Blossoming Path-275. All or Nothing Beneath A Waning Sky

Jun's laughter erupted suddenly, harsh and disbelieving. The sound echoed off the stone walls like the cry of a wounded animal. But as his eyes found Xu Ziqing's face, the laughter died in his throat.

"You're not joking," Jun whispered, his voice barely audible.

Xu Ziqing's expression didn't change.

"Power has always defined the Silent Moon," he said quietly. "For centuries, our sect leaders proved their worthiness through strength, not through hiding behind walls. It is time for you to prove yours. If you lose, you must step down as Sect Leader."

Jun's face twisted with rage, his hands trembling as he gripped the armrests. The sheer audacity of it... a second-class disciple, challenging him, the Sect Leader, as if they were equals. As if decades of cultivation, of experience, of authority meant nothing.

His eyes snapped to Ren Zhi, searching for some sign of intervention. "Will you interfere in this?" he demanded.

Ren Zhi's clouded gaze remained fixed on some distant point. "No," he said simply. "I will not."

Xu Ziqing watched the calculation flicker across Jun's features.

The narrowing of eyes, the slight curl of lips. He could almost see the thoughts forming behind that cruel expression: here was a perfect opportunity. A chance to end this challenge to his authority in the most decisive way possible. To crush not just him, but any future resistance.

"... Very well," Jun snarled, rising from his seat. "I accept. And when I'm done with you, no one will ever question my authority again."

The procession to the training grounds was silent but for the steady drum of rain against stone. Xu Ziqing felt the weight of countless gazes upon him. Disciples following at a respectful distance, their faces masks of disbelief and dread. He could read the questions in their eyes:

Has he lost his mind? Does he truly think he can win?

Ren Zhi walked beside him, his cane tapping rhythmically against the wet stone. The old man seemed utterly unconcerned by the crowd surrounding them on all sides, as though he were simply taking an evening stroll rather than walking toward what many surely expected to be an execution.

The broken training grounds stretched before them. Rain fell steadily, turning the dust to mud, washing away the last pretense of glory this place had once held.

Jun drew his sword with theatrical flourish, the blade singing as it cleared the scabbard. His qi flared around him in a deliberate display; decades of cultivation made manifest. But he recognized the performance for what it was: intimidation tactics, meant to make him doubt himself before the fight even began.

Beneath the impressive display was a foundation that had grown complacent, strength that had been hoarded rather than tested. It was the power of a man who had grown accustomed to others yielding before he even had to prove himself.

The rain continued to fall between them, and Xu Ziqing felt his own qi settle into the steady, controlled rhythm he had learned in countless real battles; not the staged dominance displays of sect politics, but the life-and-death struggles that had forged him into something far different from the disciple who had once knelt in these very halls.

"You know," Jun said, his voice carrying over the rain, "I truly believed you were smarter than this, Xu Ziqing. But clearly, I was wrong."

He shifted into a combat stance, his sword gleaming with deadly intent.

"For you to think that a few months away from the sect could make you strong enough to defeat me in combat. This shall be proof that traitors must be crushed for order to remain."

Xu Ziqing said nothing. He simply drew his own blade, the steel catching what little moonlight pierced the storm clouds. His qi flowed through the weapon, steady and controlled, without the flashy display Jun had shown.

As he settled into his stance, the second-class disciple looked across the muddy ground at his sect leader. When he spoke, his voice was calm, almost conversational.

"You may have the first three moves."

The words hit Jun like a physical blow.

It was a gesture of mercy; what a master offered to a junior opponent, a way to allow the weaker fighter to display their skills before being inevitably defeated.

The supreme insult of being treated as the inferior by one so far beneath him.

Jun's face went purple with rage. His qi exploded outward, no longer controlled but wild with fury.

"You dare—!" he screamed, raising his sword high. "You DARE!"

And with that, he launched himself forward through the rain, his blade seeking to end both the duel and Xu Ziqing's life in a single, devastating strike.

CLANG!

The first blow confirmed what Xu Ziqing had known—Jun's cultivation was simply higher.

Even with all the powerful pills Kai provided him during his time in Gentle Wind, they could not compare to the resources a Sect Leader could command. The impact sent him skidding across the muddy ground.

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Jun’s speed brushed the edges of what Ziqing had seen from the Envoys, and his techniques were sharp and polished. Sharper than Xu Ziqing's own.

Every swing gave him mere half-breaths to block, forcing him into desperate parries that jarred his arms to the bone. These were not blows meant to subdue, but to kill. Jun had abandoned any pretense of mercy the moment his pride had been wounded.

