The battle armor encased his entire body. Qian Wu's soul power surged violently, and the phantom of the Behemoth beast materialized once again behind his armored frame.
This time, the beast's eyes burned with a bloodthirsty crimson glow, perfectly mirroring the flowing patterns etched across the battle armor.
The terrifying pressure it radiated caused the very air around the arena to feel as though it had frozen solid.
"Arthur, you caught me off guard just now."
Qian Wu raised his fists and cracked them together. The metallic clang rang out sharp and clear.
"But now, armored as I am, I'll make you understand what a true gap in power really means!"
The words had barely left his mouth before the soul rings beneath his feet blazed to life.
Purple, purple, purple, black, black — five rings lit up in sequence, the fifth ring's black radiance dense and suffocating, forming a striking contrast against the battle armor's gold.
The Behemoth phantom let out a deafening roar. Qian Wu vanished from where he stood, leaving only a golden afterimage in his wake.
So fast.
Arthur's eyes sharpened.
So this was Spirit Sage speed. Compared to a Spirit Emperor, it was an entirely different category of existence.
He couldn't track Qian Wu's movements at all.
The little tuft of hair on top of his head stood straight up.
In that instant, he released his mind and surrendered everything to instinct.
A heartbeat later, Qian Wu was already in front of him. The armored fist, carrying a force that seemed capable of tearing space itself apart, came crashing toward Arthur's face.
Arthur moved as though he had seen it coming. His footwork shifted at the last possible moment, his body drifting aside like a wisp of dandelion fluff, letting the devastating blow pass him by entirely.
The shockwave from the punch skimmed through his golden hair and punched a massive crater into the ground behind him, sending chunks of stone flying in every direction.
Qian Wu's fist struck nothing. A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes.
"You dodged once. Can you dodge a second time? A third? A fourth?" he roared, and his fists accelerated further.
A barrage of fist shadows, each carrying enough force to level everything in its path, came crashing toward Arthur in rapid succession.
Arthur's footwork grew faster and more intricate, like a spark drifting through a gale, slipping clear of each blow by the narrowest of margins.
As Qian Wu's fist shadows thickened into a downpour, Arthur's numbers were being overwhelmed in every dimension. The Instant-Light Meteor was useless here.
What he relied on now was the body technique he had roughly picked up from Muye before — crude, but his.
Tang Wulin, Xie Xie, and the others watched with mounting anxiety, desperate to help but finding no opening. They couldn't even tell where the two of them were at any given moment.
One second Arthur and Qian Wu collided at the edge of the arena, the next they reappeared at its center. Afterimages of both fighters blanketed the entire venue.
In one of the private boxes, Muye stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, eyes fixed unblinkingly on Arthur's every movement.
That his student was on the back foot didn't stir any particular emotion in him. It was just a match, and Arthur was only fifteen. Win or lose, it didn't mean much.
What truly held his attention was the totality of Arthur's decision-making as he withstood Qian Wu's assault. Every movement drew on the body technique Muye had taught him, and drew on it fully.
"A once-in-a-generation genius."
Su Wuyan stood quietly beside him, saying nothing. His attention was spread mostly across the entire Skysea Tournament venue, watchful for anything unexpected.
In another box, Cai Yue'er let out a visible breath of relief the moment Qian Wu successfully donned his battle armor. Looking at how the fight was unfolding, she smiled lightly. "The outcome is decided."
"Though this boy Qian Wu was far too careless. He'll need to answer for that once the match is over."
"Not necessarily." A serene voice spoke up. It belonged to a woman of slender build who appeared to be around thirty, dressed in a flowing water-green gown whose sacred hem shimmered with a faint, living light, as if breathing with the essence of life itself.
Dark green hair cascaded like a waterfall down to her waist, making her already striking features appear even more luminous.
This was the Holy Spirit Douluo, Ya Li.
"It may not be as simple as it looks." As she watched Arthur out on the arena floor, something indefinable tugged at her intuition.
