Combat Rounds

Day Two dawned with palpable dread. The assembled disciples looked like survivors of a minor war—hollow eyes, twitching hands, the particular exhaustion that came from fighting their own minds all night.

"Group events commence this morning," Liu Tiansheng announced, though even he seemed affected by the oppressive atmosphere. "Teams of three, randomly assigned. Cooperation will be essential."

The irony was delicious. Force psychologically compromised individuals to work together, their amplified negative emotions guaranteed to create conflict. Zǔ Zhòu found himself paired with Liu Rong (third in forms, steady but unimaginative) and surprisingly, Liu Qiang himself.

"Work together," Liu Qiang muttered, dark circles prominent under his eyes. "After yesterday's disasters, we need this."

The group event was deceptively simple—navigate an obstacle course while maintaining a formation array. Three cultivators channeling qi in harmony to power protective barriers while crossing trapped terrain. It required trust, synchronization, and emotional stability.

They had none of those.

"Maintain the triangle!" Liu Rong snapped as they began. "Qiang, your qi output is erratic!"

"I'm trying!" Liu Qiang's control, already shaken by yesterday's failures, crumbled further under criticism. The array flickered, nearly dropping them into a pit of cultivation-suppressing mud.

Zǔ Zhòu played the helpful teammate, adjusting his own output to compensate. But he carefully mistuned his qi every seventh pulse—not enough to notice consciously, but sufficient to create subliminal discord. The formation held but felt wrong, increasing everyone's anxiety.

"Why does this feel so unstable?" Liu Rong demanded.

"Competition pressure," Zǔ Zhòu suggested innocently. "We're all pushing too hard."

They completed the course, but their time ranked fifteenth of twenty teams. Liu Qiang's alliance members watching from the sidelines exchanged dark looks. Their leader's continued failures reflected on them all.

"Pathetic display," someone muttered, just loud enough to hear.

Liu Qiang's face flushed. The arrays caught his spike of humiliation and amplified it into rage. Only Liu Rong's restraining hand prevented an immediate confrontation.

After group events concluded (with predictable psychological carnage), afternoon brought the second round of individual combat. The stakes had heightened—winners advanced to tomorrow's finals, losers were eliminated.

Zǔ Zhòu's first opponent was Liu Dao, a Fourth Stage cultivator known for defensive techniques. Steady, patient, difficult to provoke—an interesting challenge for psychological manipulation.

"Your temporal tricks won't work on me," Liu Dao announced as they faced off. "I've studied your matches. Misdirection and mind games. I'll simply outlast you."

True to his word, Liu Dao shifted into Iron Mountain Stance—feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, arms crossed before his chest with palms facing inward. Qi visibly condensed around him, forming a translucent gray barrier that made the air shimmer. His breathing synced with the technique, each exhale reinforcing the defensive shell.

So Zǔ Zhòu didn't attack.

Instead, he began circling slowly, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. His movement pattern followed the Temporal Drift principle—never quite where expected, always slightly ahead or behind normal rhythm. His hands stayed loose at his sides, occasionally twitching in false starts.

Thirty seconds passed. A minute. The crowd grew restless.

"Are you going to fight?" Liu Dao demanded, though his stance remained rock-solid.

"I am fighting. Just not the way you expected." Zǔ Zhòu smiled pleasantly, continuing his hypnotic circling. "Your defense is perfect. Like a mountain. Eternal. Unchanging. Boring."

He suddenly shifted direction mid-step, his left foot sliding across the packed earth in a crescent arc. Liu Dao's eyes tracked the movement automatically, a minute adjustment in his defensive barrier following the expected attack angle. But no attack came—just another direction change, another false pattern.

Two minutes. Three. The referee looked uncertain—no rule prohibited passive fighting as long as combatants remained engaged.

"Attack or forfeit!" Liu Dao's patience, his greatest strength, began fraying. A bead of sweat traced down his temple, not from exertion but from the strain of holding perfect defense against nothing.

"Why? You're doing exactly what you planned. Perfect defense. You could stand there all day." Zǔ Zhòu chuckled, executing a sudden forward lean that made Liu Dao's qi barrier flare instinctively. "Of course, everyone's watching you do nothing. How long before they start laughing?"

