Han Yimu was wrestling with a whole new set of demons in his mind that he'd never, not in a million years, thought he'd get. All his life, even if he lagged behind his peers, he never once considered himself lesser; if given time and equal resources, he fully believed he would have stood on top of them all.
Even before today that belief was shaken, but today it was practically shattered. He learned first-hand just how much the other kids held back during the spars.
The shock started with Dai Xiu; the way that girl fought was staggering. She was lithe and graceful, and she weaved between strikes and used momentum to such a perfect degree that it left Han Yimu aghast. It wasn't as though he was unfamiliar with momentum fighting--he had quite a few Seniors and Juniors use it--but none had mastered it to a degree she did, despite some being about ten to twenty times as old as her.
She looked like she had a total and complete control over every single one of her muscles--she'd dig a heel into the ground and kick off, swaying slightly to the left, reaching the man and swinging in a wide arc at him. He'd deflect and bounce her backwards, yet rather than losing momentum as would almost everyone, she'd use the repelling force on the landing to kick herself sideways and around in a fuller arc, striking yet again... but this time with twice as much force.
She'd done so four times before the man had to dedicate the full brunt of his strike to completely dismantle her momentum by tearing a massive hole in her left thigh, down to the bone, whilst taking a direct sword strike from Xi Zhao that left a massive gash on his back.
By now, Han Yimu had caught up to the marvels and divinity of the Surging Spirit Art--there was nothing like it, not here and not above in the Upper Realm. An art that allowed one to heal mid fight without popping toxin-infused pills was akin to a made-up story children were told about the ancient times. Rather, even if the only thing the art could do was stop the bleeding without needing to manually dedicate a portion of Qi to the wounded areas, it would already have been considered a divine art among divine arts.
Despite that, he couldn't help but suck in a mouthful of cold air as he watched, in real time, Dai Xiu's massive wound slowly close up; the edges of the torn flesh wiggled and squirmed like maggots, tiny, hair-like tendrils shooting out of the wounded flesh and slowly combining to form new parts. The entire wound that would have taken him as he was before coming down here a day or two, with a set of average healing pills, took her just shy of a minute to heal. And she still moved while it was healing, attacking with such precision and violence that it left him dispirited.
Then there was her even more violent counterpart--Wan Lan. Unlike Dai Xiu, whom he'd fought a few times before during spars, Han Yimu had never actually fought Wan Lan... or saw her fight. Best he knew, her all-out spars were limited exclusively to the ever-mysterious Long Tao, and today he finally learned why.
That woman was a battle maniac.
With each passed second of the fight, the look in her eyes grew more demented, and her actions more and more reflected that rising lunacy in her. Unlike Dai Xiu who dodged and lithely danced around the attacks, Wan Lan never bothered--she stormed through them all, taking them head-on without so much as a flinch. Her body was repeatedly besieged with attacks that would have killed Han Yimu if he'd taken them head-on even at the peak of his strength, let alone now.
And yet, most of the man's attacks barely managed to break skin; it was immediately clear that she had an amazing physique, but his shock only kept deepening the longer the fight had gone on. With each minute, she'd grown more frantic, more loose, and more frightening; while initially there was some rhyme and reason to her decisions during a fight, by now... that was gone.
She would be slammed back, half her body in tatters, and she'd just lunge back in like a beast. Every kick and every punch and every slam of her body was accompanied by ferocious Qi, and about five minutes into the fight or so, the true nature of it was finally revealed: it was Demonic Qi.
He was actually more horrified that he'd failed to notice she was a Demonic Cultivator than that she was one; it was likely due to her physique that matched the expected behavior of someone who had been corrupted by Demonic Qi, except... she wasn't. Even now, as the plumes of dark twilight eschewed light, coiling around her body, Han Yimu didn't notice a single sign of corruption.
Mentally she wasn't quite there, sure, but that wasn't due to Demonic Qi; whatever the reason was for her current mania, it ran much deeper than the choice of Qi.
At the same time, every few moments, a fresh burst of wind and Sword Qi would soar from one or another place, perfectly aimed at the minute openings that the man provided during the fight. Each time Han Yimu would catch the essence of it, he'd feel the hairs on his neck stand up; those impossibly silent and invisible arrays of Sword Qi were... dangerous.
They weren't merely dangerous for the realm... they were dangerous. Xi Zhao's ability to hide an attack so lethal it didn't feel real, and hide it so perfectly bordered on impossible. Only cultivators with deep understanding of Dao of Space could possibly conceal their strikes that well.
But that wasn't all.
Every once in a while, one of those arrays would stagger unnaturally. It would be descending toward the man in full bloom, and just as he'd raised his sword to deflect it... it would stop. Abruptly. Whereupon he'd be force to lower the sword to defend against another attack, while Xi Zhao's strike would 'resume' falling.
Try as he may, Han Yimu couldn't figure out how.
Then there was the shaman, the anomaly standing in the back, tearing parchments one, weaves of light emerging from them. Sometimes the array of light would find Han Yimu, and he'd feel his body suddenly lighten to a degree that was almost perverse. A few times while he was distracted, and the man's strike was about to chop off a limb or two, a shield of light would suddenly appear and buy him half a second of time to dodge the strike just barely.
And Han Yimu was quite certain he was being supported the least as his role in this fight was very simple: a distraction. Which was a sobering thought in and of itself.
Then there were the two literal children--Xing Feng who used a strange weapon that kept changing shapes, but, somehow, he managed to masterfully use them all. Unlike others, he didn't have one specific thing that made him stand out; rather, he was just... stable. Which felt insane to think about a boy that was maybe eleven or twelve years old. When Han Yimu was that age, as most other kids, he was wild and unrestrained, and hardly in control of much of anything.
And yet, the boy nimbly danced between being the vanguard striker to rear support to flanker and to a defender, all in the span of a singular minute. Were he not so massively restrained by his low cultivation...
And lastly, there was Light.
The youngest of the group, who stood at the far rear since the battle's begun. She's done... nothing. She simply stood and watched, seeming partly interested in the ongoing battle.
Nobody said anything, so Han Yimu didn't either. He'd never sparred against her as she only ever sparred with Long Tao. He didn't even know what kind of a cultivator she was.
But the instinct that he had honed in the years he'd lived and observed prodigies warned him like a screeching banshee that, outside Long Tao and Master, that girl was by far the most dangerous one.
He was curious, though.
... just how? How did an assortment of children that could rival almost any of the Divine Lands all just so happen to be under the same Master? No... he mused as he glanced down at the spear that was somehow the best quality weapon he'd ever held in his life.
It wasn't the kids.
It was the man guiding them.