Chapter 15: The spar

“Anyway, I think this is enough about the sword. Let us get to the spar…” I swung my sword to get a hang of the weight of it.

“Yes, thank you, senior brother.” Lai Xinyue cupped her fist.

“Just for clarification, I have to add that we don’t use our Qi outside our bodies other than powering the soft sword. Usually, we would allow sword Qi in this kind of spars but this time we would only use pure swordsmanship to spar. Is that clear for you?” I asked Lai Xinyue.

“I understand senior brother. How do we determine the winner?” Lai Xinyue asked back.

‘If I didn’t know that this girl is simple-minded, I would have thought that she is implying that she would win and is asking for assurance.’ I thought to myself.

“That is easy. We use the number that is recorded on the swords as measurement.” I answered her inquiry.

She nodded and looked at me.

“I am ready, senior brother.”She told me.

“Then let us begin.”I nodded back.

This spar Is not a good place to use [Eclipse Devourer Sword Art], because that sword art is for maximizing lethality and this is a friendly spar so yeah…

When Li Huang was training with grandpa Long, he didn’t have to be afraid of hurting grandpa Long with his attacks. Grandpa Long was strong enough that Li Huang’s full force couldn’t scratch his robes, to say nothing of his body.

But this is someone with lower power and technique than him and using [Eclipse Devourer Sword Art] is simply overkill. Well if her physique was too strong that is another situation.

Lai Xinyue got in the stance and was ready to receive my attack.

I don’t mean to look down at Lai Xinyue but I see this spar as an experiment and don’t think that she can do much out of my expectations.

You might ask what am I experimenting on? Well, with [Peeping Eye of Heaven] I can not see information on myself. As for why, I think it is because this artifact is using my Qi resulting in me being unable to use it on myself, meaning that we have the same ‘Qi signature’ and do not identify as two distinct entities.

Getting back to my reason to experiment, I want to find out that how is my physique in comparison to [Fate Eluding Physique].

I don’t know if I have a physique, but I know for a fact that my attainments in the way of the sword are way too much for my age and this can only show my talent. But where does one’s talent originate from? Is it blood? Is it luck? There are many factors that could affect talent, and physiques are one of the important factors in this equation.

So yeah, that is the experiment. I hope I can get some satisfying results.

Doing a simple slash I attacked Lai Xinyue.

As my slash got close to her she moved her body in an impressive way and evaded my attack.

I didn’t give her any time to rest and followed with another slash that she evaded with body movements.

This way more than 50 moves passed. The disciples who were watching the scene were gobsmacked.

“This… is this junior sister that strong?” a disciple asked no one in particular.

“If this is not talent what is?” another one chimed in.

“Don’t tell me that senior brother would lose!” a junior sister asked her friends.

“Nonsense! How can it be so? Senior brother is merely playing around and is not fighting seriously.” Her friend answered her, more to convince herself…

This time the elder who helped Li Huang to cut the line snorted and spoke.

“Chief disciple Li is the brightest genius of the past 1000 years, how can this be the height of his capabilities? He is clearly trying to find the limits of that junior sister…” the elder nodded to himself.

The disciples came to a sudden realization. It is exactly as the elder says, how can someone who could produce sword Qi at the age of 12 have problems in this fight? If it is so, what is next? The sun comes up from west? There were clearly shortsighted moments ago…

“”Thank the elder for his teachings.”” They said with gratitude.

As they were analyzing the fight, Li Huang and Lai Xinyue exchanged the 100th move. Well, an exchange may not be the appropriate word for this one-sided attack from Li Huang.

After the 100th move, Li Huang stopped for a moment.

“Junior sister, I am going to step up my attacks now, be careful.” I told her and even used the ‘be careful’ line.

Even after these 100 moves, there wasn’t any sign of fatigue on Li Huang but you could see Lai Xinyue panting a little.

She just nodded and gripped her sword harder.

This time, I did not only use simple slashes.

No, this time I used my understanding of the sword, as I did in comprehending the ancient sword mark, and used my knowledge to do consecutive attacks and find an opening.

After I closed my eyes and attacked Lai Xinyue, she didn’t have the leisure of parrying my attacks with body movements and had to use her sword more often to change the trajectory of my attack.

As I was having fun attacking Lai Xinyue, the audience was in an uproar.

“Is this the true power of senior brother?”

“Too strong.”

