Cultivator’s Path to Infamy [Progression | Cultivation | Villain Lead]

On the stands, among the crowd.

"Oh, who would have thought? This year they decided to skip the drawing..."

"Grandad, what do you mean?"

"Heh, little one, before the battles, participants used to draw sticks with numbers, and the fights happened as specific numbers were called. But this time, it seems they decided to use the participants' plaques instead of sticks..."

"Ooh!"

As An sat and watched, he heard a man and his granddaughter a few rows away discussing the Tournament. Listening to them, he thought and assumed that this new system for choosing opponents was much more convenient for both participants and judges, the elders responsible for the competition. But for all its advantages, this new system created many loopholes that would make it easy to cheat for those who want to benefit from it.

'Elders in charge of the Tournaments could easily rig matches, creating favorites, giving them weaker opponents. And in the end, these favorites would have a better chance of being noticed by the elders who were selecting disciples from the participants… Those who pay more, advance further in the tournament…'

'Perhaps the introduction of this new system is not accidental. The opportunity to be in the Qi Hearths, and again, the chance to become the personal disciple of some powerful master… Why, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the finalists, and everything else was already decided before the Festival even began… Most likely, the selection of personal disciples is also smoke and mirrors, and everything was decided long before today…' An believed that his logic might be wrong in some places, but he was able to guess the overall picture correctly.

Just as the teleportation of participants onto the arenas had been unexpected, so too did the battles begin, without any speeches or introductions. Simply finding themselves on the arena and seeing the signal from the elder standing at its edge, the participants began their fights.

For nearly an hour, An tried to absorb all the information from the projection in front of the stands, which had split into forty equal projections, each showing one of the arenas where participants were fighting.

Carefully watching the battles, he began studying the timing and how the participants' Qi flows moved, the energy paths from the approximate location of the dantian to the exit point, the technique activation point. After each analysis, he tried to replay the battle in his head, where he himself would be in place of one of them.

'Too bad I can't visually see how Qi moves inside a person… I can only intuitively track changes and the involuntarily emitted energy from their bodies, and based only on this, approximate the movement of Qi…' Recreating the opponent in his head, An tried to reconstruct the internal energy path as accurately as possible, afraid of missing something.

Finishing his creation in his mind, giving it real strength, and staging fights against himself, he constantly lost. An deliberately avoided making the first move. He decided to project fights where his enemy always struck first.

Only after several dozen attempts against the same opponent did he finally manage to hold his own. An began avoiding techniques, focusing entirely on Qi flows, on information, timing, patterns of movement, both of the opponent's physical body and their Qi, that he had studied before from the projections. In the end, he started winning without any expenditure of Qi on his part, simply waiting until the opponent's Qi reserves ran out.

But this didn't always work. Some participants used techniques on the arena that An didn't know how to deal with at all. For example, a technique that compressed the air, increased pressure, and turned the ground into jelly. It all happened simultaneously over a large area. He simply lacked the speed to avoid that technique. And he saw a huge number of such techniques.

Not giving up, he simulated fights against such, seemingly invincible opponents. After many defeats, An found a way, but it was too crude.

The only way to avoid such techniques, again, was to close the distance quickly. He would accumulate Qi under his feet and instantly detonate that energy, by compressing a large amount of Qi and converting it to the Fire Element. Only then could he avoid such techniques, though he lost his imaginary sandals every time.

In battles, inside his head, when he felt confident against his opponent, An began using Qi threads and modifying them into crude daggers.

Thanks to the fusion of the Sharpness aspect with his Qi, his energy could now, in some cases, cut or more precisely, tear through an opponent's defenses, whether physical shields and armor, or energy-based defenses such as artifacts and techniques.

But he ran into a small problem, because his Sharpness was only superficially mastered, it didn't give a significant advantage. In other words, he couldn't defeat opponents at the seventh layer in a few strikes, sometimes not even those at the sixth, when he himself was only at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation.

After repeated simulations, losing again and again, he finally managed to snatch victory twice from the claws of a seventh-layer opponent. But An was sure he had succeeded only because on the real Arena, the participants hadn't yet reached the battles where they would have to use their entire arsenal.

In almost all simulations against seventh-layer opponents, he lost primarily due to the pressure and power of Qi itself, and only then to techniques and auxiliary items.

….

Arena number 27.

After a bright flash, the two participants opened their eyes, throwing their gazes at their opponent on the other side of the Arena.

"Hahaha! I always knew it! The Heavens are on my side, Mo Fan! Finally! That day has come! Today, I will wash away my shame with your accursed blood!" One of them began laughing and, activating his Qi, directed it into his swords, holding it above his head.

