Chapter 218 | Drawing the Butcher

Chapter 218: 218 | Drawing the Butcher

That evening, the lanterns along the western wing of the Southern Maple Compound burned late into the night.

Inside the quiet recovery hall, Zhou Kai lay propped against a stack of linen bolsters on a low wooden bed. His broken jaw had been set and bound with green medicinal paste, and his right leg was encased in a thick splint of spirit-jade bamboo that radiated a cool, steady herbal mist.

Elder Liu stood beside the bed, wiping her hands with a clean white cloth as she closed her second medicine chest.

"The Jade-Bone pill and a Tier-3 Marrow-Mending Pill have stabilized the shattered kneecap," Elder Liu said, her voice cool and steady as she addressed Gao Chen, Fang Yu, Chen Hao, and Instructor Qing standing near the foot of the bed. "His meridians were spared permanent damage because Qing sealed his thigh vessels before the marrow shifted. However, he will not be able to stand on this leg for at least two months."

Fang Yu let out a long breath of relief before his fists tightened again. "As long as Senior Brother Zhou isn’t crippled for life... those Black-Sun bastards truly have no bottom line."

On the bed, Zhou Kai turned his bandaged face toward the doorway as Lin Tian stepped quietly into the hall.

Seeing Lin Tian, Zhou Kai struggled to sit up straighter, his eyes red with shame and gratitude. Through his stiff, swollen jaw, he forced out a hoarse, slurred whisper.

"Junior Brother Lin... tomorrow morning... be careful of Zhao Lie’s last steps. He hides an explosive footwork art beneath his saber stance..."

Instructor Qing stepped forward and pressed a firm hand on Zhou Kai’s shoulder, keeping him from straining his set bones.

"Rest and stop talking," Qing said quietly, though her dark eyes were cold as iron. "Your match is over. Leave tomorrow’s ring to those still standing."

Lin Tian walked up to the side of the bed and looked down at the thick jade splint around Zhou Kai’s knee.

"Get some sleep, Senior Brother Zhou," Lin Tian said evenly. "You only lost one knee today. Tomorrow, I will collect the interest for you in full."

Zhou Kai’s eyes glistened as he sank back against the bolsters and gave a slow, heavy nod.

As they stepped out of the recovery hall into the cool courtyard breeze, Instructor Qing paused for a heartbeat beside the stone path while Elder Liu and the other disciples walked ahead.

Without turning her head fully toward Lin Tian, Qing spoke in a low voice meant only for his ears.

"Elder Mo was seen entering the Black-Sun Sect’s armory carriage," she murmured, her fingers resting tightly on her sword hilt. "Zhao Lie will not enter Stage tomorrow with the same artifact he used today. Do not drag out the exchange."

Lin Tian glanced at her under the lantern light, noticing how her ears warmed slightly the instant his eyes lingered on her neck.

"Is the Head Referee worried about me?" Lin Tian asked softly.

Qing’s posture stiffened at once.

"I am reminding a representative not to get careless before the quarter-finals," she replied quickly, turning on her heel and striding briskly up the path toward her Western Private Pavilion before he could say another word.

When dawn broke over Sky-Pillar City on the second day of the Regional Tournament, the crowd pouring into the Heavenly Colosseum was even denser than the morning before.

Word of the first round’s clashes—Su Ling’s one-sword freeze, Zhao Lie’s ruthless crippling of a Crimson Nimbus representative, and Lin Tian’s terrifying one-armed strike that had blasted Iron-Peak Sect’s Lei Zhen forty feet into a wall—had spread through every teahouse and tavern in the city overnight.

By the time the morning sun lit the central.

Up in the Crimson Nimbus Upper Sect Pavilion, Elder Liu and Elder Bai took their seats. Without needing a word of today, the empty stone chair immediately to Elder Bai’s right had been left for Lin Tian, while Gao Chen, Chen Hao, and Fang Yu stood just behind them.

In the Black-Sun Sect’s side, Elder Mo sat sipping spirit tea with a calm, sinister smile. Behind him stood Mo Yan and Zhao Lie.

Instead of the iron saber he had carried yesterday, Zhao Lie held a newly unsealed weapon wrapped in dark-crimson leather straps—a four-foot-long, broad-backed cleaver whose exposed spine gleamed the color of dried blood.

BONG—!

The bronze war-bell tolled from the magistrate tower, signaling the start of the Second Round—the Top Thirty-Two.

