The swordsman's steel blade shrieked through the air, a grey arc aimed to split Gen from shoulder to hip. Gen met it not with a block, but with a rising, angled strike of his green bamboo rod.
***THWACK-CRACK!***
The sound was not of bamboo breaking, but of something dense and hardened meeting force with its own stubborn resilience. A spray of pale green splinters flew, but the rod held. The impact shuddered up Gen's arms, a familiar, grounding ache. He rode the force back, skidding three paces on the smooth stone floor.
The swordsman's eyes widened. He glanced at his own blade, then back at the unbroken bamboo. "Reinforced wood?" he muttered.
A fierce, genuine grin split Gen's face. It felt good. The shock in the opponent's eyes felt better. "It's made of better stuff now," Gen said, his voice tight with the thrill of the clash. He didn't explain about will or spirit. The bamboo's unyielding presence was explanation enough.
"Pretty stick," the man sneered, recovering his composure. "Let's see how it handles a proper edge."
His body *hummed*. A bronze-gold light, solid and practical, flared around his limbs—**Jingdao** reinforcement, strengthening muscle and bone. Then, with a sharp, outward gesture of his free hand, he performed **Shidow**. The air around his steel blade rippled, condensing, pulling sharpness from the very atmosphere to layer over the metal. The sword's edge didn't glow; it seemed to vanish into a thin, distorting haze, a line of focused cutting intent.
He came again, faster this time, the enhanced speed of his legs driving him forward. The sharpened blade came in a clean, horizontal slash at waist level, meant to cut Gen in two.
Gen's first instinct was to meet it. To pour his own Jingdao into his arms, reinforce them, and smash the strike aside. The impulse was a hot pulse in his core. But in the space between heartbeats, a memory surfaced, clear and cold as mountain water. *Your body is not just a weapon. It is the temple that houses the weapon. A broken temple shelters nothing.*
Black-Green Wood's words, grumbled over a sparse fire.
Gen's forward dash became a pivot. He stamped his lead foot down, but not to brace. He pushed a burst of his own, still-recovering Jingdao energy not into his arms, but into the sole of his boot and the air beneath it. It wasn't enough to fly, just enough to *skate*. The stone offered no purchase, but the compressed air did. He slid sideways, a clean, evasive step that carried him just outside the arc of the humming blade. The distorting edge passed so close he felt the chill of severed air on his tunic.
As the slash spent its force, Gen was already moving back in. His bamboo rod, carried by the momentum of his evasive slide, whipped around in a short, powerful arc. It slammed into the swordsman's exposed rib cage.
***THUD.***
The man grunted, the breath rushing from his lungs. He stumbled back several paces, his sharpened blade dipping, a flicker of pain and shock on his face. He caught himself, glaring. "What was that?" he spat, rubbing his ribs. "I thought Gen Jiang was a prodigy of the First Wheel! A brute force terror! Why dance away from a direct contest? Is the famous son of the Immortal… *afraid* of a little steel?"
In the great hall below, the murmurs around Madame Su echoed the sentiment.
"He dodged?"
"With that opening? A full Jingdao reinforcement could have shattered that blade!"
"Has he lost his nerve?"
"Maybe the Tower's assessment was right. Fifth floor strength is all he has."
Madame Su watched, her hands clasped tightly within her sleeves. A small, unexpected warmth bloomed in her chest, pushing back the cold worry. *He didn't take the bait. He is thinking.* The old Gen, the boy before the fall, would have met that enhanced strike head-on out of sheer pride, trusting his superior reinforcement to overwhelm. This Gen had calculated. He knew his Jingdao was a river still refilling its banks, not a flood. He had used the minimum necessary, not for attack, but for movement. To protect the temple. Her lips pressed together, not in a frown, but to hold back a smile of fierce, proud relief.
Prince Jou Si, standing beside her, noted her subtle shift in expression. His voice was a polite, low murmur. "I heard a curious thing upon my arrival in Heaven's Gate. That young Gen Jiang's first act was to seek out the hermit, Black-Green Wood", He paused, letting the implication hang in the air between them, delicate as a poison needle. "One wonders what ailment or lack would compel such a desperate pilgrimage."
Madame Su's proud warmth instantly frosted over. She kept her eyes on the screen, her voice flat. "The young master's health is his own concern. His path is his own to walk."
