Treasures Of Heaven And Earth

Dàilán became aware that the earlier commotion from the separate areas of combat elsewhere in the arena had stopped; the billows of sand were beginning to thin out, causing her surroundings to return to the earlier searing brilliance. Despite her creative use of the Veil technique, she blinked furiously in an effort to help her eyes adjust to the change - even as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up in warning - and she darted quickly back toward Chenli's position.

Her instinctive reaction saved her from a painful experience as a half dozen attacks landed on her prior position - the blast waves from the impacts of the techniques throwing her off her feet. She curled herself into the tumble, controlling it to send her closer to her bodyguard's position as a new 'sandstorm' crashed outward from the explosions.

Judging from the approving - and not-so approving - cheers and comments from the spectators, the remaining geniuses had finally put their differences aside to return to the original goal of the tournament.

With Mountain Mists running, she touched down lightly on the sand and dodged off at an oblique angle from Chenli's location, relying on the new, thick cloud of roiling sand that was now flowing over her to obscure her exact position from her opponents. As soon as Chenli was visible, the young Heiress flashed hand signals to her bodyguard. Chenli immediately left the formation at speed, arriving at Dàilán's back within moments.

"What is the plan?" Chenli queried as they curved away from their previous location, dodging the attacks that were starting to shoot outward from inside the cloud of sand, their accuracy surprisingly good.

"There is up to seven left - likely less since they were fighting someone," coughed Dàilán as she fought to clear her sinuses of the cloying and abrasive sand which was getting past her makeshift mask, "and I am guessing these were the ones you were worried about - the ones who go out on Orders…" Dàilán replied and Chenli winced, nodding in understanding.

The two of them were zigzagging across the sand both dodging the attacks and using the resulting sand plumes from near misses as visual cover as Chenli huffed in irritation. "Yes, these are not from the hothouse - and you are correct, without any idiots getting in the way we cannot stay stationary on defence - they will surround and bombard us."

"They have obviously picked a leader to get the Heir-ship, too," gasped Dàilán as they were forced to increase their speed, "or they would not be co-operating like this. Plus, I have to take out another five of them!"

"We need something…" Chenli jumped and rolled to avoid a blast of energy from an unknown technique, "...hells... to force them to break up... so you can take at least some of them out," the fully fledged Enforcer swore a blue streak as the attacks started coming in all around them, missing by literal hairs breaths as they scrambled to evade

"I… rotten, egg s.u.c.k.i.n.g, son of a dogs… knew this would - Turtle! Heads! - happen! By all the nine hells… you have to attack - Sh… incoming!"

The two of them dove in opposite directions as a stupidly large blade, wielded by a maniacally grinning girl, outfitted in an official Enforcer's robe - the same as Dàilán and Chenli - crashed into the sand between them, sending up a ridiculously large sand plume.

"He~re, mi~icey, mi~cey." Perched on top of the guard of her blade, a tiny girl who would barely make it to Dàilán's shoulder cackled disturbingly as the sand crashed down on them like a small fountain, forcing them to shield their eyes with their forearms, "Noo~where to ru~n, mi~cey, mi~cey! Sta~y sti~ll and let Chi'eh sw~at you! It will only hu~rt, the tiny~est bit!"

"Hells no, BloodWitch!" shouted Chenli from the left, circling back towards her charge defensively as Dàilán rolled to her feet and dropped a dagger into her hand, while calculating the odds of hitting an obviously experienced - not to mention small target, "What in the nine hells are you doing wielding Drinker in a non-lethal bout!"

"That shock sword was booo~rring… Drinker is only sw~atting to~day, not drink~ing, S~illy Bi~ig Sis~ter Chen~li," the imp giggled at the other Enforcer.

"You are not here for the Heir-ship," deduced Dàilán, head c.o.c.ked at the curious person that posed theatrically on her blade guard without a care in the world. Peripherally, she realised the long distance attacks had stopped and she cautiously looked off into the thinning dust to see a group of five other Cultivators standing and observing watchfully, but not attacking, around thirty paces away.

"Damn, only six left," she cursed under her breath. Something told her she was unlikely to defeat this Enforcer, which left her to try taking out all of the others - but…

"Naa~ I do~ not ca~are about the Heir~ship. I li~ke be~ing in the field," the girl replied to her in a singsong that was eerily threatening, for all that it sounded like the worst affectation of an empty vase Noble concubine.

"So why are you here?" demanded Chenli, clearly frustrated at this girl's presence, "You are overqualified for this match. You are on the Justice Ranking!"

