The Sect Leader System-Chapter 337: A Weird Outfit

As Yang Xiu stepped onto the arena floor, she could barely contain her excitement. Finally. The Qi Gathering division had taken forever, and then, she’d had to wait days because of her byes. She just wanted to fight.

Her left hand held her bow, and she raised it high in the air. Her fellow Rising Tide Sect members went wild. Even some of the Poison Claw Sect members cheered. Better, lots of Jade Chameleons and Swift Blizzards looked quite irritated.

All in a good day’s work.

She examined her opponent. He wore the gray robes of the Jade Chameleon Sect and was, honestly, kind of scrawny. Probably not someone who relied on physical might. That inference was backed up by the lack of a weapon, though he could simply be keeping one stored in his ring until just before the match started.

Next, she extended her spiritual sense toward him. The first thing she detected was just how small his qi pool was. Like tiny. Smaller even that Kang Lin’s. Yang Xiu had at least three times as much available.

The second thing she detected was the boy’s aspect. She got the feel primarily of Wind but with a hint of Illusion. Interesting.

Surely, the people manipulating the tournament brackets didn’t think she would lose to that little guy just because his element was strong against hers. Surely not. Really.

Maybe he had some kind of hidden trick that he’d pull out to make the contest interesting. Hopefully.

Soon, it was time to begin the match. Remembering Master’s words, Yang Xiu politely bowed to her opponent when it was the proper time to do so. He didn’t even give her a nod. Instead, he simply stared at her like she was something yucky that he’d stepped on and was inconveniently stuck to his shoe.

Master truly didn’t seem to care about face, but she’d read too many stories about cultivators to ignore her opponent’s provocation. He’d pay for his insult. He’d pay dearly.

The official signal started the contest, and she immediately launched an arrow, curious as to what he would do.

He … gradually formed a crescent of air and propelled it at her, similar to Master’s Wind Slash only much, much weaker. And slower.

She easily could have stepped to the side and avoided it completely, but given the small quantity of qi built up inside the attack, she wasn’t exactly scared of it. And honestly, she was more than a little curious about how much damage it would do.

Yang Xiu let the slash impact her shield.

The answer to how much damage it would do was … not much.

Master had told her that her new technique, Feather Fall, wouldn’t be needed in her first match, and he was right. For one thing, the ability to create separation by jumping high in the air and falling slowly down wasn’t useful against an opponent using a ranged weapon. More importantly, though, he was simply too weak for her to reveal any of her tricks.

The match came down to straight math. He could send one Wind Slash in the time she could send roughly six arrows—sometimes seven. Each Wind Slash hit with one and a half times potency due to her aspect being weak against his. In contrast, her arrows landed with reduced potency for the same reason.

If she were fully reliant on Ice, her attacks would have been reduced to half damage against his Wind shield. Luckily, though, she’d added Sharpness to her repertoire. Ice was still the primary qi element attached to her arrows, but the additional element eliminated some of the type weakness, allowing her attacks to hit with seventy to eighty percent effectiveness.

She, however, had three times as much qi as he did. Another big advantage she had was that, while his qi had to form the projectile and move it and account for all the damage, her arrows were physical objects being driven by a physical mechanism, the bowstring. That meant all her qi essentially went to increased damage. Additionally, since she was more talented and had access to better techniques, her qi was naturally more efficient than his.

Furthermore, each arrow that hit his shield burned a simply enormous amount of his reserve compared to similar hits on her very efficient shield.

Overall, the calculations were very much not in his favor.

Despite those many, many disadvantages, though, he was content to stand there launching Wind Slash after Wind Slash while being pounded by her arrows. Sooner than probably most people watching expected, his shield sputtered, and his ability to create new attacks ceased.

Yang Xiu got in two additional hits before he surrendered.

Sweet. That was for not bowing.

Yang Ru couldn’t help but be curious about his opponent. Master had broken his non-intervention policy by giving Yang Ru a technique to defend his mind and had done so solely because of the person he would be facing. Master, however, would not reveal anything else about the match.

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Naturally, Yang Ru couldn’t help but wonder why. On one hand, he had previously had no defense against mental attacks, so he understood why Master would provide such a technique. Without it, Yang Ru would have almost certainly lost.

But so what?

No cultivators in the very beginning stages of Foundation Establishment had learned enough techniques to protect against every avenue of attack. There should have been no reasonable expectation for him to defend against something esoteric. Losing to someone using mental manipulation wouldn’t detract from his or the sect’s honor. If anything, the sect whose member used such tactics might lose a bit of face, depending on how dishonorable their technique actually was.

The only other thing Yang Ru knew for sure was that his opponent possessed spiritual roots inferior to his, but again, he didn’t see how that mattered. Since the mismatch in techniques wasn’t something he should be expected to overcome, there was no shame in him losing.