The seed planted, Liu Dao became hyperaware of the crowd. His peripheral vision caught spectators shifting restlessly, someone pointing. The arrays amplified his self-consciousness, making every murmur sound like mockery.

"Famous for defense," Zǔ Zhòu continued conversationally, now mixing his circling with random pauses—two steps, freeze, five steps, freeze. "But what else? In fifty years, will anyone remember Liu Dao? Or just 'that guy who stood still really well'?"

Four minutes. Liu Dao's Iron Mountain Stance, textbook perfect, began showing cracks. His back foot shifted half an inch. His breathing hitched between cycles. The qi barrier flickered at the edges where his concentration wavered.

"FIGHT ME!" Liu Dao suddenly roared, abandoning his fortress stance to charge.

His attack came as Mountain Breaks Valley—a crushing downward palm strike that channeled all his defensive qi into offense. The air screamed as his hand descended, gray energy condensing into a visible pressure wave.

Zǔ Zhòu flowed aside using Temporal Drift, but this time the evasion had substance. His body seemed to blur, moving through three possible positions simultaneously before solidifying just outside the strike zone. Liu Dao's palm cracked the arena floor, sending stone shrapnel flying.

As the defensive specialist overextended from his missed strike, Zǔ Zhòu's finger touched his shoulder with deceptive gentleness. "First touch."

Liu Dao whirled with a horizontal sweep, trying to catch him with Mountain Repels All. His arm blurred in a 180-degree arc, qi extending like a scythe. But Zǔ Zhòu had already begun moving before the attack started—Paradox Counter letting him respond to future positions.

He ducked under the sweep, rolled forward, and tapped Liu Dao's knee as he passed. "Second touch."

Now fully enraged, Liu Dao abandoned all pretense of defense. His attacks came wild—Stone Shatters Steel, Mountain Avalanche Fist, Valley Crushing Palms. Each technique perfectly executed but emotionally driven. The arena floor cracked and cratered under the assault.

Zǔ Zhòu weaved between the attacks like smoke, each evasion precisely calculated. When Liu Dao threw a desperate haymaker charged with all his remaining qi, Zǔ Zhòu simply stepped inside his guard and placed a finger against his throat.

"Third touch. Victory to Liu Wei!"

The crowd seemed unsure whether to applaud. Liu Dao stood among the destruction he'd caused, legendary defense broken by four minutes of circular walking and light mockery.

"You broke my perfect record," he whispered. "Without even fighting."

"I fought your mind. Bodies are just transport for the real battlefield." Zǔ Zhòu bowed politely. "Your defense remains technically flawless."

His second match proved more straightforward but no less intense. Liu Xin, driven desperate by yesterday's poor showing, opened with Nightingale Cuts Dawn—a swift series of finger strikes aimed at pressure points.

Her hands blurred into motion, index and middle fingers extended like blades. The technique created actual air distortions, her qi compressed into needle-thin points designed to penetrate defenses. First strike aimed for his shoulder's qi junction. Second for the solar plexus. Third for the throat.

Zǔ Zhòu met her assault with Temporal Echo Palm, creating visual afterimages that made targeting difficult. To observers, he seemed to exist in three places simultaneously—each image slightly offset in time. Liu Xin's first strike hit only air where he'd been. The second passed through where he might be. The third met his actual palm in redirection.

"Your father's watching," he noted conversationally as their hands remained locked. "He seems... disappointed?"

Her eyes flicked involuntarily toward the stands. In that moment of distraction, Zǔ Zhòu's free hand snaked forward, fingers touching her ribs in the exact pattern of her own Nightingale technique. First touch.

She snarled and broke contact, spinning into Swallow Returns to Nest—a circular kick that generated a visible arc of qi. Her leg swept at head height, force sufficient to shatter stone.

Zǔ Zhòu dropped beneath it, but she'd anticipated this. The kick converted into an axe drop, heel descending toward his skull with crushing force. He rolled aside, arena floor cracking where he'd been.

"Third strike looks just like your older sister's. But weaker."