There was a sharp drop in the surrounding temperature as the tiny girl's eyes compressed into slits, "Are you suggesting that I am older than you, Enforcer?" The other Cultivator's voice was sharp and perfectly dictated, "Do I - LOOK - older than you?"

"As it relates to the safety to my Mistress…" Chenli's body was trembling slightly, but none of it showed in her voice. Dàilán walked slowly over and laid a careful hand on her friend's shoulder. She noted with amus.e.m.e.nt that the other genii had retreated another ten or so paces - almost half the distance of the arena.

"As you clearly could have hit us, but deliberately did not," the young Heiress pointed out for her bodyguard's benefit more than anything else, "you are not here to bully me either, despite my Guard's concern. Stand Down, Chen'er, before you say something we might both regret." Her voice was soft with understanding, taking the sting out of her words, even as she carefully sent the disabling signal to the limiter.

The 'little girl' c.o.c.ked her head, her eyes opening to absurdly wide proportions as the temperature abruptly seemed to return to searingly hot. "Oh!" Judging from the tone of her voice she seemed very pleased. After a moment, she looked around at the other Genii and laughed, doing a little mocking dance on the hilt of her weapon, "I~i~i k~now a Se~cret…" She spun around on the hilt to face Dàilán, a happy smile on her face "I wi~ll not te~ll, do not wor~ry."

Chenli relaxed and blew out a breath, "Sorry, mistress. Of course. My apologies… little sister." She bowed slightly towards the Cultivator still perched on her sword hilt, "I will just go and make sure that the others do not decide to interfere."

"They Will Not." The implacable voice was back and the Cultivator was looking at the remaining competitors who shrank back again. The audience was also oddly silent - judging from the body language and the occasional hushed murmur, apparently this particular Enforcer was infamous. Chenli ignored the audience and the sword wielder to walk ten paces towards the other genii, watching them intently as she sank into a defensive stance.

The small Cultivator - Dàilán found she could not consider them a girl - turned back around and sat on the sword guard like a tree branch, her legs swinging freely underneath.

"So, you are intelligent and you can think clearly in a crisis. Good qualities in an Heir," her voice was suddenly that of a m.a.t.u.r.e woman and completely conversational, "but a weak Heir is useless - no matter how smart, compassionate or cunning they are."

There was a sudden prickle of Essence in the air and Dàilán took a large step back, just in time to avoid the sword as it breached out of the sand like a leaping shark.

"So I ask… ar~e y~ou Str~ong?!" The childish sing-song voice was back as the tiny Cultivator hurled herself off the sword's guard down the blade towards the Heiress with that maniacal grin back on her face as the sword spun. The hilt of slapped impossibly into the Cultivator's hands and she swung it like a thug's club around in an improbable arc towards Dàilán.

Something told her it would be suicidal to try the same trick as she had on Meng Fan's staff; so she flung herself backward and under the blade at her top speed, only just fast enough, even without the limiter active, to avoid the flat of the blade as the sword rotated and descended from the swing in an attempt to flatten her as she passed beneath it.

As the blade threw up a new cloud of sand, she took the resulting cover to throw out all the spare blades she had collected at the exact spots she could sense her opponent - and those she could evade in what would normally killing speeds, even for sparring daggers.

There was a surprised squawk and crackles as the blades hit something and discharged their charges of Lightning Essence, but judging from the sounds of metal against wood, most - if not all - had been blocked.

Dàilán shrugged mentally, she had expected that; hopefully, however that would cause the crazy woman behind her to second guess her full on approach - in case she got a faceful of dagger. Not that she had any spares left, but she was not above playing some mind games of her own.

That odd 'knowing' feeling she had been having since she had started using those ancient meditation techniques meant that she 'knew' her opponent had not slowed in the slightest, but she was now approaching from a completely different direction out of the roiling dust.

Dàilán smiled to herself; with the limiter off she had a lot more options. The young Heiress pushed her Essence through a Guan Clan technique known as Mountain Winds and aimed it directly at the oncoming Cultivator even as she also executed the full Veil technique and - using the Mountain Mists technique she was still running - threw herself upward over the sudden, enormous, rolling bank of sand the powerful, howling winds threw up.

Indignant cries of alarm and discomfort along with shouts of complaints against the 'crazy Bloodwitch', rang out from the remaining contestants and members of the audience as they scrambled to shield against what was now a 'real' sandstorm.

