As the Core disciple overseeing the match raised his hand to signal the start, Ling Qi briefly considered her options. She could try to beat him at his game, rush him down, freeze and defeat him before he could build up a charge, but that was not what she had spent the month practicing. That would allow him to dictate the pace.
The referee's hand came down, and everything outside the field distorted as it expanded, putting hundreds of meters distance between them. A trilling wintery melody rang out as her Singing Sword materialized above her head, and The Mist spilled forth.
Across the field, thunder boomed and a ring of inscribed discs appeared behind Ji Rong's shoulders. His fists rose, static crackled in whitening hair, and his silhouette seemed to frizz and jump.
In the field between them, Ling Qi felt their domains clash. Both were still formless, nameless. The Mist spilled into the world, and sang of winter's hardship, but Ji Rong projected nothing outward.
He had become the lightning.
In that moment, she met his eyes, and found commonality. Neither wind nor lightning could be caged. She would not trap him with laughing revelers again.
Then he was in front of her, his fist outstretched, sparking knuckles nearly touching her nose. Ling Qi became the wind, and scattered as the heavenly bolt crashed through her. In the boom of thunder, her laughter could be heard.
Even as her silhouette reformed, she heard glass shatter as his heels dug into the melted dirt and launched himself back at her.
This time a palisade of writhing wood rose to stymie him, even as a young girl's laughter mingled with a dragon's roar.
As new grown wood blackened and bulged inward, Ling Qi used the moment bought and played the first notes of the Spring's End Aria, and called upon the echoes of true winter. Hoarfrost spread across the ground, and icy mist trailed from the hems of her dress as she ghosted backward, carried on the wind, riding the shockwave of the explosion that tore through Zhengui's barrier. When Ji Rong ripped through, a battlecry on his lips, she met him with a Hoarfrost Caress.
The screaming howl of a blizzard lashed him, and the scouring cold poured into his channels. Ji Rong, suspended in midair, shattered like fine glass, a great waterfall of sparks and static falling to earth amidst sparks of ice.
A fraction of a second later, she felt an impact on her cheek, From a scattered crackle of static, Ji Rong's fist materialized, followed by the rest of him. Her head snapped to the side as heavenly power ripped through layers of defensive qi. The follow up punch deflected off a ringing note in the air, and the third and fourth crashed through naught but air. The fifth struck her in the chest. Then within her mind, Sixiang stirred, and chaotic qi rippled out, disrupting Ji Rong's technique.
They flew apart to rematerialize on the ground. For a second time, their eyes met. Ling Qi's cheek stung where his hit had landed, and frost clung to strands of Ji Rong's hair.
Ling Qi smiled thinly behind her flute, and flew backward without turning, toward Zhengui, flaring her qi in a prearranged signal.
Her little brother was engaged with Ji Rong's dragon, stabbing roots leaving scrapes and cuts across flying golden coils, but the moment that she gave the signal, he stopped, allowing the beam of liquid lightning that the young dragon spat to splash across his face to no effect.
Hanyi 's voice rose in song and drove Relong back with the voice of winter. She hopped from Zhengui's shell onto a squirming root, following as he retreated. That was the plan, she trusted Hanyi to deal with the dragon.
Ling Qi had managed that situation perfectly well at that level after all.
As Ji Rong cut through the air, hot on her trail, a massive quantity of qi flowed down through Zhengui's legs and into the field below.
The earth roiled with life. Roots the size of entire saplings erupted, interposing themselves. A flurry of fists tore apart a score, but a score more sprouted in their place. Ling Qi landed atop Zhengui's shell, it's volcanic heat only a pleasant warmth to her, and played a single ear piercing note.
Even if something could not be stopped, it could be redirected. Ji Rong, rocketing toward her still, despite the lashing and obstructing roots, was taken by surprise as an eagle screamed, and talons seized his shoulders from behind, using his how momentum to fling him across the battlefield. Amidst the grasping roots the phantoms of beasts rose, and the song of her sword and the Mist girded their claws and fangs in frost.
She wondered briefly what she looked like to the audience, shrouded in mist standing atop Zhengui's back, surrounded by a growing phantasmal army that stalked among root and branch.
Ji Rong landed with a thunderous boom at the end of his flight as a crackling fan of lightning rippled outward, ripping apart the phantasmal eagle. He glared across the field at her, crackling static pouring down his limbs and blackening the grass as he crouched there.
Two of his nine discus were burning blue.
Then, he did something that surprised her.
His hand rose, two fingers extended. He stabbed them into his own chest, lightning shrouded fingertips parting flesh like paper, and roared.
It was not a sound which was meant to come from a human throat, pebbles rattled and rose from the earth and the Ling Qi felt the wind vibrate and shake. Blinding lightning erupted outward in every direction from his position and bolts fell from the clear , reflexively, Ling Qi called on the Starless shroud technique, and the bolts which fell upon her and her spirits vanished with nary a ripple.