The comment hit harder than any physical blow. Liu Xin's form wavered, her next combination—Hundred Birds Take Flight—losing cohesion. What should have been a coordinated assault of qi projections came as scattered, desperate attacks.

Zǔ Zhòu weaved through them, closing distance. His approach used Infant Void Step—not true spatial manipulation but movement that defied normal physics through perfect timing. Left foot forward but body weight suggesting right. Shoulders rotating opposite to hip direction. Each motion individually wrong but collectively creating unpredictable approach vectors.

"Is that the technique you failed with last year?"

Liu Xin screamed, abandoning all pretense of technique for raw violence. Her qi erupted outward in an undirected blast—wasteful, desperate, emotionally hemorrhaging. Zǔ Zhòu touched her shoulder and stomach in quick succession during the explosive release.

"Second and third touch. Victory to—"

She collapsed crying before he could finish, emotional overload finally claiming another victim. The referee called the match with visible discomfort.

But the semi-final match brought Zǔ Zhòu's greatest challenge yet—Liu Bai, Liu Feng's closest supporter and a genuine Fifth Stage peak cultivator. Worse, Liu Feng himself watched from ringside, eyes sharp with suspicion.

"Eldest Brother suspects something," Liu Bai said quietly as they faced off. "Too many upsets. Too many breakdowns. He asked me to test you properly."

Liu Bai's stance was economical—weight evenly distributed, hands held at middle height, ready to attack or defend. No wasted motion, no telegraphing. A fighter who'd learned through actual combat rather than forms practice.

"I'm honored by the attention."

"Don't be. I'm going to hurt you."

Liu Bai opened with Thundering Palm—a Liu family technique refined to near-perfection. His right hand drew back, qi spiraling around his arm in visible white-blue coils. The air itself seemed to contract, pressure dropping as energy condensed. When he struck, it wasn't just his palm moving but a localized thunderclap given physical form.

The attack crossed the three-meter gap instantly. Zǔ Zhòu threw himself sideways, feeling the pressure wave tear at his robes. Where he'd stood, a palm-shaped depression appeared in the stone, cracks radiating outward like frozen lightning.

This required revealing slightly more capability.

He responded with Paradox Counter, the degraded version he could actually perform. When Liu Bai followed with a classic combination—right straight, left hook, right uppercut—Zǔ Zhòu moved as if defending against the reverse pattern. His body flowed left when it should go right, ducked when it should block.

The cognitive dissonance made Liu Bai hesitate fractionally between the second and third strikes. His uppercut came a tenth-second late, trajectory slightly off. Enough for Zǔ Zhòu to slip inside and tap his ribs.

"First touch."

"Clever," Liu Bai admitted, immediately creating space with an explosive backward leap. "But tricks have limits."

He shifted tactics, abandoning combination work for single, devastating strikes. Thunder Breaks Mountain—an overhand blow that made the air shriek. Lightning Splits Earth—a knee strike that cratered the ground. Storm Fist Descends—a rotating punch that created actual wind vortexes.

Each attack came with full commitment, spacing calculated to prevent counter-touches. Zǔ Zhòu gave ground steadily, seeming pressed to his limits. His evasions grew increasingly desperate—diving rolls, ungainly stumbles, last-instant deflections that left him off-balance.

The audience watched Liu Bai dominate, driving the upstart around the ring. They couldn't see what Zǔ Zhòu tracked—how each retreat positioned him perfectly, how each "desperate" dodge actually set up future possibilities.

Then Liu Bai made his mistake—he glanced at Liu Feng, seeking approval.

In that instant of divided attention, Zǔ Zhòu struck. Not physically but psychologically. His entire bearing shifted, expression morphing to mirror Liu Feng's evaluating look—that precise combination of expectation and disappointment the heir showed followers who failed to meet standards.

Liu Bai caught the expression mid-strike. For a heartbeat, he wasn't fighting Liu Wei but performing for Liu Feng's judgment. The arrays amplified that insecurity, turning momentary doubt into a chasm of inadequacy.

His Thunder Palm came a fraction too hard, overcompensating for imagined weakness. Zǔ Zhòu redirected it using Time Thief's Redirection—using Liu Bai's future position against his present commitment.

