Qiyana and Sane's conflict finally erupted in the most straightforward way possible.
Smiling, Qiyana turned her gaze toward King Yuen's gloomy face. "Father, I'm not the one who said it. It was my esteemed sister!"
In response, King Yuen merely fell silent for a moment before letting out a deep breath. Then he sat down in the chair behind him and said:
"Since you, Sane, demand a duel, then gather all the Yuentar... This is a Truth Duel. The loser will leave Yishuaoken, while the winner will become the ritual's presider."
As he spoke, King Yuen's face was steeped in gloom, as though filled with unresolvable frustration—Yuan Chen understood why, because he could sense that King Yuen hated seeing his own family turn against one another.
However, a challenge, a duel, and a Truth Duel were three entirely different concepts in Ixialia.
A challenge was when the weak overcame the strong—when Qiyana invited Sane, even if Qiyana called it a duel, people would still see it as a challenge. Whether in age, status, or years of cultivation, Qiyana was far inferior to Sane.
But what Sane had issued to Qiyana was a duel. Compared to a challenge, duels often ended far more brutally, frequently with death or crippling injury. By saying this now, Sane had clearly reached the limit of her tolerance for Qiyana's insubordination.
A Truth Duel, meanwhile, was a tradition that had existed before Yishuaoken closed itself off—legend had it that it first arose because masters held differing views on the elements.
Such clashes of ideas had once flourished in the scholarly atmosphere of Yishuaoken, because the Yuan Chu Axiom had been advancing at a rapid pace at the time.
When ideological conflicts reached an impasse, the masters would challenge one another. The loser would leave Yishuaoken and