The Essence driven gale she had just created blasted the majority of the arena's sand violently at skin tearing velocities as the winds and sand swirled around the confined space. The Formations around the Arena glowed as they strained to contain screaming winds full of the deadly particles.

It looked like her gamble had paid off, the initial cloud of sand between herself and the rest of the people observing - whether inside or outside the arena - had obscured her use of the Winds technique, so they were blaming her opponent; hopefully this meant they would not be expecting that sort of capability from her going forward.

Hoping the sandstorm had hidden her subsequent use of the invisibility technique and risky midair movement - being caught in mid air by an expert was a - bad - idea - she dropped lightly into the massive cloud of sand, behind where her feelings told her the crazy lady was.

The sand was falling rapidly, now that the technique had played itself out; she could see various people digging themselves out of the sand dunes the winds had pushed and dumped the arena sand into - her opponent especially seemed to have had a large portion of the arena dumped on her. In contrast to most of the others who seemed to be much the worse for wear, however, she burst out of the sand dune she was buried under with bubbling laughter.

"Crazy witch!" raged one of the other opponents, her earlier caution evidently burnt away as she frantically shook sand from her previously luxuriously long black locks, "This is a sparring match. You should not be using techniques that could get people killed!"

"Empty Vase…" snorted the tiny Cultivator, the m.a.t.u.r.e voice back as she turned cautiously in a circle, the sword on her left shoulder, "You train like you fight - or you die… what are you complaining about? No one got hurt."

Dàilán felt her eyebrows shoot up as the other Cultivator did not deny causing the sandstorm.

Very carefully, she used the distraction of the argument to manoeuvre behind the sword wielder, as she turned her back on the others, repressing the d.e.s.i.r.e to go after the raging female 'genius'. She would only get one shot at this.

"Well the competition is over, I suppose," drawled one of the other 'Genii' who had seemed relatively unaffected by the sandstorm, his smooth tenor carrying throughout the arena.

Dàilán rolled her eyes. Arrogant a.s.s. In passing, she noted that she was between the tiny Cultivator and the Formation she had placed at the center of the arena earlier, which was surprisingly still active. She marked it mentally as a backup plan, but the other competitors were arranged around the other side of the formation - meaning that it was not a viable escape route. They might be keeping clear of the BloodWitch, but she doubted they would restrain themselves if she ran straight into them.

She moved carefully away from the formation, towards the back of the Bloodwitch, even as the other Cultivator let lose that crazy laugh, "you~re an i~di~ot," she taunted the pretty boy who had made the proclamation in that sing song voice.

The other genius shrugged. "You are not qualified to participate in this farce. As the highest ranking Genii still standing, rightfully the prize is mine."

"Did you land the finishing blow?" came Chenli's voice as she appeared behind a sand dune, coincidently, Dàilán noted, in the high-eye's blind spot.

"You cannot fight for your mistress," responded the arrogant Cultivator, stepping back and to one side to put Chenli in his field of view as the others retained a vigilant eye on the BloodWitch, "your words are meaningless."

Dàilán looked around thoughtfully. All of this was providing a great distraction, but she suddenly did not want to make it obvious to these people that she could stay invisible while moving. A moment's consideration had her diving smoothly into a large sand dune, out of sight of the contestants and the Bloodwitch. A quick application of another Guan technique known as 'Mountain River' ensured she did not make a disturbing ripple as she sank into the sand. The Veil technique on her body failed aa the sand touched her, but it hardly mattered as the sand dune itself hid her from sight as she 'swam' up towards the BloodWitch's position.

"S~ince t~he Elders h~ave not stop~ped the bat~tle… you are sti~ll an i~d~i~ot!" the crazy woman retorted, her taunting voice still clear to Dàilán even through the sand.

There was an annoyed scoffing, "This battle is over, Elders. It is time for the Sect to select a more appropriate Heir than a useless waste of nobility. Even if she is not incapacitated, she is clearly trapped under the sand. Call it."

The arrogance of this boy's near ordering of Cultivators many years and levels his Senior nearly made Dàilán swallow sand as her mouth threatened to drop open. It certainly seemed to stun the audience - it was so quiet out there you could hear grains of sand falling down the sides of the dune. She clenched her jaw in aggravation, suddenly wishing she was behind that idiot instead of the crazy woman, who despite the theatrics, was taking her seriously and playing fair.

Dàilán crouched within the sand dune, circulating Mountain Mists as she waited for her moment. She knew that the woman was less than an arms span in front and just below her, but she needed her to turn away for this to have any chance.

