Volume 2, Chapter 32: The Main Bracket Begins
Lakan sat in the broadcast booth, leaning so far back in his plush leather chair that it groaned in protest.
In front of him was a high-tech console with glowing buttons and three different microphones. Beside him sat a very professional, very nervous announcer named Lin, who was currently trying to straighten his tie for the hundredth time.
"Professor Lakas," Lin said, his voice cracking slightly. "It is an… honor to have the Dean of the Hall of the Origin with us today. Are you ready for the opening match of the main bracket?"
A few days ago, Lakan had been forcefully given a promotion he didn't ask for. He was strictly a Senior Professor at the Hall of the Origin. Being a Dean involved too much paperwork and too many meetings, which Lakan avoided like the plague. He'd much rather be in the back of a classroom or at a street food stall than running a department.
He blamed it all on his Great Priest.
She was a beautiful and mature-looking woman, with a gentle presence that reminded him of a quiet spring breeze. She was the mother of Xiao Xiao, the young girl with the twin martial souls. Her own martial soul was a rare phoenix-like flute, a graceful instrument that could produce melodies capable of soothing the soul or commanding the winds. It was that same flute martial soul that had given her the perfect compatibility to become Lakan's Great Priest. Since she has his bestowed divine power upon her, she had sensed his true presence almost immediately but just wasn't certain at those times. And of course, she had used that knowledge to "gently encourage" the academy board to promote him.
Of course, Lakan already told her to not tell anyone about his true identity.
Lakan sighed. "That woman is too sharp for her own good," he muttered under his breath.
"I'm mostly here for the air conditioning," Lakan said, tapping one of the microphones to see if it was on. Thump. Thump. "And I heard the catering in the VIP booth has those little meat pies. Are we getting those? Or do I have to go down there and steal some?"
"We… we can certainly arrange for pies, Professor," Lin stammered, looking at the camera with a panicked expression. "The match is about to begin! It's the Central Anito Academy versus the Hidden Mist Institute!"
Lakan squinted at the screen. "Hidden Mist? Oh, those kids. They use the 'Cloud-Trap' style. Very annoying. If you aren't careful, you end up swinging at air while they pick your pockets."
••••••
Down on the platform, Yuhao felt the change in the air before he saw it.
The Hidden Mist team didn't look like much. They were thin, wiry students dressed in dull grey robes. Their captain was a girl with short, choppy hair and eyes that seemed to constantly shift focus.
"Don't let them spread out," Yuhao warned, his hand moving to his forehead. He didn't want to open the Third Eye yet — the headache from the roof terrace was still a dull throb — but he needed the basic Gaze of Openings.
"I'll burn the mist away before they can even start," Ma Xiaotao said, her hands already beginning to glow with a banked orange heat.
"Wait—"
But the Hidden Mist captain was faster. She didn't charge. She slammed both palms into the dirt.
Resonance: Shifting Fog.
It wasn't a soul skill in the traditional sense. It was a rhythmic disruption of the local movement of energy. The ground beneath Yuhao's feet suddenly groaned. Massive, jagged walls of stone and reinforced earth shot upward from the arena floor, moving with terrifying speed.
It was a maze.
The walls didn't just rise; they vibrated. The sound was a low, oscillating hum that messed with Yuhao's internal equilibrium.
"Xiaotao! Tang Ya!" Yuhao shouted.
But they were gone. A ten-foot-thick wall of vibrating stone had slammed down between them. In less than five seconds, the open arena had been turned into a series of isolated, foggy corridors.
Yuhao stood alone in a narrow alley of grey stone. The mist was so thick he couldn't see his own boots.
•••••••
"Well, that's embarrassing," Lakan's voice boomed over the stadium speakers. "You see that, Lin? That's the Triangular Pivot used in reverse. They didn't move themselves; they moved the environment to create blind spots. Smart kids. Lazy, but smart."
"Professor, the Anito team is completely fractured!" Lin shouted into his mic. "Huo Yuhao is isolated! He's just a Spirit Eyes user! Without his teammates to protect him, he's a sitting duck!"
"A duck?" Lakan chuckled. The sound of him biting into a meat pie echoed through the speakers. "He's been practicing his Suntukan. If I were that Mist kid, I'd be very careful where I put my hands."
•••••••
In the fog, Yuhao heard a footstep.
He didn't open his Third Eye. Instead, he dropped into a low, relaxed stance. He closed his physical eyes entirely. He focused on the Center-Point Stillness.
