Moon Cultivation [Sci-fi Xianxia]

Right after the tournament, a girl approached Bao and politely asked for a duel.

Bao, still riding the high from dealing with the arrogant Hu Long, responded just as arrogantly, telling her to set the stake at two hundred points and send the challenge.

The girl apologised and said that two hundred was too much for a first duel. She asked him to lower it to at least fifty.

Bao tried to haggle and managed to bargain her up a bit. He accepted a stake of seventy-five points right away, and so the duel was scheduled for the following day.

Her name was Sang Seo-yeon. She wore black-and-blue armour, but besides metal alloys, her body was also draped in fabric: a short red sari over her armoured hips, and red scarves tied around her neck, wrists, and shins.

Was it like the red tassels on traditional Chinese weapons, used to hide movement and distract the eye?

She stepped onto the arena wielding a two-handed jian. Or at least, it looked like a jian. Maybe the weapon had a different name, but it resembled a long and thin two-handed sword with a small guard and a large ring instead of a pommel. It had a fairly traditional Eastern look, though purely utilitarian in design, without ornamentation.

I understood she was a Point cultivator, but I found it hard to imagine what techniques she might use. I hadn't seen anything on her besides that oversized toothpick, so I was eagerly looking forward to the match. Bao, now that the adrenaline had worn off, was feeling a bit nervous.

It all seemed like a setup. No one picks a tough opponent for their very first match. The girl must have had some sort of ace up her sleeve. And that red fabric was intriguing. Even the referee was eyeing her with interest.

Bao began spinning the vine before the signal, transforming his weapon into a flail, clearly showing he had no intention of starting with close combat. The judge had finally had enough of staring at her odd armour and gave the start signal.

Bao's flail spun and extended, the head growing heavy and lashing downwards from above. Seo-yeon didn't leap back; she simply raised her sword hilt-up, laid the blade across her shoulder, and took a soft sidestep. Instead of landing a crushing blow, the flail's head slid down the blade.

Bao's next strike was craftier, he swung the vine overhead, then lashed out horizontally, dropping the weapon to knee height.

Seo-yeon planted her sword tip-down on the floor and, bracing herself with one hand on the hilt, lifted her entire body into the air, balancing vertically on the blade.

Quite an intriguing and graceful move, especially with those red scraps fluttering around her.

At first glance, the move looked senseless, Bao had adjusted the length of his whip, and the flail's head whipped the sword out from beneath her.

The red scraps spun through the air.

From Bao's perspective, it probably looked even more confusing. He kept spinning his whip-flail, and she suddenly darted towards him like an arrow.

Amidst the flutter of red fabric, we all missed the sudden dash technique typical of Blade cultivators.

Bao deflected the strike at the last possible second, with his hand. The blade slid along the defensive formations, broke through, and scratched his left shoulder. He almost lost hold of his flail. He certainly lost control of it. It had already begun to recoil, but the flail's head bounced uncontrollably along the floor.

Bao was so stunned he completely missed those brief moments after the end of her technique, the moment when the girl was vulnerable. He gripped the handle tightly, forcing the vine to retract into a knot. The head of the flail trembled as it curled into a dense ball, but that took time, and in battle, time is costly.

Seo-yeon gave him no pause.

As soon as the recoil loosened its grip on her, her two-handed sword moved with sharp precision, like it was wielded by a seasoned fencer: a short step forward — the tip gliding straight for Bao's throat; a knock to the side — followed instantly by a thrust to the stomach; a pivoting step — and the blade reached for his thigh.

She didn't waste her strength with sweeping swings.

Her strikes were like a metronomic chain of thrusts: dry, fast, unadorned. Each new attack coming before the previous one had fully ended.

Bao had to defend not with his weapon, but by twisting his body and limbs independently.

He must have lowered his weight to the minimum with Mace Qi. He dodged, threw his shoulder back, crouched so that the blade whistled just centimetres above his head.

The vine in his hands had coiled back, but he had no space to make a proper swing while his opponent kept stabbing and stabbing with tireless rhythm.

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A few times, the tip actually struck his armour. His defensive formations couldn't keep up. Maybe he'd skimped on them. Maybe she was simply too strong. Or maybe it was the sword itself?

Bao grew angry, and as she made her next step, the flail suddenly uncoiled, crashing down right where her foot was meant to land.

Seo-yeon twisted mid-step, barely avoiding it. Her foot landed on the head of the flail.

With the halted step, her thrust was also interrupted. The sword blade froze, and Bao caught it with his left hand.

The mace, still in flail-mode, was yanked out from under Seo-yeon's foot.

Bao swung it in a furious arc, but the girl dove under his right arm, never letting go of her sword. The flail whooshed above her, while the sword's blade slipped beneath Bao's right armpit.

She pulled the blade towards herself. Bao's armour sparked where it clashed with the metal, and he leapt.

I couldn't quite tell what had just happened.

He had the advantage, and in a heartbeat, Bao let go of the flail and pulled off an incredible somersault, just to break contact.

Seo-yeon struck immediately, trying to stab him in the stomach while he was still mid-air, but Bao once again pulled off his weight-reduction trick. He twisted in the air, pushed off the flat of her blade with his hand, and vaulted over her.

