The fight raged like a whiteout storm, and honestly, my Sword Domain barely mattered here, especially one-on-one.

Frustration hit first, then the truth: I was outmatched in style.

My way is balanced, a ridge-walk between blade and guard—can press or pull back, can go near or far. No glaring flaw, no shining edge.

Lixue’s way is the opposite, a wildfire that refuses to bank—absolute offense. She throws away all shields and pours her soul into striking.

Worse, every strike of hers blooms like fireworks in a blizzard—ranged, wide-area, high-destruction sword arts. She almost never steps in to grapple.

How to put it… it’s like she never bothered with the basics. She only learned the cannons, not the pistols. All big moves, no small ones.

“So she’s aiming to crush or outright one-shot with overwhelming force… got it. A ranged burst flow.”

Ranged, sweeping, high power—that’s the wind I hate to sail against. She won’t even let me breathe, much less close. Meteors keep falling like she’s burning free fuel.

And she’s airborne, a hawk over ice. My close swordplay and techniques can’t bite. I’m stuck burning heavy Sword Aura and flinging ranged arts to keep up.

This won’t do. Lixue can spam ultimates; I can’t. I need to drag her down and force a close fight.

“Your movements slowed,” she called, voice like frost. “Out of stamina? Extreme Snow Rend!”

Her twin blades rose with speed the eye couldn’t chase. Two huge ice-blue arcs tore through space, ripping up the mirror-slick ice beneath me.

A chill hit first, then focus. A heartbeat earlier, my Sword Intent had caught her line. If not, I’d have been done.

But that didn’t mean relief. Blocking her big moves is climbing a cliff in sleet. I drew a deep breath, then detonated the Sword Aura I’d banked.

I unleashed a full-force Sword Qi Storm.

Boom!

Ice-blue slashes slammed into the tornado. The collision burst like thunder under glass. My storm edged it out, shredding both arcs and sweeping the blizzard clear.

“Myriad Swords Unleashed!”

The whirlwind faded. I didn’t pause. I triggered the next technique waiting on my tongue.

Clang, clang!

Thousands of blades sang and surged up, arrowing toward Lixue in the sky. It looked like a shoal of silver fish breaching a frozen sea.

“Hm? This could be troublesome.”

She murmured, closed her eyes, lifted her swords like a priestess—then—

“Extreme Snow Flash!”

She opened her eyes. Her body vanished. An ice-blue swordglow fell from above like a cold crescent.

Thump! Thump! Thump! …

My flying blades shattered in sheets, as if struck by railgun fire, then bloomed into explosions.

A spike of danger surged through me. Instinct hit first, Sword Intent second. I turned and cut.

Clang!

The impact cracked the ice walls around us like a spiderweb. A breath later, they smoothed themselves, pristine again. No wonder the Palace of Ice Crystal hasn’t taken a scratch.

“Ugh!”

I reeled back several steps. Both hands on the Shattered Light Sword went numb and prickled. Lixue stood right before me, her Ice Illusion Moon locked against my Shattered Light.

My grip screamed. I flooded the lock with Sword Aura and forced her back a few paces.

Ha—ha—

Exhaustion washed over me like black tide. Two full-power ultimates, then bracing her last strike—I’d burned through a lot.

“You even predicted my angle,” she said, gaze clear as frost. “Sword Intent, huh. And by the look of you, you want me on the ground. Fine. I don’t love close combat, but I’ll humor you. Beating you in the air is getting dull.”

This time, Lixue didn’t shoot back into her home ground—the sky.

“Ahaha… I’m honored.”

I could only laugh, bitter as winter tea. On paper, we looked even. In motion, the gap gaped. She could pin me from above, and I could barely touch her.

“Then… Mirror Calm Water…”

Her aura dropped into stillness, smooth as a mountain stream. If she weren’t standing right in front of me, I’d have thought she’d vanished.

“Mirror Calm Water, huh?”

The guardian “Mirror” on Trial Lake’s fourth floor had used that. I’d eaten a full course of pain back then.

“Dance Blossom: Flowing Blade.”

“What—?!”

Somehow, Lixue was already at my back, her cut drifting in like a dancer’s sleeve, graceful and fatal. My Sword Intent flared at the instant she moved, or I’d have been carved.

So close… perfect chance. No time to waste. I gathered Sword Aura and launched Sword Qi Dance.

In my head, even if it didn’t wound her, it’d at least make her taste some iron. At this range, no one outruns flying Sword Aura. Or so I thought—

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—

She read the currents like a swallow riding wind. Step by elegant step, she slipped past each streak by a hair’s breadth. When she couldn’t, a single cut erased it.

In the end, Sword Qi Dance didn’t trouble her at all. Not one arc landed. She either glided past or sliced them from the air.

“This is bad…”

Watching her Mirror Calm Water up close, my heart sank like a stone into deep lake. Two things nailed it home—my Sword Intent didn’t catch her first steps, and she traced every Sword Aura’s path as if they’d left chalk lines in the air.

Lixue’s Mirror Calm Water was, without a doubt, far stronger than Trial Lake’s guardian Mirror. At the very least, it wasn’t weaker than my Sword Intent.

…