Chapter 40: Breakthrough

“Miss Yun, you’re really a forthright person.” By habit, Wang Kuang narrowed his eyes and touched his square jaw once more.

“I really did underestimate you, Miss, winning against another of my group even with your disadvantaged cultivation. If I don’t defeat you, then I don’t think those of us from the Yue kingdom will have the face to remain here.”

“How shameless!” Lin Qingxue exclaimed. “What happened to best of three? You’re still trying to fight even though you’ve lost twice?”

“This matter concerns my reputation as a member of the Yue kingdom, so I have to fight,” Wang Kuang continued. “You’re free to battle me in order, just as my group did with Yun Ruoyan, and I’ll admit defeat if I lose at any stage. But from what I can tell, none of the three of you will be able to stand more than three blows from me.”

“Don’t bother.” Yun Ruoyan raised a hand, stopping the Lin siblings from talking. She looked once again at Wang Kuang. “I’ll be facing you once more.”

Having fought—and won—two matches in a row, Yun Ruoyan was a little tired, but her competitive spirit was flaring.

“Good.” Wang Kuang raised his right hand. In a matter of moments, the dagger in his hand had transformed into a simple, unadorned sword. He got into a battle stance. “Miss Yun, you may have the first blow.”

Yun Ruoyan’s hands trembled as she made to stab at Wang Kuang’s head.

He tilted his head to the side and parried the attack with his sword, a shower of sparks appearing where the two weapons clashed.

Yun Ruoyan felt her wrist go numb as she revolved her body to dissipate the momentum from the clash. The sword that Wang Kuang had exhibited truly wasn’t ordinary, but it seemed to be a little inferior to her spear.

Even during that blow, Yun Ruoyan hadn’t borrowed the bracelet’s power. Instead, she had clashed directly with the far superior Wang Kuang based on her third-rank blademaster cultivation alone. Despite this grave disadvantage, she had barely lost the clash.

Wang Kuang looked at Yun Ruoyan’s impassive appearance, becoming more and more surprised by this slender girl standing in front of him. He’d already become a sixth-rank blademaster, an amazing accomplishment for his age, and was almost unparalleled among his peers in the Yue kingdom.

That blow had contained almost half his power, and was even augmented by his high-grade weapon. Despite being disadvantaged both in terms of age and cultivation, Yun Ruoyan was actually able to receive the blow.

“Not bad.” Wang Kuang couldn’t help but be impressed by her skills, but the ruthless glint in his eyes still remained. There had to be something unusual about the girl for her to be so different from what all the rumors said, and he intended on figuring out what made her so special.

“Again!” This time, it was Wang Kuang who pressed the attack, his footwork nothing that Yun Ruoyan had seen before. In three successive clashes with their weapons, Yun Ruoyan stepped back time and again.

Suddenly, her left hand slipped, and the spear almost fell out of her hands. Luckily, Yun Ruoyan’s reflexes were fast enough that she stooped, rolled, and avoided Wang Kuang’s attack while repositioning the spear.

This time, Wang Kuang used half his total strength and combined it with a low-grade footwork technique, greatly enhancing his attack. Despite this, Yun Ruoyan still didn’t use her bracelet’s power.

She stood back up, her forehead dotted with sweat. The sweat flowed into the scar on her birthmark, causing a little numbness and itchiness.

“Look, pus is leaking out of her face again! How disgusting!”

“That’s right! Is she trying to disgust her opponent to death, since she can’t beat him based on skill?”

Jin Fei’er chattered away with another girl from the Yue kingdom, saying all manner of unpleasant things in an attempt to distract Yun Ruoyan.

“You’re despicable!” Lin Qingxue called out from afield. “Not only do you pile on Yun Ruoyan even with your improved cultivation, you’re even trying to distract her during a fight! Is this how honorable people from the Yue kingdom are?”

“If your sister hadn’t caught me unaware with a spiritual weapon, I wouldn’t have lost either.” Jin Fei’er had clearly recovered from the shock she’d suffered during the fight. Thinking about how she seemed to have lost in more unsightly a fashion than Liu Sheng, and how she almost got her nose cut off, she couldn’t help but shudder. “Brother Wang’s a peak sixth-rank blademaster, so just you wait to tend to Yun Ruoyan’s corpse!”

The Lin sisters’ hearts sank. Tend to her corpse? Was Wang Kuang intending to kill her?

“That’s just how stubborn my sister is.” Yun Ruoyao shook her head helplessly. “After all, she was the sole wife-born daughter of the Yun family and a cultivation genius from birth. Everyone praised her, and so she grew to be a stubborn and willful girl. Even when she lost her talent and became useless, her personality still didn’t change a single bit. It’s past time that she suffered some in the real world.” Hopefully, she would lose her life, too!

“Sister Ruoyan’s not useless,” Lin Qingxue couldn’t help but speak up. “It was the Yuns who po—”

Lin Qingchen immediately clutched Lin Qingxue’s mouth.

When Yun Ruoyan had told them about this, she’d emphasized that they needed to keep it a secret. Lin Qingchen glanced at her sister reproachfully.

Having recognized her gaffe moments after she began to speak, Lin Qingxue ignored the taunts coming from the other side, apologized to her sister, and focused anxiously on Yun Ruoyan’s match.

