Up in the third tier of the spectator stands, hidden behind a carved jade pillar, Junior Sister Gou-Na was actively losing her mind.
She wasn't wearing her baggy grey sweatpants anymore—mostly because she had traded them to a missing-toothed goblin for black-market pharmaceuticals. Instead, she wore her crisp, blue Jade Water Sect uniform.
The fabric across her chest was currently screaming for mercy.
The Twin-Peak Expanding Lotus pills had hit her system like a runaway carriage. Overnight, her aerodynamic cutting-board physique had miraculously sprouted two heavy, incredibly sensitive Yin-spheres. She was finally top-heavy. And she was currently putting them to use.
Gou-Na had her hands shoved deep inside her own robes, aggressively tweaking her newly acquired assets while she stared down at the arena floor. Her eyes were glazed over, locked entirely onto the glowing, neon-pink tent straining against He Lu's cheap grey trousers.
"Look at the vascularity of that aura," Gou-Na panted, grinding her thighs together. Her seat on the bleachers was already visibly damp. "He's a walking, talking jade dildo. The localized Yang-density in his pelvis is off the charts. If he drops that Adamantine Pillar into my Jade Valley right now, I wouldn't leave my pavilion for a decade."
Directly across the stadium, sitting in the high-backed chairs of the VIP box, Senior Sister Ho Li-Fan was fighting a completely different internal battle.
She sat with perfect posture, her expression an unreadable mask of cold authority. But beneath her pristine, icy-blue law enforcement robes, her Ice Dao was actively boiling.
She stared down at He Lu's prone figure. Her elite cultivation brain was automatically calculating the sheer, overwhelming hydrostatic pressure radiating from his lower half.
It defies the Heavens, Ho Li-Fan thought wildly, squeezing her thighs together and shifting uncomfortably in her velvet seat. I felt his Dantian three days ago. It was hollow. Now, the sheer volume of his pre-circulation Yang-dew is weaponized. He is generating enough friction to power a localized array.
A thick, undeniable wisp of white steam curled from the collar of her robes. The Ice Beauty subtly grabbed her folding fan and began fanning her flushed, bright red face, desperately trying to maintain her cold persona while her imagination ran wild with the implications of his "Holy Grail Stack."
Down on the arena floor, the political rally was in full swing.
I was still flat on my stomach, waiting for my blood pressure to migrate north of my beltline. The crowd was murmuring.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the competitor's tunnel.
Senior Brother Bai marched out into the sunlight. He was clutching a cheap, rusty iron broadsword he'd clearly borrowed from an outer disciple. His silver robes were immaculate, but his face was twisted in a snarl of pure, elitist hatred. He pointed the rusty tip at my prone figure.
"When the mortal realms send their people to our Sects, they aren't sending their best," Bai sneered, projecting his Qi so his voice echoed through the entire stadium. "They're bringing dirt. They're bringing crime. They're bringing unwashed farm animals! They are rapists of our ambient Qi!"
A guy in the third row pumped his fist. "Yeah! Send him back to the mud!"
"We need to build a defensive array around the Inner Court," Bai declared, nodding to his supporter. "A massive, beautiful wall of solid light! And we are going to make the Outer Court pay for it!"
The crowd erupted into cheers. Cultivators were, by and large, massive snobs.
"These undocumented mortals are sneaking across our mountain borders," Bai continued, feeding off the crowd's energy. "They breathe our air. They clog up our alchemy lines. I say we deport them all back to the cabbage fields!"
"Make the Eastern District Great Again!" an elder shouted from the VIP box.
"And worst of all!" Bai screamed, his voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated trauma. "They use dark, unholy magic to corrupt the local livestock! This filthy peasant actively commanded his cross-eyed goat to swallow my sword! He made a farm animal deep-throat my ancestral weapon!"
Suddenly, a wizened, incredibly old man in the VIP box leaped to his feet. He wore robes woven entirely from premium sheep's wool.
"And what is wrong with that?!" the old man bellowed, his long white beard trembling with righteous indignation.
It was Grandmaster Bah-Fuka of the Velvet Hoof Beast-Taming Sect.
"Feeding your sword to a willing goat is a sacred tradition!" Bah-Fuka yelled at the arena. "It is the absolute pinnacle of the Dao of Animal Husbandry! The warm, muscular contractions of the beast's inner throat polish the blade! The gastric juices temper the steel! I let my prize ewe swallow my sword every single morning, and my cultivation has never been stronger! You are just jealous of his bond with his beast!"
The entire stadium went dead silent.
Thousands of cultivators slowly turned their heads to stare at Grandmaster Bah-Fuka. Even the wind seemed to stop blowing.
