The Arena of Blades was a massive, circular platform carved from a single piece of black obsidian that seemed to drink the very light from the sky. It was a place for settling grudges and testing strength, a stage built for violence and victory. Today, it was packed to capacity, the air thick with the buzz of thousands of disciples, their excited chatter rising like a storm cloud.
When Jian Wuchen arrived, a wave of cheers and respectful murmurs followed him. He moved like a living weapon, his white robes a stark contrast to the black stone of the arena. His hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword, "Frost Chill," and his cold, confident gaze swept over the crowd, dismissing them as irrelevant. He was the protagonist of this story, and everyone knew it.
Then, Yue Qingqian arrived.
A hush fell over the crowd, followed by a ripple of confused whispers. She did not walk like a fighter approaching a duel. She moved with the same serene, detached grace she had displayed at the seminar, her purple robes flowing gently around her. Her eyes were not on her opponent, but seemed to be observing the patterns the wind made on the arena floor. She looked less like a combatant and more like a poet who had accidentally wandered into a slaughterhouse.
The referee, a stern-faced elder from the Disciplinary Hall, looked from the ice-cold sword prodigy to the ethereal Dao-child and sighed inwardly. This was going to be a strange day.
"The duel of Dao verification between Jian Wuchen of the First Peak and Yue Qingqian of the Ninth Peak," he announced, his voice booming across the arena. "The rules are simple: no fatal blows. The duel ends upon concession or incapacitation. Begin!"
Jian Wuchen didn't waste a second. He had no intention of prolonging this farce. His goal was to shatter her nonsensical Dao with one, overwhelming display of power.
"Let's see if your 'harmony' can dance its way out of this," he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt.
His sword left its sheath in a flash of blinding white light. It wasn't a single slash, but a storm. Dozens of razor-sharp arcs of sword qi, each one crackling with chilling frost, shot across the obsidian floor, converging on Yue Qingqian from all sides. To the audience, it was an inescapable net of death.
Yue Qingqian, following the script, responded not with a counter, but with a statement. "The sword is loud," she said, her voice impossibly calm amidst the screaming qi. "I will listen to its song."
And then, she began to dance.
The Willow Catkin Body Technique bloomed in its purest form. She became weightless, ethereal. As the first arc of sword qi reached her, she didn't dodge it; she yielded to it. She allowed the torrent of air created by its passage to carry her, drifting sideways like a feather in a gale, the lethal energy passing a hair's breadth from her robes.
Another slash came from behind. She spun, not away from it, but with it, using its momentum to propel her in a graceful pirouette that placed her just outside its cutting edge.
The audience gasped. They had expected a bloody collision. Instead, they were witnessing a miracle of movement. Yue Qingqian was not fighting. She was flowing. She was a single, purple butterfly navigating a hurricane of blades, untouched, unhurried, her expression still one of serene curiosity.
In the stands, Liu Changqing was weeping openly with pride. "The Dao! That is the Dao of yielding! She is harmonizing with his aggression!"
Li Haoran leaned forward, his knuckles white where he gripped his seat. His analytical mind was in overdrive. He could see no flaw in her movement. It was perfect evasion, a level of control he had never thought possible.
On the arena floor, Jian Wuchen's initial confidence began to curdle into annoyance. He intensified his assault, his sword a blur of motion, blanketing the stage in a web of cold light. But it was like trying to cut smoke. Every attack, no matter how fast or powerful, was met with the same effortless, infuriating grace. She was always where his sword wasn't.
His annoyance festered into frustration. He was the strongest of his generation! His sword was meant to dominate, to crush! Yet here, against this strange girl who refused to even fight back, his ultimate sharpness felt clumsy, brutish, and utterly useless. He was a master warrior swinging a sledgehammer at a ghost.
The jeers he had expected to be directed at her were now being replaced by murmurs of awe for her impossible evasiveness. His pride, the very foundation of his Sword Dao, was being eroded with every missed strike.
Finally, something inside him snapped.
"ENOUGH!" he roared, his voice echoing with raw fury and humiliation.
He stopped his flurry of attacks and took a deep, shuddering breath. The air around him grew intensely cold. Frost began to form on the black obsidian floor at his feet. He raised his sword, "Frost Chill," with both hands, its blade glowing with a terrifying, incandescent light.
He was no longer trying to win a duel. He was trying to obliterate the source of his shame.
"If you will not face my sword," he growled, his eyes blazing with cold fire, "then you will be consumed by its storm! Sword Art: World of a Thousand Cuts!"
He slashed downwards, not at Yue Qingqian, but at the very air in front of him. An inescapable tempest of microscopic sword qi exploded outwards, covering the entire half of the arena where she stood. It was not an attack that could be dodged. It was an environment of pure destruction.