Chapter 83

Fang Zheng and Mo Bei step onto the stage for the last round, Mo Bei bracing himself against Fang Zheng’s rank two cultivation while Fang Zheng rushes straight into close combat instead of opening with moonblades as the students normally do. Mo Bei retreats and fires a moonblade to keep his distance, but Fang Zheng dodges it and keeps closing, a ball of moonlight gathering unfired in his own palm. Qing Shu reads the shrinking gap as the clan leader’s own teaching: students normally fight ten meters apart, since a moonblade dissipates past that range, and Fang Zheng has narrowed the distance to six meters while still evading cleanly. After fifteen minutes Mo Bei’s whole body is covered in injuries and blood soaks his shirt, and the match is called for Fang Zheng. ^{ch. 83}

Fang Zheng rests briefly, receives free healing and primeval stones from three Gu Masters, and returns to face Gu Yue Chi Cheng. Chi Cheng opens with the Dragonpill cricket Gu to leap ten meters clear, boasting that Fang Zheng’s two legs cannot catch him. Fang Zheng answers that every leap costs Chi Cheng primeval essence, that his own rank two red steel primeval essence holds three times Chi Cheng’s rank one peak stage reserve, and that Chi Cheng will run dry first. The surrounding Gu Masters gasp at hearing Fang Zheng is already rank two, a result kept quiet since only the day before. Rattled, Chi Cheng loses his composure and is swept from the stage. ^{ch. 83}

Fang Zheng walks down from the stage to praise from every side, the acclaim striking him with a warmth the winter wind cannot touch. Onlookers credit the clan leader’s personal coaching along with Fang Zheng’s own hard work since surviving an assassination attempt, and call him the likely first place this year. Beside the clan leader, Gu Yue Mo Chen remarks that Fang Zheng looks set to take first place, while Gu Yue Chi Lian, hoping his own grandson would win honor for the Chi faction, watches with a black face as Chi Cheng falls. Some in the crowd note that Fang Zheng answers to the clan leader’s own faction while Mo Bei and Chi Cheng answer to the Mo and Chi elders, and read the results as tilting the clan toward the clan leader at the two elders’ expense. ^{ch. 83}

An announcer then calls the last match of the day: Gu Yue Fang Zheng against Gu Yue Fang Yuan. ^{ch. 83}