At the hour of the Rat, the Canglan Arena looked as though it had been thoroughly drenched in moonlight.
Moonlight poured down from the cloudless night sky, illuminating the entire stage like a broad platform carved from white jade. The runes etched along its edges glowed with faint lines of spiritual power under the silver light, resembling sleeping undercurrents in a pool of still water.
The stone steps surrounding the arena were already packed with people. In the night, the robes of the disciples from various sects were dyed in varying shades of silver-gray by the moonlight, their gazes converging on the two figures standing in the center of the stage.
The wind blew in from the sea, slipping through the gaps in the crowd and gently ruffling hems and strands of hair. Yet, it could not disperse the tense, touch-and-go silence that hung in the air.
Bai Qingxue stood on the eastern side of the stage. The hem of her frost-white Daoist robe rose and fell gently in the night wind, and her silver hair gleamed with a cool, lustrous sheen under the moonlight.
The Frost Moon Chant hung at her waist, its cool body resting against her side through her clothing.
Ten zhang away, Han Muchun stood on the western side.
For this occasion, Han Muchun had changed into an ink-blue Daoist robe. The fabric shimmered with tiny specks of light under the moon, looking as if she had draped a small patch of the night sky over herself.
The bandage wrapped around her left hand had been replaced by extremely fine silver threads wound around her wrist, glinting with a cold luster under the moon.
Resting in Han Muchun's palm was a bronze mirror, slightly smaller than an ordinary one. Its surface did not reflect light but instead glowed with a deep ink-blue hue, like a pool of frozen night.
Inside the mirror, a faint ball of light rotated slowly. It seemed to be the core of some spiritual power, controlled by Han Muchun's slender fingertips and held steadily in her palm.
Below the stage, Lu Xueqing sat in the very front row of the Xuantian Sect disciples' seats, her hands clasped and resting on her knees.
In the Falling Star Pavilion seats near Han Muchun, Shen Yan and Chu Mu sat on her left and right, both of them holding their breath.
The deacon's drawn-out voice rang through the night wind: “Bai Qingxue of the Xuantian Sect, Han Muchun of the Falling Star Pavilion, tie-breaker match, begin!”
The moment the words fell, Han Muchun was the first to move.
With a gentle flick of Han Muchun's wrist, the bronze mirror in her palm flipped, its surface facing outward.
The ball of spiritual light that had been rotating slowly inside the mirror suddenly accelerated. Three beams of starlight shot out from the mirror simultaneously, each trailing a stream of fine stardust like three cast meteors, tracing zigzagging paths through the air.
Those three beams of starlight did not shoot directly at Bai Qingxue. Instead, they darted past in three directions—above, left, and right—weaving into a dense starnet in the air above the center of the stage. The edge of every single thread of starlight gleamed with a sharp, cold light.
As the starnet pressed down, for a moment, it was impossible to see how one could possibly counter it.
Below the stage, some disciples gasped softly, while someone murmured, “How is she supposed to dodge that?”
Seeing this, Bai Qingxue's gaze focused.
Immediately, she brought the Frost Moon Chant to her lips. Her fingertips pressed against the flute's holes, and the moment the first note fell, cold energy surged from the flute's body like a door being slammed open, letting the chill pour out from behind it and spread in all directions with Bai Qingxue at the center.
The chill rolled out across the stone surface of the stage. Wherever it passed, a thin layer of frost rapidly condensed, spreading from beneath Bai Qingxue's feet toward Han Muchun, shimmering with tiny white glints under the moonlight.
By the time the starnet had shrunk to within three feet of Bai Qingxue, the wave of cold had already covered more than half the stage.
With a shift of Bai Qingxue's fingertips, the flute's tone suddenly changed.
It shifted from the previous smooth, wave-like buildup into a rapid, urgent melody.
The spreading cold energy suddenly contracted. No longer dispersing outward, it instead condensed into dozens of ice crystals around Bai Qingxue.
Each was only the size of a thumb, sharply angular, with edges as thin as blades, refracting specks of cold light under the moon like frozen stars.
As Bai Qingxue's musical style shifted, the dozens of ice crystals moved in response, shooting outward like a reverse shower of meteors to crash head-on into the shrinking starnet.
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.
A dense barrage of collisions erupted on the stage, sounding like countless ice beads striking thin iron at the same time.
Every ice crystal was precisely pinned to the intersection nodes of the starnet, knocking the interlacing threads of starlight slightly out of alignment at their connections and abruptly halting the starnet's rate of contraction.
A wave of gasps rose and fell below the stage. Someone blurted out, “Ice crystals against starlight? She's countering stars with ice?!”
The starnet stopped three feet away from Bai Qingxue, its nodes pinned by the ice crystals, temporarily unable to tighten further.
At this moment, the starnet resembled a net that had been stretched open but could not close, suspended in midair and trembling slightly.
At the same time, the edges of the starlight flickered erratically due to the constant collisions with the cold energy.
Han Muchun watched this scene, a faint glint flashing in her eyes.
Then, with a turn of her fingers, the bronze mirror flipped once more.
This time, the mirror's surface did not emit starlight but instead reflected a scene.
The outlines of the ice crystals around Bai Qingxue, their positions, and the flow of her spiritual power were all perfectly replicated by the ink-blue mirror without the slightest error, like a thin sheet of water taking the moon in the sky entirely into its embrace.
The bronze mirror vibrated gently.
Dozens of identical ice crystals shot out from the mirror. The shape, size, and spiritual fluctuations of each were almost indistinguishable from the ice crystals Bai Qingxue had condensed, with the sole exception of their color.
Bai Qingxue's ice crystals were a transparent, cool white, whereas the ones shot from the mirror carried a very faint ink-blue halo, resembling ice spikes dyed by starlight.
They flew out at the exact same angles and speeds as Bai Qingxue's, slamming precisely into the defensive line of ice crystals in front of her.
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.
Another dense barrage of collisions rang out.
Bai Qingxue's ice crystals clashed head-on with those from the mirror, both shattering into fine powder and exploding into a blanket of white ice mist under the moonlight, looking like a fleeting firework blooming out of nowhere.
In the Falling Star Pavilion seats below, Chu Mu suddenly clenched his fists, his eyes lighting up. “Senior Sister's Mirror Abyss Technique is complete!”
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