While airborne, he grabbed the scarf wrapped around her neck and yanked, but the fabric tore like it had been woven from spider silk. Bao landed and leapt back to evade the next thrust.

The blade slid across his armour, sending golden sparks flying from the formation. Again, and Bao dropped into a crouch, one leg swinging upward to deflect the sword aside.

The girl didn't stop. She moved coldly, methodically, yet not without grace, like a killer from an Asian film.

A thrust to the knee. A thrust to the neck. A thrust to the solar plexus.

Bao twisted like a mad cat, parrying the blade with his legs!

Eventually, he stepped to the side and leaned so far down it looked like he'd collapse, but instead he launched forward like a rocket.

The blade's tip couldn't catch his back, and his hand reached the flail lying on the floor.

Snatching it up, Bao immediately widened the distance.

The vine uncoiled and extended; the heavy head crashed against the arena floor several metres away. Bao hopped and the flail coiled, pulling him toward it.

Seo-yeon dashed after him, but Bao threw the flail even farther, widening the gap again.

Then he began spinning the whip above his head, just like at the very start, and lashed out with a horizontal strike.

Seo-yeon didn't hesitate and responded with her now-familiar move. Once more, she planted her sword tip-down into the floor and, with a single fluid motion, lifted her body vertically into the air, balancing on the blade like an acrobat. Her red scarves spun through the air, and we all froze, waiting for a repeat of that earlier manoeuvre.

Bao wouldn't fall for the same trick twice!

And indeed, this time he didn't strike the blade. Instead, he let the vine stretch to its maximum and wrapped it around the sword. Only then did he pull, keeping her weapon locked in a vertical position.

Seo-yeon dropped to the ground, trying to keep her balance.

Bao pulled, and the sword started to give.

Seo-yeon braced her feet against the floor and leaned onto the blade's tip to resist, but Bao was stronger. Centimetre by centimetre, she was losing ground.

Once again, the fight looked like it had reached a stalemate, but Seo-yeon surprised us yet again!

She shifted her grip. Now her right hand, twisted thumb-down, was much closer to the ring that replaced the sword's pommel.

A split second, and the sword's hilt split into two uneven parts.

In Seo-yeon's hand flashed a second blade, a narrow dagger without a guard, with a large ring in place of a pommel.

The girl planted her foot in front of the sword's flat, near the tip, to further slow Bao's pull, and pressed the dagger against the point where the vine met the blade. Bao panicked and yanked, but the sword didn't come free from her grip.

Seo-yeon threw her full weight behind the dagger and slashed.

These vines were nearly as tough as metal, but…

She slashed again.

And again!

A single sword, without spikes… She wasn't just a pure Point! She was a classical swordsman — Point plus Blade!

That's why Bao had pulled away so abruptly. She'd sliced through his armour and nearly took his arm clean off!

The vine on her sword was caught between the blades like in a pair of scissors.

Bao lunged forward in a panic. He leapt and swung the vine. It arced and began wrapping around Seo-yeon, pulling him closer.

In the next instant, so many things happened that it took a replay to understand what had gone down.

Bao was already flying toward her, knee first, channelling Mace Qi into the strike.

At the same time, Seo-yeon sliced through the vine and freed her sword. At the moment of impact, she raised the tip and countered.

They were bound together by the vine, so the formations didn't activate. Not for him, and not for her.

Bao impaled himself — stomach on the sword, chest on the dagger. The long blade came out his back, while Seo-yeon took a crushing blow to the chest from his knee.

At the same time, the thicker end of the vine, the one near the flail's handle, coiled tightly around her neck.

They both collapsed onto the arena floor.

The referee was at their side in an instant, but froze in hesitation. The situation was critical, but he couldn't declare a winner.

Medics were already at the edge of the arena, ready to sprint in.

Bao didn't move, but the vine kept squeezing, crushing the girl's neck like a hydraulic press. She was still twitching, but the vine gave her no way to defend herself.

"Enough!" barked the judge and kicked Bao. "Stop!"

He leaned over and wrenched the vine's handle from Bao's hand by force.

Only then did the vine stop compressing her neck, but by then it had already become far too thin.

"Technician!" roared the judge. "Medics!"

They had to cut the girl's helmet off.

In fact, they first had to punch a hole in her neck, through metal and flesh, just to get her breathing, before they could begin pulling out twisted shards of steel embedded in her throat.

Even with the hole, breathing was hard — Bao's blow had shattered half her ribs.

They didn't dare remove the sword from Bao in the arena. That might have killed him outright. And the dagger was dangerously close to his heart, it had to be handled with utmost care.

Both duelists had come within inches of death, and the judge couldn't declare a winner. Normally, victory went to the last one standing, or at least the last one conscious, but this time the referee didn't take any chances, and we were grateful for it.

Bao was already suffering massive internal bleeding. A few moments longer, and it would've been clinical death.

In all my time here, it was the first true draw.

Without a doubt, it was the most spectacular fight I'd ever witnessed in the arena.

To hell with Gunther, sure, the guy was an efficient bastard, but this… this was a SHOWDOWN!