I am the Heroine’s Master?

"Bai Ning vs Jin Shihan."

The second day of the third round also began with a bang. The instant the announcement was made, Jin Shihan – gold-skinned, tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing an irrepressible grin – vaulted onto the ring from his box. He landed with a thud that echoed across the arena, then waved wildly to the crowd, who screamed back in adulation.

Bai Ning was far more restrained. She descended on her paper crane in a smooth glide, stepping off with practiced grace before arching an eyebrow and deliberately looking down on her opponent. It was, she insisted to herself, a clever psychological strategy she had devised, and not at all a petty reaction to the fact that she was clearly not the crowd favorite. Absolutely not. Regardless of what certain people might claim.

Still, she had no intention of being careless. Yesterday had reminded her that anyone who'd made it this far carried at least one hidden advantage, and body cultivators were rarely straightforward foes. A moment of overconfidence could turn into defeat.

Case in point: Jin Shihan was built like a brick wall. Physical stature didn't matter overly much to spiritual cultivators, but on him it was a declaration, maybe even a warning. Clear, corded muscles – he had torn off the sleeves of his robes to show them off – anchored by a steady, grounded stance. And there was the fact that he hailed from Nine Heavens City, the unofficial heart of the Thousand Shattered Islands. No one from there was going to be a simple opponent.

His gold skin alone suggested formidable innate defenses, but Bai Ning could feel the density of his qi even from across the ring. A body cultivator's aura didn't flare outward like a spiritual cultivator's; it compressed inward, layer by layer, sinking into skin, bone, and muscle until the entire body became a weapon.

Bai Ning slapped her storage pouch, and her trusty magical tools leapt forth, settling smoothly into her hands. The Green Karma Sword unfurled into its coiled ring form, its hilt resting reassuringly in her right, while the Crimson Parasol dropped neatly into her left.

Jin Shihan watched her preparation and cracked his knuckles, flashing her a grin bright enough to rival his golden sheen. "Fairy Bai Ning," he boomed, cheerful and utterly unabashed, "go easy on me! This is already unfair since I'm blinded by your beauty!"

Bai Ning's expression went stiff, though the crowd adored it. People jumped and screamed and hollered, and-was that a heart? Yes. A group of female cultivators in the upper cloud ring had joined their qi to shape a glowing heart in the sky.

Jin Shihan spotted it immediately and, without hesitation, cupped his massive hands to form a heart of his own before blowing a kiss toward the heavens.

Bai Ning closed her eyes in deep, silent pain. Right. That tore it. She would wipe that smirk off his face, one way or another.

"Begin," the announcer's voice rang out.

The Crimson Parasol shot from her hand the instant the word fell, unfolding to its full size with a crisp snap. It hovered at her side, barrier flaring to life as a red sphere enclosed her in a protective dome.

It activated just in time.

Her shield boomed like a struck bell as Jin Shihan crossed the entire arena in a blur, slamming his fist into the barrier with bone-shaking force. His grin had vanished, replaced by sharp, disciplined focus. He didn't slow. He didn't even pause. Punches hammered the shield in rapid succession, some heavy enough to rattle her bones through the barrier, others light and precise, testing for weakness, as he sprinted in a tight orbit around her.

Bai Ning gritted her teeth and poured more qi into the parasol. He was fast. Too fast for her to even think about landing a clean sword strike like this.

But staying on the defensive was the shortest path to defeat. She wasn't going to gift him the momentum.

She raised her ribbon-like sword and spun it overhead, its flexible length whipping through the air in widening circles. By the third rotation, the arc extended beyond the shield, and she let it drop into place, no longer guided by her arm, but by threads of her qi, forming a rotating ring of blade-light encircling her barrier.

The moment he recognized the shift, Jin Shihan skidded to a halt in a spray of dust. He pivoted sharply, assessed the spinning blade for a single breath, and then deliberately extended his hand into its path. The sword bit cleanly into his golden skin. A sharp, precise cut opened, and gold-tinted blood welled out. Surprise flickered across his face.

A heartbeat later, flame burst beneath his feet. He launched himself backward, retreating all the way to his starting position in a controlled, powerful arc.

Bai Ning seized the opening. Her sword contracted, curling in on itself like a serpent about to strike. From its swaying tip, blades of light shot forth one after another. She had only recently begun practicing this technique; projecting swordlight from a flexible weapon was far more difficult than from a rigid blade. But now, the effort paid off. Arcs of green qi, each carrying her cutting intent, lanced across the arena in a rapid barrage aimed squarely at Jin Shihan.

He dodged with infuriating ease, his movements fluid and exact. Even when a swordlight or the sweeping reach of her ribbon-sword came close enough to graze him, he simply ignited bursts of fire beneath his feet, vaulting across the arena in strides that looked almost effortless. His movement art was, in its way, a superior version of her Imperial Flying Steps, though still nowhere near the speed of the Divine Water Lightning technique.

