Author's Note: Do Not Unlock Yet. All Unconstructed Chapter Will Be Taken Care Of In The Next 48hrs.

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A rival from an outside sect called Black Lotus, stepped forward with a smirk. "So be it. May I?"

The guests were immediately fired up, drawing the attention of the City Lord up ahead.

"Our celebrant is here to be celebrated not challenged. I demand you show him..." City Lord Xuan Wenzhou was about to stick up for Victor when he interrupted.

"Lord Wenzhou, it's fine. There's nothing wrong with a little friendly challenge," Victor was very welcoming of the current situation.

"Are you sure?" The City Lord inquired.

Victor nodded and then the City Lord gave instructions for the center of the hall to be cleared.

Tables and seating areas were moved to the edges to provide a large enough space for sparring.

A ring opened in the center of the banquet garden where the marble tiles gave way to raked sand and moonlight.

Palace masters raised a thin barrier to keep stray qi from flaying the hedges. The youth saluted with two fingers, then stepped into a flowing stance.

He proceeded to perform a quick sequence of hand seals, summoning a small vortex of wind that sent silk banners fluttering.

"Brother Fang, show us this 'technique'."

Victor stepped forward with a calm look and activated his Void Emperor Bloodline.

[ Void Emperor Bloodline Activated ]

His skin suddenly emitted a milky glow as arrow shaped marks appeared all over.

The surrounding crowd were instantly stunned.

"Is that...?"

"The aura of the void Emperor!"

"He truly possesses the Void Emperor Bloodline..."

At first they doubted it but seeing and feeling the energy of the void Emperor surround them, the guests were starting to believe what this celebration stood for.

The black lotus disciple narrowed his eyes in dissatisfaction and charged forward.

"Wind dragon... form one," he voiced out while making a bunch of hand signs, causing a serpentine shaped body of wind to surge upwards from his frame.

Just as the serpentine shaped wind dove downwards, towards Victor, he suddenly activated his Void Emperor Space.

[ Void Emperor Domain Has Been Activated ]

His qi suddenly spread across a radius of more than fifty feet.

The serpentine wind suddenly stopped and vanished with a single thought.

The crowd was astonished.

The black lotus disciple tried to create another but the moment he sent it out, the same occurrence repeated itself.

"What... wh-at did you do to my wind dragon technique?" He voiced with a tone of confliction.

"That was a dragon? Oh sorry, I mistook it for a tiny snake,"

Victor's response caused the guests in the surroundings to burst into laughter, earning a scowl from the disciple. He was starting to feel the sting of embarrassment.

He grunted and tried to activate another technique but Victor was done wasting time.

"You're in my space now... everything here, including you... will bend to my will," he proceeded to reach out after saying this and the disciple got pulled forward by an invisible force.

Victor arched his arm back and swung forward at full force.

Bam!

His fist slammed into the chest of the black lotus disciple, sending him flying across the air and knocking the wind out of his lungs.

While he was in mid air, Victor reached out again and dragged him back with telekinesis before slamming him onto the other end of the arena.

The spar was over before it even began.

Victor bowed slightly. "That's the power of the Void Emperor."

Polite applause rippled through the hall, mingled with stunned silence.

The City Lord clapped vigorously, Xuan Qing squealed in delight, and the disciples from the Violet Springs Sect were very delighted upon witnessing this conclusion.

But the challenges did not end there.

However, they had become more respectful after seeing how the Black Lotus Disciple winded up. Nonetheless, a lot of them believed the first challenger was defeated so easily because they underestimated Victor.

The musicians had just shifted from flutes to zithers when another challenge floated across the lantern-lit hall like a stray ember.

"Hero of Blueflame," a pale youth in teal robes called with the crest on his chest depicting a spiral mountain, "would you grant me the honor of pointers?"

A hush fell, then the hush broke into a low tide of whispers. Azure Mountain Sect was prestigious, stubborn and never quite gentle.

Victor set his wine aside. "Pointers I can give," he voiced with a smile. "Bruises are extra."

They proceeded to move to the center ring and the Azure Mountain Sect disciple, moved first.

He activated Azure Gale Eight Steps, a respectable movement art. His blade flashed, riding a compressed line of air toward Victor's collarbone.

