After three or four days of selection bouts and defending the platforms, few contestants remained-only eight.
When the Sword Saint of the Western Regions stepped onto the platform, the air abruptly congealed. He was as lean as bamboo, with a long, narrow scimitar hanging at his waist. The sapphires set into its sheath reflected a cold, eerie light beneath the blazing sun. Tens of thousands of spectators fixed their eyes on him, yet none dared raise their voices-a deathly stillness honed amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood surrounded him, as though even the wind skirted around him.
"State your name!" Lü Bu reined in the restless Red Hare, his Sky Piercer pointing diagonally toward the ground. His scarlet cloak stirred without wind under the surging force of his Haki.
"Loulan, Meng Kedo Nali." The Sword Saint's voice rasped like grinding gravel. Before his words had faded, his scimitar was already out of its sheath! There was no dazzling flash of steel, only a nearly transparent ripple tearing through the air, so fast it left not even an afterimage! Wherever the blade passed, fine ice crystals actually formed on the platform's obsidian surface.
Lü Bu threw back his head and laughed as Red Hare reared! Raising his halberd with one arm, he neither dodged nor retreated, but hacked fearlessly down at that invisible blade light! The Sky Piercer never touched the scimitar's edge, yet three feet before its blade, a visibly distorted vortex abruptly burst into being, then exploded with the roar of wind and thunder!
Clang-humm!
The piercing clash of metal came not from physical contact, but from the shriek of two ultimate forces colliding! The scimitar in Meng Kedo Nali's hand trembled violently. The web of his hand split open instantly, blood winding down the hilt. More