a anchor. He clung to it.
He turned, still blind, and swung the sheath off his hip in a wide, slow arc.
It wasn't an attack. It was a invitation.
Mei, confident in her mist, stepped in to tap him again. Her wrist entered the sheath's arc.
He triggered a tiny kinetic release. Not enough to hurt. Just a pulse.
Thump.
The vibration traveled up her arm. She gasped, her illusion flickering. The mist wavered.
In that moment, he saw her. Three feet away. Surprised.
He didn't strike. He stepped forward and placed his palm flat against her chest, over her heart. Just as he had with Yan.
"Yield," he said, his voice cutting through the fading mist.
She felt the steady pressure. She felt the unnerving calm. Her illusions were useless against someone who didn't believe his own eyes.
"How?" she whispered.
"I listened to the stone," he said.
She lowered her fan. The mist dissolved completely. "I yield."
Another quiet victory. The crowd was getting used to it. The strange attendant who won by standing still.
But as he left the ring, he saw Hong, Li Chen's opponent, watching from the shadows. Hong's eyes were narrow, calculating. He'd seen Zhou Kai with Li Chen earlier.
Trouble.
Li Chen's match was brutal.
The inverted poison made him a temporary berserker. His earth techniques were wild, explosive. He shattered Hong's guard in the first minute, driving him across the ring with reckless, powerful strikes.
Hong, a striker who relied on bullying weaker opponents, was unprepared. He took a rock fist to the jaw. The crack echoed. He fell.
Li Chen stood panting, his body shaking from the toxin's strain. He'd won. But as he left the ring, he stumbled. The inversion was fading. The poison's true damage would now express itself, worse for the forced exertion.
Ling Yue was there, catching him. She shot Zhou Kai a look: This is your doing. Help fix it.
Zhou Kai joined her in a secluded medical tent. Li Chen lay on a cot, trembling, his Qi in chaotic collapse.
"The backlash," Ling Yue said, checking his pulses. "You turned a slow poison into a fast one. He won the battle. He might lose his cultivation."
"I can stabilize him," Zhou Kai said.
"Openly?"
"No."
He placed his hands on Li Chen's chest. This time, he called Water fully to the surface. Not a manifestation. Just its essence.
[Deploying Water Blade essence: Purification protocol.]
[Goal: Extract and neutralize inverted toxin remnants.]
[Process: Visible. Risk high.]
Blue-white light, faint but visible, glowed from Zhou Kai's palms. It sank into Li Chen's chest. In the medical tent's dim light, it was unmistakable.
Ling Yue kept watch at the flap.
Zhou Kai worked. He guided Water's power through Li Chen's ravaged meridians, not fighting the chaos, but guiding it to flow out. He became a channel. The poison, now spent and unstable, was drawn out like black smoke from Li Chen's mouth.
It coalesced above them—a twisting, dark cloud.
Zhou Kai didn't know what to do with it. He couldn't release it here.
The sheath hummed at his hip.
An idea. A dangerous one.
He pointed the mouth of the sheath at the poison cloud.
[Sheath function query: Can void-store volatile spiritual toxin?]
[Answer: Yes. Risk of internal corrosion: 14%. Acceptable.]
He willed the sheath to open its void-space.
A small, purple vortex formed at the sheath's mouth. The poison cloud was sucked in with a sound like a sigh. The sheath shuddered, then stilled.
[Abyssal toxin variant stored in void-pocket 2.]
[Contained. Stable.]
[Note: Potential resource for future Water Blade techniques.]
Li Chen's breathing eased. Color returned to his face. He'd be weak for days, but his core was intact.
Ling Yue let the tent flap fall. "That light was seen."
"By who?"
"By someone who matters." She nodded outside.
Dao Feng stood at the entrance to the tent area. He wasn't looking at them. He was looking at the ground where the poison cloud had been. He knelt, touched the dirt, then brought his fingers to his nose. His eyes narrowed.
He looked up. Directly at Zhou Kai.
Then he turned and walked away.
[Observation: Dao Feng has noted anomaly: spiritual toxin extraction and void-based containment.]
[Threat assessment: elevated. Knowledge accretion progressing.]
"He's putting pieces together," Ling Yue said.
"I know."
"What will you do when the picture is complete?"
Zhou Kai watched Dao Feng's retreating back. "Hope he's an ally."
The tournament advanced. Zhou Kai won his next match the same way—endurance, minimal movement, a final touch that suggested vulnerability rather than victory. He was becoming a fixture. The unbreakable attendant.
