Picking Up Attribute Chapter 150: Battle Of Swords

Chapter 150: Battle Of Swords

Seven Petals Severance was a High-Grade Profound Rank Mysterious Technique. It was already very lethal and in hands of a Sword Genius like Sun Tianlan, it beca a nightmare.

Ye Jun’s mind moved faster than his body ever could. In the space between heartbeats, he counted the angles, weighed the cuts, asured the breath she had put behind each one.

Seven attacks in a single second. Seven manifestations of a sword that should only exist once.

’Tch. So this is what a Sword Genius looks like when she stops being polite.’

He couldn’t dodge all of them. He knew it the mont the technique unfolded so he didn’t even bother to try.

His Ember Sword rose in a tight arc, catching the first petal at the wrist, redirecting it just enough that the second petal struck where the first had ant to land.

Sparks blood on the arena as tal kissed tal and the impact ran up his arm like a hamr striking an anvil.

The third petal caught his shoulder. It was shallow and hot. A line of red opened beneath his sleeve.

The fourth he turned with his palm pressed against the flat of his blade, body twisting at the waist. The fifth grazed his ribs. The sixth he ducked under, barely. The seventh—

The seventh was waiting for him on the other side of his dodge.

Sun Tianlan’s sword had already finished its arc and was returning, faster than the first six combined, aid at his throat. The technique didn’t end on the seventh petal. The seventh petal was a feint for the true cut hidden behind it.

’Damn it! She improved so much in such short ti!’

Still, he felt excited to fight her.

Ye Jun threw himself backward.

He hit the arena stone on his shoulder, rolled, and ca up with his sword already raised. A thin line of warmth traced his collarbone. Another inch and she would have opened his throat to the bone.

The crowd had gone quiet. Even the disciples who’d been jeering monts before now stood still, mouths slightly open, watching.

"You’re not dodging the way you used to," Sun Tianlan said. She wasn’t out of breath. She wasn’t even particularly serious. Her sword rested at her side, point lowered, blade catching the afternoon light. "You’re letting

hit you."

"I’m learning," Ye Jun said with a smile, and he ant every word.

He felt the cuts. The shoulder, the ribs, the collarbone. None of them deep. His body would close them before the duel ended, but that wasn’t really the point.

The point was that every ti her sword had touched him, sothing in his bones had recorded it. The angle. The pressure behind the wrist. The breath that ca an instant before the cut.

’Each strike is a teacher. Pay the tuition. Learn the lesson. Fortunately, my comprehension is high too.’

In this battle, he was testing his comprehension more than simply picking up Attributes.

He rolled his shoulder, settled his stance, and exhaled.

She ca again.

This ti he saw the Falling Star Draw before her sword left the sheath. Not because his eyes were faster, but because he’d felt it twice before in this very arena, and his body rembered the way her shoulder dropped half an inch the instant before she committed.

He moved on the half inch.

Their blades t again in the centre of the arena.

Ember Sword rang against her sword in a clean, ringing note that carried across the Falcon Fields. He didn’t try to push her back.

He let her force pass through him, redirected the angle the way she had taught him by cutting him three breaths ago, and the tip of her blade slid past his cheek instead of through it.

Sun Tianlan’s eyes narrowed.

"Moon Reflection Guard," she said quietly. "You’ve never used that before."

"First ti," Ye Jun admitted.

"You learned it from watching ." She clicked her tongue, knowing of his reputation already.

"From feeling you, mostly."

She smiled then. It was a small smile, and there was sothing hungry in it. The smile of a sword cultivator who has just realised her opponent is going to make her work.

"Good," she said.

Then she dissolved.

Cold River Steps unfolded around him, and for a long mont Ye Jun couldn’t tell where she was. While the crowd saw only water, he saw sothing more honest, a series of weight shifts so smooth they refused to commit to any single position until the instant the cut ca.

His Ashen Phantom Steps were sharper, more violent, all shadow and displacent. Hers were patient.

He let himself be patient too.

When her cut ca, he was already moving with it, not against it. Their blades t on the inside of her swing, and he felt the mont her wrist tightened to compensate.

But he compensated first. Ember Sword’s edge bit into the flat of her blade and held there for a single breath, and in that breath he was inside her guard.

He did not strike with his fist. He did not use Crushing Mountain. He did not summon his fla. They weren’t required in this battle of swords.

He stepped back instead, and let her have the centre.

Sun Tianlan blinked in surprise.

"You had ," she said in geniune disbelief.

Ye Jun shrugged and said. "I ca here to learn."

She studied him for a long second. Then she laughed, short and surprised, and raised her sword in a salute.

"Then learn faster," she said. "Because I’m done holding the seventh petal back."

She ca at him without pause. The Seven Petals Severance unfolded again, and this ti the seventh petal was not a feint, it was the real cut from the start, and the first six had beco the deception.

Ye Jun’s sword moved on instinct, then on mory, then on sothing he didn’t have a na for yet, a thread that connected the last duel to this one and this one to the cuts still bleeding on his shoulder and ribs.

Three petals struck him. Four he turned aside. The seventh, the true cut, he caught on the angle of his blade and let slide past his hip with a hand’s breadth to spare.

It was the closest he’d ever co to her in a sword exchange.

He felt sothing settle inside him, as if enlightennt struck him mid battle.

’Falling Star. Cold River. Seven Petals. Heart-Piercing.’

He saw them now, not as separate techniques, but as the shape of how she thought. Every sword art she used was about commitnt without commitnt, weight that pretended to be water until the instant it beca iron.

He had been fighting her like cultivator pretending to hold a sword. He had been wrong, so wrong.

A sword wasn’t a fist. A sword was a question. And the answer was a single unbroken line.

His grip on the Ember Sword shifted. His body simply found the place where the blade beca an extension of his breath instead of his arm.

Sun Tianlan saw the change and her stance dropped lower. She knew those changes very well, as she has gone through them herself. She felt jealous of him, but also a newborn resolution was born inside her.

"Co," she said, eyes glistening.

Ye Jun moved.

The Fallen Star Sword Art moved through him before he fully chose it. There was no flourish, no announcent. He stepped, and the stepping was Ashen Phantom; he cut, and the cut was the first form of Fallen Star, the one he had been struggling with for weeks because he kept trying to make it powerful instead of letting it be true.

The cut fell.

It fell the way a star falls, indifferent, inevitable, with the entire weight of its own existence behind a single line of descent.

Sun Tianlan’s sword rose to et it. Moon Reflection Guard, turned back on its teacher. Their blades touched, and for the first ti in three duels, it was her foot that slid back across the arena stone. Half a step.

But half a step from a Sword Genius was a mountain moving.

His blade ca to rest against the side of her neck. Hers had stopped a finger’s width from his heart. They held there, both of them breathing, and the crowd around the arena was so silent he could hear the wind moving through the Falcon Fields.

The Elder cleared his throat.

"Draw," he said.

Sun Tianlan looked at the Ember Sword resting against her throat. Then she looked at Ye Jun.

"Next ti," she said, lowering her blade, "I won’t draw with you."

Ye Jun smiled.

"Next ti," he said, "I won’t either."

Both knew the true winner of the duel was Ye Jun. Even Sun Tianlan could see he was holding back massively. She didn’t know how he progressed so quickly, but it filled her with enough spite to surpass him.

"That technique felt familiar," she said, rembering the last.

"It’s wrong one." Ye Jun said, smiling. "It isn’t the real technique."