Yet despite being given no chance to counter-attack, despite simply weathering this storm of steel and fury, Xu Ziqing found it... lacking.

The realization struck him as he deflected another vicious cut. Jun had never made his mark through combat prowess. He was a schemer, a manipulator who had risen through the ranks by leveraging others' strength rather than cultivating his own. As a martial artist, he was closer to the bottom rung of the elders; powerful, yes, but without the refined edge that came from true battle.

That was why Xu Ziqing had offered him the first three moves. Not out of mercy, but to enrage him, to use his arrogance and wounded pride to strip away his greatest weapon: his calculating mind. Now all that remained was raw power wielded by fury.

Dangerous, but predictable.

Xu Ziqing let his arms hang loose after the next exchange, seemingly limp from the battering he had received. Jun's eyes lit with predatory satisfaction as he lunged forward, his blade aimed for Xu Ziqing's exposed throat.

At the last possible moment, he moved.

His sword swept up in a perfect arc, deflecting Jun's thrust just enough to save his life. Their blades locked, the white glow along Xu Ziqing's weapon brightening as he channeled his qi into the clash. He could feel Jun's superior cultivation pressing against him, but he had faced worse odds; Envoys who would sacrifice limbs to land a single killing blow, cultists who fought with the desperate fury of the damned.

Guiding Jun's sword away in a circular motion, he forced the sect leader to follow his movement, then cut downward in a vicious diagonal slash.

BANG!

Xu Ziqing went flying, Jun's boot catching him in the ribs and launching him backward through the rain. He hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact.

'Wishful thinking,' he muttered to himself, spitting mud from his mouth. 'To think I could end it so easily.'

His blade had cut through Jun's shoulder, but the wound was superficial; enough to draw blood, not enough to disable. Still, as Jun looked down at his torn robes and the thin line of red seeping through the fabric, the crowd fell into stunned silence.

A second-class disciple had wounded the Sect Leader.

Xu Ziqing rose to his feet, readying his blade once more.

This was what the Silent Moon needed to see; that their walls could be broken, their chains cast off, their fear overcome. Even against a threat seemed beyond their capabilities, they could fight.

Jun raised his sword again, but Xu Ziqing could see the change in his eyes. The blind arrogance had been replaced by wary calculation. The sect leader was finally taking him seriously.

But Xu Ziqing wouldn't give him the chance to adjust.

He launched himself forward, abandoning defense for pure aggression. His sword forms had been honed in life-or-death battles against demonic cultivators, each movement stripped of unnecessary flourish and refined for maximum lethality. Jun's techniques were well-practiced, polished through decades of training—but they lacked the brutal efficiency that came from fighting enemies who would kill you without hesitation.

The difference showed immediately. Where Jun's strikes were textbook perfect, Xu Ziqing's were ruthlessly practical.

He pressed forward relentlessly, staying just one move ahead while Jun struggled to adapt to this new rhythm. His blade found another opening. A swift cut bloomed along Jun's wrist as the sect leader overextended in a counterattack. Blood flowed freely now, staining his grip on his sword.

Jun's face contorted with rage. His qi blazed brighter, infusing his blade with crackling energy as he drew back for a more desperate gambit.

Xu Ziqing's instincts screamed danger. The blade began to glow with brilliant white qi, and Jun's thrust came forward; seemingly slow, almost lazy in its approach.

But the disciple knew better. The apparent sluggishness was an illusion born of compressed time and focused qi. He threw himself sideways, the blade whistling past his neck, slicing his ear.

He hit the ground rolling, but before he could regain his footing, Jun was already above him, gathering an immense amount of qi at the tip of his sword.

Xu Ziqing's eyes widened in recognition. Full Moon's Apogee—a technique reserved for the elders, manifesting qi as a ranged attack that could cleave through stone.

The slash came down like falling starlight.

He crossed his blade overhead, angling it to deflect what he could, but he had to choose: protect his heart or his limbs.

SCHWING!

The energy scoured along his shoulder and back, leaving a vicious burning cut that made him grit his teeth against the pain.

Jun disengaged, panting heavily from the exertion. Sweat mixed with rain on his face, his seemingly bottomless cultivation finally showing its limit.

But Xu Ziqing didn't retreat. Despite his wounds, despite the blood running down his back, he pressed forward again.

He knew Jun was stronger. Knew this battle held no assurance of victory.

'But so what?'

True battles were never about certainty, they were about will.

Jun, flustered by this relentless pressure, fell into a defensive pattern. Block, parry, retreat. His technique remained flawless, but his rhythm was broken.

That was when Xu Ziqing struck with one of the earliest forms he had ever learned—

'Crescent's Illusion.'

