Lin Daiyu Uproots the Willow Tree

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

The jarring, muffled impacts reverberated across the sky as two figures clashed mid-air. The surrounding spectators gaped in disbelief—they were witnessing a delicate-looking female cultivator trading blows with a mountain of a man…

And winning seven to three.

Yes, the woman held 70% of the advantage, while Liu Xinlou barely managed 30%.

"Is she holding back, or is her physical body just that monstrous? A spellcaster going toe-to-toe with a body cultivator—while at a lower cultivation level—and dominating?"

At this moment, everyone stared at Su Min as if she were a ghost, their minds screaming "What the hell?!"

Even Tian Yinzi was speechless, his expression twitching.

"Grand Elder… your image… your image!"

He watched helplessly as Su Min, growing more enthusiastic, uprooted a centuries-old willow tree from the secret realm and started whacking Liu Xinlou with it.

"Lin Daiyu uprooting a willow tree? Grand Elder, you're the representative of Eastern Mulberry Province!"

"I surrender!!!"

Faced with the sight of Su Min brandishing a hundred-meter-long willow, Liu Xinlou finally raised his hand in humiliated defeat.

What kind of fight was this?!

Su Min hadn't cast a single spell the entire time. She'd treated him like a punching bag—and the worst part? He couldn't even fight back.

As the saying went, even a worm will turn. If he couldn't beat her, at least he could deny her the satisfaction.

So the moment Su Min swung the tree again—

Whoosh!

The old man vanished from the arena, teleporting away before anyone could react. He didn't even wait for the referee's call, fleeing like the wind.

"Tch."

The crowd's lips twitched in unison. Had this been the previous round, Su Min's reckless approach might've backfired. But Liu Xinlou had exhausted all his trump cards in his last fight, leaving him utterly defenseless. Against Su Min's unrestrained brutality, they could only laugh wryly.

"Sigh."

Watching her opponent flee, Su Min clicked her tongue in disappointment. If someone wanted to run, she couldn't exactly force them to stay. Still, this bout had given her a clear measure of her physical prowess—while slightly inferior to her spellcasting, the gap was negligible.

The real limitation was the lack of killing moves. Unless she resorted to specialized pills (which she'd save for true life-or-death situations), her close combat had its limits.

"Grand Elder, perhaps… refrain from such methods next time?"

Tian Yinzi wiped his forehead as Su Min floated back, his expression pained.

"What's wrong with it? I got a good sparring partner. Want to volunteer next time?"

"Gulp."

Tian Yinzi's neck shrank instinctively. Me? Fight her? She'd pulp him into mist with one slap.

"Grand Elder Xie… where are you?"

He silently prayed. Normally, Xie Yingying was the one who sparred with Su Min. Their bouts were always evenly matched—unless they fought to the death. But with Xie Yingying absent, no one could rein in Su Min's wild side.

"Enough. Let's focus on the matches."

Su Min shook her head, turning her attention to the arena. Over the next period, the battles progressed swiftly. Compared to the month-long slog of the first round, the second round concluded in a week.

The third round wrapped up even faster—under three days.

This time, Su Min faced another late-stage Divine Transformation cultivator, whom she dispatched without theatrics. A Vermilion Bird Possession explosion, followed by a few feather projectiles, sent her opponent packing.

Now, the tournament had reached its final round.

This event was fundamentally about resource allocation, not pure competition. Only four rounds determined the distribution of Sealing Crystals, with the final victors claiming the largest shares.

But when the lottery wheel stopped this time—

The Eastern Sea Immortal Sect's seating area erupted in chaos.

"Why her?!"

"Uh…"

The crowd froze.

The wheel's display was unmistakable:

Su Min vs. Xuan Mengyin

"Oh-ho! This'll be fun. Catfight!"

"The last two female cultivators, pitted against each other."

"Go all out!"

While the spectators cheered gleefully, the atmosphere around Su Min's faction turned glacial.

Xuan Mengyin—

The current sect master of the Mystic Sound Valley, a half-step Dao Comprehension expert. While others at her level were just starting their journey, she was a hair's breadth from breaking through. A single epiphany could propel her into the true Dao Comprehension stage.

But cultivation alone wasn't the issue.

The Mystic Sound Valley was an all-female sect, renowned for two arts: Charm Magic; Illusion Magic Worse, Xuan Mengyin possessed a unique heavenly treasure—the Dreamweaver's Gale. Unlike combat-oriented divine objects, this one specialized in transformation and deception, synergizing perfectly with her charm and illusion techniques.

As the saying went: Softness overcomes hardness.

Against opponents weaker than her, victims often found themselves trapped in inescapable fantasies.

"Grand Elder…" Tian Yinzi leaned in nervously. "Can you… break her illusions?" This was the key to victory.

"Hmph," Su Min rubbed the bridge of her nose, expression unreadable.

Illusions? She could handle those. When it came to fantasy realms, she was basically immune to surprises.

But charm magic… that was another story.

She wasn't afraid, of course. No, never that.

She just… didn't want to be remembered as the genius alchemist who got turned into a drooling idiot in this fight.

If she fell victim to that kind of magic, the humiliation would be historic.

Her past life's memories—had always served as her grounding rod, keeping her sober while others chased fleeting pleasures and vanity. Those memories reminded her of who she was. What she'd lost. What she couldn't afford to want.

But charm magic didn't care about that.

It went deeper. Beneath the rational mind. Beneath cultivated detachment. Straight into the soft underbelly of desire—especially the ones you worked hardest to ignore.