Why, then, did Master care enough to step in, especially since he’d made it clear that winning tournament matches was still not a priority?

The answer, for some reason, lay in the opponent. Somehow, it would be bad for Yang Ru to lose to that particular person in the particular manner that he would have. And the consequences were not simply a loss of a tournament match, which Master didn’t care about.

No, a loss would be bad for some other reason, which Master wouldn’t reveal.

So yes, curious was an understatement.

Finally, though, it was time for Yang Ru to enter the arena, and when he saw his opponent, curiosity morphed into confusion.

He was pitted against a young lady, a young lady with ample … assets. Worse, her robe, the blue of the Swift Blizzard Sect, was not standard issue. For one thing, most robes, including his, practically drug the ground. Hers stopped before her knees, revealing her bare legs beneath the hem. And the top wasn’t much better.

Normally, shawl collars came together just below the neck, showing almost no skin, but hers gaped wide and didn’t connect until the middle of her chest, exposing a lot more than most women seemed comfortable showing. Even her sleeves were short, baring most of her arms.

Everything that absolutely had to be covered was but only just.

The outfit struck him as quite weird. Why would anyone fight wearing such a thing? He didn’t understand what it was supposed to accomplish. If one of the members of his Martial Pavilion had worn such a thing, he would have pulled that person aside for a talk about practicableness and propriety.

On the other hand, who was he to judge? Maybe her aspect or techniques or Dao demanded she dress in that manner.

What she wore was irrelevant, though. None of what he observed so far answered his fundamental question about why Master didn’t want him losing to her. Cultivation realm and methods and techniques and a lot of other factors determined strength, not gender. There was no shame in losing to a female, even one who for some reason fought while half dressed.

Yang Ri walked to the middle of the arena where the young lady and an official stood. He first bowed to the official before doing the same to his opponent. She returned the gesture, and he made sure to keep his eyes firmly focused on her face as she did.

The young lady then introduced herself as Zhao Chunhua, which was strange. In none of the other matches had the combatants announced their names. In the interest of being polite, Yang Ru gave her his name in return.

Finally, time for speculation was over. The two moved to opposite sides of the arena, and the match started.

Since he knew she practiced some form of mental manipulation, his proper move was to end the fight as quickly as possible, so he should have charged her, building up Momentum all the while. But he was curious.

For a moment, nothing happened. Yang Ru stared at her, waiting for her to do something. Anything. But she just stood there.

Which, okay, so was he.

As he watched her, though, he happened to notice her large green eyes. They were quite striking, really. How did he not notice those before? They sparkled vividly. So intriguing. He never seen eyes that were so compelling.

And honestly, her pale oval face with those bright red lips and her colorful eyes was quite pleasing.

He swallowed hard.

Her neck, too, was interesting with the way her smooth skin curved so enticingly. He’d never actually seen quite so much of a young lady before. The experience wasn’t unpleasant.

A bead of sweat appeared on his brow as his eyes moved lower.

And her…

Wait. What was he thinking? A few minutes ago, he hadn’t given the girl a second thought. Now, he was suddenly concentrating on how pretty she was? As if she could hold a candle to Kang Lin?

No.

Ah. Her mental manipulation. The weird outfit was intended to show off her body. Zhao Chunhua focused on seduction.

Got it.

His new technique had broken the spell, and since he knew what to look out for, there was little chance of it re-establishing its hold

If he had fallen for such a tactic and lost to her… He would have become a laughingstock and developed a reputation that would follow him for a lifetime. Worse, he could see how Kang Lin might interpret such a thing in exactly the wrong way. Even though he was pretty sure he’d completely messed up the relationship with her somehow, him making a fool of himself over a young lady in front of thousands of spectators would surely have closed the door on any chance he had of salvaging it.

He made a mental note to thank Master profusely. Not only had he gone out of his way to create a technique to prevent the girl’s seduction from succeeding, he’d broken his policy of non-interference in the tournament to do so. And none of it had anything to do with the sect’s face or anything like that.

No, he’d done it simply to preserve Yang Ru having some chance at happiness.

He didn’t have his parents anymore, but he thought they were resting easier ever since he and Yang Xiu had found Master to take care of them.

It was time to end the farce that was the match, though.

Yang Ru calmly walked across the sand toward his opponent. Not ran. Not building Momentum. Simply walked.

Zhao Chunhua kept leaning forward and sticking out her leg and twisting so that her behind was toward him, trying desperately to draw his attention. She failed. Miserably.

Once he reached her, he said, “Do you yield?”

Her response was to lean even farther forward, her robe gaping.

He slugged her right in the face.

She made no attempt to block, and her qi shield was extraordinarily weak. His punch cracked her nose, and she collapsed onto the ground like a sack of potatoes.