The single word, "Try," hung in the air, not as a challenge, but as a simple, profound invitation. It was the calm at the eye of the storm, and it infuriated Zhang Fan more than any boast could have.
With a roar that was half-human, half-inferno, Zhang Fan exploded into action. He didn't bother with the elegant, foundational forms of the Verdant Mountain Sect. This was raw, hate-fueled power. He stomped the ground, and the arena floor itself heaved, sharpened pillars of rock and superheated magma erupting in a line towards Li Yao. It was a bastardized technique, merging Earth and Fire in a violent, unstable union.
The crowd gasped. This was far beyond the level of a normal Essence Refinement realm cultivator. Zhang Fan was burning his potential for a momentary surge of power.
Li Yao didn't move to avoid the erupting line of destruction. He simply stood, his Warding Emptiness activating. The first few feet of the erupting rock and magma hit his field and died, crumbling to inert dust and cooling to black, dead stone. But the attack was immense, a continuous wave of force. For the first time, Li Yao felt a strain. The sheer, chaotic volume of energy pushed at the boundaries of his negation, threatening to overwhelm it through brute force.
He took a single, smooth step back, then another, allowing the leading edge of the nullification to constantly meet the oncoming tide. It was a dance of stillness against chaos. Where he stood, the world was calm. A step behind him, the arena was being torn apart.
"You can't run forever!" Zhang Fan screamed, his face contorted. He raised both hands, gathering the chaotic energy around him into a massive, swirling orb of molten rock and furious flame—a miniature sun of destruction. "Shattering Mountain Core!"
He hurled it.
The orb flew, distorting the air around it, its unstable energy screaming. This was the technique he had used to cripple the alchemist.
Li Yao stopped retreating. He planted his feet and looked at the oncoming orb of annihilation. This was not an energy attack to be nullified upon contact. This was a physical object, a condensed mass of law and matter, designed to detonate.
He couldn't simply stop it. But he could unmake it.
He recalled the concept he had forged the night before. He wouldn't meet force with force, or even with a shield of nothingness. He would be a surgeon. He would find the flaw.
His void-sharpened senses focused on the orb. He ignored the terrifying power and sought the "cracks." And he found them. Dozens of them. The forced fusion of Earth and Fire laws was inherently unstable. The threads of energy were tangled, pulling against each other, held in a violent, temporary truce only by Zhang Fan's raging will.
Li Yao extended a single finger.
He did not project energy. He projected a concept. A pinpoint suggestion of absence directly into the most critical stress point within the chaotic orb.
It was like pricking a overinflated bladder.
The orb didn't hit his Warding Emptiness. It unraveled a dozen feet in front of him.
There was no colossal explosion. There was a disintegration.
The fiery energy and the earthen mass, no longer bound together, flew apart. The fire dissipated into a harmless, warm gust of wind. The rock shattered into a cloud of fine, grey sand that pattered down like rain, covering the front of Li Yao's robes.
The arena was utterly silent. The most powerful attack Zhang Fan could muster had simply... come undone before it even reached its target.
Zhang Fan stared, his jaw slack, the fury in his eyes replaced by dawning, absolute horror. "Impossible... That's impossible!"
"You built your mountain on a fault line, Brother Zhang," Li Yao said, his voice calm, carrying in the dead silence. "I merely pointed out the earthquake."
The words were a psychological strike far more effective than any physical blow. They targeted the very doubt and instability festering in Zhang Fan's heart.
"LIES!" Zhang Fan shrieked, his aura flaring wildly, erratically. He charged, not with technique, but with pure, mindless rage, his body glowing with unstable energy. He was a walking catastrophe, his foundation crumbling in real time.
Li Yao didn't nullify him this time. As Zhang Fan lunged, fist pulled back for a final, desperate strike, Li Yao simply sidestepped. As Zhang Fan passed him, Li Yao placed his palm not on his body, but on the raging aura around him.
He didn't drain it. He nudged it.
He applied the same surgical principle of absence to the chaotic knot of energy that was Zhang Fan's core.
It was the gentlest of touches.
Zhang Fan stumbled, his charge faltering. He fell to his knees, not from an attack, but from an internal collapse. The raging inferno of his aura flickered, dimmed, and then imploded inward. A sickening crunch, silent but felt by every cultivator present, echoed from his dantian.
He didn't scream. He let out a choked gasp, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. The light in his eyes didn't go out with a bang, but with a whimper, replaced by a hollow, empty stare. He wasn't crippled like the alchemist; his dantian was not shattered. It was... deflated. The unstable power he had gathered had turned on itself, collapsing his foundation back to a level even below where he started.
He was, effectively, a Mortal Foundation cultivator again, with a broken spirit to match.
The arena master stepped forward. "Winner: Li Yao."
There were no cheers. The victory was too profound, too unsettling. Li Yao had not just won; he had demonstrated a terrifying form of alchemy, turning his opponent's greatest strength into the instrument of his own defeat. He had fought without fighting.
Li Yao looked down at the kneeling, broken form of his former tormentor. There was no gloating in his eyes, only a quiet, somber understanding.
"A vessel that is cracked will leak," he said, so softly only Zhang Fan could hear. "You tried to fill yours with too much, too fast. The void is not an enemy to be fought, Zhang Fan. It is a truth to be accepted."
He turned and walked away, leaving the silence and the shattered disciple behind. The "Void Disciple" had just shown the world that his power was not merely defensive. It was a fundamental force that could unmake the flawed and the unstable. And in the high-stakes world of cultivation, where every genius walked a razor's edge of power and control, that made Li Yao the most dangerous cultivator in the tournament.