It wasn't enough. She could see it already. At this rate, it would become an endless chase, and she would be the one burning through her reserves first. She needed to escalate or be clever.

Before she could settle on a plan, Jin Shihan made the next move.

He stopped running. The flames beneath his feet guttered out. He stood perfectly still as an orange glow, threaded with pale gold, suffused his body and rose around him like a living mantle of fire. The aura wrapped him from the soles of his feet to the ends of his hair, shimmering with dense, compressed qi.

Her swordlights struck the glow head-on and shattered. The impact pushed the fiery aura back by a few inches, but it reformed almost instantly, unbroken and unwavering.

Her actual sword fared no better. Jin Shihan snatched it out of the air mid-swing, the blade slicing through the aura and biting into his palm, but failing to pierce the skin beneath. He flashed her another broad grin, and pulled.

The sudden jerk was her only warning. She released the hilt just in time, though the force dragged her several staggering steps forward. The sword's full length snapped taut and whipped toward Jin Shihan like a flying steel rope. He twisted his wrist, redirecting the momentum and letting the flexible blade coil around his forearm like a captured serpent.

Clever, but cocky. Disarming a sword cultivator was always a double-edged tactic, quite literally in her case.

She cut the flow of qi to her weapon. The coils slackened at once, the ribbon-blade losing all rigidity and falling limp around Jin Shihan's arm. He blinked, momentarily wrong-footed by the sudden change, likely having expected her to fight for control instead.

Rather than indulge him in that contest, Bai Ning released her paper crane and took to the air. Jin Shihan was undeniably fast on the ground, but she wanted to see whether he could maintain that speed above it. The formation dome limited her aerial maneuverability more than she liked, but it was hardly unmanageable.

Hovering above him, she grinned and unleashed her newest technique; new in the sense that she had never dared use it seriously in a match. Fireballs were fine, easily scaled and satisfyingly reliable, but there was a certain gravitas to hurling javelins of fire that a simple orb could never match. Harder to cast, yes, but watching Jin Shihan vault from one edge of the arena to the other to avoid them was undeniably good for her heart. Fast as he was, she still held the advantage of higher ground.

He noticed that too. With a casual shrug, he let her sword fall from his arm, then stomped on it with full force, using the recoil to rocket himself upward. She dodged easily, already understanding his aim: keeping her sword wrapped around him mid-air was a liability he didn't want, so he'd opted to remove it from the equation through sheer brute force. The impact of his stomp made the entire ring tremble.

She wasn't worried. The Green Karma Sword was far tougher than that.

Sure enough, amid the dust cloud Jin Shihan had kicked up, the sword lay on the ground, perfectly pristine. Bai Ning allowed herself a small, private smile.

In the time she spent confirming its condition, Jin Shihan had generated small wings of fire from the soles of his feet. Using them, he wasn't so much flying as he was hopping, each burst of flame propelling him upward in sharp, explosive leaps.

Huh. She honestly thought the movement technique Yan Qixue had used in the Enigmatic Death Domain was superior. Who would have guessed that some obscure sect from the middle of nowhere had better footwork than a major lineage from Nine Heavens City?

Another flame-assisted hop sent Jin Shihan shooting toward her, the aura around his hands reshaping into-she blinked just to be sure-yes, lions. Golden-orange lions with their jaws wide open, fangs gleaming as they lunged with him. Still, here in the air, she held the advantage in speed. She slipped past his charge and hurled another fire javelin at his back.

Jin Shihan twisted in mid-air and met it with a punch. The shockwave blasted him almost back to the arena floor, but he landed unharmed, wings of fire already igniting for his next leap.

He shot upward again and flashed her another broad grin. "Fairy, you've become the object of my adoration. Why hide in the sky? To me, you are already like the stars in heaven!"

Bai Ning ignored him. The crowd, predictably, did not. Their cheers rolled across the arena in jubilant waves, and though she didn't bother to look, she was certain that infuriating heart in the sky had returned.

It didn't matter. Something far more important had caught her attention. Earlier, Jin Shihan had let several of her javelins graze him, testing their strength. Annoyingly, almost infuriatingly, she suspected he could endure a few direct hits without flinching. Yet he had gone out of his way to punch the one aimed at his back.

Which meant he had realized she was maneuvering him toward the Green Karma Sword lying innocuously on the floor and was deliberately avoiding it.

Tricky. But useful.

Bai Ning sent her paper crane gliding toward the center of the stage, hovering just above the sword. Jin Shihan danced around, miming punches; lions of qi erupted from his fists, surging toward her like grander versions of her own fireballs. She let them impact harmlessly against the shield of her Crimson Parasol. The blows rattled, but they came nowhere close to breaching her defense.

