As the hammer was thrown at Hong Mi from a close range, he could not dodge it in time. Hong Mi moved his hands forward and crossed them in the 'X' position in front of himself to defend against the hammer instinctively.
The wooden hammer struck Hong Mi's arms and disappeared. The sleeves of Hong Mi's robe started to turn red because of the blood. Hong Mi moved his arms away to look at Ci An and saw a fist coming toward him. Her fist was so close that he could only see the fist and nothing behind it.
Ci An punched Hong Mi's face with her right fist. The fist struck Hong Mi's nose, and it began to bleed. There was also swelling in the area around the nose. It looked like one of Hong Mi's nose bones had broken. He stumbled backward, but managed to save himself from falling onto the wooden ground.
Ci An's physical strength was not much different from a normal person. The reason she managed to injure Hong Mi's nose with her punch was that her speed gave her fist enough momentum to injure Hong Mi.
Before Hong Mi could balance himself, a hand touched his chest. Hong Mi looked at the owner of the hand and saw Ci An smiling.
Then, Ci An activated a technique and an explosion happened that sent Hong Mi flying out of the arena. Hong Mi fell unconscious because of the power of the attack. It seemed that Ci An had learned an explosion technique.
"The winner of this fight is Ci An. And you two, heal him." Elder Wand announced and then asked the two healing cultivators standing next to him to heal Hong Mi.
"Ci An, you can rest for an hour. After that, the final round will start, and you will fight against Yang Zhai." Elder Wang said to Ci An.
"Elder, I don't need that much time to rest, only five minutes are enough for me. After that, we can begin the final round." Ci An said proudly. She was itching to fight Yang Zhai and take her revenge. So, she wanted to start the fight as soon as possible. However, she still had to restore her Essence water to the limit of her talent so that she could use her advantage of having more Essence water than Yang Zhai; thus, she asked for only five minutes.
Elder Wang narrowed his eyes after he heard Ci An and thought: She is quite impatient, it would result in her downfall someday.
"Very well then, as you say. But know this, you will not be given even one minute of extra time after five minutes." Elder Wang said seriously to Ci An. She was her student, so he had to be strict with her for her own safety.
"Ok, elder." Ci An agreed without any hesitation.
After five minutes,
"Are you two ready?" Elder Wang asked Yang Zhai and Ci An.
Both of them were standing on the two sides of the arena. The final round was about to begin.
"Yes,"
"Yes,"
Both of them replied to elder Wang.
"Ok, begin the fight." Elder Wang said from below the stage.
Yang Zhai without any delay activated a technique with his full power. This technique was called "A Dark Day", and was one of the top-tier techniques. Not just top-tier, it was said that this technique could even rival some low-level Rank 2 techniques:thus, it took thirty percent of Yang Zhai's essence water, leaving only 29 percent essence water in Yang Zhai's aperture.¹
This technique had the ability to release a black fog into the air. This fog was extremely thick, so much so that a person could not see when they were in this fog, even the things right in front of their eyes could not be seen. At higher ranks, this technique had the ability to make one lose their sense of direction.
Even though Yang Zhai did not see Ci An's increased speed in the third round, he knew about it from his previous life. He also knew that Ci An had a Rank 1 speed-type Ka in her possession. The only thing that had changed was that she had reached the third stage, which did not happen in his previous life, which is why he was interested to sense Ci An's aura.
These two reasons were what made Yang Zhai use a top-tier technique from the very start.
If he was not wrong, many more things would also go differently in this life from his previous.
"Could this be the butterfly effect?"² Yang Zhai thought.
After he activated The Dark Day, a black fog began to spread like darkness in the day. This fog hurriedly developed the whole arena. As this was a powerful technique, it took only a few seconds for it to quickly envelop the entire arena.
A darkness spread in the whole arena, making both Ci An and Yang Zhai oblivious to their surroundings.
If I can't see anything, then let's make her unable to see as well: Yang Zhai thought. He did it because he didn't want to give Ci An an advantage from the start. This fog would make her unable to use her speed, after all, would she run blindly here and there? If she did, she might fall out of the arena because of her carelessness.
"Why, why can't I see anything? I can't even see my hands." Ci An mumbled to herself.
"Yang Zhai, what did you do? Coward, fight me fair and square if you dare." Ci An shouted angrily.
Yang Zhai did not say anything and removed his shoes. He then began to move around slowly. He was careful as to not fall out of the arena, he was just being cautious; after all, he remembered the area of the wooden stage perfectly, so he did not need to be this worried about falling out of the arena. However, he was a cautious person and would not foolishly believe that his opponent did not have any tricks up her sleeves.
He moved around the arena slowly and was moving his hands here and there, trying to find Ci An. He only needed to find her, and he would be able to deal with her in thousands of different ways. And he had to find her as soon as possible before this fog started to fade. After all, if he wanted to keep this fog, he would have to insert more Essence water in it, but he did not do it; otherwise, he may run out of Essence water too soon.
He had many other powerful techniques as well, but they all needed more than thirty percent of his Essence water, which was not feasible.
And then the toll on his body would hinder him if he used techniques so carelessly.
Ci An, on the other hand, also moved and went to one of the corners of the arena. She then activated the fire path technique and shot fire five times in five different directions.
Yang Zhai was still walking, when a fire struck the right side of his waist and began to burn his clothes. Yang Zhai, without wasting any time, activated a water path technique and poured some water on himself. This technique took seven percent of his Essence water, leaving him with only twenty-one percent Essence Water.
Yang Zhai knew that it would be disadvantageous to him if he was struck by the fire a few more times: thus, he hurriedly changed his position and walked two meters to the right side. When something is burned, then there would be a burning sound as well as a smell; therefore, he changed his position. He then removed the burned part of his robe and threw it to the side.
His waist side was also burned because of the fire, but it also benefited him. It was because he roughly managed to pinpoint Ci An's location. As the fire attacked his waist's right side, he just had to attack in the right direction.
Yang Zhai activated an ice path technique to summon an icicle and shot it in the right direction. He directly attacked with a technique instead of running there to attack because there was a chance that Ci An might change her direction.
*****/*****
1-Author's note: A aperture can contain 100 percent essence water. Yang Zhai had 59 percent and used up 30 percent, leaving behind 29 percent. So, 30 usage percent doesn't mean that he used only 17 essence water.
2-Butterfly Effect: In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, in which a small change in one state can result in large differences in a later state.