Bin Wei goes to propose a battlefield, looking for a way to better modify the landscape-

There is a crack of thunder, and the hill she was standing on has been opened, shattered open beneath the impact of her departure. He senses no Qi, no fluctuation of Dao- he's seen warriors that manipulate Vector, Momentum, even Gravity Daos at the higher end of some sects and elders, and there is none of that here. Through sheer force alone, she breaks the ground, the sound barrier, and very nearly his face as she comes close enough to swing at him.

He dodges backwards, but only barely. The world warps him backwards, his Domain acting as his own personal world around himself and obeying his commands. It should, in theory, be faster than anyone can move under the bounds of the Will of the Heavens- rather than fight him, air pressure warps out of his way, gravity pulls him backwards, force and momentum and inertia all cooperating to his benefit.

His opponent demonstrates no such abilities, and, to his surprise, doesn't even seem to need to.

He's faster than she is, and he's dodged the first strike. The initiative goes to him.

He manifests his Domain in truth, and the world changes. The hillsides turn from grass and earth to stone, colored brilliant azure and marbled with spiraling patterns and currents. Like a painting of a windy sky made solid, the landscape begins to shift and churn as if liquid, three states of matter in perfect unity and moving in sequence in a reflection of his cultivation.

The stone she lands on should fail to hold her. It should force her to slip and fall, should bend and warp under her weight as if ephemeral, should be hard-sided and solid where it will trip her. And technically, it does.

She just doesn't fall.

This "Rai Ka" moves as if possessed, her body shifting and readjusting faster than should be possible without Qi or a Domain of her own. Rather than force her to collapse, it merely buys him a moment of time as she readjusts- only to launch herself at him again.

This time he's ready. The air in front of him turns to water, and then to stone, floating in place as if fused with the air around it, ready to accept any blow.

Rai Ka's fist strikes it, and should, by all rights, be stopped whole by the force of inertia working against her, by the impact against the stone. It should, by rights, fail to do anything against the supernatural material.

The world, his Domain, cracks.

His opponent digs her hands into the shattered remnants of the air-turned-stone, and even as it turns to water, even as it bends to his every whim and flows away from something she might use, she unleashes her Intent.

The context of the space around her changes, and suddenly what was unstable terrain, slipping wildly from her grasp, is as solid and as stable as any platform, because her Intent is to STAY STILL.

That…

Killing Intent can do strange things, but he's never seen it used to command so… cleanly. It's always a threat- the act of context changing to that of violence, used as a tool, but not like this.

She grabs hold of his Domain and throws herself forward at him, her Intent to stay stable forming the world around her, and, much to his shame, he's forced to dodge once more. Against an opponent with no Domain!

As if it weren't already clear, it seems he has once again been reminded of the fact that he cannot underestimate this opponent. This Rai Ka doesn't seem the type to pick a fight without some sort of guarantee that it would, in fact, be a fight. These handicaps she's given herself certainly don't seem to be stopping her from coming at this like a fight she could win.

Hmm. No holding back, then.

Just as his Domain can act on his body as if it obeyed his own Will above that of the Heavens, so too does it act on all it encompasses. Just as the landscape turns to his truth, so too does it supercede the will of another, so long as they have no Domain of their own.

He reaches out with a hand, stretching his senses, and wraps his will around his opponent- and then inverts.

I Am Me, I Am Mine.

Nothing happens.

Her insides don't explode out, her body and mass don't invert her flesh into open air- but she does manage her first strike on him.

His Domain reduces the inertia of it. It increases his durability, affects how the rules of reality apply to him, minimizes the harm and moves him away with full efficiency.

She still breaks his jaw on contact.

He lets out a gargled cry as blood floods his mouth, some of his own teeth floating in it. The world around him reforms to protect him, layering rippling waves of terrain and ever-shifting air in turn, and it manages to buy him a few seconds.

First blood goes to the challenger.

To the one fighting with no Domain. No Qi.

It cannot stand.

He reaches out with his Domain again, confirming what he briefly experienced. She exists, more than illusion, possessing mass and structure, but for some reason, despite the lack of Qi, his control slips off of her. Not unheard of, though rare- likely an esoteric Truth, or some strange technique, something about how she refuses to use cultivation. It matters not- the air around her remains his for as long as she remains in the same space as his Domain.

With the slightest flex of will, he turns the air in her mouth (the last point where he can access it) into liquid, and then stone, and then rippling solid-state matter have torn her jaw off her body and cracked the front of her skull-plate.

Matched, blow for blow. He smiles, or tries to, wincing before he sends his Qi to his jaw and pushes his body to repair itself. His jaw will click for a few days, but it connects back into place, which is what he needed. Now-

She's here.

Her jaw is still missing, her faceplate dislocated and her eyes cracked apart to odd angles- but she's here.

He's been out of combat too long. He's out of practice. It's clear he'll have to rectify this state of affairs.

After he vanquishes this would-be opponent.

His Domain moves him aside from the first swing, then the second, and a kick beyond that, the range of it inhuman and cutting through the air at him. He's adapting, learning, his subconscious wielding his Domain more practically against this Rai Ka.

