Yang Xiu was having a bit of trouble with the rank four beast she was fighting, an armadillo. More like an armor-dillo. The thing was encased in a thick, qi-enhanced bone shell that her arrowheads simply could not penetrate. Even its eyes were armored, and while not fast, it was quick enough to be able to move its head so that her shots hit the armored eyelids instead of the eyes as she intended.

Obviously, she could have used any of the arrows Master had created for her to solve the situation, but using a limited resource to defeat such a relatively low level creature would have been a waste. The special munitions gave her great power and versatility, but they took Master’s precious time to create and should be used for actual emergencies.

Her lack of power frustrated her, especially after seeing her brother execute the new use of his technique in actual combat. He still wasn’t fast enough with it to counter her arrows, but that was only a matter of practice and experience. She could easily see how powerful that tactic would make him in the future.

Between that addition to his skillset and his overall build favoring strength and toughness, he was sure to go far in the tournament. In contrast, her Body Cultivation helped in those two areas, but it mainly enhanced her speed.

Which was fantastic. With each new minor realm in Silver that she achieved, she felt like a part of her had been freed, like she had always been meant to move that fast and the baths just unlocked it. The advancement felt right.

Adding too much strength and toughness would have conflicted with her aspect, a matter that, after much research and meditation, she much more thoroughly understood. Any improvement that ran counter to who she was at core was no improvement at all.

She was, “Perfectly smooth ice balanced on the razor edge of freezing and thawing.” Adding, say, “with lightning” at the end of that sentence wouldn’t give her the ability to use Lightning qi. Instead, it would almost definitely create a horrible feedback loop where the Ice and Lightning conflicted with each other, severely messing up her cultivation.

Still, she needed a way to increase her personal power and had been thinking of the best solution ever since she’d first approached Master about changing her aspect. After watching Yang Ru the previous day, her resolve regarding finding that solution firmed.

Not for the first time, she repeated the phrase in her mind as she shot more arrows at the armadillo, keeping it away from her as she literally ran circles around it.

Perfectly smooth ice was fine. Not anything to be messed with. Her entire cultivation and combat style was based on those three words.

And therein laid the problem. She didn’t use the rest of the phrase, the majority, nine words, at all. And there was a lot in there.

For example, Balance. Depending on how she fixed the meaning of that word in her mind, there could be some interesting applications for it. The element could definitely enhance her movement techniques, making it more difficult for her to fall. It could also be used offensively, like making her opponent lose their balance. Or more esoterically, she could creatively bring a fight more in balance. If her opponent were stronger, she could balance her and their respective strength.

The possibilities were basically endless.

Maybe in the future, Balance would be an option for her to explore, but it didn’t feel right to her at the moment.

Freezing seemed to have some potential. Having her arrows cause a Freezing effect on hitting gave some more oomph to her hits. But not really as much as she wanted. She needed damage, for her opponent’s health to suffer. Injuries. In her mind, Freezing meant being stuck in place. A useful effect but not the damaging one that she wanted.

Presumably, cold could cause damage. Frostbite, etc. Still, it just didn’t feel like the solution to her problem of not hitting hard enough.

Over the last month and a half, she’d considered those same options and more over and over again. The downside of having nearly infinite ways of looking at each word was that it made it hard for her to narrow the list to a small number that she could select from. The issue was made worse in that she also had the possibility of adding a few words or modifying a small portion of the phrase.

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That path, however, involved a Trial and adding or modifying a core piece of who she was naturally carried much more risk than simply shifting her focus to a part of it that already existed.

Still, the more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that the potential gains outweighed the dangers.

Two words that already existing in her aspect really stood out as being exactly what she was looking for—razor edge. Sharpness. But it was buried in the phrase in such a way that it didn’t quite mean what she needed it to mean, and no amount of mental contortions on her part could get her to that meaning without changing the phrase.

