The First Stirring of the Wind

Time slipped by like quicksand through one's fingers, and three days passed in silence. The atmosphere surrounding the Blue Moon City tournament grew ever more fervent, while the competition in the East District gradually reached a fever pitch. Over those three days, the Li Family team had rolled over three opponents like a precise war machine, efficient and ruthless: Fire Dragon Valley, the Xiao Mansion, and the Mountain-Suppressing Sect, whom they had encountered before.

They won all three battles without suspense, never even needing to reveal the Li Family's true strength.

Against Fire Dragon Valley, renowned for its ferocious fire-attribute attacks and moderately famous within the East District, the Li Family fielded Li Longyue, Li Xuanqing, Li Xuanshu, Li Qiuqiu, and Li Huajun as their main lineup. Fire Dragon Valley's captain was a level-seventy-five assault-type Soul Sage whose martial soul was the Flame Earth Dragon. His temper was as explosive as his martial soul, and before the match, he had declared that he would show the Li Family what true Flames Burn the Heavens meant.

Yet once the match began, the battle became utterly one-sided. The instant Li Longyue's Mountain Dragon King martial soul appeared, the dragon's pressure, as heavy and ancient as primordial mountains, brought the restless fire elements and dragon-type martial souls on the arena to a standstill. The overwhelming sea of flames created by Fire Dragon Valley's captain through his sixth soul skill, Earth Dragon World-Burning Transformation, crashed against Li Longyue's dark yellow Mountains-and-Rivers Bastion, which seemed condensed from the essence of the earth itself. It could only stir up waves of green smoke, unable to advance even an inch. Li Longyue did not even use a stronger soul skill. Relying solely on the innate defensive power of his martial soul and his absolute command over earth