In Lakan's system, the Center-Point Stillness wasn't just a place. It was a complete mental and physical state. You imagine yourself standing at the exact middle of a compass — North, South, East, West, and the four diagonals. Every attack in the world must come from one of those eight directions. If you stay perfectly still and balanced at the center, the world has to come to you. It's like being the eye of a storm — everything spins around you, but you remain calm and unmoved. No wasted movement, no telegraphing your next action. You simply wait for the opponent to commit, then use their own force against them.
It shared many principles with the ancient art of Tai Chi that Lakan had studied back on Earth. In Tai Chi, you never meet force with force. You yield, redirect, and borrow the opponent's momentum. The Center-Point Stillness worked the same way. You didn't resist the attack head-on. You let it flow around you, staying rooted like a mountain while moving like water. The moment the opponent overextended, you used their own energy to unbalance them. It was softness overcoming hardness, balance defeating brute strength.
But there were important differences. Tai Chi was primarily a health and longevity practice, designed for slow, meditative movements that cultivated inner harmony over many years. The Center-Point Stillness, however, was built for combat. It was fast, explosive, and deeply integrated with soul power circulation. While Tai Chi taught you to flow gently like a river, the Center-Point taught you to become the calm center of a battlefield compass, ready to strike with seadly accuracy the instant an opening appeared. It wasn't about long-term wellness. It was about surviving the next second.
A grey-robed student blurred out of the mist to his left. He was wielding a pair of short, serrated daggers. Behind him, a misty, ethereal Fog Serpent Soul Spirit coiled, its translucent body blending perfectly with the thick fog.
Yuhao didn't panic. He used the Triangular Pivot.
Instead of jumping back, he stepped forward at a 45-degree angle toward the attacker's shoulder. It was a tiny movement, no more than two feet. But by shifting his weight onto that diagonal line, he moved into the attacker's blind spot. The daggers whistled through the empty air where Yuhao's chest had been a millisecond ago.
The Triangular Pivot was one of the first movements Lakan had taught in the Eight Directional Flow Scripture. It wasn't about running away. It was about using simple geometry to turn a direct attack into a wasted swing. You stepped at a 45-degree angle, creating a triangle between your position, the attacker's front, and their side. This kept you out of their strongest line of force while putting you in a position to counter from their weaker flank. In practice, it looked almost lazy — just a small sidestep — but it was incredibly effective. It was like how a boxer slips a punch by moving their head just a few inches off the centerline, or how a fencer uses an angular lunge to bypass a straight thrust. The difference was that the Triangular Pivot was designed to work with soul power circulation. You didn't just move your feet; you shifted your center of gravity and soul power flow at the same time, making the movement faster and more stable than ordinary footwork.
When combined with soul power, the Triangular Pivot became deceptively fast. A well-trained user could execute the step in less than a heartbeat, often appearing to the opponent as if they had simply vanished from one spot and reappeared in another. It wasn't true teleportation — it was perfect timing and efficient movement. The soul power burst from the calves and core created a sudden acceleration that made the pivot feel instantaneous, especially when the user was already in the Center-Point Stillness. This speed came from economy of motion rather than brute force, allowing even lower-ranked soul masters to dodge attacks from much stronger opponents by staying just outside their effective range.
Yuhao didn't stop. He pivoted on his lead foot and drove his elbow into the student's ribs.
Thud.
The student gasped, the air leaving his lungs in a sharp wheeze. The Fog Serpent Soul Spirit hissed and faded as its master stumbled back into the mist.
"One," Yuhao whispered.
Then came the Captain.
The Mist Captain appeared at the end of the corridor. She didn't use daggers. She wore heavy brass knuckles etched with blue Crystalline circuits. A swirling Mist Phantom Soul Spirit hovered around her, its form constantly shifting and making her silhouette hard to pin down.
"You're the navigator," she said, her voice echoing strangely off the stone walls. "Without your Phoenix and your Grass, you're just a kid who can see a bit better than most. Let's see how you handle a real weight."
She lunged.
She used a version of the Diamond Glide, zig-zagging through the fog so fast she looked like three different people. It was a high-speed offensive advance, using soul power to burst from the calves. Her Mist Phantom Soul Spirit amplified the confusion, creating multiple afterimages.