"Of course," Jou Si said smoothly, his smile benign. "I imply no weakness. Only concern. The Tower is unforgiving to those whose capabilities are, shall we say, *in flux*. Survival here requires a certain… baseline of stability."
"He will find his way," Madame Su said, the words coming out more sharply than she intended. She believed them, but the prince's needling exposed the raw nerve of her own fear.
"Such faith," Jou Si observed, his tone lightly admiring, but his eyes were like polished stone. "It is a rare thing to see, placed so completely in one so… visibly tested. It reminds me of the faith many once placed in his father. Unconditional."
The comparison was a masterstroke, meant to wound by elevating her care to the level of a tragic flaw. Madame Su felt it land. She was silent for a long moment, watching Gen circle his opponent on the screen. *Is it blind?* she asked herself. *He is different. Scarred. He sought out a legend of survival, not power. He is thinking, not just raging.* The faith wasn't in his invincibility, but in his stubborn, dogged will to keep moving forward. It was a different kind of trust.
"I trust his will," she finally said, her voice quieter, more certain. "Just as I trusted his father's character. They are not the same thing."
Back in the cylindrical chamber, the fight had shifted. Gen, now on the offensive, focused his energy. This was not **Jingdao** for reinforcement. This was the nascent understanding of **Shidow**—Manipulation. He pulled at the particles of ambient Qi swirling in the wake of their clash, gathering them around his bamboo rod not to sharpen it, but to *weigh* it. He layered momentum onto its swing, a technique crude compared to the swordsman's sharpening, but effective.
He charged, the Qi-weighted bamboo cutting a deeper, louder swathe through the air. The swordsman, wary now, met it not with his body but with his own blade, channeling his Shidow into a visible extension of cutting energy—a blade of pure force that extended a foot past his steel.
***BOOM-WHAP!***
Bamboo met energy-blade. The collision released a deafening wave of force that rippled outwards, visibly distorting the air in the chamber and making the projected image in the great hall shimmer. Both combatants were thrown back.
The swordsman snarled, regaining his footing first. He saw Gen off-balance. This was it. He took two quick steps and committed to a huge, wide-armed swing with his energy-extended blade. It was aggressive, powerful, and designed to cut Gen in half from a distance where a dodge would be impossible.
Gen's eyes narrowed. Every instinct screamed to throw himself back or to the side. But the swing was too broad. Too showy. A skilled swordsman killed with efficiency, not spectacle. This was a move of someone who relied on his enhanced tools to do the work his technique lacked.
As the crescent of cutting force hissed toward him, Gen didn't leap. He dropped. He poured a jagged burst of Shidao compressed air into his legs and *shoved* against the floor, not upwards, but laterally. His body slid across the stone like a thrown pebble, propelled by the contraction of his own muscles and a focused push of air. The energy blade passed so close it sheared a lock of hair from his temple and left a stinging, thin red line across his jaw.
But he was inside the swing.
The swordsman was over-extended, wide open.
Gen, still sliding, uncoiled like a spring. He thrust his bamboo rod not like a club, but like a spearman making a killing lunge. The hardened, blunt end took the man squarely in the solar plexus.
***CRUNCH.***
The sound was sickening. The man's eyes bulged. He flew backwards, the wind utterly knocked from him, his energy blade dissipating into motes of light. He hit the far wall of the cylinder with a heavy thud and slumped, wheezing.
Gen pushed himself to his feet, breathing hard. A mistake. He should have closed the distance, finished it.
Before he could, the wheezing swordsman on the floor lifted a trembling hand. A faint, almost invisible thread of silver energy, like a spider's filament, snaked out from the tip of his still-clutched sword. Gen tried to sidestep, but it was too fast, too unexpected. It latched onto his left ankle, a cold, buzzing tether.
The man wiped blood from his lips with the back of his hand, a ragged, triumphant smile on his face. "Got you," he gasped. "Life-Hazard Line. A manipulation spell. The blade is now tied to that ankle. I can swing wild, I can swing blind. The edge will find its mark." He struggled to his feet, raising his sword. "It's over."
Gen looked down at the faint silver thread connecting his leg to the opponent's blade. He frowned, not in panic, but in assessment. His earlier thought crystallized. *Skilled with energy. Clumsy with the sword itself. He needs a trick to guarantee a hit.* The temple of his body was now tagged. The solution wasn't just to protect the temple.
He had to break the connection.