To speed up the tournament schedule, all four stages opened simultaneously.

In the very first set of bouts, Gao Chen stepped onto Stage Three against a Peak Level 8 disciple from the Cloud-Spear Sect, while Frost-Moon Valley’s Su Ling took Stage Four. Both matches ended within ten breaths—Su Ling sweeping her opponent off the platform in a curtain of frost, and Gao Chen piercing through the spearman’s defense with three thrusts to advance cleanly into the Top Sixteen.

Before the cheers from Stage Three and Stage Four could even settle, the chief magistrate’s voice boomed across the central pit.

"Stage One, Match Two! Lin Tian of the Crimson Nimbus Sect, versus Zhao Lie of the Black-Sun Sect!"

A deafening roar surged through the spectators as every eye snapped toward the main stage at the center of the colosseum.

Down on the western staircase of Stage One, Zhao Lie ripped the bindings off his new weapon and leaped heavily onto the stage.

THUD!

As his boots struck the stone, he swung the wide, blood-colored cleaver through the air with a savage whistle and rested its thick spine across his shoulder.

Looking up toward the Crimson Nimbus sect, Zhao Lie grinned widely, lifted his right hand, and slapped his own right kneecap twice—laughing out loud in front of the entire colosseum to mock the crippled Zhou Kai!

In the Crimson Nimbus pavilion, Fang Yu’s eyes turned bloodshot. "That shameless dog—!"

"Let him laugh while he still has legs to stand on," Elder Liu said coldly, not a ripple of emotion on her face as she looked at Lin Tian.

Lin Tian rose calmly from the stone chair beside Elder Bai.

Walking down at an slow pace, he stepped onto the Stage One and stopped fifteen paces across from Zhao Lie. The Profound Void-Yang Blade remained strapped across his back, still wrapped tightly in its cloth.

Down on the joint supervision bench ten yards from the edge of Stage One, Instructor Qing sat with her spine straight as a spear, her cold gaze locked onto the stage referee—a senior deacon from the host Sky-Pillar Sword Sect—ensuring there would be no biased interference today.

On the platform, Zhao Lie spat to the side and pointed the wide tip of his crimson cleaver at Lin Tian’s chest.

"Yesterday you got lucky against a idiot like Lei Zhen who only knew how to stand still behind a shield," Zhao Lie sneered, running his rough thumb along the blood-red flat of his new blade. "Elder Mo personally lent me this Crimson-Marrow Saber last night! Since your senior brother is lying in bed missing a kneecap today, why don’t I break both of yours so the two of you can share a room?"

Lin Tian did not reply to the taunt.

Instead, as Zhao Lie boasted and poured a trickle of his Peak Level 9 Foundation Qi into the crimson cleaver, faint crimson runes flickered deep within Lin Tian’s golden pupils.

Insight Eye.

As a master Artifact Refiner, Lin Tian’s gaze stripped away the outer glare of the saber in a fraction of a second.

What he saw beneath the surface made his eyes narrow slightly.

To an ordinary cultivator, the Crimson-Marrow Saber looked like a vicious but standard northern fire-attributed heavy blade.

Yet through the Insight Eye, Lin Tian saw that the inner structure of the weapon had not been forged with spirit-coal or earthly fire at all. Buried three layers beneath the outer metal was a core of Corrupted Blood-Iron carved with inverted, parasitic grooves—a quintessential hallmark of demonic blood-refining!

More importantly, as wisps of Zhao Lie’s blood-qi circulated through those hidden grooves, the blade was not holding the energy inside. A faint, almost invisible thread of dark-red frequency was leaking downward from the tip of the saber, resonating directly with a hairline seam hidden beneath the array-reinforced of Stage One!

A demonic blood-channeling core inside a righteous sect’s weapon... and it’s tuned to the floor beneath the stage?

In a single breath, Lin Tian’s mind connected the pieces. The demonic commander who had ambushed their ship on the northern route had not been hired mercenaries at all—the Black-Sun Sect was working directly with demonic blood-cultivators, and they were using these tournament weapons to feed something buried beneath the Heavenly Colosseum!

"Still staring like a mute?" Zhao Lie barked, mistaking Lin Tian’s silence for fear as he gripped the hilt of his saber with both hands. "Don’t worry—when I crush your jaw first, you won’t need a tongue anyway!"

At the edge of the platform, the Sky-Pillar Sword Sect referee raised his hand and dropped it sharply.

"Stage One, Match Two—begin!"