The Diamond Glide was one of the more aggressive movements in the Eight Directional Flow Scripture. It wasn't just running fast — it was a controlled zigzag advance that used short, explosive bursts of soul power from the calves and core. The user would step at sharp angles, changing direction every few feet to make it nearly impossible for an opponent to lock onto a straight line of attack. In practice, it looked like the fighter was weaving through invisible obstacles, leaving the enemy constantly guessing where the next strike would come from. It was especially deadly in close quarters or foggy conditions, where the constant changes in direction made the user appear to multiply.
It shared similarities with the fast, angular footwork found in Filipino Kali. In Kali, practitioners use quick, triangular steps and rapid direction changes to close distance while staying elusive, often combining it with blade or stick work. The Diamond Glide took that foundation and enhanced it with soul power, allowing for even sharper bursts and better control over momentum. The main difference was that Kali footwork was designed for practical street or battlefield combat with weapons, while the Diamond Glide was optimized for soul master battles, where the user could channel energy directly into the legs for explosive speed without tiring as quickly.
When executed properly, the Diamond Glide made the user incredibly fast. A well-trained practitioner could cover ten meters in the time it took most people to blink twice, appearing as a blur of motion with multiple afterimages trailing behind them. The soul power bursts from the calves created short, powerful accelerations that felt almost like teleportation to the opponent, especially when combined with mist or fog to hide the exact foot placement. This speed came at a cost, though — it required precise control of the Crystalline Vessel to avoid tearing the leg muscles or meridians from the sudden changes in direction.
Yuhao's Third Eye snapped open.
The world turned into a wire-frame map. He saw her coming. He saw the burst of energy in her legs. He also saw the flaw — she was over-extending her right side to maintain that speed.
He stepped into the Center-Point.
As she arrived, swinging a massive, Crystalline-enhanced hook, Yuhao didn't dodge. He used his left hand to parry her forearm, guiding the blow past his head. At the same time, he pulled his right fist back to his hip.
He activated the Crystalline Vessel.
His skin took on that familiar, translucent white sheen. He felt the soul power in his meridians begin to churn, not like a fire, but like a piston. This was Panununtukan — the vibrational pulse.
In Lakan's teachings, a punch isn't just a hit. If you hit a wall, your hand stops at the surface. But if you pulse your energy at the exact moment of impact, the force travels through the wall like a whip crack — the energy concentrates and snaps forward, bypassing surface resistance. It was the same principle as a tuning fork: the vibration doesn't stop at the surface; it resonates through the entire object, shaking it from the inside out. The Crystalline Vessel made this possible by turning the body into a stable, high-capacity conduit, allowing the pulse to travel cleanly without tearing the user's own meridians apart.
Yuhao drove his fist into the Captain's stomach.
He didn't just hit her. He timed his soul power to "snap" the moment his knuckles touched her robes.
BOOM.
It wasn't a loud explosion. It was a deep, wet thud that sounded like a drum being struck inside a cave.
The Mist Captain's eyes went wide. The vibrational pulse bypassed her leather armor and her external soul-power shield. It went straight into her core. She didn't fly backward; she just dropped. Her knees hit the dirt, and she vomited a bit of bile, her breath completely gone.
"That's… not a soul skill," she wheezed, clutching her stomach.
"It's just physics," Yuhao said. He was breathing hard, the blood beginning to leak from his nose again.
"Ouch," Lakan's voice rang out through the arena. "Did you see that, Lin? That's the Echoing Strike. It's like hitting a bell. The bell stays still, but the sound inside rattles everything to pieces. That girl is going to have a very sore stomach for about a week. Maybe two."
"I… I can't believe it!" Lin shouted. "Huo Yuhao just took down a higher-ranked Captain with a single punch! No flashy soul skills, no massive spiritual shock — just a punch!"
"Skills are just fancy ways to hide bad form," Lakan said. He sounded like he was leaning back even further, probably putting his boots on the desk. "The kid is learning. He stopped trying to look at everything and started looking at the one thing that mattered. The gap."
•••••
Across the arena, the stone walls began to crumble. Without the Captain's concentration, the Shifting Fog resonance died.
Ma Xiaotao and Tang Ya burst through the clearing mist. Ma Xiaotao was covered in soot, looking like she had tried to punch her way through the stone walls (which she probably had).
They stopped when they saw Yuhao standing over the kneeling Mist Captain.
"You're okay?" Ma Xiaotao asked, her eyes wide.
"I'm fine," Yuhao said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He gave a small, shaky thumbs-up.
•••••
Up in the booth, Lakan stood up and stretched.
"Alright, match is over. Where are those meat pies, Lin? I'm starving."
End of Volume 2, Chapter 32