Yun spent the rest of her day recovering her energy in meditation. She already knew her next opponent's strength and had no need to watch more matches today. Reflecting on her previous battle with Bai Xieren while in meditation, she realized that her attention had lapsed a few times, but thankfully the only time it was taken advantage of was when he retrieved his second chain and used it against her. She went over the fight in her head a few times, thinking about it again and again, to analyze where she went wrong and where she could improve.
Somewhere down the line she entered an ethereal state, where she was neither awake nor asleep, and the battle ran in front of her eyes over and over while she just watched quietly. In this state she began to feel like something was changing, some level of comprehension was breaking past the point of the unknown and flooding into her mind.
Beneath the surface of her mind the image of the valley from the first level of the Solar Thunder Sutra began to rise and lay itself atop her mind, and her thoughts turned from the battle of attrition she had just completed. In this state she began to feel the concept that was beneath the Dragon Aura skill, and she felt that this was a concept which she should easily understand. As the flow of energy within this concept turned and flowed around it changed directions erratically and branched out to other areas spontaneously.
What element was this? Such erratic movements were not any of the traditional four elements of fire, water, wind, earth.
Comprehension struck her rapidly as she watched the erratic patterns.
Lightning!
This flow of energy was leaping out and linking together two close flows! This was the concept of Static Arc, where a high enough charge was built up on one side and leapt across a gap to change the charge state of the other side!
As her comprehension of this new energy flow dawned on her she began to feel her body flooded with energy. She began to sense the energy present in the world around her and felt she was able to draw on it to power her body and not just her cultivation!
Opening her eyes from this state of sudden enlightenment, Yun realized that it was already late night and everyone else had gone back to their tents to rest except for one of the Elders from her sect, who was sitting nearby on the stadium seats watching over her. Seeing this, she stood and bowed.
"Thank you for protecting this Yun. If you've no instructions for her, this Yun will go sleep now Elder."
The Elder simply smiled back at her and waved her on her way before he stood and walked leisurely to his own resting place.
The next morning arrived quickly, and Yun woke up early to stretch and prepare. This was the day she would fight in the first round, it was the last battle of the two main brackets from the winner's group. Today would hold a total of six battles, and four of them were the losers bracket.
Before long the sun rose fully and the Elders announced that, since there were fewer battles, they would begin at mid-morning and not first thing. Hearing this, she decided to have a hearty breakfast before stretching and doing calisthenics.
Soon enough, mid-morning arrived. The Elder in charge of the match called out Yun and Fang Niu to the arena and waited for them to take positions.
As soon as they were both ready the Elder simply walked off the stage, not even bothering to announce a beginning. In martial arts there was no need, your enemy would never warn you before attacking.
Each of the two fighters drew out their weapon and carefully drew closer. This was the final match of their bracket, they both knew the opponent was powerful! Finally drawing close enough to reach with the spear, Yun attacked. Each strike was aimed perfectly, and a flurry of spear strikes rained down on Fang Niu. But strangely, her soft sword seemed to cause them to slide off, drawing the blade away from her body with what looked to be little effort.
The blade of the soft sword bent and flexed under the impact, but when she swung it out it could straighten like a sword or curl and strike like a snake. It was very unnerving to fight, and with a spear it was extremely important to keep her beyond striking range. But again, that strange technique that caused her spear to slide off to the side made it impossible to completely control the distance between them as the distance closed in.
Finally, deciding it was too risky to keep letting her advance, Yun once again activated her Dragon Aura and cranked up the heat. Thankfully, this seemed to work. A look of frustration appeared momentarily on Fang Niu's face as she backed out of range of the fiery aura before a look of greater determination began to rise in her face. Her countenance became icy and her sword, like before, began to shimmer, the air around it crystallizing.
Slash!
Fang Niu's sword sliced into the Dragon Aura and actually left a space cut into it where the heat couldn't gather for a short time! The coldness of the ice sword was equal to the heat of the Dragon Aura, causing the two to strike a balance.
Seeing her aura sliced into caused Yun a good deal of surprise. In response to this she began to more aggressively attempt to strike Fang Niu, even going so far as changing her strike part way through a swing to try and out-maneuver the soft sword's defense.
As the fight dragged on Yun began to feel the exhaustion from maintaining the Dragon Aura, but Fang Niu didn't seem to be suffering as much exhaustion as she was. This was obvious from the energy expenditure of their skills. To maintain an aura with such intense heat obviously took far more energy than to freeze the air around a blade, it was all a matter of space. Realizing this, Yun began to shrink her Dragon Aura down to conserve energy.
With the reduced size of the Dragon Aura the ice blade stopped preventing it from regenerating after slicing through it, but the distance they were fighting at continued to shrink with it. Yun was struggling to come up with a way she could win this seemingly impossible battle when she remembered what she had comprehended last night.
Static Arc!
With the Static Arc concept she could not only pull energy from the electric power in the air, she could also charge her weapon with it so strikes would pass energy on to things that got too close! This was a technique that allowed you to punish those who were able to evade your strikes, and numb them if they dared to receive them!
Expanding her Dragon Aura out again rapidly to drive Fang Niu away, Yun took the moment she created to concentrate on the circulation pattern for this technique. The extremely dry air around her was ideal for building up a static charge, as there was no moisture to wick it away, so it only took a moment to begin to build a lightning elemental charge in her body.
Striking out and reducing the Dragon Aura again, this time Yun charged her spear with the Static Arc concept she'd just begun using. When Fang Niu tried to deflect the blow's energy away with her soft sword again she was surprised when the sword became more rigid just before the strike! The static charge didn't manage to travel through the materials of the hilt, but it did cause a reaction with the soft sword's materials! Finally, for the first time this battle, Yun began to feel like she had made an impact when she struck the soft sword.
Fang Niu, surprise in her eyes, slid back a few meters with the impact and stared at her sword, which was slowly losing the stiffness it had suddenly gained. She looked back at Yun with anger obvious in her gaze. "What did you just do to my sword? There's no way your Fire element was able to penetrate my Ice concept, and even if it did it wouldn't cause that reaction!"
Yun just smiled back, not deigning to respond while she took a relaxed fighting stance, clearly egging on her opponent.
"I'll tear you to bits, you cocky little cub! Die!"
Charging forward, Fang Niu seemed to lose her calm and collected exterior.