Ling qi focused through the lightning, eyes flickering silver, and she saw him. A tracery of curling red lines like tattoos marked his flesh, and the wound in his chest bled freely, a crimson line running down his chest. Sparks crackled around his fingers and his eyes burned blue.
A third disc was alight.
Ji Rong flung his hand outward and crimson droplets scattered, each holding a single catalyzing spark, and orbs of lightning the size of a man's head bloomed in the sky. Beneath her, Zhen's throat swelled as he spat a boiling mass of glass and magma.
It struck him head on, and he erupted from it, bearing no more than scorched clothes and smoking skin.
A fourth disc burned.
Ji Rong charged, a roaring tail of lightning following him as if he were a comet.
Ling Qi leapt down from Zhengui's shell, her dress trailing behind her limbs like ripples of the night sky, and called forth the memories of revelry, the last link she needed to call forth to complete her defenses. Around her, howling beasts rose onto their hind legs, and snarls turned into callous laughter, robes and intricate arade armor bloomed across fur and hide, and Ling Qi felt the brush of dream.
Zhengui tensed, and ash began to fall like snow. The aches of what few hits had landed began to fade.
Overhead, orbs of lightning pulsed and Ling Qi prepared herself to defend, only for the jagged bolts that erupted to strike Ji Rong. With each one, his aura flared brighter, she felt his qi surging, building up power.
A fifth and sixth disc glowed.
He hit the front lines of her phantasmal army and howled like a beast himself as he tore them apart, fists flickering faster than her eye could track, phantoms were torn into scraps of mist and dream. On his forehead, a third eye, blazing with golden radiance burned, and behind his head, she caught a flickering vision of a thousand petaled lotus.
...and the area he plowed through stayed clear. The Mist rolled back in, but new phantoms and revelers did not arise.
But he paid for his advance. A great black wolf the size of a horse tore gashes in his right arm with it's fangs before lightning ripped it apart. A screaming hawk tore at his face before a fist crushed it, a striking serpent's fangs found his leg before he trampled it. He carved a path of violence toward where she stood.
Zhengui's roots stabbed at his feet and snatched at his limbs, but they failed to slow him down any longer.
He charged, and Ling Qi remained still as the air around her shimmered, faint and dreamlike afterimages trailing her limbs as she raised her flute to her lips once more. Dissolving, she rematerialized behind him.
The pressure of her spirit smashed into him with the weight of glacier, and ice burns spread across his back, visible under his tattered robe. Ji Rong stumbled, and for a moment, she thought that he would be launched forward, ready to take another flume of magma from Zhengui.
Instead, his feet dug into the earth, and he spun, throwing a punch at the open air.
Ling Qi scattered, but this time it didn't help. A ten meter wide gash opened in the earth as the wind roared, and Ling Qi felt dizziness as the tremendous force tore apart the currents of wind on which she flowed, scattering, for a brief moment her perception into a thousand whirling sparks of color and noise.
Scattered and dizzy, she was struck a hundred times and more, sparking fists battering her spirit.
Ling Qi reformed, crouching on the ground, feeling as if she had been run over by a cart. Ji Rong stood above her, and Ling Qi prepared to step into dream, dragging them all away to rest the match.
The seventh and eighth disc activated.
But around her, she felt the dream deepen, the world blurring and rippling, in a moment of communication with Sixiang, she understood. As Ji Rong drew back his fist, the world bent, and Sxiang manifested, slender arms wrapped around his chest. Their features were feminine, and as they leaned forward to nip at his ear, space bent and his movements slowed.
"Heeeey cutie, things are about to get hot," Sixiang giggled.
It was at that point that magma concentrated down to a single point erupted under his feet, and Ling Qi flowed back to her feet, the revelers around her beginning to cheer and stamp their feet.
The ninth disc erupted in light, and the magma was blown away.
Ji Rong was far from unharmed, burns marred his skin, his clothes were tattered and charred, and she could see a trembling in his right leg that spoke of coming collapse. None of that changed the ring of scintillating lightning that burned overhead like a gods crown. None of that changed the exultant cry of falling lightning that fell upon them, a blast which she could only compare to Cai Renxiang's light in experience.
The silence did.
The roar of lightning, the music and revelry and howls of beasts, even the distant sound of Hanyi's laughter all fell silent. Starless Night's reflection was an art that mimicked the bottomless lakes of the Bai lands. The Black Mirror technique was it's most potent defense, and she used it now, draining her reserves precipitously. Darkness bloomed from Ling Qi, and swallowed them all.
A moment later it shattered, and the lightning was gone, the field lay unchanged, as if nothing had happened at all.
Ling Qi stepped forward and laid her hands on the gaping young man's smoking shoulders.
She sang silence, and the revelers roared.