Cai Yue'er glanced her way briefly and gave it no weight. A gap this wide — unless it was Yun Ming telling her Arthur had a chance of winning, she wasn't about to believe it from anyone else.
As time wore on, the sheer disparity in strength began to tell. Arthur's evasions crept closer and closer to their limit.
A shockwave from a punch grazed his shoulder. Pain flared instantly. Cold sweat slid down his skin, and his golden hair was tossed into chaos by the force of it.
Qian Wu seized the opening.
The fourth soul ring's black light erupted. His fists split into dozens of afterimages, dense as sheets of rain, hammering toward every vital point on Arthur's body.
Arthur pushed his soul power outward, squeezing out a fraction more speed. Driven entirely by instinct, he twisted and contorted his body desperately, every dodge shaving the margin to almost nothing.
A shockwave grazed his throat. He could feel the cutting chill of it against his skin.
The instant Arthur's feet left the ground, the spot where he had been standing exploded into a crater.
During an earlier exchange he had tried to intercept with Excalibur, but Qian Wu's raw strength had far exceeded his expectations — the impact numbed his arm and nearly threw his soul power into chaos.
Stung by that lesson, Qian Wu was now giving everything he had, offering not a single breath of room, staying locked onto Arthur without relent.
"I miscalculated."
Arthur had only meant to test what Spirit Sage-level strength actually felt like. Instead, he had maneuvered himself into a corner.
His thinking had been that Wu Changkong, a peak Spirit Emperor, was someone he had already gotten a reasonable read on. That felt manageable. A Spirit Sage couldn't be all that different.
He hadn't anticipated the gulf between Spirit Sage and Spirit Emperor being this enormous.
"Enough of this. It ends now!"
Qian Wu bellowed, and the Behemoth phantom came crashing down with the force of a collapsing sky.
Arthur had already begun moving to evade.
Then, without warning, Na'er's small figure streaked forward like a bolt of white light and planted herself squarely in front of him.
Her small fist clenched tight. A golden radiance exploded from her entire being. The Behemoth phantom's crushing pressure seemed to touch her not at all.
"Arthur!"
"Let me help!"
Her voice rang out bright and clear, carrying an unshakable certainty. She met the incoming blow head-on and threw her own punch straight at it.
Boom!
A blaze of golden fist light crashed directly into Qian Wu's strike.
Na'er's small frame stood in stark contrast against his towering build.
A devastating shockwave of energy swept across the entire arena in an instant. Even the soul-guide barrier rippled and shuddered from the impact.
Qian Wu felt the force from her strike match his own, precisely and exactly.
The two titanic impacts collided and, through some elegant twist of physics, perfectly cancelled each other out.
For a moment, Qian Wu's sense of reality began to unravel. His eyes were filled with pure disbelief.
"There's another one like this?!"
Arthur grabbed his chance. He scooped Na'er up and pulled back hard and fast.
"Na'er, perfect block!"
"Leave it to me, Arthur!"
With distance regained, Arthur came to a halt and raised Excalibur above his head.
"The Thirteen Restraints are released. The Round Table Convenes!"
The instant those words fell, a ring of golden ripples surged outward from his body, like a stone dropped into still water, spreading in all directions.
Wherever the light touched, sacred power unfolded like a tide, and the battered, cratered arena was swallowed in gold in an instant.
Pinpoints of golden light rose from the ground, holy and ethereal, gathering into twelve distinct pillars of radiance.
Excalibur was Arthur's Martial Soul. The Thirteen Restraints within it were nothing more than a set of protocols — there were no actual Round Table Knight consciousnesses inhabiting them.
"This is bad."
A display this overwhelmingly dramatic could only mean one thing. There was no way Qian Wu was going to stand by and watch it happen.
He moved to interrupt — and found that he could not. An invisible force of incomprehensible standing had locked onto him, and he was rooted completely in place.
"We're done."
On that point alone, Qian Wu understood. The tide of the battle had just reversed in an instant.