The blow landed, and a crack split the yin-yang disk above Nangong Yue.
Crimson Refinement's second slash was already coming.
She moved fast, giving Nangong Yue no chance to rest or react.
There were no gaps between her moves, as though she needed neither to breathe nor gather strength.
Slash after slash poured down like a violent storm.
Each carried a wholly different blade intent.
The first was heavy as a mountain, the second sharp as a needle, the third fierce as fire, the fourth cold as ice.
Her blade work was hardly exquisite. It was almost unreasonably brutal.
Yet within that brutality lay a primal, rugged force.
Every slash seemed to unleash a ferocity suppressed for countless years.
Nangong Yue wove through the rain of blades.
Her movements cycled like a Taiji Diagram. Her left palm traced a circle, her right an arc, while yin and yang fish flowed and transformed between her hands.
When Crimson Refinement's blade came down, she drew on the yin fish's power to pull the slash aside.
When Crimson Refinement's blade intent bore down, she drove the yang fish's power to dissolve the pressure.
Though more and more cracks spread across the yin-yang disk, it never shattered completely.
Each time it cracked, fresh yin-yang power flowed from Nangong Yue's palms to replenish it.
They exchanged more than a hundred blows. The space above the Arena had shattered and healed over a dozen times.
Each time, it healed a little more slowly than before.
It was as though the fabric of the area had endured too many concentrated impacts, leaving even the Arena's own power of restoration flagging.
Around the points of impact, countless chains of law twisted together like ropes wrung into knots. In some places, the laws even short-circuited.
Laws that should have