So- his Domain has limited utility here. It's strange, for one such as he- Domain on Domain combat are quintessential to highest-tier cultivators, and to relegate it to a utility tool alone feels alien.

But Bin Wei is no weakling, and he is not so old he has forgotten his roots.

He steps into her next attack, the landscape of blue stone turning her footing briefly unsteady, and pulls from his core into his arms, weaving a well-practiced technique.

"Roaring Heavens, Broken Skies!" he roars, a dual palm-strike hitting the strange bio-crafter directly in the chest.

Space shatters, the world obeying his Qi and multiplying its effectiveness in the bounds of his Domain. Cracks into the void of reality itself break open, as if he has struck the surface of a frozen pond, and his opponent is torn asunder, separated along lines of perspective.

And then-

I Am Me, I Am Mine.

The world shudders, and once again, a wave of Intent washes over him and his technique.

I Am Alive, it says- and so it is.

Shattered across a visual metaphor, torn apart in a hundred ways… and it barely goes beneath the skin. The technique hits some sort of under-armor, beneath her skin, and the damage is… it's not gone, but the context of it is changed, from dangerous to irrelevant. She is still alive- her Intent has reinforced and reshaped what was already true, in a sense.

The language of Intent, wielded at a level he's never seen.

It's…

Oh.

Oh, he's glimpsed it. How long has it been? How long?

Insight. Divine insight, a glimpse to the eternal. If one is the same as the other, then-

No. He will meditate on this later- his opponent is advancing again.

He reshapes the world, his Domain flexing space and terrain such that it forces Rai Ka back a hundred feet, nearly to the edge of his claimed space.

"You!" he roars, his eyes wide, his smile bright. "You are a truly unique one, stranger Rai Ka! It is this Bin Wei's honor to trade pointers with you!"

From flesh still re-knitting itself, her face realigns into a grin, healing at an inhuman (but not instant, he notices) pace.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"This Raika is overjoyed that the honorable Bin Wei has learned to take things seriously!"

And then- she steps out of his Domain.

Escaping another's Domain is common practice in Domain on Domain warfare, but her lack of Qi, her strange constitution, makes the transition jarring. One moment, he has perfect awareness of her form and presence- the next, it is as if she has turned to an illusion, only his eyes and ears giving him any indication she is real.

But she is very real. He adjusts, scanning the terrain instead of her. His cultivation flares, expanding past his Domain to track air movements, the Qi of the ground she steps on- he won't lose sight of her, not now.

Luckily, that doesn't seem to be an issue- she retreats no further.

With an earth-shattering kick, she strikes the ground directly- and shoots a thousand pellets of stone and earth directly at him.

At which point they enter his Domain, are transformed, and fade to air.

She frowns, cocking her head.

"Damn. No chance I can convince you to come out here and punch me?"

He laughs, the sound pulled from him by the audacity of the question.

"This Bin Wei would remind Rai Ka that the terms were defined by you, were they not?"

She smiles, and it is both frustrated and… happy?

"So they were. Ah well! I suppose I'll have to go back in then, won't I?"

"I suppose you shall. Though, on the other hand~"

Once again, his Qi races through his meridians, wielded by an iron will and precise mind, dancing along his spiritual pathways to shape the world.

Above his head, spears begin to form, built of whirling winds and sharp-edged Killing Intent. First one, which splits into three, which each split into six, which each split into nine, such that the sky above him has become a storm of lethality and overwhelming Qi.

As the technique manifests, he pushes his Domain into it, magnifying it with his chosen properties. The wind turns blue, warping between states of matter as violent cyclones, typhoons and impossible magma- and then, as a final touch, Bin Wei reaches for his favorite of his collection of Dao, and adds a chaotic spiral to them in the form of Transmutation.

In under a second, he has formed one of his more lethal techniques, manifesting reality into a form befitting the destruction he wishes for.

"World-Shattering Rain of Form," he announces- and then launches.

The hillside behind her vanishes as she dodges and lets it be hit by a single spear. It digs a trench into the earth, fifty feet deep and twice as wide- and the shot keeps going, traveling out further, further, until it dissipates almost two miles away.

And then he launches the second spear, and the third, and the first twenty, and idly reflects on how much paperwork it'll be to have to redraw the maps again.

And yet… she lives.

Short bursts of Intent reshape the context of her run, turning lethal hits into stepping stones just enough that she can stay ahead of his attacks. She's rapidly approaching the upper limit of what can be done without Qi, her body fighting the Will of Heaven to break past air resistance, to properly wield friction and acceleration, but every hit he strikes is glancing, tearing away the surface of her to reveal more of that midnight-black armor under her skin.

Still- he has 142 more droplets. He waves a hand, and his Domain warps space between himself and its edge, ensuring that the techniques lose not an ounce of power in their travel, and-

With a tearing sound of flesh rent, unmade and torn asunder, Rai Ka rips her skin off.

The upper layer of her body falls away, revealing a nightmare of black steel and claw, of glowing orange metal and sunset-rich indigo blood. A second set of arms, longer than the first, distend out from inside her, and her eyes meet his, eight-pointed stars. She moves faster than she has before, breaking through the barrier of sound and inertia to launch herself at him, pushing through the rules of the Will of Heaven with sheer physical force.