Her understanding was that, if one were to modify their aspect, the slighter the rewording, the better. She’d come up with—perfectly smooth ice balanced between freezing and thawing, its edge a razor.

Before her intensive study about aspects, she wouldn’t have even registered the difference in the wording, much less understood how profound those small changes would be.

The new phrase would definitely add what she wanted—an idea of cutting using the sharpness of the razor.

There was a downside, though. In the original version, “balance on the razor edge of freezing and thawing” represented when ice was at its absolute slipperiest. The new wording still contained that balance but gave it less prevalence. She’d definitely lose a hopefully only very small amount of her ability to create purely slippery ice. That change would lower the effectiveness of her Slippery Arrow technique, her movement technique, and even her shield.

Of course, those impacts were likely to be too small to be seen while she was in the lowest minor realm of Foundation Establishment, so she was more robbing her potential in that category instead of making herself actually weaker.

The gain, though, would be significant. A qi element associated with Sharpness, with Razor, added to all of her arrows… Giving up the potential of a bit of speed in exchange for the ability to slice into her target seemed worth it. She’d have to discuss it with Master.

During the time she’d been thinking about her qi aspect, she’d continuously circled the armadillo and had kept hitting it with arrow after arrow. But she hadn’t been hitting it at random. No, every arrow had hit the beast within a tiny fraction of an inch of the same spot.

Its qi shield in that location had failed long ago, withering under the constant barrage. So, too, had the bone armor eventually wore down.

For the next shot, she used every ounce of her strength to maximize the bow’s pull. Doing so lessened her accuracy, of course, but she only needed to hit the weakened spot, around the size of a silver tael, at a distance of around fifteen yards. She could accomplish such a feat while blindfolded and dizzy like she was playing a child’s game. If she couldn’t, she should have her bow taken away from her.

Twang!

The arrow launched from the bowstring with all the speed and power her muscles could impart to it and further enhanced by her Slippery Arrow technique.

As it neared its target, the moment of truth approached. All her other arrows had bounced off the armadillo’s thick bone shell.

Thunk!

Not that one.

It stuck. And not only did it stick, but it sank into the beast’s tender flesh underneath that armor so that only about half the shaft was sticking out of it.

The armadillo let out a loud, pained wheezy grunt that told her it regretted ever attacking her.

Since she was so much faster than the beast, it was quite trivial for her to choose where to hit it, and she’d chosen the middle of its chest, where Kang Lin had told her the beast’s heart was located. Of course, given that its head hung down over that part of its body, Yang Xiu had to wait for the perfect time to loose in order to hit the gap correctly, which was why she’d occasionally been off by a tiny fraction of an inch.

She actually appreciated the extra challenge, otherwise the fight would have been too easy.

Seeing as how the armadillo was not dead yet, though, she’d apparently missed the heart. Which was okay. She didn’t know exactly where it was after all. A good portion of the bone shell in that area appeared to be compromised, though, she figured a few more chances would be appropriate.

She loosed again. The arrow again penetrated, but the beast still didn’t die. It did try to flee, though, meaning she had to run to keep ahead of it.

Neither the next arrow nor the one after that caused it to fall over. Finally, the fifth arrow that penetrated seemed to hit something vital as the armadillo let out an awful caterwauling and fell over.

A minute or two later, it was dead.

She frowned. How much quicker would she have been able to kill it if her arrows had been imbued with Razor Edge Sharpness?

Yang Ru was built to fight solo against other cultivators. He had the toughness needed to go toe to toe with probably anyone in the same minor realm and the strength to do the damage needed to take his opponents out.

Yang Xiu had some advantages. Her speed should stand out among her peers, and it would definitely be hard for them to beat someone they couldn’t hit. And her accuracy and rate of release for her arrows was, according to Kang Lin, outstanding.

Those strengths would make Yang Xiu a difficult out for anyone in the tournament, even Yang Ru. But they wouldn’t make her a favorite. To have a chance to win, she needed a competitive advantage. An extra edge. A Razor Edge.