"Mon Tuo?" Mo Fan, hearing that piercing voice, with a constant whistling due to missing teeth, which he himself had knocked out, immediately recognized his opponent in this match.

"Those damned idiots! I gave them a simple task… And that ass-kissing Bulldog couldn't even carry out my simplest order! As always, everything has to be done with my own hands!" Mon Tuo twisted his face, showing his chessboard of missing teeth to everyone through the projection, undisguised killing intent in his eyes, his whole body showing that today, he was ready to go all the way.

"So those fools were acting on your orders? Because of their betrayal, half of my people were disqualified, including someone who was dear to me!" Mo Fan's gaze cooled, not wanting to waste any more time, he raised his right hand upward.

"Today, for my new brothers and for my new sisters, for those you deprived of their chance, you will answer to them in full! And I am the one who will hold you accountable!"

"Eternal Darkness! First Form!" Shouting, a sword appeared from nowhere in his hand. He sharply swung it in an arc, and immediately, a wave of black energy materialized behind him, having burst through the blade of his sword, and began to devour all the light around.

Once formed, this wave, passing by the caster himself, rushed toward Mon Tuo with lightning speed, growing in width and height along the way, reaching several dozen meters in width and about four meters in height.

"S-shield... Golden Shield!" Mon Tuo, freezing for a moment at the sight of the light-eating wave, managed to activate his defense at the last moment.

"AAA! aaH!!" The wave, slamming into him at tremendous speed, knocked him off his feet and sent flying directly into the barrier around the Arena.

From the force of the impact, even through the loud noise of the two still-raging energies from his attack and the shield, a distinct sound of cracking was heard. It was the barrier, from the sheer power of Mo Fan’s attack energy, the barrier could not hold and began to crack across its entire surface.

The elder standing to the side, who until now hadn't even been paying attention to the fighting kids, suddenly looked at Mo Fan and his technique with surprise, and with newfound interest, he began to watch him. Not forgetting to wave his hand and repair the barrier.

Without wasting a moment, Mo Fan jumped with all his might, and found himself in the air directly above the center of the arena. Beginning to fall, he pointed his sword directly at Mon Tuo.

"Phoenix Lunge!" Like an arrow, he shot directly at Mon Tuo, aiming the tip of his sword straight at his heart.

"G-golden! Sh-shield! Golden Shield!" Panicking, Mon Tuo activated his technique again, enveloping himself in a golden membrane.

Miscalculating the amount of Qi and giving too much, his shield cracked even before the tip of Mo Fan's sword was millimeters from his heart.

Without even having time to scream from sheer fear and the realization of imminent death, he was teleported beyond the barrier of Arena 27.

Seeing his opponent disappear before his eyes, Mo Fan, landed on the ground and without stopping his attack, directed the energy in his sword into the barrier, all to ensure that the accumulated Qi didn't backlash into his body.

"Outer Disciple Mo Fan, Heavenly Soul Sect. Is the winner!" He heard a mechanical voice announce his name, and he was immediately teleported to the group of participants who had won their matches.

Looking around, he saw Ru Meng and Lia Kult waving at him.

….

On the stands, the last row.

"I think I'll call you Qi Blades..." Sitting in the corner, An played with his little daggers made purely of Qi, tossing them from hand to hand.

Taking the daggers, which he had seen many times in Yan Eli's hands, as a prototype, he rebuilt his crude dagger technique, bringing it to a stable form.

Moreover, he managed to integrate the principle of Frequency Control into his blades. Now, when his dagger touched something, he could change the vibration frequency of its Qi surface, and together with the Sharpness aspect, his attack became much more destructive.

An began simulating battles in his head again, only this time, he used the Qi Blades.

….

Arena number 6.

"Beauty of Death! Second Form! Ha!" Standing in the center of the arena, Yan Eli threw four daggers into the air and, pushing off the ground, jumped back to the edge.

Having already deflected several of her ruthless and treacherous attacks, Lin Xue, still not fully recovered, heard the sound of tearing air.

Tilting her head back, she saw the daggers freeze in the air, and, as if on command, they began to fall from the sky, rapidly gaining speed and growing in size.

"Ice Wall!" Lin Xue barely managed to activate her technique, creating a dome-shaped wall in front of herself, and she channeled energy into the protective artifact around her neck.

Each dagger, enlarged several dozen times, wrapped in Qi, began to fall on her wall. Each impact left huge cracks, and took a significant portion of the shield with it.

When the third dagger made contact with her Ice Wall, the shield could no longer hold, and shattered, taking the dagger with it. But right behind it, aimed directly at her chest, flew the last dagger.

