Chapter 223 | Unwrapping the Blade

Chapter 223: 223 | Unwrapping the Blade

The third morning of the Regional Tournament dawned beneath a sky of pale, cloudless iron.

Long before the bronze war-bell tolled its first chime, over thousands cultivators had packed every stone tier of the Heavenly Colosseum. Even disciples who had already been eliminated in the earlier rounds crowded, craning their necks.

Today was the Semi-Finals.

Out of sixty-four representatives from the major sects, only four remained standing:

Jian Wuchen of the Sky-Pillar Sword Sect, Tie Shan of the Iron-Peak Sect, Mo Yan of the Black-Sun Sect, and Lin Tian of the Crimson Nimbus Sect.

Because only two matches would be fought this morning, the hosting sect had deactivated Stages Two, Three, and Four array, merging their defensive array power entirely into Stage One at the dead center of the arena floor.

Up in the Crimson Nimbus Sect Viewing Terrace, Elder Liu and Elder Bai sat at the front balustrade.

Behind them stood Fang Yu and Chen Hao, alongside a pale but determined Gao Chen, who had insisted on wrapping a thick cloak over his bandaged chest so he could watch the semi-final with his own eyes.

Down on the joint supervision bench directly beside Stage One, Instructor Qing sat with her posture straight and composed.

The subtle tension that had lingered between her brows for years was completely gone; her skin carried a clear, luminous glow.

Not once did she glance overtly toward the Crimson Nimbus pavilion, yet when Lin Tian stood up from the chair beside Elder Bai, Qing’s fingers rested calmly and steadily on the hilt of her sword.

BONG—!

The great bronze war-bell tolled across the silent colosseum.

"First Semi-Final Bout!" the refree voice thundered. "Lin Tian of the Crimson Nimbus Sect, versus Mo Yan of the Black-Sun Sect!"

A massive roar erupted from the thousands of spectators.

Across the pit in the Black-Sun Sect’s Viewing Terrace, Elder Mo did not sit in his chair.

He stood right at the stone rail, his sunken eyes fixed coldly on the arena floor as Mo Yan leaped straight off the sixty-foot balcony!

BOOM!

Mo Yan’s legs smashed into the one side of Stage, sending a visible ripple through the protective array light.

He looked far more menacing than he had during his quarter-final match against Gao Chen yesterday.

Dark-crimson veins bulged faintly along his neck and temples, and in his right hand he carried a brand-new weapon that had not appeared in any previous round—a four-and-a-half-foot saber hybrid forged from dark, glossy scarlet metal, etched from guard to tip with a blazing black sun emblem.

The Tier-3 High-Grade Blood-Sun Saber—one of the best weapon of the Black-Sun Sect!

From the eastern staircase, Lin Tian walked calmly onto the stage and stopped twenty paces across from him.

The moment Lin Tian stepped into the ring, Mo Yan’s bloodshot eyes locked onto his face with bone-deep hatred.

"Lin Tian!" Mo Yan’s voice rasped across the stage like grinding iron. "For two days, you’ve relied on brute physical tricks to catch people off guard! You humiliated me, and you crippled Junior Brother Zhao in this very ring!"

Mo Yan raised the Blood-Sun Saber with one hand, letting its spiritual pressure roll across the stage.

"Today, Elder Mo personally given Blood-Sun Saber for this match!" Mo Yan snarled, a cruel, deranged grin twisting his lips. "Do you think I’m going to let you concede? I won’t just break your knees like you did to Zhao Lie—I’m going to sever all four of your limbs at the joints and throw your trunk at Elder Liu’s feet!"

Up in the Crimson Nimbus terrace, Gao Chen and Fang Yu clenched their fists in fury, while Elder Liu’s eyes turned as cold as an abyss.

In the center of Stage One, Lin Tian didn’t even blink at the threat.

Instead, faint crimson runes flickered quietly inside his golden pupils as his Insight Eye swept over the Tier-3 Blood-Sun Saber in Mo Yan’s hand—and then shifted downward to the stage floor beneath him.

What he saw made his gaze turn icy.

Inside Mo Yan’s Tier-3 saber sat a thick, pulsing rod of Refined Blood-Bone Iron—three times denser and more corrupted than the one inside Zhao Lie’s broken cleaver yesterday!

Worse still, beneath the surface of Stage One, the hairline rune seams that had absorbed the spilled blood and Qi from the past two days of matches were now glowing with a faint, subterranean crimson light.

Four massive, six-foot-long Demonic Blood-Sacrifice Spikes had been driven deep into the spirit-vein conduits beneath the four stages of the colosseum before the tournament had even begun.

Right now, three of the four underground spikes were already fully charged with the blood shed during the earlier rounds—and the main central spike directly beneath Stage One was sitting at ninety percent capacity, waiting only for the violent blood-qi clash to complete the seal!

So that’s why Elder Mo handed a Tier-3 corrupted weapon to a Foundation disciple, Lin Tian thought calmly. Win or lose, he wants the blood and demonic Qi from this saber to finish charging the underground array before the Finals.

"Why aren’t you barking back today, brat?!" Mo Yan shouted, mistaking Lin Tian’s quiet stare at his weapon for dread. "Scared of a real Tier-3 artifact?! Take out that piece of scrap iron on your back so I can chop it in half along with your neck!"

Lin Tian lifted his gaze from the floor to Mo Yan’s twisted face.

"You want to see what’s under the cloth?" Lin Tian asked quietly.

Slowly, Lin Tian raised his right hand to his left shoulder.

Instead of gripping the hilt with the wrapping still tied around it as he had against Lei Zhen and the Wind-Ridge disciple, Lin Tian’s fingers caught the loose end of the grey linen binding cord.

He gave it a single, smooth tug.

Fwoosh—

The long strips of grey linen unwound in the mountain breeze and drifted silently down onto the granite floor at his boots.

Across the forty thousand seats of the Heavenly Colosseum—and in both the Frost-Moon Valley gallery and the host Sky-Pillar Sword Sect terrace above—thousands of cultivators leaned forward at once.

Resting across Lin Tian’s back was no ordinary sword.

It was a heavy, four-foot-long broadsword forged from dark-gold Void stone.

Down its wide, midnight-gold spine ran nine intricate, sunken blood-grooves inlaid with glowing crimson-gold runes. Even before a single drop of spiritual Qi was poured into the hilt, the sheer weight and terrifying Tier-3 Peak-Grade pressure radiating from the naked metal caused the air around Lin Tian’s shoulders to distort like heat over a forge!

Up in the central host pavilion, Jian Wuchen’s eyes snapped wide open, his hand unconsciously tightening around his silver scabbard as he stared at the dark-gold broadsword below.

"A Peak Tier-3 heavy blade... refined to complete perfection without a single structural flaw?" the Sky-Pillar Sword Sect’s Grand Elder murmured in shock beside him. "Where did an inner disciple of the Crimson Nimbus Sect get a weapon of that caliber?!"

On Stage One, Lin Tian gripped the hilt and lifted the Profound Void-Yang Blade off his shoulder with one hand, letting its heavy tip point lazily toward the floor.

"Since Elder Mo went through the trouble of giving you a corrupted toy," Lin Tian said, his calm voice carrying across the hushed arena pit, "let’s break both the toy and its owner together."

At the edge of Stage One, the chief referee dropped his flag.

"First Semi-Final—begin!"?