Bai stared at the old man, his racist momentum completely derailed by horror. "I meant my literal, iron broadsword!" Bai shrieked. "The metal one!"
Grandmaster Bah-Fuka blinked. He looked around at the horrified, disgusted faces of his peers in the VIP box.
He slowly cleared his throat.
"Ah," Bah-Fuka muttered, avoiding eye contact. "Yes. Of course. The metal one. Ahem. Carry on."
He slowly sat back down, pulling his wool collar up over his ears to hide his burning red face.
I ignored the xenophobic political rally and the unexpected bestiality confession happening around me. I had much bigger problems.
The temporary seal in my Dantian was holding, glued together by the stank of Fairy Ton-Ka's battle-skirt. But it wasn't just holding. It was evolving.
A single, thick drop of premium Amazonian battle-dew—leftover juice from my close encounter with the Jade Valley—hung precariously on my upper lip.
I inhaled. The drop slipped.
It trickled into my nostril. It bypassed the blood-brain barrier entirely and dropped straight into my spiritual circulation system like a shot of liquid adrenaline.
My body convulsed.
In a normal mortal man, the bulbourethral gland—commonly known as the Cowper's gland—has a very simple job. It secretes a clear, viscous fluid to flush out the urethra, neutralizing any acidic leftover urine to create a safe, lubricated slip-and-slide for the main payload. It is a biological janitor.
But I wasn't a normal mortal anymore. I was a Litigation Master juiced on high-tier Yin-musk.
The Amazonian dew hit my lower Dantian and immediately bypassed my stomach. It sank directly into the Cowper's Meridian.
The laws of cultivation were violently rewritten inside my pelvis.
Instead of storing Qi in a crystalline lake near the navel like every orthodox cultivator in history, my body adapted to the heavy, unhindered essence. My Cowper's Meridian expanded. It synthesized raw Yang energy into spiritual pre-dew. It began neutralizing the weak, mortal frailty of my muscles, lubricating my entire nervous system with weaponized arousal.
My heart thumped like a war drum. My veins glowed with a faint, neon-pink light beneath my grey tunic.
I wasn't storing Qi in my stomach. I was storing the power of the Heavens in my balls.
The sheer density of the physiological rewrite sent a ripple through the fabric of reality.
Far above the mortal realm, past the clouds and the atmospheric Qi-storms, lay the Upper Heavens.
On a massive cloud shaped like a reclining chair, a minor deity was asleep. He wore glowing golden armor and had a beard made of actual starlight. He was in charge of monitoring new martial arts breakthroughs in the Southern Province. It was a boring desk job.
Suddenly, a pink ripple of energy struck the cloud.
The god snorted, his eyes snapping open. He rubbed his face, annoyed, and peered down through the ethereal mists toward the Jade Water Sect arena.
His divine sight zoomed in on the white jade platform. He saw Senior Brother Bai holding a rusty sword. Then, he looked at the guy lying face-down on the floor, glowing pink, actively restructuring his reproductive organs into a spiritual battery.
The deity squinted. He read the karmic signature of the breakthrough.
The Adamantine Pillar. The Cowper's Awakening.
The god's lip curled in disgust.
"Filthy undocumented mortals," the deity mumbled, resting his chin on his hand. "They're taking our jobs. Typical mud-blooded peasant, sneaking in through the back door of enlightenment. Can't even cultivate through the chest like a civilized being. Trash."
He waved his hand, dismissing the anomaly. He didn't even bother writing it down in the heavenly ledger.
The god turned over on his cloud, pulled a blanket of stardust over his shoulders, and let out a thunderous, echoing fart that sounded like a distant monsoon.
He went right back to sleep.
Back in the arena, a low rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. The crowd glanced up, confused by the sudden noise, before turning their attention back to the fight.
"Get up, peasant!" Bai yelled, kicking the jade floor near my head. "The referee called the match! Stop cowering and face my blade!"
I took one final breath. My blood pressure had stabilized. The tent in my pants remained formidable, but the structural integrity of my new Cowper's Meridian meant I could finally stand without passing out.
I pushed myself off the floor.
I didn't dust off my robes. I just stood there, holding my cheap wooden practice sword. I felt light. I felt fast. The ambient Qi of the arena was flowing directly into my lower half, charging my batteries with every breath.
"You talk a lot for a guy whose sword got swallowed by livestock," I said.
The stadium went dead silent.
Senior Brother Bai's racist smirk vanished. The veins in his forehead throbbed. He gripped his rusty broadsword with both hands, his knuckles turning white.
"I am going to peel your skin off!" Bai screamed.
He surged forward. His Foundation Establishment aura flared, kicking up a cloud of jade dust.
