[GL] I'm Just A Side Character... So Why Is The Heroine Chasing Me?! Chapter 63: Quarterfinal

Shen Zhiran attacked first.

No greeting. No bow. No courtesy pause. The mont the bell faded, he launched forward with a burst of earth energy so dense the platform cracked beneath his feet. His fist trailed golden brown light, and the air in front of him compressed into a wall of force that slamd toward Zhao Lingxi like a collapsing building.

She did not flinch. She turned her body forty five degrees, letting the force wave shear past her left shoulder close enough to pull her hair from its ribbon. The wave smashed into the barrier wall behind her. The crowd gasped. Zhao Lingxi tucked a loose strand behind her ear without looking at the impact.

Lan Yue’s heart did sothing completely inappropriate for a combat situation.

He was faster than he should have been. Stronger. The pills were burning through his ridians, supercharging his earth root techniques beyond his natural limits. His movents were sharp and aggressive, each strike carrying the weight of soone two stages above his actual cultivation. This was not the Shen Zhiran who had coasted through the earlier rounds on family reputation and average talent. This was a weapon soone had loaded and aid.

Zhao Lingxi read it in three seconds. Lan Yue could see it in the way her posture shifted, her weight settling into her back foot, her chin lifting slightly. Not retreating. Deciding. The way a predator decides whether sothing is worth the effort of chasing.

She decided it was not. Not yet.

She dropped into a defensive pattern that made the crowd lean forward and made Lan Yue grip her seat. To untrained eyes, it looked like she was struggling. Dodging. Reacting instead of acting. But Lan Yue knew those movents. She had watched Zhao Lingxi train for months. Every dodge was a asurent. Every deflection was a calculation. She was counting his heartbeats between strikes, mapping the rhythm of the pills burning through his system, learning his body better than he knew it himself.

It was the most controlled display of dominance Lan Yue had ever seen, and it looked like losing.

"He is burning through energy too fast," Bai Xuelan murmured. "At this rate, the pills will destabilize within eight minutes."

"She knows," Lan Yue said. She was not sure how she knew that Zhao Lingxi knew. But she did. Sothing in the way Zhao Lingxi moved, unhurried, almost lazy, like a cat allowing a mouse to tire itself out.

Shen Zhiran pressed forward. A series of earth spikes erupted from the platform surface, jagged and fast, forcing Zhao Lingxi to leap and weave between them. She moved through the chaos like it had been choreographed for her. One spike shot up directly in her path. She planted her palm on its tip, vaulted over it, landed on the far side, and kept walking. Walking. Not running. Not scrambling. Walking through a field of stone spikes with the calm, asured stride of soone crossing a garden.

The crowd went quiet. Not the excited quiet of anticipation. The unsettled quiet of people realizing they might be watching sothing they did not fully understand.

Three rows above, Sun ihua tilted her fan toward Hu Lian and whispered sothing. Hu Lian nodded, her sharp eyes cataloguing everything.

Shen Zhiran launched his heaviest technique. He slamd both palms into the ground, and the entire platform erupted upward in a wave of stone and compressed earth. It rose like a tidal wave, wide enough to span the full arena, fast enough that dodging was impossible.

Zhao Lingxi stopped walking.

She turned to face it. Squared her shoulders. Planted her feet shoulder width apart. And raised one hand.

One hand.

Ice crystallized in the air around her palm. Not a shield. Not a wall. A single point of concentrated cold so dense the air around it cracked and hissed. The earth wave slamd into it, and for two seconds the arena filled with the sound of a mountain breaking against winter.

The wave split. Clean down the center. Two halves crashed past her on either side, showering the barrier walls with debris. Zhao Lingxi stood in the divide, her robes whipping in the displaced air, her raised hand steady, her expression carrying the absolute unbothered calm of soone who had just cut a tidal wave in half and found it unremarkable.

Lan Yue forgot how to breathe. Not because of the technique. Because of the way Zhao Lingxi lowered her hand afterward, slow, deliberate, flexing her fingers once like she was shaking off dust. Because of the way she rolled her neck to one side, a single, casual motion that said I am still warming up. Because of the look in her eyes when they found Shen Zhiran through the settling debris, steady, patient, faintly amused, the look of soone who had not yet decided to take this seriously.

Tang Xiaoli grabbed Lan Yue’s arm. "Are you breathing?"

"No."

"You should start."

