Honestly, You Yuyao had almost been fooled by Gu Chengming's righteously indignant act.
But the moment she thought it over, she found herself caught between irritation and laughter.
What did he mean, 'insulting the Huiyuan Sword Art'? Anyone who didn't know better would think he was deeply devoted to Huiyuan Gate — and then they'd look at his cultivation realm and find a three-year disciple still stuck at the First Realm, Third Layer.
If you truly cared about the sect, how about you raise your own cultivation level first before lecturing anyone?
As far as You Yuyao was concerned, this was nothing but a man wrapping himself in the banner of 'sect righteousness' and swinging it like a club, hoping the weight of that hat would pressure her into backing down.
But for her, that was actually good news.
What she feared most was Gu Chengming continuing the way he had been — playing deaf and dumb no matter how she provoked him, completely ignoring her.
Now that he'd taken the bait, things were much simpler.
So she let out a contemptuous snort, crossed her arms, and tilted her chin up slightly. "And if I refuse to apologize?"
Gu Chengming didn't waste words.
He gripped his sword in one hand, the tip angled toward the ground, and gave You Yuyao a slight bow. "Then... I humbly ask Senior Sister for her guidance."
You Yuyao's voice went cold and sharp. "Bold of you!"
She hadn't expected it — this spineless-looking waste of space actually had it in him to say those three words: 'ask for guidance.'
From the way he'd been earlier, taking every insult and taunt without so much as flinching, she'd assumed he'd keep cowering indefinitely.
Since he was the one asking for a fight, she could hardly be blamed for what came next.
A contest, naturally, meant a contest of swordsmanship.
After all, with her cultivation at the First Realm, Ninth Layer, deploying spiritual energy to suppress him would be bullying — a victory not worth having.
Never mind how many fellow disciples would mock her for it; she herself wouldn't be able to live with it.
As a cultivator of Jingshui Pavilion, she may have had a sharp temper, but she had her own pride and her own lines she would not cross.
She raised her right hand, releasing a thread of spiritual energy that shaped itself into a blade of wind, shearing a wrist-thick branch from a nearby tree. Then, with a few precise taps of her fingertip, wood shavings flew as she whittled it into a rough wooden sword.
She weighed it in her hand, decided it would do, and leveled the tip at Gu Chengming.
"After you, then. Let me see just how much this Huiyuan Sword Art you're so devoted to actually—"
She hadn't finished speaking when Gu Chengming stepped forward and struck.
Sword out!
You Yuyao seethed inwardly. This man can't even wait for me to finish talking before attacking — utterly shameless and infuriating!
She threw up a hasty guard.
"Clack!"
The two wooden swords met in midair. Gu Chengming's first strike missed its mark, but he didn't retreat — instead, he let the momentum carry his wrist into a smooth rotation, his blade sliding down along You Yuyao's sword and driving straight for her wrist.
You Yuyao felt as though his sword had locked onto her with some kind of homing instinct, glued to her blade no matter how she tried to shake it free. That maddening, dragging pull threw off her prepared counter-strike before she could even launch it.
She was forced to change tactics, snapping her wrist sharply to try to knock his sword away.
But Gu Chengming's sword clung like a bone-deep parasite. It traced a circle along the path of her force, neutralizing her strength entirely — and then used it against her, his tip darting once more toward her ribs.
The Clinging Formula!
You Yuyao felt a rising pressure in her chest, and a deepening unease in her heart.
Her own art was Jingshui Pavilion's Flowing Cloud Sword Art — a style built on fluid footwork and a sword that moved like drifting clouds, elusive and unpredictable.
Jingshui Pavilion was not known for its swordsmanship, true — but that depended on who it was being measured against.
Against a mere First Realm, Third Layer waste, this should have been over in seconds.
Yet here she was. On the surface, her superior cultivation and footwork kept her firmly in control — she was pressing him, pushing him back. But in reality, every single one of her attacks was being dissolved by that bizarre, sticky tenacity of his.
It felt like throwing a punch into a pile of cotton. All that force, nowhere to land.
Her failure to finish him quickly was starting to feel embarrassing. A crowd of disciples had already gathered around them, drawn by the noise.
"Is dodging all you know how to do?!" You Yuyao snapped, trying to rattle him with words.
Gu Chengming seemed not to hear her at all.
Watching her attacks fail to land blow after blow, You Yuyao grew increasingly frantic. Her sword forms began to fray at the edges — yet even then, he showed not a single gap in his defense, solid and impenetrable as a boulder.
— Should I just use my realm advantage?
The thought surfaced and was immediately crushed back down by her own will.
Setting aside the Wenjian Sect's extremely strict regulations against disciples using realm suppression in private duels — if he reported it afterward, she'd be the one who suffered.
But beyond the rules, there was herself to answer to.
We are sword cultivators. We are above such things.
To bully someone with overwhelming cultivation — what would that make her, if not exactly the kind of contemptible person she despised most?
Absolutely not. Never!
But the frustration coiled inside her refused to be quiet. She attacked with mounting ferocity, and her mouth refused to stop either.
"Sticky and clinging — fitting that your swordsmanship matches your personality. It's revolting!"
Merciless with her words, and merciless with her blade.
Her sword grew faster and faster. The Flowing Cloud Sword Art contained a form called "Clouds in Chaotic Flight," and its entire philosophy was speed.
