Clang! Clang, clang!
Blow after blow, strike after strike.
Inside Yuan Yixin's seemingly barren and withered body, hot blood surged like magma—heavy, crimson, and scorching hot, carrying an unspeakable, overwhelming weight as if it would melt everything before it.
His sword stance shifted from defense to all-out offense. If the earlier clashes had been a contest of swordsmanship with Qi Xiuyuan, this moment had thoroughly escalated into a life-or-death struggle.
As the blades moved at blinding speed, they blurred into phantom images. In the blink of an eye, the two weapons collided several times, sending bursts of sparks exploding amid the flashes of steel.
"That's it!"
Finally, amid that uninhibited, swaggering shout, Qi Xiuyuan cast aside the sword forms in his mind, surrendered to his instincts, and reversed his grip on the blade...
Rip!
Crossing paths and turning their backs to each other, the two figures sprayed fresh blood. Two crimson arterial jets splashed onto the floor, blooming like flowers of blood.
"..."
Half-crouching on the ground, Qi Xiuyuan slowly lowered his head. He saw the torn fabric at his flank and the blood flowing down from the wound.
"Old man," he straightened up, turned to look at the old man, and said with a smile and a tone of deep emotion, "that move was way too youthful!"
Drip... drop...
A single drop of blood slid down the blade of the horizontal sabre and fell to the floor.
Standing in place, Yuan Yixin raised a hand to touch the bone-deep wound on his chest. His clothes were already soaked red with blood.
So close. Still a hair's breadth away.
Thinking this to himself, he turned around and once again assumed his sword stance.
He paid no heed to his own injuries.
"What an old fellow who refuses to grow old."
A genuine smile hung on Qi Xiuyuan's face. His response was to draw his sabre into the opening stance.
His right hand sheathed the blade, his left hand reverse-gripped the hilt, and his body sank slightly.
"Xinyu Saber Technique," he dropped his smile and said softly, "please advise me."
The murderous chill in those black eyes masked the last trace of greenness on his face.
This was the first time he had assumed this stance; it meant he truly acknowledged Yuan Yixin.
The Xinyu Saber Technique, also known as the Qi Family Saber Arts, borrows the superior techniques of the foreign barbarians to conquer them, born specifically to shatter Japanese sword arts.
Vicious and ruthless, bold and violent, killing in a single strike.
Looking at Qi Xiuyuan's stance—one that resembled quick-draw techniques yet was entirely different—a daze flickered across Yuan Yixin's eyes, and once again, decades-old memories surfaced of his teacher being defeated by that very move.
"So, it's called the 'Xinyu Saber Technique'?"
Yuan Yixin muttered in a raspy voice, finally wearing a relieved smile as he, too, lowered his body and pulled his sword back to his waist.
The two stared at each other without blinking.
Bang! Bang!
Under Chu Zihang's watchful gaze, both figures suddenly vanished.
He could only hear a terrifying whistle rip through the wind, imagining that anything standing in the path of that shrill scream would be torn to shreds.
In the span of a single flash, Qi Xiuyuan and Yuan Yixin crossed paths and turned their backs to each other. Both the start and the halt were startlingly abrupt, shifting from extreme motion to absolute stillness with no transition whatsoever.
"So fast," Yuan Yixin sighed.
He looked down at the blade resting against his neck. The Ten-Grasp Broken Sword he had been gripping so tightly fell to the floor, and even the cuffs at his wrists slowly split open.
In that strike, Qi Xiuyuan had shown mercy. He hadn't taken his life; he had merely severed his wrist tendons.
The quick-draw method within the Qi Family Saber Arts was designed explicitly to counter Japanese swordsmanship—gathering the momentum of the strike beneath the feet, reverse-gripping the blade, and sweeping upward in a motion similar to Japanese sword-drawing techniques.
In that fleeting instant, Qi Xiuyuan's strike unfurled with a crisp whistle, like a towering wall crashing forward. The killing intent was suffocatingly dense, executed in one breathless, blindingly fast motion.
Which meant Qi Xiuyuan had won...
Just as Chu Zihang, watching from the sidelines, thought the outcome was decided and moved to stand up, he saw Yuan Yixin throw a bare-handed punch straight at Qi Xiuyuan's face.