A technique so fundamental that most disciples abandoned it for flashier moves.

His blade seemed to split into multiple images, a shimmering mirage that made Jun gauge the distance incorrectly. While the sect leader moved to block the phantom strike, Xu Ziqing's real blade punched downward, piercing through Jun's foot and pinning it to the muddy ground.

Jun's scream echoed across the training grounds, raw and agonized. He wrenched his foot free with a rip of leather and meat, staggered, and slashed for Ziqing’s throat on the recoil.

Ziqing didn’t have time to reclaim the planted sword. He snapped his scabbard up in both hands, reinforcing it with his qi. The incoming edge smashed into it with a shriek; the blow skidded, carving wood instead of his neck. He kicked the lodged blade’s hilt. It tore from the mud, freeing both of them into the next exchange.

Jun ripped backward and hacked again. Xu Ziqing slid inside the sword's arc, shoulder-first.

The cut scored along his back; he accepted it, teeth bared, so his elbow could crush into Jun’s ribs. Bone thudded. The Sect Leader stumbled, found his footing, and drove forward in a storm of cuts that pressed the disciple to the brink.

They traded like that. Rain hammered the broken yard as the sound of flesh meeting steel repeated.

Jun was better at the blade. Even dulled by years of scheming, his foundation eclipsed Xu Ziqing’s. But each time Jun should have turned the tide, he struggled. The earlier wounds spoke now: the shoulder slice that loosened a grip, the wrist line that bled speed, the foot stabbed clean through left his stance uneven.

Xu Ziqing felt it in his bones. The lattice of choices forming like a game of Tianqi Duel. Each move cut from a future he refused to accept.

There, a half-breath late guard. There, a pivot that would overcommit.

He didn’t look pretty. He made trades.

He took a slash across the hip to slam the crown of his skull into Jun’s face.

The headbutt cracked like a dropped stone bowl. Jun reeled, eyes swimming, blood running from his brow into his mouth. Xu Ziqing’s sword hand opened, deliberately. The blade fell, splashing into the slurry.

His forearm crashed down into Jun’s own chest, preventing him from using his blade. The Sect Leader choked, air and spittle flying. Xu Ziqing’s knee rose, driving into the thigh just above the pinned foot’s old wound. Jun’s leg buckled.

They were chest to chest now, blade trapped between them.

Fists.

Xu Ziqing’s had no flowery flourish, no sect form to admire. Short hooks. Palm-heels. Thumbs braced, wrists aligned. He drove one into the ear, one into the liver, one into the breath. Jun answered with a brutal cross that split Xu Ziqing’s lip and a head-hacking pommel smash that sent bells singing in his skull. Xu Ziqing accepted both to get his hands on the sword’s spine, wrenching it sideways to snap the tendons in Jun’s sword hand with a twist.

The blade tumbled.

Jun roared and tackled. They hit the flooded stone, rolled through rain and blood. Xu Ziqing rode the momentum, posted an elbow, and hammered three fast strikes into the clavicle, the solar plexus, the jaw hinge. Jun’s qi surged in a last desperate flood; Xu Ziqing felt it boil and gutter, felt the earlier cuts and bruises consume those dregs like dry soil drinking a downpour.

Jun tried to rise.

Xu Ziqing’s palm met his face and shoved him back to one knee.

They froze there, panting. Rain churned the ground around them into a pink mire. Jun’s breath rattled. His hands scrabbled for purchase and found none. The leg Xu Ziqing had pinned earlier trembled, refused to answer.

The battered disciple stood without flourish. He didn’t raise a fist. He didn’t gloat. He only stepped back one pace, swaying once, blood washing from his brow to his chin in a thin, steady line.

Jun sagged. The fight went out of him like air from a split wineskin.

Dozens of moves. Sword to fists. Elegant forms abandoned for what would work.

Around the yard, disciples who had half-risen were struck still. Elders leaned forward, faces unreadable. Rain hissed. Blood steamed faintly on warm stone.

Xu Ziqing let the silence hold. A memory surfaced unbidden; of Kai standing over Ping Hai in the dirt of the Verdant Lotus' training grounds. The wager that had seemed so important then, so life-changing.

Then, voice hoarse but carrying, he said for all of Silent Moon to hear.

“The bout is decided. I am the victor.”

He lowered the blade. Jun’s eyes, bright with hatred and the first shiver of fear, lifted to meet his.

But Xu Ziqing wasn't looking at the defeated sect leader anymore. He was looking beyond him, to the disciples whose faces showed the first cracks in months of enforced despair, to the elders whose eyes held something that might have been hope.

The old order was broken. What came next would be up to all of them.