[Contestant Xiaoyuan! What is Xiaoyuan doing? Check Xiaoyuan’s status!]
Ling Yi’s face dips like a cloud losing its color, but Yekase feels the air tighten—the real show is only now unfurling.
When Xiaoyuan plays “serious,” she’s T2, maybe T3—steady waves. When she decides to throw it, she ranges T0 to T5—storm or dead calm.
If she rolls T0, Bowman faces a god—history’s fiercest tri-discipline: mage, Mind Energy, and body as one.
If she rolls T5, she flips to dog mode and zaps herself with an electric pierce, eyes going white like a fish on ice.
The swing between those states is eerie as moonlight in fog—no one knows what her mind’s dice show. Hence the nickname: the “Dice Warrior.”
[It’s over.]
Luzhixing blurts it from the guest seats, a pebble dropped into a still pond.
[Over already?! Is our opening match ending under contestant Xiaoyuan’s cryptic moves?! Bowman’s armor still has juice, and his fighting spirit’s blazing!]
A veteran like Luzhixing knows Xiaoyuan’s quirks by heart. Which means—did she already see the die’s face?
Xiaoyuan lifts her straight blade from the floor and hugs it like a pillow. Her head tilts as if dozing; her body sags forward like a puppet with cut strings.
Bowman clenches his fists, circuits humming through his frame—
Then Xiaoyuan’s half-lidded eyes are at his chest like a ghost in a mirror.
—?!
When did she get that close?
The sheathed blade pops from her arms. Its blunt pommel skims his unarmored cheek and inks a red line.
She slips her left hand around, almost tender, arm looping behind his head to grip the pommel’s counterweight.
A leftward tug.
—Boom!!
The thud lands like a boulder in a temple, echoing through the hush.
With a palm-sized leverage on the pommel, she flips an armored man where he stands.
But Bowman’s no pushover. He hits ground, rolls, then scythes a sweeping leg. She’s cut down, dragged into the floor, and he slickly hooks a leg over her and spools up his thrusters.
“He—he’s going to burn a person with thruster flame?!”
“A heavyweight, all right…”
A ripple of dread goes through Yekase. She files Bowman’s name in the cold drawer in her mind—please, never meet him in a bracket.
She fights dirty too; when two of your kind meet, it’s bile for bile, and everybody leaves bleeding.
[Levitation Spell.]
Xiaoyuan speaks the name like dropping a feather on stone.
Pinned, her upper body bows the wrong way in a tug-of-war between buoyancy and gravity—and then crack, crack… it breaks.
It breaks…
Her lower body drags the twisted upper half, snaking free of Bowman’s hold, spinning up two meters. Through the blood-dyed shirt, a bone’s outline bulges like a thorn under bark.
Oh right—she doesn’t die.
“Yikes!… That Levitation Spell doesn’t feel like the Doctor’s. It’s got heft!”
“She changed the affix.”
“Affix?”
“Different casting configurations. ‘Steady Chant,’ ‘Passionate Chant,’ ‘Chain Chant,’ ‘Battle Chant,’ ‘Delayed Chant’… Affix spells don’t do anything by themselves; they tint what comes next. Think… uh, enchanting.”
Enchanting a spell with more spell. Trust her to think of that.
After finding out ‘Delayed Chant’ had siblings, Yekase stole time to learn the set. Now she can mix-and-match 64 versions of Levitation Spell.
With her grab-bag of cantrips, she could stroll down a European boulevard calling herself a mage and never flinch.
She refocuses on the screen. In the air, Xiaoyuan’s wounds knit at naked-eye speed; Bowman rips flaming crescents—rip-off Blaze Rekindled—as cover and fires thrusters to hunt the sky.
[He didn’t win the pocket clash. Most of the damage is Xiaoyuan’s self-harm, but Bowman’s still chasing the beat! He won’t let up!]
[It’s useless.]
Luzhixing drops another wet blanket like cold rain on a campfire.
Can this woman not talk? And she’s a brainless Xiaoyuan stan…
The host stalls, words drying up. The commentary channel falls silent like a cut wire.
Inside, speed only climbs. Xiaoyuan earns her T0~T5 legend. She stamps herself with four buffs: Silent, Delayed, Passionate (crits up), Battle (speed up). The crowd watches, breath held:
She sticks Silent onto Delayed. Delayed onto Passionate. Passionate onto Battle. Then Battle onto a second Levitation Spell to top off her airtime.
