Chapter 23: The Aerial Opponent

The tournament had reached its final, brutal stage. The final four. The air in the main arena was electric, buzzing with a tension you could almost taste. The warm Jamaican night outside was a distant memory, banished by the relentless glare of the floodlights. This was the only world that mattered now.

Lin Ke's impossible victories had landed him here. His opponent this time was a quick, nimble girl named Maya, her pet a sleek Gale Sparrow that now circled high above them.

As the matchup flashed on the giant screen, a new wave of whispers washed through the crowd. "Oh, he's done for. A true aerial opponent." "His Rock Vole's defense is shocking, sure, but what's the point if you can't even touch your target?" "Maya just has to stay in the sky and plink him to death. The bookworm's luck has finally run out."

In the waiting area before the match, Maya had walked over, a friendly, competitive fire in her eyes. "Champion Lin Ke," she had said with a grin. "Your control is insane. But my 'Zephyr' isn't something you can beat by standing still."

Now, on the field, her words seemed prophetic. The Gale Sparrow, Zephyr, was a thing of beauty and terror. It let out a sharp, piercing cry that screamed of aerial dominance.

"Battle... BEGIN!"

"Zephyr, Air Cutter!" Maya commanded instantly.

The sparrow swooped, its wings glowing with a silver light as it unleashed a volley of sharp, crescent blades of wind. They sliced through the air with a faint shhh-shhh-shhh sound, chewing up the ground where the Rock Vole had been a moment before.

"Evade," Lin Ke said, his voice a low, calm anchor in the roaring stadium.

"You can't dodge forever!" Maya called out, her voice sharp with confidence. "Zephyr, don't give it room to breathe! Barrage!"

For the next few minutes, it was an exercise in frustration. The sparrow was a blur against the bright lights, a relentless storm of attacks from an untouchable position. The Rock Vole was just a thing on the ground, scrambling and weaving, completely unable to fight back. Any stone it tried to throw was casually batted aside by the wind or laughed at by the bird's impossible speed. The crowd was murmuring, a consensus forming. The incredible run of the dark horse was about to end. It was obvious.

But Lin Ke wasn't panicking. He wasn't even frustrated. His eyes were narrowed, his mind a quiet, cold storm of data as he tracked the sparrow's every move. While everyone else saw a hopeless defense, he was hunting for a pattern. In his vision, the Gene Editor traced the sparrow's flight, revealing a shimmering, predictable figure-eight. Efficient, but repetitive. With each pass, he saw it: a momentary dip in altitude, a slight banking of the wings to generate force for the attack. A vulnerability window. It was tiny—a fifth of a second, maybe less—but it was there. A crack in the perfect aerial assault.

Now, he thought, I just have to bait her into opening that window exactly where I want it.

"Rock Vole… stop," Lin Ke commanded, a sudden, bizarre shift in tactics.

His pet skidded to a halt in the very center of the arena. It stood there, its small sides heaving, looking for all the world like an open, exhausted, and defeated target.

Maya saw it instantly. Her eyes lit up with predatory glee. "He's out of gas! This is our chance! Zephyr, use DIVE BOMB!"

This was the finisher. The Gale Sparrow folded its wings and became a feathered missile, plummeting from the sky in a shrieking, terminal dive, aimed straight for the kill. The crowd gasped. This was it. Fifty meters… thirty… ten…

Lin Ke's eyes were as calm and cold as a frozen lake. He had been waiting for this exact moment.

"Now," he whispered.

The command was almost telepathic. The Rock Vole, which had been perfectly still, suddenly dug its claws deep into the arena floor. It didn't look up. It didn't aim. It just executed the single, insane maneuver they had practiced a hundred times for just this one possibility.

"Predictive Throw. Trajectory seven."

It hurled a single, sharp stone up into the seemingly empty air, at an angle that looked completely, utterly random to the thousands of watching eyes.

But it wasn't random. It was mathematics.

The stone flew on its calculated path, a silent messenger of fate, arriving at a precise point in space at the exact microsecond the diving Gale Sparrow would be there. The bird, locked into its attack, a predator focused only on the prey below, never even saw it coming.

THWACK!

The sickeningly small, precise sound of impact echoed in the massive, silent arena. The stone connected perfectly with the delicate joint of the sparrow's outstretched wing.

A pained, surprised shriek cut through the air. The sparrow's flawless, powerful dive shattered into a chaotic tumble. It spiraled uncontrollably out of the sky, a flurry of broken feathers, before crashing to the arena floor in a heap. It tried to stand, but its wing was useless, bent at an unnatural angle. It was grounded. The battle was over.

The examiner stared, stunned, before finally finding his voice. "Gale Sparrow is unable to battle! The winner, advancing to the CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH… is Lin Ke!"

The crowd was dead silent for a full ten seconds, every single person trying to process the sheer, godlike impossibility of what they had just witnessed. He hadn't just won. He had shot a speeding missile out of the sky. With a rock. Without even looking. The questions about his "talent" had just escalated into something far more dangerous.