"I am Yan Guang. My greatest skill is a sword movement art. I challenge you to a duel. Here's the fee for this round! Don't you dare refuse!"
The sword-wielding boy was the first to grab the opportunity to challenge the red-robed girl. Fearing that others might compete with him, he immediately threw a handful of coins at her.
Chuckling at his eagerness, she bent down to pick up the coins scattered on the grass and replied.
"My name is Xuanyuan Zhou. I have never touched a real sword in my seventeen years of life. But I will not refuse your challenge. Do you have one extra sword to spare?"
The challenger, Yan Guang, looked quite embarrassed for a moment. As a skilled swordsman, it was definitely a shameful act for him to go through with the challenge.
But he quickly found a solution. Unsheathing his three-foot-long sword, he threw it over to her.
"Here's a real sword. I will fight you with its sheath so that no one can claim it was an unfair contest."
"Heh~" Old man Lao Jun sneered from the side.
"It's not like you'll be fighting to the death or something. What's the difference between a sword and a sheath? It's still a duel between a swordsman and an ordinary little lass."
Yan Guang chose to ignore the criticism. To him, it seemed, honor wasn't as important as a discipleship slot of the Crimson Snow Sect. He doubled down on his path instead.
"If my selection is ensured, I'll still compensate you, miss. If you stick around after the ceremony is over, I'll find a way to let you enter the sect anyhow. If you're not unwilling, you can also become my maidservant and enter the sect with me officially."
How bold! How confident!
Han Xuhan was nearly moved to tears. These entitled young masters were the backbone of cultivation novels. He loved to see them get abused!
He had never imagined that he'd get to see the live-action version one day!
His opponent, Xuanyuan Zhou, didn't try to ride on Lao Jun's logic, despite the unfair arrangement. Neither did she seem to take offense at the arrogant, insulting proposal.
She simply grabbed the hilt of the sword and beckoned at Yan Guang.
"Let's duel. If you can disarm me, you win."
Yan Guang didn't even bother to ask what the condition of her victory was. His confidence had soared the moment she agreed to fight.
He held the sword sheath at an inside stance with both hands and rushed towards her.
Xuanyuan Zhou wasn't totally still while he closed in on her. She stepped back and forth erratically, albeit keeping herself within an area of nine square feet. Her movements didn't warrant any change in Yan Guang's approach.
Just as he was about fifteen feet away from her, Yan Guang leaped, reaching almost six feet above the ground and crossing the entire distance in that one leap.
While airborne, his stance turned offensive, and he swung the sheath back to deliver a strike with all of his momentum.
Even Han Xuhan, an outsider with zero idea about sword arts, thought that the attack was too brutish and simple. Did he want to win by intimidating her with raw striking power?
Xuanyuan Zhou seemed a bit panicked as she took a couple of steps back and raised her sword in an awkward oblique pose, one hand on the hilt, the other hand touching the back of the blade in a defensive posture.
She gave Yan Guang the perfect platform to deliver the strike upon. Everyone took a sharp breath, preparing to hear the loud collision as the sheath landed on the blade.
But a fraction of a second later, countless pupils shrank simultaneously. Yan Guang's sheath did smash into the body of the blade, but his hands were no longer supporting it.
Instead, he had let go of it just before the collision, and using the opportunity where Xuanyuan Zhou was anticipating the strike, he attacked her left hand, which was gripping the hilt of the sword.
No one had expected that a conniving scheme was hidden behind the brash attack. It didn't seem to match his earlier persona.
His claw-like grip latched onto Xuanyuan Zhou's left hand, and the momentum of his flight was shifted to a kick he aimed at her stomach. The entire scheme of his landing was to disarm her with brutal force.
Watching his plan play out like a tutorial, Han Xuhan regretted betting with the guy standing beside him.
With a weak clatter, the sheath bounced off the sword. Veins bulged on Yan Guang's hands clasped over Xuanyuan Zhou's left wrist. His foot successfully smashed into her midsection.
But Xuanyuan Zhou did not move. It didn't even look like she felt the kick, which seemed unlikely considering how much momentum was invested behind it.
The reason became apparent when everyone noticed her other hand, which had been supporting the back of the blade earlier, was now gripping the back of his knee in a vice-like grip.
It was as if Yan Guang was a ragdoll thrown at her from afar. There was no lethality in his aggressive pose. She was handling him like a toy.
Panicking, Yan Guang tried to disengage his knee from her grip, only to feel his vision begin to spin. She was planning to disorient him by gyrating on her heels while he was stuck in her grip.
It was a comical sight. Yan Guang began to wail tragically as her spinning speed increased to a point where his whole body was off the soil, turning into a blurry figure. She even managed to slip her wrist out of his grip in the process.
A collective gasp was heard across the testing site when she let his knee go. Yan Guang flew for real this time. Like a wingless bird, he smashed into the tent behind them and slid down powerlessly.
Had she not carefully aimed for it, he would have definitely suffered grave injuries. Any large rock or hard soil as the landing spot could have turned some of his bones into dust.
"That's the end of the first round. Who's next?" Xuanyuan Zhou asked, placing Yan Guang's sword over her shoulders authoritatively.
Behind her, Yan Guang attempted to get back up on his feet, only to lose his balance from the dizziness and land face-first into the sand.
Han Xuhan patted his new friend on the back, shaking him out of the reverie.
"Brother, where is my money?"