The courtyard held its breath.
Qin Feng took his place at the center, bamboo staff steady in hand. His heartbeat echoed in his ears, but his breathing was calm.
Across from him, Qin Liang rolled his shoulders, cocky and relaxed, as if this were a game.
To him, it was.
Qin Feng listened not just to footsteps or breathing, but to the rhythm beneath it all. The slight hiss of anticipation in the wind. The shifting weight of feet on stone. The thrum of tension in the air.
He couldn't see their eyes. But he could feel them. All of them.
Waiting.
Watching.
Wishing for a spectacle.
Qin Liang moved.
Fast.
A burst of wind rushed as he dashed forward, his movement barely making a sound, save for the sharp crack of his foot hitting the ground mid-lunge.
Qin Feng adjusted half a step to the side, staff angling up.
But Qin Liang was faster.
Far faster.
Qin Feng's instincts screamed. He tried to pivot.
Too slow.
Boom.
A single fist drove straight into his chest; brutal, direct, and merciless.
The impact knocked the air from his lungs. His staff flew from his grasp. His body lifted clean off the ground and slammed into the hard stone courtyard with a dull thud.
Everything went quiet.
Qin Feng gasped, choking on air that wouldn't fill his lungs. Pain bloomed through his ribs, hot and jagged. He twitched once, then stilled.
Motionless.
Defeated in a single strike.
A ripple of laughter broke the silence, awkward at first, then growing louder, crueler, easier. Qin Liang didn't even look at him as he stepped back, shaking out his wrist like brushing off dust.
"Tch. What a waste of time."
Qin Feng didn't hear that part.
He was already unconscious.
Sprawled on the cold stone.
A lifeless figure beneath the weight of every jeer, every sneer, every unspoken judgment that hung heavy in the air.
An instructor sighed and stepped forward at last, not with concern, but impatience.
"Drag him out."
Two outer sect guards approached, unmoved, as if they'd been waiting for this moment all morning. They lifted Qin Feng's limp body like baggage, tossing him onto a wooden cart pulled by a plain brown horse. The cart creaked under his weight.
"Take him past the southern ridge," the instructor ordered. "Leave him outside the border marker. He's no longer one of us."
No protest came.
Not from the elders.
Not from the disciples.
Not from the clan.
This was the Qin Clan's way.
Only strength had value.
Only cultivators were worthy.
Those without talent?
They were burdens; trash to be swept out with the morning dew.
Qin Feng's staff was left behind, cracked and forgotten near the center of the courtyard.
As the cart rolled away, dust trailing beneath the morning sun, no one looked back.
No one spoke for him.
No one stopped it.
Qin Feng was gone before the sun reached its peak; carried away like a stain to be scrubbed from the clan's legacy.
But even in unconsciousness, his fingers twitched.