But Qi Xiuyuan dodged it with a grinning lean backward, followed up with a right hook, which Yuan Yixin also evaded before casually delivering a backhanded slap to the old man's head.
Thud!
Yuan Yixin dropped flat onto the floor, a bitter smile touching his lips as he said, "I lost."
Thoroughly lost.
Just like his teacher all those years ago, he too had fallen to this very move.
"Old man, at your age, don't be a sore loser."
Qi Xiuyuan shook his head helplessly, grabbed his arm, and hauled him up.
Yet the moment his hand closed around that arm, his movements involuntarily paused.
This arm was far leaner and more withered than he had imagined. This was an arm that, for forty years, had survived purely by gripping a sword.
Forty years of delving into swordsmanship; forty years of a road that had reached its end today.
Hum-whir! Hum-whir!
Blue and red lights from outside the window washed over the training floor.
The ambulance Chu Zihang had called in advance had arrived.
Yet just as Qi Xiuyuan moved to help him down the stairs, the old man suddenly spoke in a calm voice.
"Actually, I never expected to win in the first place."
Hearing this, Qi Xiuyuan paused. He listened as the old man calmly continued, "I didn't even entertain a shred of a thought about winning."
"Because I also had a student in Japan whom my main family calls the 'Emperor'. His name is Genji Chisaki. He made me realize my teacher was right: the gap between a genius and an ordinary person is dozens of times greater than I ever imagined."
"From that moment on, I decided to find another born prodigy, someone who could play the part of the Grim Reaper lowering the final curtain on my life. That's why I kept wondering how to lose with style, so my exit could be more graceful."
"Until you appeared before me, mastering in a single day the swordsmanship it took me a year to learn. I knew I had found him."
At this, the old man raised his head, looked at Qi Xiuyuan with a faint smile, and said, "Watching you bathed in the sunlight pouring through the window, I didn't feel a single ounce of jealousy. I was simply thinking..."
"What a young and handsome Grim Reaper. As the one to lower the curtain, there is no one more suitable than you. That's why I poured everything I knew into teaching you—I wanted to cross blades with you fairly and squarely, and face defeat and death with equanimity."
"But, ah, but..."
He lowered his head and raised a hand to cover his face, yet tears still slipped down his cheeks.
After forty years dedicated to the path of the sword, how could he let go so easily?
All that unsightly, struggling wretchedness boiled down to three simple words.
Unwilling to lose. Resentful of defeat.
Forty years had passed in the blink of an eye, and a man who achieved nothing had turned gray overnight.
Once the sword was taken from him, what was left to support him on his journey forward?
If those expectations, heavy as a curse, truly faded away, what would remain?
"..."
Watching the bowed head of the old man, Qi Xiuyuan shook his head and sighed inwardly.
The old man before him was like a scholar tree—perhaps inconspicuous, perhaps growing slowly, but time never flowed in vain. Every inch of passing season was carved into the rings of the trunk, and that solid foundation had grown him into a towering tree, resilient and deeply rooted.
Forget it.
To cut down an old tree with his own hands, to personally end an old man's decades of obsession and passion—even for someone like him, that was a cruel thing to do.
"You said you once taught an 'Emperor', and that he was also a born prodigy, right?"
Yuan Yixin instinctively lifted his head, only to see Qi Xiuyuan smiling faintly. "Don't you want to see whether ancient Chinese swordsmanship or ancient Japanese swordsmanship is truly stronger? Surely you don't think you alone represent ancient Japanese swordsmanship?"
"So, keep living on, ignobly and ugly as it may be. Go back and teach that so-called 'Emperor'. I will go look for him too, and when the time comes, I'll let you see which of them is stronger."
"..."
Yuan Yixin remained silent. He gazed into the young man's eyes, searching for a trace of contemptuous hypocrisy, but all he found was pure clarity. Those eyes were like open windows, laying bare his genuine emotions without a single reservation.
Finally, a glimmer of light surfaced in his murky eyes.
"You brat," he lowered his head, pressed a hand to his brow, and gave a bitter smile. "You really are cunning."