But the real battle was happening in the shadows.
That evening, as Zhou Kai returned to the dormitory, a figure stepped from the alley.
Hong. His jaw was bandaged. Two larger disciples flanked him.
"Attendant," Hong spat. "You interfered."
"I treated a poisoned disciple," Zhou Kai said, not stopping.
Hong blocked his path. "You cost me face. And you cost my friend Zhang Wei his place here." He leaned in. "We know you're not what you seem. That sheath isn't normal. Those tricks aren't Soul Attendant garbage."
"Step aside."
"Or what? You'll touch my chest and ask me to yield?" Hong laughed. "This isn't a ring. There are no rules here."
The two flanking disciples moved, forming a triangle around Zhou Kai.
[Hostile intent confirmed.]
[Three opponents. Stages: 19, 21, 20.]
[Environment: enclosed alley. No witnesses.]
[Recommended response: Non-lethal incapacitation. Minimal Blade exposure.]
Zhou Kai weighed options. He could probably handle them with Stone's partial manifestation and the sheath's redirection. But it would be messy. Revealing.
Then he felt a new sensation. A gentle pressure at the edge of his mind. From the void-pocket where the poison was stored.
Water was suggesting something.
An idea formed. Terrible. Effective.
"You want to see what the sheath holds?" Zhou Kai said, his voice cold. "Fine."
He unclipped the sheath from his belt. He held it out horizontally, like an offering.
Hong looked wary. "What trick—"
Zhou Kai triggered the void-pocket's release. Not fully. A controlled vent.
A wisp of the stored poison cloud, diluted but potent, hissed from the sheath's mouth. It wasn't directed at them. It was released at their feet.
The black vapor touched the ground. The stone pavement sizzled. Tiny pits appeared.
The three disciples stumbled back in horror.
"That's Soul-Scorch!" one gasped.
"A refined version," Zhou Kai corrected. He took a step forward. The vapor, guided subtly by Water' essence clinging to it, swirled around his legs harmlessly. To them, it looked like he commanded it. "My symbol doesn't hold a blade. It holds consequences for those who use poison on my fellow disciples."
He was bluffing. He couldn't control it. But they didn't know that.
Hong's bravado shattered. He saw the dissolving stone. He saw Zhou Kai standing calmly in the toxic mist. This wasn't a weird talent. This was something dark. Ancient.
"Freak," Hong whispered, backing away. "You're a demon."
"Leave," Zhou Kai said. "And tell your friends. The next poison you brew, I will drink. And I will return it to you tenfold."
They fled.
He sealed the sheath, containing the vapor. The effort of even that minor release drained him. But the message was sent.
He re-clipped the sheath. His hand trembled.
[Bluff successful.]
[Hostiles neutralized.]
[Reputation shifting: Strange → Dangerous.]
[New rumor vector initiated.]
[Warning: Use of stored toxin as threat escalates profile.]
He walked the rest of the way alone. The night felt colder.
When he reached his dorm room, a small parcel lay on his bunk. No note.
He opened it. Inside was a simple ceramic jar of ointment for spiritual fatigue. And a single, perfect Black Lotus stamen—the same rare herb Ling Yue had collected in the marsh.
He knew who it was from.
He also knew it was more than a gift. It was a confirmation. She knew he'd used the toxin. She knew he was playing a deeper game.
He applied the ointment. The coolness spread, soothing his strained spirit.
[Recovery accelerated.]
[Qi Condensation Stage: 21.]
[Water Blade synergy: 12% increase from practical application.]
[Stone Blade synergy: 5% increase from defensive endurance.]
He lay down. The tournament's quarter-finals were tomorrow. He would face stronger opponents. Dao Feng was watching. Hong's faction was now actively hostile. And he had just weaponized a void-stored poison.
He was no longer just hiding. He was building something. A reputation. A mystery. A shield of fear and curiosity.
The sheath was no longer just empty. It held two silent blades. And now, it also held a weaponized secret.
He closed his eyes. In the dark, he felt the gentle, fluid presence of Water, and the steady, patient weight of Stone.
Two down.
Four to go.
And a tournament to survive.
[Tomorrow's opponent: Dao Feng.]
[Probability of victory with current restrictions: 3%.]
[Recommended: Strategic surrender or unprecedented risk.]
He fell asleep with the taste of lotus and ozone on his tongue.