40 Final Tournament: Defeating Space Itself.

After a night of rest and meditation Yun felt like she was finally ready to try and combat this incredible opponent, obviously a front-runner in the tournament. Slowly opening her eyes, she once again discarded thoughts of the spirit residing deep within her soul before she stood up and proceeded to the arena. Today would host five battles. The first would be her battle, the other four would be battles within the Losers bracket. This battle would be the semifinal battle and would determine who would be facing the winner from the Losers bracket. Yun would be facing her most powerful opponent ever and was not confident of victory.

Victory would mean she had only one battle left to win. Defeat meant she would face whoever came out on top in the next few rounds of the Losers bracket. The Final round would happen two days from now, and both brackets would have a day of rest before that last match.

Arriving at the arena early yet again, Yun did some warm up exercises before focusing on her Solar Thunder Sutra. The Sutra was more difficult to comprehend the further along one studied it, so while the first 'page' of the Sutra, that being the image of the valley, was not difficult to learn, the next image, or the third image, or the fourth image would be exponentially harder. As of yet she still had no information of how many levels there were to the Sutra. Nobody had practiced it in so long that there was no way to know.

Focused on her cultivation, Yun began to have a deeper understanding of the Static Arc concept. This was a concept that allowed the transfer of energy from one body to another, or one object to another. This ability could be used in many ways, such as when she transferred a charge to the soft sword and caused it to stiffen!

Thinking more deeply, Yun began to realize that one of the methods of use could be to steal energy directly from something, like an opponent's attack or their body itself. This would require testing, but should be possible.

At this time the Elders had arrived and began to announce the day. They first announced the battle order for the day, and how many matches there would be, before preparing to start the first match.

"Huli Yunlong versus Xing Zhenya. Competitors enter the stage for the Semifinal match!"

Both of them were prepared, and mounted the stage from opposite sides with gentle leaps to the outer arenas and then from there to the inner arena before walking to their starting positions. They started the match standing three hundred meters apart, looking at each other. While this distance sounds large, it is nothing to a cultivator at this level.

Within twenty seconds Yun had charged forth nearly covering half the distance before the first strike of Xing Zhenya reached her. The incredibly sharp spatial attack crashed down towards her like a mountain, nearly stopping her in her tracks.

Yun stopped to face this strike head on and decided this was her best chance to test her new gnosis. Standing tall with her spear ready she expanded her Dragon Aura to its limit, drying the air out in an instant and creating a high static zone. As the blade of space began to encroach on her aura it slowed significantly, being resisted by the energy emitted by Yun. Slowly it dug into the Dragon Aura, pushing forward and consuming energy bit by bit, but as it completely submerged in her sphere of influence something else began to happen.

Along the edges of the spatial rift were visible arcs of lightning seemingly draining the energy from it. The further it traveled the more it shrank until it was so small that Yun slashed it apart with her spear. Smiling, she then began to charge forward again with confidence.

"I see, so this simple technique will not work against you. It looks like I will have to fight this battle for real."

Xing Zhenya spoke to himself softly, causing the Elders who heard him shake their heads. This young man's pride as a sword cultivator would not let him truly draw his sword against anything less than a worthy opponent. He could not allow himself to put effort into fighting someone who couldn't even stand his blows.

Raising his sword high above his head, Xing Zhenya drew a profound circle with the tip of his blade. This circle grew outwards in front of him until it was nearly half his height taller than him. Pushing out with his free hand caused the disk of space distortion to move out in front of him, then he reached out gently with the tip of his sword and tapped the center of the space.

"Xingzhen. (Starquake)"

Instantly space began to tremble. Everything within the cone of impact for that disk began to tremble, and spatial cracks randomly formed within the region. As space trembled around her, Yun began to absorb more and more energy from the distortion waves that tried to penetrate her aura. Drawing the energy out of them, she forcibly suppressed the trembling of space as it entered her region. Pushing closer and closer to Xing Zhenya she finally got close enough to strike.

Slashing out with her spear, one could notice that tiny crackling bolts of lightning were gathered around the head, leaving trails in the air as it moved rapidly. Approaching the spatial disk of Xhing Zhenya's Starquake technique, Yun's spear let loose a blinding flash of lightning that was only a meter long, but nearly a meter wide as well. All this energy blasted straight through the disk and off the edge of the stage, shattering the spatial tremors and leaving behind what appeared to be shattered glass. The latent electric charge arced between those pieces as well, disintegrating them.

Xing Zhenya looked slightly surprised at this, but he still responded extremely quickly to Yun's next strike. After slashing apart the spatial disk she then whipped the tail of her spear around to strike at his side quickly, but it was stopped by his sword. She took a step back and began to fiercely duel with Xing Zhenya using every technique she could to try and force him back or break his guard.

With her two skills active, she tried to drain energy from him as well, but he just kept creating spatial cuts that seemed to take no effort from him, but gave her something that she had to focus on draining. Xing Zhenya had struck a balance and was preventing her from gaining ground. After a few minutes of having reached a status quo he began to reverse the tides.

Xing Zhenya stepped in close and began using heavy slashes and stabs, intermixed with powerful spatial rifts from each and every slash, to drive Yun backwards. The sudden aggressive assault caught her off guard and forced her back time and time again, her Dragon aura became riddled with holes that she couldn't spend time on fixing without being injured. The Lightning elemental charge she was building up had no way to be directed at him and was continuously used to support her own energy expenditure as well as lashing out at rifts that were a threat to her.

Yun was being suppressed!

Finally, after nearly an hour of intense fighting, she was driven off the edge of the arena with no way to resist. Xing Zhenya had used his extremely powerful sword and Space laws to prevent her from building any kind of offense against him without taking life-threatening injuries. She was unwilling, but at the same time she understood the disparity in their power.

Climbing out of the river water and standing on the cliff edge that served as the shore she bowed towards Xing Zhenya, acknowledging his superiority with a simple gesture.