The technique looked simple to observers. Liu Bai's palm thrust forward with devastating force. Zǔ Zhòu's hand met it at an angle, not blocking but guiding. The slight redirection combined with Liu Bai's overcommitment sent him stumbling past. Zǔ Zhòu's finger found his spine.

"Second touch."

"How are you doing this?" Liu Bai's composure cracked. "Your cultivation is lower! Your techniques are tricks! But you keep—"

"Winning?" Zǔ Zhòu offered helpfully. "Perhaps Eldest Brother's suspicions have merit. Perhaps I am hiding something. Or perhaps..."

He leaned in conspiratorially.

"Perhaps you're just not as good as you thought."

The psychological knife slid between ribs of ego. Liu Bai's face flushed as the arrays fed on his wounded pride. His final assault came wild—Thunder God's Wrath, a technique that should have been beyond his level.

Both fists erupted with electrical qi, his entire body becoming a conduit for destructive force. He charged like humanoid lightning, the arena floor melting beneath his feet. It was beautiful, terrifying, and completely telegraphed by emotional desperation.

Zǔ Zhòu waited until the last possible instant, then applied Temporal Drift with full focus. His body seemed to stutter through reality—existing here, there, and elsewhere in rapid succession. Liu Bai's charge passed through afterimages, his overwhelming power striking nothing.

A gentle finger touch to the back of his neck as momentum carried him past.

"Third touch. Victory to Liu Wei!"

The crowd erupted. A Body Tempering Fifth Stage defeating someone at peak Fifth Stage should have been impossible. But they'd seen it happen through "clever tactics" and "innovative techniques."

Liu Feng's expression could have frozen flame. His eyes met Zǔ Zhòu's across the arena, suspicion crystallizing into certainty. Something was wrong with these matches.

"Impressive victories," Liu Feng said, intercepting him after the match. "Almost miraculous."

"The manual provides unique advantages, Eldest Brother."

"Does it? I've noticed a pattern. Your opponents all seem to... break down. Emotionally. Consistently." Liu Feng's tone remained pleasant but his eyes were steel. "Once might be coincidence. Twice, luck. But every match?"

"Competition pressure affects everyone differently. I've been fortunate that my opponents struggled with it."

"Hmm." Liu Feng studied him like a puzzle with missing pieces. "Tomorrow's finals should prove interesting. I look forward to seeing these 'techniques' myself."

The threat was politely delivered but unmistakable. Liu Feng would be watching, analyzing, looking for the trick behind the victories.

That night, in the temporal scar chamber, Zǔ Zhòu conducted his true advancement. The combat victories had provided perfect cover, his body stressed enough to justify breakthrough.

"Begin Sixth Stage advancement," he commanded.

The temporal energy flowed through prepared channels, paradox power condensing into his dantian. His body had been ready for weeks, held back only by the need for plausible timing. Now, with the competition providing explanation for rapid growth...

Body Tempering Sixth Stage solidified with a sensation like iron becoming steel. His flesh density increased, reaction time sharpened, spiritual capacity expanded. Still pathetic by his standards, but another step on the infinite path.

"Hidden advancement complete," he noted. "Public revelation during tomorrow's finals will seem like competition-induced breakthrough."

"Liu Feng's suspicion poses a threat," his servant observed.

"Liu Feng's suspicion is an opportunity. He'll watch for tricks, for deception, for hidden techniques." Zǔ Zhòu smiled coldly. "He'll never suspect the truth—that I'm not hiding power but creating psychological devastation through pure understanding of human weakness."

Tomorrow would bring the finals. Liu Feng would watch every move, analyze every victory. And he'd miss the truth by looking too hard for it.

The combat rounds had advanced Zǔ Zhòu to the final day. More importantly, they'd demonstrated that a weak cultivator with perfect psychological understanding could defeat stronger opponents by breaking their minds.

"Traditional cultivation assumes mental and physical strength correlate," he told the watching void. "Tomorrow, I prove that assumption fatally flawed."

The stage was set for a final day that would shatter more than just competition rankings.