…
There’s a thing called Parallel Chanting.
She doesn’t turn it on.
[Twin Arm Flame!!]
Bowman roars. His arm armor strikes sparks; powered by the Gauntlet, an X-shaped blaze carves toward the dazed Xiaoyuan.
She takes it raw, sparks skittering off her like fireflies; the impact slings her back.
[Xiaoyuan’s form looks bad! Xiaoyuan retreats as she fights! Xiaoyuan’s caught between advance and retreat! Xiaoyuan’s—]
Xiaoyuan punches through Bowman’s chest plate.
[……?]
Bowman wears a face that can’t parse the world.
“If her punch hits that hard, she could’ve just gone melee,” Ling Yi sighs like wind over reeds.
“No—this isn’t over.”
Alert prickles first, and Yekase sits up in the tub. The water’s body-warm, tiny whirlpools kneading her back; her skin feels pruned.
“That Bowman’s off.”
“Off…?”
Onscreen, chest punched, Bowman neither spits blood nor falls. He clamps both hands on Xiaoyuan’s shoulders.
“His first-hit flinch was wrong. No human reflex. He’s a cyborg.”
“What?!”
It isn’t just the words. Two claws sprout from his waist and lock Xiaoyuan down. His back plates split; an oversized mechanical arm unfolds from inside him and drives straight into the ground!
“Dading Tech, number one in the world! Ultra Ground Gyro!” the big man bellows.
The arm—longer than his whole body—uses the floor as an axle and whips the tangled pair like a rag in a typhoon.
It feels… like he’s put on a gown named “Xiaoyuan”…
“Centrifugal attack. Even with undying, plus Mind Energy, she can fight with all her organs ruptured. But if she’s spun senseless, she’s done.”
However—
—never, under any sky, underestimate the Dice Warrior.
In the washing-machine churn, Xiaoyuan lifts her straight blade like a staff.
She calls:
[Shadow Dice Twice!]
That spell.
Shadow Dice Twice—the banned one at home, rarely taught abroad. Its effect is simple: random.
Why the ban? It reeks of gambling.
But the Sinister Organization bends laws for its elite. If they can’t prove you learned it, they shrug and call it a sudden epiphany.
Shadow Dice Twice triggers a number of random low-tier spells equal to how many spells you used in this Celestial Speech.
Affixes are a 1+1 pair with spells; by default, they don’t add to the count…
A light-dot glows over her head.
It’s the casting marker for Shadow Dice Twice. Then a second. A third—
Court Bout, count 1.
Needle Fire Rain, count 2.
Levitation Spell, counts 3 and 4.
The four dots blossom into one Levitation Spell, two Dancing Lights, and one Fireball, and launch.
Bowman squints at the sudden glare for a heartbeat—then eats a faceful Fireball. His clamp breaks.
But Xiaoyuan’s markers are spent—
…wait?
The markers keep piling up!
“I get it…!”
The host gasps. Ling Yi turns, hungry for the why.
Watching the screen, Yekase can’t hide her respect. “That goofy four-affix chain—she buffed affix with affix. The second and third got treated as the plus-one partner in the 1+1, so they counted!”
This woman in streetwear, half-asleep—flailing at random, or hiding knives and fighting in earnest?
A fifth and sixth dot flare.
Before Bowman, whose stance has collapsed and who’s one breath from defeat—
They resolve into an Oz Floating Disc, and… an electric piercing shot.
The lightning hits the clear disc—
It bursts into a bouquet of sparks—
And sprays Xiaoyuan at arm’s length.
…
…………
[—Match over! Winner: Bowman of Dading Heavy Industries! What a roller-coaster bout—spectacular, electric! Ms. Lu, how did the two perform?]
You’re asking that on purpose!
Cut to the studio.
The deep-V host sits beside Luzhixing, who for some reason has a big pack of cold steel on her back. Even Yekase, socially tone-deaf, sees Luzhixing’s face go storm-dark.
Luzhixing snatches the mic.
[If Ms. Xiao truly wanted the win, she should’ve forgotten her big-name signature spell.]
It’s the longest thing she’s said all show.
Yekase and Ling Yi are already laughing in their bathtubs, splashing like carp in spring rain.