And that… was what terrified her.

She'd never faced charm magic before. What if it worked? What if she—heaven forbid—liked it? What if, while everyone watched, she let out some embarrassing moan and collapsed in a flustered haze?

What if she thought it was Xie Yingying?

Her thoughts started spiraling.

"Maybe I should just trade blow for blow and overwhelm her with my pill reserves?"

The last Divine Transformation expert who fought Xuan Mengyin had surrendered before the match even began—his expression glazed, his thoughts clearly… elsewhere.

And that was a late-stage Divine Transformation veteran—individuals with ironclad wills, to whom beauty was but fleeting smoke.

Yet he'd folded instantly.

That spoke volumes about Xuan Mengyin's charm prowess. The only silver lining? Both illusions and charm magic were single-target. Onlookers saw nothing.

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the arena, Xuan Mengyin wasn't exactly celebrating either.

"Why her…?"

Her sect's charm magic was unisex—but against Su Min, it'd be useless. Despite being only at the early Divine Transformation stage, Su Min had: Three heavenly treasures; Defeated Yao Xian'er (someone Xuan Mengyin idolized); A flawless, unshakable Dao heart

In short: Charm magic preyed on primal desires. But against someone like Su Min? It'd be like tickling a boulder.

So while Su Min was having a quiet internal meltdown about possibly becoming another charm-victim statistic…

Xuan Mengyin was staring at her like she was a stone tablet.

"It seems charm magic is out. I'll need another approach."

Xuan Mengyin began formulating a new battle plan. This would be a rare hard-fought match. In gaming terms, she had "anti-male super effectiveness." Since male cultivators outnumbered females severalfold, she usually held an overwhelming advantage.

Today? She'd drawn the worst possible matchup.

"Hahaha! Serves her right! No more bullying men with that tricky charm magic!"

"Exactly! Let's see her try being a 'seductive vixen' in front of Su Min. All she'll get is a slap!"

"Heh."

The other half-step Dao Comprehension experts laughed in relief. Facing Xuan Mengyin was a nightmare—losing to Su Min was just embarrassing, but losing to her? Social suicide.

Now that these two were paired, the rest could relax. With only four rounds total, they'd avoid both landmines.

"Oh, for f—"

She swore silently and descended into the arena. Her mind was racing. Her inner world was chaos. Her spiritual sea churned with half-formed panic. So her instincts did what they always did when things got bad.

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form…" she chanted quietly, without conscious command.

Golden Buddha light erupted around her body in radiant waves.

A visible ripple passed through the crowd. Across from her, Xuan Mengyin landed lightly… then promptly froze mid-step, her eye twitching uncontrollably.

The Great Sun Tathāgata Sutra—a heaven-grade cultivation method that severed earthly desires—activated instinctively.

Xuan Mengyin's lips moved soundlessly: "You've got to be kidding me".

"Is Grandmaster Su becoming a Buddha? I almost forgot she practices the Great Thunder Temple's techniques!"

"That woman's face must be priceless right now."

"Hahahaha!"

The crowd burst into laughter. Su Min's ties to the Great Thunder Temple were well-known—after the Land and Water Dharma Assembly, secrecy was impossible. Moreover, Liao Jie's public acknowledgment and Kong Hui's silent approval had cemented her status as their ally.

"Huuu…"

Xuan Mengyin exhaled sharply, watching the radiant, charm-immune Su Min.

She'd already decided: No charm magic today.

Even trying would get her turned into a laughingstock. She could already hear the nicknames forming. "The temptress who couldn't tempt." No thank you.

She'd fight clean. While this crippled half her strength, she wasn't helpless. As a half-step Dao Comprehension expert, she still had other means.

And Su Min, radiating divine light and chanting silently like a monk cornered at a brothel, stood across from her with a look that screamed:

"Please don't awaken anything weird in me."

It was going to be a long, weird match.

"Begin!"

The barrier fell.

In a flash, Xuan Mengyin summoned a guqin—a rare earth-grade treasure and one of her sect's priceless heirlooms.

While swords and sabers were commonplace, crafting a musical instrument required esoteric knowledge. Few cultivators understood the arcane harmonies needed to forge such a treasure.

This guqin was the lifework of a past elder, who'd aimed for heaven-grade but settled for earth-grade.

Yet it sufficed.

With the first pluck of its strings—

Whoosh!

Su Min's surroundings warped. The empty arena vanished, replaced by towering mountain ranges. But these weren't ordinary peaks—even Mount Everest would be insignificant to a Divine Transformation expert. Yet now, Su Min found herself genuinely trapped.

"Not mere illusions. My spiritual sense is at least equal to hers, if not stronger. This is… a formation? So she's also a formation master. Troublesome."

Su Min's expression darkened. This woman was far more formidable than anticipated. Meanwhile, outside the arena…

"What kind of illusion is this? Why can we see it too?!"

Spectators gasped as the battlefield transformed into a dense mountain forest. Illusions were supposed to affect only the target. Yet this was visible to everyone.

That meant one thing: This wasn't an illusion—it was a large-scale formation.

"She's been hiding her skills! A formation master all along!"

"Combining formations with illusions… blurring reality and fantasy. This is mental torture!"

Even the other half-step Dao Comprehension experts paled. Had they faced her, they'd have been played to death. As the crowd murmured, Su Min inside the formation was forced into a desperate retreat, harried by inescapable terrain shifts.