Tian Lei and Xue Lan moved at the same time.

Golden fire surged up Tian Lei's arm, forming a huge blazing wing behind him. Xue Lan's frost spiraled upward, creating a storm of sharp snowflakes that gathered around her palms.

Then they launched forward.

Tian Lei came down like a falling meteor, his fiery wing cutting through the air with explosive force. Xue Lan dashed in with a burst of freezing wind, her final attack spinning around her like a blooming flower of ice.

The two moves collided right in the center of the arena.

The impact was brutal.

A shockwave blasted outward, flattening everything around them. The golden platform cracked, chunks of stone flying off the sides. Heat and cold slammed into each other so hard that the entire arena lit up in white light. Even the elders were forced to raise stronger barriers to protect the stands.

For a few seconds, no one could see anything.

When the light finally faded, the arena was destroyed—half melted, half frozen.

In the middle stood Tian Lei and Xue Lan, both shaking, both barely staying on their feet.

Xue Lan was the first to drop to one knee, frost breaking apart under her hands. Her Snow Falcon's faint image flickered behind her once… then disappeared completely, spent.

Tian Lei stayed standing, but only just. The golden flames around him shrank down to small embers, and his breathing was heavy.

The elder raised his hand.

"Winner—Tian Lei of the Golden Sun Bird!"

The crowd erupted into cheers, shouting his name.

Tian Lei let out a tired sigh, then walked toward Xue Lan and offered his hand. She looked up, surprised, then took it with a small smile.

"You almost beat me," he said honestly.

She smirked. "Next time, I will."

The two of them walked off the arena together as the cheers continued to shake the sect grounds.

As Tian Lei and Xue Lan exited the field—both looking like they'd just survived a quarterly performance review conducted by an angry volcano—the atmosphere in the stands didn't even have time to cool before it spiked again.

Because now came that match.

The arena hadn't even fully stabilized yet—the melted side still shimmered with heat, the frozen half crackling like it was filing a complaint—when the elder raised his arm again.

"Next match—battle for third place! Wu Long of the Iron Gale Sect Division versus Huo Ren of the Crimson Wolf Division!"

The disciples roared like someone had just dropped bonus payouts from the sky.

Wu Long rolled his shoulders, wind spiraling around him in fast, tight rotations. "Let's align expectations," he muttered with a feral grin. "I'm not settling for fourth."

Huo Ren cracked his knuckles, flames rippling up his arms like excited puppies. "Buddy, I respect your ambition. Truly. But you're about to get onboarded into a world of hurt."

The elder dropped his hand.

"Begin!"

They shot forward at once.

Wu Long's footwork blurred, every step exploding into bursts of compressed air. Huo Ren answered with a ground-ripping dash, fire trailing behind him like the tail of a furious comet.

They collided with a thunderclap.

Wind spiraled outward in sharp crescents, slicing through leftover frost. Flames roared upward in towering arcs, melting the last of the ice with zero consideration for the budget assigned to arena maintenance.

Wu Long swept in low, spinning into a razor-edged gale.Huo Ren countered with a blazing upward hook, fire roaring around his fist.

Impact. Shockwave. Screaming fans. Slight structural instability.

The stands vibrated like someone had turned the whole sect into a malfunctioning massage chair.

Huo Ren was blasted back first, boots carving a burning trench as he skidded across the arena. He snarled, shaking off sparks, fire erupting brighter than before.

"All right," he growled. "No more soft metrics. Deliverables only."

Wu Long smirked. "Glad we're aligned."

They clashed again—wind shrieking, fire exploding, two silhouettes tearing across the arena in a storm of red and white.

Blow by blow, the momentum shifted.

Huo Ren's flames dimmed first. His core technique burned hot—too hot—eating through stamina at a reckless pace. Wu Long's movements only got sharper, each rotation building on the last, each strike feeding more speed and power into the next.

Finally, Wu Long slipped past Huo Ren's guard with a burst of wind so sharp it cracked the floor.

WHAM.

The impact threw Huo Ren off his feet, slamming him into the arena hard enough to send a puff of dust into the stratosphere.

Silence.Then Huo Ren coughed once, raised a scorched thumb, and collapsed flat.

The elder didn't even wait.

"Winner—Wu Long! Third place is awarded to him! Second place goes to Xue Lan!"

The sect erupted into applause—some celebratory, some exhausted, some emotionally compromised from witnessing three consecutive natural disasters disguised as teenagers.

Wu Long walked over and pulled Huo Ren up by the arm.

"You good?" he asked.

Huo Ren grinned, one eye twitching. "Brother, I'm fantastic. I'm just gonna lie down for… several days."

As attendants rushed in to start restoring the arena (again), the final rankings crystallized in glowing runes overhead:

1st — Tian Lei

2nd — Xue Lan

3rd — Wu Long

4th — Huo Ren

Tian Lei stepped forward as the crowd parted in raw anticipation. His robes were torn, his aura unstable, and his expression somewhere between humble gratitude and "please let me nap for three business quarters."

The presiding elder raised a jade box wrapped in seven intertwined light-streams—each line a different color, pulsing in slow, regal waves.

"First place reward," the elder announced, voice booming across the sect grounds, "the Seven-Star Radiant Lion Essence Core!"

No one was surprised as everyone just looked at Tian Lei with envy after all, The seven star radiant lion is emperor among all beast only few con contend with it.

And absorbing the essence core also have a chance of gaining some bloodline ability of the Seven star radiant lion.

The jade box opened.

A core the size of a clenched fist rose into the air, blazing with seven radiant stripes—gold, red, white, blue, violet, silver, and green—each strand flickering like a star pressed into a heartbeat.

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