Even as she thought that, the other woman turned sharply and snapped at the other Genius, "You open your mouth with such disrespect again - Apprentice - and the Sect will have to drag your worthless corpse out of the arena."

Even as the older Cultivator was speaking, Dàilán's body reacted to the other Cultivator's turning away from the Heiress' position without conscious thought, bursting out of the sand like a praying mantis beast, with her daggers already positioned for a backstab.

The next shùn was pure instinct as her blades flashed downward, sparking with Lightning Essence…

...twisting frantically out of the way as the other Cultivator contorted their body impossibly and that enormous blade was suddenly in her face….

...The Lightening Essence blades hit the hilt of the weapon and discharged with a wicked crack; there was an eyeblink where Dàilán saw the other Cultivator spasm…

...There was suddenly a lot of noise coming from the audience, she noted idily…

… and - there - was a foot coming for her torso.

She flung herself to one side and back towards her formation. Mountain Mists let her slide gracefully across the sand instead of crashing into an ungainly heap, although she still sent up a large roostertail of sand as she was blasted backward through several sand dunes. The hit must have connected despite her best efforts - but with the adrenaline pumping she could not feel it.

Something tugged at her senses and without even thinking about it she opened her right palm - letting her own sparring dagger fall - to catch a discarded blade as it was flung free of the sand. In the same motion she Essence charged and threw the spare blade as hard as she could…

...straight at the arrogant son of a donkey who had written her off as a failure before this tournament had even started. The blade moved faster than even a Sky Cultivator's eyes could follow; even as she caught her still falling dagger and frantically twisted to evade another thundering strike from the laughing, tiny, crazy woman…

...there was a deafening concussion of sound and a blinding light, reminiscent of a lightning strike, followed by a matching roar of acclimation from the crowd…

...and a scream of pure rage so distorted, Dàilán thought some Essence Beast had appeared in the arena. She saw her diminutive opponent do a double take and miss step, giving Dàilán critical breathing room - then an expression of una.d.u.l.terated glee appeared on her face and she started laughing, even as she continued to walk forward. Not the mad cackle from before, but real laughter, that was quickly being echoed by the audience.

Despite the danger, Dàilán could not resist turning her head. The arrogant idiot from before was still upright, but he looked like someone had clubbed him, rolled him in an ashpit and then blasted his hair with a very strong wind technique for good measure. He was literally purple-faced with rage and even as she registered what she was seeing, he furiously waved his followers forward as he marched towards her. The other Cultivators picked themselves up from where the aftermath of her strike had sent them tumbling into the sand and all broke into a run towards her, murder in their expressions.

"Damn, I did not hit him hard enough," she swore, ignoring the chortiling BloodWitch behind her - who appeared to be enjoying herself too much to chase her seriously. Taking a risk, the young teen Heiress broke for the formation at the center of the rapidly closing sets of enemies. Chenli suddenly darted in front of her, facing the oncoming rush as the two of them crashed into the center of the arena, the Formation humming as Dàilán started pushing Essence into it.

"I can only hold off a couple…" Chenli shouted as the first of the group of opponents came within an arms span, raising her sparring weapons grimly. Dàilán did not bother responding and activated the defensive formation with everything she had left.

Small, bright, white spheres of Lightning Essence materialised midair with no warning and and hurtled themselves into the oncoming attackers. The combined momentum of both the Essence charges and the people running straight into them, compounded the lack of warning; the vengeful competitors were hit with multiple charges of Lightning Essence simultaneously, flinging them all back to crash painfully onto the sand, twitching and insensenate.

A blue streak of swearing coming from the Bloodwitch that filled a sudden silence revealed that the formation had caught her off guard as well. A large metal weapon was not the best way to block Lightning Essence and a twitching little girl peered around the blade a moment later.

"Good trap, Heir. If that had been something more deadly - or if I had been rushing in like those idiots - you would have taken me out. You got me. I am out." The voice was the m.a.t.u.r.e, confident one shaded with a touch of respect, "That is the third solid hit you landed on me - I have had fully fledged Enforcers with decades of experience - and criminals - not do so well. You have my support." She bowed slightly and stabbed her weapon into the sand, leaning her still twitching form up against it as the audience recovered from their shock and started cheering.

"Do not celebrate too early," warned the Senior Enforcer, jerking her chin past the pair of young women, "You still have a problem."

Dàilán looked over and swore. Unlike the other fallen cultivators who were yet to move from where they had fallen, the arrogant - and well-done - genius was pushing himself to his feet. The fury radiating from every line of his body was unmistakable.