Wang Kuang bellowed out loud before moving even faster than before, rushing to Yun Ruoyan’s face and slashing, thrusting, and cutting, not holding back one bit as he released an unrelenting volley of attacks. Unable to even blink for fear that she’d miss something, Yun Ruoyan barely avoided each blow with her own lithe body, but she was forced back time and again.

When Wang Kuang dodged Yun Ruoyan’s spear and thrust his sword forward from close range, Yun Ruoyan immediately shrunk the spear to the size of the sword and parried.

This clash was one purely based on spiritual energy, and the difference in spiritual energy for a peak sixth-rank and novice third-rank blademaster was obvious.

Faced with such a disparity in strength, the weaker party would often become seriously injured, if not dead.

“Sister Ruoyan!”

“Yun Ruoyan!”

The Lin sisters and Zhuo Yifeng, who’d kept his fist tightly clenched during the entire fight, couldn’t help but worry.

Wang Kuang didn’t infuse all his spiritual energy into the sword at once. Instead, he began with only a third, then slowly increased the amount imbued in his sword.

It had been so long since he’d encountered someone as interesting as Yun Ruoyan, and it was far too boring to kill her in a single blow. He had a dim feeling that Yun Ruoyan was hiding a secret, and he very much wanted to see what sort of surprises she would bring him in her death throes.

Yun Ruoyan’s whole body was damp with sweat, and she’d already imbued her spear with all her spiritual energy, barely able to hold back her opponent’s sword.

But Wang Kuang was clearly pushing her back, and as his spiritual energy grew stronger, she was finally unable to hold out.

“Mistress, quick, use the bracelet’s power!”

Yun Ruoyan looked toward her silver bracelet, the stubborn crease of her brows finally relenting. She was already very satisfied with her performance today.

Arduously, she raised her left hand and touched her right wrist, slowly twisting the bracelet. An unceasing flow of spiritual energy immediately permeated her body and entered her spear under Yun Ruoyan’s direction.

Wang Kuang had been forcing Yun Ruoyan back step by step, and she was about to be crushed under just 40% of his power. All of a sudden, however, power burst out of her. Caught unaware, he was forced to retreat a few steps, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

How could it be?! He looked at Yun Ruoyan with astonishment. There was clearly something going on with this girl!

“What happened?!”

“Brother Wang!”

“My goodness!”

Yun Ruoyao, Jin Fei’er, and Pei Ziao exclaimed simultaneously. How could Yun Ruoyan’s spiritual energy have overcome Wang Kuang’s?!

“Sister Ruoyan won! Oh, thank goodness! Her talent’s blossoming again!” Lin Qingxue excitedly shouted.

What was meant by her talent blossoming? Lin Qingxue’s words quickly aroused suspicion amidst the crowd.

“Hng! Did you really think that Sister Ruoyan’s talent vanished just like that? No! Her talent’s just temporarily dormant, and now it’s blossoming once more!” Lin Qingxue put her hands on her waist as she exclaimed in pride.

Her dormant talent was awakening? Was that truly the case?

Even so, he couldn’t believe that, even with a peak sixth-rank cultivation, he would lose to a novice third-rank. He had to have been too careless just then.

“In that case, I won’t hold back.” Wang Kuang immediately raised his spiritual energy output to the maximum he could handle, and infused it all into his sword.

Yun Ruoyan felt pressured once again. Wang Kuang’s peak sixth-rank spiritual energy wasn’t something she could handle, even if she used the bracelet’s full power.

“Mistress, what do we do? You’re not his match!” Qiuqiu’s anxious voice rang out from Yun Ruoyan’s mind. “The restriction on the bracelet’s power output lasts for at least a year after its imposition, so I can’t release the limiter either! Why don’t you admit defeat?”

“It’s not that easy.” Yun Ruoyan’s entire body was damp with sweat. Pus continued to leak out of the birthmark, and the sense of numbness and itchiness on her face grew stronger and stronger. “He’s clearly intending to kill me, so even if I admit defeat, I won’t be able to escape.”

“Then, then, what if you release the Feilai Blade?”

“I can’t do that either. If I use any spiritual energy to summon the blade right now, my unshielded body will immediately be exposed to my opponent’s spiritual energy.”

“Then what do we do, what do we do...” Qiuqiu moaned in frustration from its pocket dimension.

But Yun Ruoyan suddenly felt a surge of strength from her body, and her dantian, which had been completely drained, seemed to have birthed a small, weak current.

A spiritual vortex! She’d actually developed a spiritual vortex once more!

When cultivators reached the fourth rank, a spiritual vortex would emerge in their dantian and allow them to gather spiritual energy more efficiently all over their body.

Three years before, Yun Ruoyan had faintly felt the presence of a spiritual vortex forming in her dantian, but the sudden regression of her talent had caused the feeling to fade.

But now, three years hence, she once again felt its existence! After three arduous years, she had finally broken through to fourth rank once again!

“Ah!” Yun Ruoyan suddenly inclined her head and released a long howl toward the heavens, shocking everyone around.

At the same time, Wang Kuang spat out another mouthful of blood, his entire body flung back by a large gust of spiritual energy before he fell heavily onto the floor.

“How could it be?!”

Blood gushed out of his throat. Yun Ruoyan had actually broken through at this critical juncture! Furthermore, the spiritual energy that he’d felt was clearly enhanced by more than what a third- to fourth-rank breakthrough would provide. Could it be that there were people who could break through two ranks at once?

No, that was clearly impossible!