Sword light fell like rain, leaving no gaps.
Its momentum was like rolling thunder, its speed like the wind. Overlapping layers of sword shadows cascaded down — like flurries of windblown cotton, like rain drumming against a window.
Each thrust split the air with a sharp crack, dazzling the eye, impossible to track.
A fast sword worked precisely this way: each strike faster than the last, a wall of blade-light pressing for any opening, driving the opponent to panic, until they finally cracked and showed their defeat.
Unfortunately for her, she was facing Gu Chengming.
And what the Huiyuan Sword Art was best at countering was exactly this type of opponent — all speed, no stability.
In truth, Gu Chengming had long since prepared for the possibility that she might resort to realm suppression.
That was precisely why he had played so carefully from the start. That very first strike — moving before she could — had been deliberate: designed to break her rhythm and drag the fight into this kind of grinding, entangled battle.
Because if she were the sort of person with no shame, and actually did pour her spiritual energy into the clash — with his pitiful First Realm, Third Layer cultivation, even a wooden sword strike enhanced by spiritual power could leave him seriously injured.
And if he lost, this favorability event would turn very ugly very fast.
Losing wasn't fun.
So I never lose!
But seeing her continue to hold back her realm's power, Gu Chengming found himself genuinely puzzled.
Was she hiding something? Or did she truly have no intention of using it?
Either way, the moment had come.
You Yuyao's sword was getting faster and faster — but because her heart was unsettled, the gaps in her offense were multiplying with it.
Right now!
Gu Chengming's sword path shifted in an instant.
That clingy, defensive, all-yielding style vanished without a trace, replaced by a force like wave after wave crashing against the shore — relentless, surging, unbroken.
The sudden change caught You Yuyao completely off guard.
Her "Clouds in Chaotic Flight" had been caught at the precise moment between the exhaustion of old force and the generation of new — Gu Chengming's blade cut right into that seam, and her rhythm shattered.
You Yuyao faltered. Unwilling to cede the initiative, she pushed her sword even faster, trying to compensate for the broken tempo through sheer speed.
But unlike before, Gu Chengming's sword was fast now too.
And his speed wasn't the frantic, disordered kind — it moved to a distinct and precise rhythm of its own.
Every single strike landed with surgical accuracy at the exact hinge-point of You Yuyao's forms.
"Crack!"
"Crack!"
"Crack!"
The sound of wooden swords meeting grew denser and denser, like rain pattering on banana leaves.
With each collision, a jolt of force traveled down the blade, through the hilt, and into the web of You Yuyao's hand.
At first, it was barely noticeable. But as the impacts accumulated, You Yuyao felt something shift.
Without knowing when it had happened, it was as though an invisible net had been cast around her.
Her sword was still swinging — but every swing had become strangely laborious. The air itself seemed to have thickened, each strike demanding several times the usual effort.
By the time she realized it, she was already mired deep.
It was as if she had sunk into this endless exchange of blade against blade and could not pull herself free.
She could see him weaving the net around her, stroke by stroke, compressing the space she had to move in — and she was utterly helpless to stop it.
On the surface, she still appeared to be winning. She was still the one pressing forward, still attacking. But the instincts of a sword cultivator told her plainly: something dangerous was closing in.
Why? Why? How?
He was just a First Realm, Third Layer waste. How was she unable to finish him quickly? How had she been deadlocked with him for this long? Why did her swordsmanship feel like it was getting slower?
Why was she...
Indignation surged and churned in her chest, and she bit down hard.
She even had the strange, creeping feeling that even if she threw all caution aside right now and channeled the full spiritual power of her realm, it might already be too late.
"Sword momentum" was something ineffable, something that defied easy explanation.
What You Yuyao had failed to realize was that she had already lost the battle of momentum entirely.
Her sword momentum had fractured — broken apart and scattered. While Gu Chengming's was coalescing, gathering, drawing tighter with every passing second.
And at that moment, the invisible net that had been forming in the ether finally dropped.
Gu Chengming stopped defending. His wooden sword became a streak of afterimage as he thrust forward, taking the offensive for the first time.
In that instant, You Yuyao couldn't even react.
One strike. Another strike. Another. And another. A storm of fast sword.
Fast — impossibly fast.
Her own fast sword couldn't stop those blades.
Finally, one slipped through — and struck her on the shoulder.
It hurt, but she could bear it.
You Yuyao let out a muffled grunt and tried to counter.
But immediately after—
"Crack!"
Another strike. This one caught her on the wrist.
The moment that first blow had broken through, her defenses crumbled like a breached dam — unstoppable from there.
More and more strikes couldn't be blocked.
"Crack! Crack!"
A rapid volley of impacts rang out across the training grounds.
You Yuyao was beaten back without any ability to fight back, her swordsmanship dissolving into chaos. All she could do was flail her wooden sword on instinct, trying to block the blows raining down on her.
It was no use.
She was driven back step by stumbling step, her footing crumbling beneath her.
In the end, she lost her balance entirely — a lurch, a stagger, and she crashed heavily to the ground.
The wooden sword flew from her grip and clattered away into the distance.
A wooden sword came to rest, perfectly still, at her throat.
The tip hovered less than an inch from her skin.
Gu Chengming looked down at her from above.
"Now then."
"Would you like to take back what you said?"
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