“To think that we doubted senior brother’s strength. Ashamed, ashamed…”

“Beat that vixen to death, senior brother Li!!!”

The ‘senior brother Li’ on the stage almost lost his footing and nearly tripped.

‘What did this girl do to you to call her a vixen? That aside this is a spar, not a deathmatch.’ I shook my head and continued attacking.

The fun fact about this spar is that so far I didn’t even land a fucking attack on her, meaning they were either parried or evaded.

It is not like I’m doing my best in this fight but this is more than I expected from her and it shows the potential of her physique if it is trained vigorously.

This way 100 more moves passed and Lai Xinyue was panting heavily but she was successful in stopping Li Huang from gaining any points by hitting her with his attacks.

On the other hand, Li Huang was as healthy as he was at the start of the fight and these 200 moves didn’t even make him break a sweat.

“Junior sister, you have to work on your stamina, in an even fight, stamina is your key to the victory and in a losing fight would be your shot to flee.” I told Lai Xinyue as I looked at her panting.

“I… have… never needed… this much… time… to defeat… someone… so I didn’t… see… this flaw…” she told me between her breaths.

“Hmmm, understandable. With your technique in sword fights, you would win the fight with the first mistake from your opponent…” I nodded.

She kept on trying to stabilize her breathing…

“As your level of swordsmanship was lower than mine, this method to only evade to make me hasty to get a hit was a good one, that way I was prone to make mistakes and you could use them to your advantage…” I explained further.

The disciples who were watching our fight listened intently.

“But there was a couple of flaws in your plan. First, you didn’t consider that you might not have the necessary stamina to see your plan come to fruition. This was your first mistake.” I begin to lecture her.

“Second, you didn’t take into account that I could fight with full power from the beginning and don’t leave you a room to maneuver resulting in your plan to backfire and make you the one who is prone to failure.” I continued.

You could see the disciples nodding here and there as if they were coming up with some results in their heads.

“Third and the biggest one, you underestimated your opponent. you assumed that your opponent could not finish you with one move.” I smiled at her.

Not only Lai Xinyue but all the disciples who were watching the fight were also shocked by my claims.

I could see from their gazes that they were thinking that this is my ego talking and me being boastful.

I didn’t try to prove them wrong by talking and decided to show them.

“Junior sister this is the final attack of this spar, I recommend you use Qi to protect yourself. If I can’t touch you even with this attack, this will be your win.” I told her to give out a hint that this attack is going to hit, and hit hard.

“Yes, senior brother.” Lai Xinyue answered.

Using this time that I was telling her the flaws of her method, she stabilized her breathing.

I nodded to her and readied myself.

“Eclipse devourer sword art, needlework.” I used a move that is near impossible if not impossible to dodge.

In this move, just like embroidery, a needle getting in and out of fabric, it consists of fast thrusts that make ‘needles’ out of air pressure.

The force behind these air needles is clearly related to your power in executing the move.

The more force you use, the more air pressure would these needles have.

Executing the move, the needles shot towards Lai Xinyue.

Lai Xinyue tried to dodge the attack but soon came to the conclusion that dodging is impossible so she started with parrying the needles and dodging one or two that was barely possible.

As my move was coming to the end, I could see Lai Xinyue struggling more and more.

It has to be said that the last wave of air needles are the hardest of them all and she is going to face them.

As I executed the last wave of needlework, Lai Xinyue had barely come out unscathed from the previous waves.

Well, I didn’t use all of my power in this move but I know this last wave is enough to finish her.

Just to taunt her a little, I sheathed my sword right after finishing my move, showing that this marks the end of the spar.

As the air needles got closer to Lai Xinyue, she was looking for a way to parry them, but alas, there was no way to do that.

Just at that moment, she remembered Li Huang’s words.

-I recommend you use Qi to protect yourself.-

‘So this is what senior brother meant by that…’ she thought.

The two needles which were closer hit her on her sword and her Qi armor. As a result, her sword broke and her Qi armor was nearly broken.

Her eyes widened in shock. She still underestimated the power of this move. Do not talk about parrying this move, keeping her life was a great achievement in itself.

‘It seems that I didn’t underestimate anything, but I overestimated myself…’ she nodded to herself.

She was almost sure that she would die. Even though she was on the eighth stage of Qi Gathering, the same realm as Li Huang, the gap in technique and power was too much.

Just as the air needles were going to kill her and she didn’t have the power to do anything about it, something happened.

“DON’T!” Someone shouted.