She focused. Her sword quivered minutely as threads of qi poured into it. She let it lie in wait while activating the Divine Water Lightning technique. Even with just over a week of practice, the improvement was unmistakable. She slipped into it faster, wielded it more smoothly, and could divide her attention across other tasks with far greater ease.

Real combat had refined her mastery more than a dozen meditation sessions ever could.

Lightning sparked around her limbs, the telltale white-and-blue glow crackling to life. Grinning, she leaped from the paper crane. Jin Shihan tried to intercept her, but he hadn't yet adjusted to her heightened speed. A single moment was enough for her to twist mid-fall, slipping past his strikes, and shifting her parasol's shield to deflect one of his heavier punches. She landed lightly, and the hilt of the Green Karma Sword snapped into her palm with a satisfying slap.

The ribbon-like blade came alive, its length spinning through the air in a shimmery, hypnotic dance. The crowd oohed in delight at the newest twist. Jin Shihan followed her down, canceling his flight technique, looking less worried and more relieved. She suspected he felt the advantage was his again: ungainly in the air but blisteringly fast on the ground, certain his speed would overwhelm hers.

Not so.

Jin Shihan shot forward, just as fast as at the beginning of the round, but with the Divine Water Lightning technique active, Bai Ning tracked every motion with utter clarity. She reacted without thinking. Her sword snapped upward, a streak of green cutting across his path, and Jin Shihan swerved and ducked, narrowly avoiding decapitation.

He backed off, eyes wide, but Bai Ning was done playing defense. The momentum was hers now, and she intended to ride it all the way to victory.

The Green Karma Sword flashed again and again, whipping and coiling like a length of silk, each strike aimed cleanly at Jin Shihan. He dodged, ran, and leaped, daring only once to test the blade's edge. The lightning flowing down her limbs imbued her sword with enough force to slice through his flame-aura as if it were paper; after that, he became far more cautious, never letting it catch him directly.

Even so, he couldn't evade every strike perfectly. Cuts began to appear: shallow lines along his limbs, a scratch across his cheek, several streaks on his torso. Small for now, but accumulating. The easy grin he'd worn throughout the match had vanished, replaced by a fierce, tight focus.

Finally, something shifted.

Bai Ning sent her ribbon-sword sliding across the ground like a hunting serpent, its tip bursting upward to slice at Jin Shihan's legs. This time, he didn't dodge. He twisted just enough to redirect the strike, and the blade drove deep into his hip. The crowd groaned as one, recoiling from the sight. Jin Shihan did not. He staggered back, planting his feet, and his qi surged outward. The flame-aura around him ballooned, pressing tight around her embedded blade until it couldn't budge.

Not just locked tight, but deliberately trapped.

Qi roared off him in waves. The aura thickened, taking shape: a lion of red and gold rising over his body, mane rippling like molten metal, jaws snapping shut around his head in a snarling helm. The air trembled. Across the ring, Bai Ning felt the intent behind it: a reckless, absolute, all-in last charge.

The crowd felt it too; their groan turned instantly into a fevered howl.

Bai Ning grinned and poured qi into her blade recklessly, matching him note for note. The sword tore free with a spray of golden blood that pattered across the white stone like scattered coins. If he was gambling everything, she'd answer in kind.

She summoned that memory again, bringing to mind the nameless swordmaster's insight. The world is something to be cut.

It slid into place inside her like a final puzzle piece locking home. The Green Karma Sword folded and curled along its own length, smoothing into a sleek, rigid form in her hand, no longer ribbon-like, but a solid, deadly edge. Across the ring, Jin Shihan's lion-helm eyes met hers.

He shot forward. If he had been fast before, he was a blur now; so fast that only the Divine Water Lightning technique allowed Bai Ning to keep pace. They collided in the center of the ring: her sword met his punch, reinforced by the blazing lion-claws that wrapped around his arms like molten gauntlets. Qi exploded outward in a massive shockwave.

Bai Ning was hurled backward. Her crimson barrier groaned under the force, overloaded, and then shattered. She slammed against the curved dome of the formation, breath stolen, body aching. Ignoring it, she scrambled upright, sword raised and parasol in hand. Her defensive tool was still intact; if needed, she could use it again.

And then she saw him.

Jin Shihan had fared far worse. He lay sprawled against the opposite side of the arena. His entire hand had been split down the middle, the golden blood glinting in the light. He was on his knees, teeth clenched, his body trembling, and clearly incapable of continuing.

Still, she remained on guard. He was a body cultivator, and in a tournament of this magnitude, there was always a chance he could push through.

He did not.

Finally, Jin Shihan looked up, his gaze steady despite the pain. He gave a tight, respectful nod. Then, loud and clear, he said: "I yield."

The arena erupted. The clash had left a brief, almost reverent silence, now shattered by a roar of thousands; cheers, cries, laughter, and even sobs, all tangled together. Bai Ning stood there, sword and parasol ready, letting the noise wash over her. Victory had never felt so alive.

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