The Preliminary Rounds

The week leading up to the Hundred Schools Tournament was a festival of power and wealth. The Sky-Piercing City transformed. Emissaries from distant empires, clad in exotic silks and bearing ancient artifacts, filled the high-end inns. Stern-faced elders from remote mountain sects, their auras as cold and sharp as a glacier, observed the proceedings with critical eyes. The marketplace became a whirlwind of frantic, high-stakes trading as contestants made their final preparations.

The Alchemical Exposition came first. It was a grand affair held in a massive, specially constructed hall. Amrit attended as a spectator, not a participant. He watched as Yan Tao, eager to reclaim his status, put on a dazzling display, concocting a complex, multi-layered pill that earned him second place. He was only beaten by a mysterious, veiled alchemist from a reclusive southern guild, whose techniques were strange and unorthodox. Amrit observed them all, his Void Perception deconstructing their methods, absorbing their knowledge, and cataloging their skills without ever leaving his seat. He learned more from watching than he would have from participating.

Then, the day of the Martial Grand Tournament arrived. The atmosphere in the city reached a fever pitch. The Grand Dueling Arena was filled to capacity, every one of its fifty thousand seats occupied. The betting houses were a chaotic frenzy, with fortunes being wagered on the dozens of famous geniuses who had gathered.

Amrit's name was a point of intense debate. The local Academy students, who had witnessed his terrifying debut, bet on him with a kind of fearful reverence. The foreign powers and their disciples, however, were skeptical. They had heard the wild rumors—breaking the Spirit Stone, a score of eleven—but they dismissed them as the exaggerated myths of an isolated institution. They saw him as an unproven, overhyped local champion who would quickly be humbled by the true, world-class talent that had now arrived.

The preliminary rounds were designed for exactly this purpose: to be a brutal, efficient meat grinder. Unlike the Entrance Tournament, there was no seeding for the top contestants. The initial matchups were almost entirely random, pitting famous champions against complete unknowns. It was a recipe for spectacular upsets and crushing defeats.

Over five hundred contestants were gathered in the staging area. The sheer density of power was suffocating. Amrit stood quietly in a corner, Zian and Rohan beside him. He was a Core Disciple now, but he still wore his simple, dark robes, Soul-Sunder a silent shadow at his hip. He was an island of calm in a sea of aggressive, competitive energy.

The grand runic screen flared to life, displaying the first hundred matchups.

"There you are," Zian said, pointing. "Platform 72. You're up against… oh dear."

Platform 72: Amrit (Kshirapura) vs. 'The Iron Fist' Chen (Black Turtle Sect)

Rohan groaned. "Iron Fist Chen? Are you serious? He's a legend in the eastern provinces! He's twenty-four years old, a half-step into the next major cultivation realm, and his 'Indestructible Mountain Body' technique is said to be the ultimate defense! He once took a direct hit from a siege crossbow and didn't even flinch! This isn't a good first draw."

Amrit looked at the name, then across the room at his opponent. Chen was a mountain of a man, with a bald head, a thick neck, and arms as wide as tree trunks. He radiated an aura of immense, unshakeable stability. He was talking with his fellow sect members, laughing loudly, completely unimpressed by the reputation of his first-round opponent. To him, Amrit was just some Academy hotshot he was about to flatten.

"His defense may be strong," Amrit said, a thoughtful look in his eyes. "But a mountain can still be eroded."

The summons came, and the first wave of contestants moved out into the sunlit arena. Amrit walked towards Platform 72. The crowd roared as his matchup was announced. The foreign delegations were eager to see the famed "Void Prince" get brought down a peg by a well-known powerhouse like Iron Fist Chen.

Chen stomped onto the platform, his every step shaking the obsidian floor. He faced Amrit, cracking his massive knuckles. "So you're the little ghost who broke a rock," he boomed, his voice full of derision. "Let's see how your tricks fare against a fist that can shatter a mountain's peak! I hope you're ready for a beating!"

Amrit simply gave a slight, polite nod, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

The duel began.

Chen roared and charged. He didn't use a fancy technique. He simply ran forward, his body glowing with a thick, earthy-yellow light—the manifestation of his Indestructible Mountain Body. He intended to close the distance and pummel Amrit into submission with his bare hands. The sheer physical pressure he exerted was immense.

The crowd leaned forward, expecting to see Amrit use his famous ghostly movement to evade.

Amrit did not move.

He stood his ground, watching the charging mountain of a man. Just as Chen entered his range, Amrit drew Soul-Sunder.

The motion was not a flash of speed. It was a slow, serene, almost lazy draw. But as the obsidian blade left its void-sheath, it seemed to pull all sound and light into it.

He did not aim for Chen's head or his heart. He performed a single, simple, horizontal slash aimed at the empty space a foot in front of his charging opponent.

His blade cut through the air, leaving behind a thin, shimmering black line—a temporary, hairline fracture in the fabric of space itself. A Spatial Severance.

Iron Fist Chen, charging at full speed, ran directly into the invisible, one-dimensional wound in reality.

The result was bizarre and instantaneous. Chen did not stop. His momentum carried him forward, but his connection to the space he was leaving behind was momentarily cut. His Indestructible Mountain Body technique, which drew its power from a stable connection to the earth and the space around him, faltered for a microsecond.

In that single, infinitesimal moment of disconnection, the technique collapsed. The thick, earthy-yellow light around him flickered and died.

Chen's own forward momentum, no longer supported by his defensive art, became his worst enemy. He stumbled, his perfect charge becoming a clumsy, uncontrolled fall. He flailed his arms, trying to regain his balance, and tripped over his own feet.

The mountain of a man, the legendary Iron Fist Chen, tumbled past Amrit and slid face-first across the obsidian platform, coming to a halt in a stunned, undignified heap at the far edge. His ultimate defense had been neutralized without Amrit ever touching him.

Silence. Then, a wave of confused, disbelieving laughter rippled through the fifty thousand spectators. They had come to see a clash of titans. They had just seen a legendary powerhouse trip and fall like a clumsy child. It was the most anticlimactic, humiliating defeat imaginable.

Chen pushed himself up, his face burning with a shame so intense it was worse than any physical blow. He stared at Amrit, who was already sheathing his sword, his expression unchanged. Chen opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. He had been defeated by a principle of reality he couldn't even begin to understand. He quietly picked himself up and walked off the platform in disgrace.

Amrit had won his first match.

He proceeded through the next few preliminary rounds in a similar fashion. He faced a "Wind-Dancer" illusionist whose phantoms he dispelled by simply "cutting" the space they occupied, causing them to collapse. He faced a powerful curse-user whose vile hexes he allowed to approach, only to have them be silently devoured by the passive, conceptual void of his own aura.

He never used a grand technique. He never broke a sweat. He won each match with a single, quiet, conceptually baffling action that left his opponents not just defeated, but utterly demoralized, their own arts proven useless against his.

By the end of the day, he had advanced to the main tournament bracket, leaving a trail of confused, broken-spirited prodigies in his wake. The skepticism of the foreign delegations had vanished, replaced by a deep, chilling fear. They now understood. The rumors were not exaggerations. If anything, they hadn't been dramatic enough.

Amrit was not just a genius. He was a category error. He was a living, breathing refutation of conventional martial arts. The preliminary rounds had served their purpose perfectly. They had not just thinned the herd; they had established a new, terrifying predator at the absolute top of the food chain. And the entire world was now watching to see who it would devour next.