"Working on it."

But the golden threads ca. Thin lines of light seeping through the ice around her hand, visible for barely a second before Zhao Lingxi closed her fist and killed them. Her output dropped. The gold vanished. But it had been there.

In the upper pavilion, Qin Wen leaned forward. His smile deepened.

He had seen it.

Zhao Lingxi’s jaw tightened fractionally. She knew. She stepped back, pulling her energy inward, returning to the asured defense of the first few minutes. The crowd murmured. To them, the mont of dominance had passed. To them, she was back to struggling.

Lan Yue knew better. Zhao Lingxi was angry. Not at Shen Zhiran. At herself. The slip had cost her, and the particular set of her shoulders, rigid, controlled, precise, was the posture of a woman locking herself down with the kind of discipline that left bruises on the inside.

Shen Zhiran charged again, riding the high of the pills. Earth techniques hamred out in rapid succession. Spikes. Walls. Compressed bursts that cracked the air. Each one forced Zhao Lingxi to respond, to channel, to push. Each one dragged her closer to the line.

Then he stumbled.

A hitch in his step. His left foot planted wrong. Pain crossed his face, quick and bright, and for one second the glazed intensity in his eyes flickered like a candle in wind.

The pills were turning. Bai Xuelan had said eight minutes. It had been six.

Zhao Lingxi did not hesitate.

She moved the way a door closes. Final. Absolute. Three steps covered in the ti it took Shen Zhiran to register that sothing had changed. Her hand found his right shoulder first. Ice ford along her fingertips, thin as needles, and the ridian that powered his earth formations went numb. He gasped. His left arm tried to compensate. She was already there. A strike to the knee that collapsed his stance like cutting a tent rope. He buckled. She caught his collar before he fell.

She caught him.

Not to hold him up. To control the descent. She lowered him to one knee with a grip so steady it looked almost gentle, her face inches from his, her eyes locked onto his with an expression that pinned him in place more effectively than any formation could.

"Forfeit," she said. Low. Quiet. A voice ant for him and no one else. But Lan Yue was close enough to read her lips, and the word landed in her chest like a drumbeat.

Shen Zhiran stared up at her. His face was grey. His hands trembled. The pills were eating him from the inside, and he knew it, and the woman holding his collar knew it, and she was giving him the chance to stop before they destroyed him the way they had destroyed Wen Hao.

"I forfeit," he whispered.

Zhao Lingxi released his collar. She straightened to her full height, rolled her shoulders once, and turned her back on him. Not dismissively. Completely. The fight was over and she had already moved past it. She walked toward the preparation entrance with the long, unhurried stride of soone who owned every inch of ground beneath her feet.

The crowd erupted. Half cheering, half stunned, the sound crashing over the arena in waves.

As she passed the front row, Zhao Lingxi’s gaze found Lan Yue. She did not smile. She did not nod. She looked at her with those pale blue eyes, steady and sure and carrying sothing beneath the surface that was not ant for anyone else in the arena.

Then, so subtle that only Lan Yue could have caught it, she lifted her hand. The sa hand that had split the earth wave. She brushed two fingers against the silver ribbon in her hair, the one that had co loose during the first attack and been retied at so point during the fight without Lan Yue noticing.

Except it was not the sa ribbon. The one she had worn into the arena was plain silver. This one had a single pale pink thread woven through it.

The color of plum blossoms.

Lan Yue’s face went so red that Tang Xiaoli actually pressed the back of her hand against Lan Yue’s forehead to check for fever.

"Are you sick?"

"I am fine."

"You are the color of a tomato."

"I said I am fine."

In the upper pavilion, Qin Wen sat back in his chair. His fingers tapped twice on the armrest. Slow. Calculating. He had seen the gold. He knew what it ant. And he was already planning his next move.

Three rows above, Sun ihua stood and stretched. She looked directly at Lan Yue with an appraising smile, waved her fan once, and disappeared into the crowd.

Lan Yue barely noticed. She was still staring at the preparation entrance where Zhao Lingxi had vanished, her heart hamring, her face burning, the red thread on her wrist blazing so brightly she could practically hear it singing.

That woman had just split a tidal wave with one hand, brought a man to his knees with three strikes, and walked out of the arena wearing Lan Yue’s flower in her hair.

And Lan Yue was supposed to pretend she did not have feelings.

She pressed both hands over her face and quietly accepted that she was dood.