"AGH! HA!" Clenching her teeth from the immense pressure on the artifact's membrane, which managed to absorb most of the energy transferred to her through her arms from the impact, at the last moment, Lin Xue blocked the last dagger with her sword, but she miscalculated the amount of residual energy in the dagger, and she was thrown aside.

"Haa… Haa…" With heavy breaths, lying on her back, feeling a strong burning sensation on her chest, part of her robes on her upper body was torn, and blood slowly trickled through the cuts on her arms, where the energy from the dagger had raged.

Just as she came to her senses, she tried to get up, but felt weight on her.

"Hmm! Little sister, your body feels even more perfect than I imagined! Much softer than it looks!" Yan Eli was already sitting on her stomach, looking into her dazed eyes with primal greed.

Leaning in, Yan Eli ran her tongue across Lin Xue's cheek.

"Aah! And tastes even better! But… What if you're wounded somewhere? We need to make sure everything is alright~" Biting her lower lip, she grabbed the closure of Lin Xue's robes at her chest.

Just as she was about to tear her clothes, Yan Eli cursed, "Damn it!" Grabbing the edges of her robes, she saw another artifact light up around Lin Xue's neck.

Lin Xue, having fully come to her senses when her cheek was licked, had controlled herself and waited for the moment when her opponent would make a mistake.

From the artifact, a wave of cold Qi burst forth, slamming into Yan Eli at tremendous speed, who had not expected such a turn.

"A! Ah! UGH!" She was thrown aside, dragged across the ground almost to the opposite edge. With a broken nose, face buried in the dirt, she tried to get up, but felt strong pain throughout her body, all because of the cold Qi from the Artifact, which had penetrated her body and was raging there.

She suddenly cried out, and lost consciousness.

Before she could even fall unconscious, she was teleported off the Arena.

"The winner is Outer Disciple Lin Xue, Heavenly Soul Sect!" The mechanical voice sounded, and she too was teleported from the arena.

….

On the stands. The last row.

"It's strange… the elder standing to the side didn't even think to stop the match… If not for the artifact, she probably wouldn't have been able to do anything against Yan Eli." Sitting alone, An mused aloud what he had seen.

‘What surprises me more is that Yan Eli is only at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation, while Lin Xue is at the peak of the sixth layer. Even with cultivation on the verge of breaking through to the seventh layer of Qi Condensation, this Lin Xue can't handle an opponent only at the fifth layer. And it's only thanks to the artifact that she can put up any resistance… The entire match, she was in a passive role, only defending, hiding behind her technique, which was completely inappropriate against Fire-dominant techniques… In the end, hiding behind her trinkets, she managed to win… and it's hard to even call it a victory.’ After the Sharpness aspect had changed his body, his intuitive perception of his surroundings had improved, he could now easily feel the strength of cultivators one level higher than before. In other words, being at the fifth layer, he could now clearly determine what stage a cultivator at the sixth layer was at. And if a cultivator seemed stronger than that, there was only one answer, at least seventh layer.

After analyzing the battle he had seen several times, An concluded that behind all the flashy techniques and expensive artifacts, this Lin girl had no real combat experience, and most likely, even theoretical experience was lacking. Her opponent, Pink Braids, on the contrary, had high-level control and tactics.

This was the reason she had so quickly defeated Lin Xue in this encounter, and in the Group Battles.

Lin Xue's main mistake: she let her opponent make the first move, and went on the defensive instead of taking the attack.

An couldn't understand, 'Maybe it's her tactic, in this way, she clouds the eyes of her future opponents, so that at the crucial moment, she can show what she's really capable of. But that’s very unlikely, considering the way she uses her Qi.'

After finishing analyzing their fight, he decided to continue practicing with his Qi, while watching the other matches out of the corner of his eye.

Over the next few hours, he saw many familiar participants, and some even managed to fight each other.

After many boring, and in rare cases, mesmerizing matches, only the top 100 participants remained.

Gu Bai, without even descending from the clouds, announced a half-hour break, so that the participants could, using pills distributed by the Sect after each match, recover to their peak conditions, and be ready for the final stages of this Tournament.

….

Outside the Coliseum. At the entrance to the main hall.

"You thought, after I spent my time on you, you could just ignore me and hide from me… and nothing would happen to you? How naive…" Holding the temporary plaque in her hand, which had been issued to her upon entering the Heavenly Soul Sect's territory, Yan Eli smirked. Wiping away the remaining blood from beneath her nose, she headed along the main shopping street toward one of the Sect's Peaks.