Bai swung the heavy iron blade in a wide, horizontal arc aimed right at my neck.
I didn't even think. My body just reacted. I ducked, feeling the wind of the blade ruffle my hair. I stepped into his guard and shoved my palm hard into his chest.
Bang. Bai flew backward, skidding ten feet across the jade tiles.
The crowd gasped.
Bai scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide with shock. "You... you were hiding your cultivation base! You filthy rat!"
"I'm a late bloomer," I grinned.
Bai gritted his teeth. He knew he was losing the crowd. He needed a flashy, undeniable victory. He needed an ace in the hole.
He needed the manual he stole from my locker.
Bai dropped his rusty sword. He took a deep breath, shifting his weight. He began to circulate his Qi in a very specific, highly unusual pattern.
Up in the VIP box, Senior Sister Ho Li-Fan leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. She recognized the stolen technique.
"You forced my hand, peasant," Bai sneered. "Witness the ultimate, lost technique of the Flowing River Sect! A technique I... unearthed just this morning!"
"Prepare to have your meridians shattered!" Bai yelled.
He dropped into the stance.
According to the fake manual Lo Yu and Fairy Copi-Rite had hastily drawn up the night before, the "Flowing River Secret Art" required the user to gather all their Yang energy into their core. To do this, the practitioner had to cross their eyes, stand entirely on their left tiptoe, thrust their pelvis aggressively forward, and stick both thumbs firmly into their own ears.
It was called the Crouching Mantis Offers the Peach.
And Bai executed it flawlessly.
He stood in the middle of the grand arena, balancing on one foot, thrusting his crotch at me with his eyes crossed and his thumbs jammed in his ears.
The silence in the stadium was absolute.
Even the goat, sitting near the entrance tunnel, stopped chewing its stolen scabbard to stare at him in sheer disbelief.
"Now!" Bai screamed, his voice muffled by his own thumbs. "My defense is impenetrable! Attack me, and my counter-strike will destroy you!"
I didn't use a martial arts technique. I didn't flare my temporary Qi.
I just walked up to him, raised my wooden practice sword like a baseball bat, and swung it as hard as I could directly into his unprotected, aggressively thrust-out crotch.
THWACK.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Bai's crossed eyes uncrossed. They bulged out of his skull. His mouth opened in a silent, agonizing scream.
He slowly tipped over like a felled tree, hitting the jade floor face-first. He curled into a tight, whimpering fetal position, clutching his shattered pride.
"Winner," Magistrate Chen said into the dead silence. "He Lu."
Instantly, the VIP box doors burst open. Senior Sister Ho Li-Fan vaulted over the railing, landing gracefully in the arena. She was flanked by six heavily armed Law Enforcement disciples.
She marched straight up to the whimpering Bai. Without a word, she reached into his silver robes and yanked out a spatial pouch. She dumped it onto the jade floor.
A dozen glowing martial arts manuals tumbled out. Techniques from the Soaring Crane Sect, the Blazing Sun Sect... and sitting right on top, the hastily scribbled Secret Techniques of the Flowing River.
The crowd erupted into furious shouts.
"He's the thief!" an Inner Court disciple yelled from the stands. "He stole my sword manual!"
"And he loves goats!" someone else chimed in from the back row.
Ho Li-Fan looked at the pile of stolen manuals. Then, she looked up at me.
Her icy blue eyes scanned my face. The vibrant red flush returned to her neck. She stepped closer, her voice dropping so only I could hear it.
"You actually did it," she murmured. Her gaze drifted down to my chest, sensing the chaotic, heavily-patched Qi swirling in my Dantian. She inhaled slightly, catching the residual scent of my temporary power-up. Her breath hitched.
"Whatever you are doing to your meridians, He Lu," she whispered, a sudden, unfamiliar hunger in her eyes. "It is... highly unregulated."
"I have a great lawyer," I wheezed.
Suddenly, my stomach clamped. The caulk was failing. The temporary seal of unwashed Amazonian sweat was dissolving, my Hollow Meridian breaking back open.
The pink aura around me vanished. My Adamantine Pillar instantly deflated. My knees buckled.
I hit the floor hard, reverting back to a weak, mortal peasant. Every muscle in my body screamed in agony.
"Boss," I groaned, spitting blood onto the jade tiles. "Invoice them."
Lo Yu strolled out from the competitor's tunnel, the goat trotting happily beside him. He carried a massive burlap sack for our payment, his missing-tooth smile stretching from ear to ear.
"Excellent work, Junior Associate," Lo Yu rasped, stepping over Bai's groaning body. "Now, stay down. I need to claim your emotional distress damages before the medics arrive."