Victor didn't draw steel. He turned his wrist, and wind gathered to his palm like a tide finding shore.

The Azure Gale bent toward him, curved, and went out with a sigh, as if embarrassed to be seen.

The youth's eyes widened. He tried again, this time layering a thrust with a threaded razor of qi.

Victor took half a step sideways, letting the thrust pass his shoulder by a whisper.

His off hand rose as he extended two fingers and activated Frost Bloom before touching the youth's forearm...

A kiss of winter slowed the qi at the wrist into syrup. The boy fumbled his grip and nearly dropped the sword.

Victor caught the blade by the flat with two fingers and gave it back hilt-first. "Your steps are fine. Your breath is loud enough to wake dogs two courtyards over."

Laughter, quickly muffled. The youth flushed to his hairline, bowed, and retreated with burning cheeks.

Another stepped forward before the applause died: a woman in black lotus silk, hair pinned with obsidian thorns from the Deadly Seven Saber Sect.

Her sect's reputation preceded her. She drew a narrow saber that sang a mean little song.

"Friendly pointers," she murmured. "Try not to die."

She moved like burned sugar... fast, brittle, liable to stick. Shadow-stepping footwork laid four afterimages around Victor, all striking at once with angles calculated to overwhelm anyone of the Nascent Soul Realm.

He lifted his sheathed sword and sent out a shadow crescent strike that slashed the sand into a clean furrow that passed through all four phantoms...

The three false ones shred like smoke while the real one raised her saber to parry the attack.

She looked down and noticed that the shadow crescent had trimmed a single thread from her hem and etched her saber's reflection into the marble at her feet.

Victor tipped his head. "If you cut in four places, leave at least one for me to block. Courtesy," he added mildly.

Her smirk cracked, then she laughed. "Noted." She bowed deeper than pride would normally permit and stepped aside.

The fourth came with no courtesy at all. A brash fellow in iron-red livery shouldered through courtiers with two scabbards rattling. "So this is the savior?" he announced. "Let's see your edge."

Victor finally unsheathed his sword in the scabbard by a thumb's width. The brash one drew two of his swords and threw twin arcs of flame that curled together into a grinning maw.

Victor's breath deepened.

The Dragon Breathing Art stirred his chest like a furnace finding its voice. He let a ribbon of pale flame lick along the sheath, then cut downward in a single, deliberate line...

Shadow Crescent married to Skyfire, swept forward powerfully.

Darkness rode the flame, then the two parted in a hiss. The red maw split and guttered, causing the the iron youth to wobble to his knees.

When the smoke cleared, he was on his rear in the sand with his hair slightly singed, looking up at a man who hadn't moved his feet.

"Your edge," Victor voiced while sliding the blade back in, "is fine. Your temper needs a scabbard."

Cheers broke decorum. Even the City Lord's stony chamberlain clapped once before catching himself. The brash one scrambled up and performed a stiff bow with pride leaking out like air from a punctured wineskin.

That should have satisfied the hawks, but challenges multiply like lanterns after dusk.

When Victor managed to take down every single Nascent Soul Realm challenger from other sects, envoys slid in with sugared smiles and cardamom breath.

"Have you considered further tempering at Cloud Temple? We possess a waterfall that inverts qi flow—"

"Azure Mountain has an ancestral cave that—"

"Black Lotus would sponsor—"

Violet Spring's disciples tightened around Victor like a velvet gauntlet.

Elder Mo didn't raise his voice; he didn't need to. "Your interest in our Violet Springs Secf core disciple," he voiced every syllable with pride. "Fang Chen... honors us. Your poaching dishonors you."

It wasn't a threat, simply a fact stated in a room now tuned to that fact. The envoys bowed, some more stiffly than others, and changed tactics: gifts, not offers.

Boxes and scroll tubes and velvet pouches accumulated like snowdrifts. Refined spirit stones that thrummed at a touch.

A Thunderseed Pearl the size of a thumbnail. A prayer fan painted with cranes that smelled faintly of sandalwood and old rain.

[ You Have Received A Gift From The Azure Mountain Sect ]

Friendship Has Been Formed

[ You Have Received A Gift From The Black Lotus Sect ]

Friendship Has Been Formed

Notifications kept ticking in one after the other.