So the matches went by, one by one, bloody moment by bloody moment. The disciple always stepped in before anyone dealt any serious wounds, but her definition of serious was far different than a non-cultivator’s, and by the time it was her turn, the snow was stained red with blood.

She breathed in. The cold air bit her.

She breathed out, and watched her breath fog the air in front of her as she stepped into the formation. She didn’t just have to win— Guandong really stood no challenge to her, not with the sort of firepower she could leverage. She needed to win with style, to really make her case, in the symphony of combat and writ with the bloody violence of the match, to the cultivator that she was worth it. That she was skilled enough to invest in.

So she calmed herself, and centered herself, and stood in easy readiness as Guandong stormed onto the field. “Lily Ward! You dare? I’ll teach you the true extent of your folly!” They began to circle one another, slowly dragging their feet through the snow— its sound, the rhythmic breath of their conflict. “You're an idiot if you think you’ll ever be able to beat me. Kowtow a hundred times and I might consider letting you leave with all your limbs intact!”

Lily laughed. “Really now? I think you’re suffering under a bit of a misapprehension—” she flourished her first talisman, taunting Guandong with it as she slowly slid another into her left hand— “that you hold any power in here at all.”

“You and your petty tricks. How will you like it when I—” then without warning she sprinted forward, snow exploding out behind her as she raced forward fist sweeping forward— only for Lily to duck away and knock her first blow to the side, slapping a talisman on her fist and forcing Guandong to disengage so she could tear it off in the brief second she had before it exploded. “You bastard! I’ll make you pay for that!”

“How much? I’ll have you know that these talismans are basically priceless, so you should be honored I’m using them against you!”

“Stand still!” Guandong charged at her again, but, again Lily ducked out of the way, blown back by a gust of wind. It was hard, using talismans like such without having a qi reservoir of her own, but she made do— and it helped that she was just naturally faster than Guandong too. The larger girl had dedicated a great deal of practice towards being the strength to Xinshi’s style, and that was backfiring on her now.

Normally, she’d have pulled out an entangling net talisman or something to just drop her there and then, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that would continue to work as she stopped facing mortals and started facing cultivators. So, she didn’t, demonstrating to the disciple that she had the sort of technique needed to fight face to face with another cultivator and make judicious use of limited resources, never overreaching, always punishing each attack, fighting to win. Not her usual style, but… well, needs must.

Four minutes into their match, Guandong staggered to a stop, then pulled out a long red ribbon wrapped around a spirit stone— and Lily knew that their play fight was over. For a moment, the two stood at each edge of the arena, Lily with her purposeful, almost dance-like movements as she slowly inched sideways and Guandong panting, grinning. “You think that you’re anything? Anything at all? That your paltry might compares to the power I wield? Your half year of training to a true master?” Lily palmed two final talismans— “think again, wretch.” Then, she yanked on the ribbon and snapped the spirit stone in two.

A burst of scarlet qi rushed through the girl’s body, causing her to stiffen in agony before she turned her eyes on Lily— and what a baleful gaze that was, burning with unnatural light.

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One second passed, Lily hurrying through her final movements, step by sweeping step—

Guandong rushed forward, and Lily didn’t avoid it. Could not avoid it— because she was just too fast. She didn’t need to, though— her most powerful single-node talisman activated mere moments before Guandong’s blow landed, a pale shield enveloping her and throwing the girl back. Ten seconds. She had ten seconds. With her right hand she chucked five talismans and a silver coin into the air, and ripped the final one, drawing on the connection between metal and light and— most critically, the most powerful sword in the vicinity as she slashed her hand down and sliced.

A wave of force erupted out from her hand with visible force, slashing through the snow and carving a furrow through the frozen earth beneath it, and striking the barrier behind her large enough to make it ring like a gong.

And missing.

Guandong gave her a confused look from where she’d skidded into a crouch. “Ha… ha! I knew your toys would fail you eventually. You missed. You missed!”

Lily just grinned, and— beneath the cultivator’s suddenly intent stare, as Guandong rose to attack again, just— folded her arms behind herself. “I wasn’t aiming for you.” Heavens that was so satisfying. She felt like a TV drama villain! Cliche or not, that had been fun. “Taiji snow formation: bind!” Bright white chains erupted from the rune she’d drawn in the snow across the course of the entire match, wrapping around Guandong for a second before they disappeared, leaving her immobilized midair. “You’ve lost. You never could have done anything except lose.” She shook her head as Guandong watched on in impotent rage. “This was never even a fight to begin with.” It had been an experiment. Why was the fullness of a stroke important in formations— to form an impression, of course. Why was an impression important?

To form a rune.

It only stood to reason that if half-strokes impotent, careless steps on top of her rune would fail to affect it. It’d worked, too— now, Guandong was at her mercy. She couldn’t even move enough to surrender.

A second later, the cultivator stood beside her, a pulse of qi proving her awesome formation was still weak to that. It had been kind of a house of cards sort of thing— cool, but it wasn’t the sort of formation she’d use to punch up ranks.

Guandong collapsed into the snow, the last wisps of the power she’d borrowed to try and beat her floating off of her as her ribbon crumbled to ash— but the disciple paid her no heed. Instead, her entire gaze was focused on Lily. “You used my sword.” Suddenly, Lily felt just a little bit nervous. When she’d made the sword-borrowing formation, she’d thought the strongest sword around would probably be Xinshi’s— but no, of course it was the cultivator's. “Interesting.” Then, she just flickered back to Master Mingtian’s side, as though she’d never been there at all.

Interesting…

Hopefully that had been a good sort of interesting.

That wasn’t important, though— exhausted as she might have been, she sat down in the snow outside the Jade Top formation and turned her attention back to the arena, because— finally.

It was finally time for Avyr’s fight. She’d known that she’d kinda messed up the usual way these sorts of martial things went by kind of over-utilizing talismans, but still…

It was finally time to see a fight between cultivators.