And with the space between his technique and the outside world minimized, she only has to take a single step into his Domain to be right here.

He fires twenty more spears as a blind barrage, then two sets of ten in sequence, then thirty more as a wave behind them-

She blocks them.

A wave of Killing Intent like he's rarely seen, joyous and unrestrained, explodes into reality, his own Domain warping beneath it, wilting under the force of it even as blood splurts from the sharp-toothed maw and iridescent eyes of the beast. She stands firm, his control of his own world disrupted by the very convincing metaphysical argument made that it is already dead, and begins to move her arms fast enough the create consecutive booms of broken air.

The first spear is aimed to land in the center of her chest- and then there is an arm in the way, the palm touching the whirling, constantly shifting tip of the spear, and twists just so. With control like he's rarely seen, she takes mountain-shattering blows like simply punches, the slightest readjustments and turns redirecting and dissipating that which should kill her. Even as her hands are broken into mush, her armored under-skin is shattered piece by piece, her body begins to tremble and gush blood, she keeps moving, her focus never wavering.

It's not enough to block and reset, every movement has to flow into the next perfectly, and even then, without truly impossible speed, it simply should not work. Spears are pushed into each other, meeting unnatural, supernatural material and suffering the attentions of its wielder.

He still has half of his whirlwinds. She is so close.

And she can come no closer.

His Qi rises, and he affirms to himself who he is.

"I am Bin Wei, honored opponent! And Without Strength, There Is No Victory!"

And, here and now, the greater strength is his.

Seventy spears this time, centered on a single, humanoid-scale target, and behind them, a man of millenia, pushing a sea of Qi into his hands, his movements, his being.

She makes it past the first five whirlwinds. She parries the next five, redirects the next ten, weathers the next twenty, survives the next thirty, a ragged strip of torn-apart flesh-

And he takes a single step, as if on the journey of a thousand miles, and extends his hand, palm-out, into her sternum.

He has not used this technique in an age. A generation, perhaps? Two? How refreshing, to wield his strength again.

"Ever-Changing Strike Breaks What Is."

A Domain of ever-shifting laws of matter and form, condensed at the point of touch, magnifying enough Qi to power a thousand formations, enhanced by a Truth of all that is, comes into being against the ragged form of his opponent.

Ah. Whoops. Maybe he should have held back a bit. Ah well- he can always raid the spatial treasures hidden in her biology after.

The world goes white.

The Will of Heaven, which says that movement has heat, that impact has dispersion, that the rules are what they are, reconciles violently with the power of a Warrior realm master. The result is a flash of heat and impact so violent that he tastes the very Dao of the world in it, tinged with Destruction, Flame, and a hundred more, subtler flavors. For a moment, he can glimpse his technique, an alien thing, intimately familiar, a point of Qi, matter and abstract concept, made into a constantly transforming spiral of destruction, blue and brilliant- and then it is gone, buried beneath its consequences.

Slowly, the damage fades. His Domain pushes back the world beyond it, shielding him from its effects, and he watches as white turns to red, then gold, then black as dust and ash make themselves dominant. The world is overtaken in a cloud of debris, malformed and ruinous.

It takes the barest whisper of will to project his Qi outwards, blowing away the smoke, clearing the air to blue sky and charred ground.

Of his opponent, there is no sign.

He sighs. He could never be ungrateful in such a moment- he's glimpsed an insight into deeper mysteries in this battle, and once he recovers the remains, he can take them for study, take from them that droplet she showed him. His Qi reserves have dipped slightly, but that's no reason to worry, and such a thorough victory is a thorough joy. Still… it was nice, to fight someone unknown, one where he was pushed to take things seriously.

Ugh. The patriarch will have such a tongue lashing ready for him on his return. He'll really never hear the end of this-

"Damn. Hurts."

His Domain expands a hundred-fold, back to its battle-ready state. His cultivation burns, the golden core deep inside stirring, the Soul within raised from its meditation by the first true hint of worry it has felt from its original in some time.

She's there. Right at the edge of his Domain.

Standing on one leg, for the other is missing. Whittled down to barely more than strange bones and dripping indigo. Her sunset-"hair" has been turned to ash, and only one eye left in the ruins of her skull. No, there- the other, already regenerating. And are those… needles? Poking out of the edge of her skullcase?

And directly through the center of this stick-thin atrocity, there is a hole, large enough that the right side of her torso and the arms there are just… gone.

There is no room for organs. There is barely a skull remaining. She… it should be dead.

As he watches, incredulous, bone and tendons finish growing into the shape of a jaw, a tongue rolling like raw meat before skin covers it. She coughs, but nothing emerges, the left side of her remaining torso just sort of twitching.

Her voice is like a rasp. Like a burnt corpse, using ruined lips to speak.

"You're… a lot… stronger. Than the last… Warrior realm… I fought."

"...I am honored by your analysis, junior."

A smile. Without lips, without a face, with barely a faceplate.

"And I… by your fear… senior brother."

He can't help it- he smiles back.

"Best not to overestimate oneself, junior sister. It would be impolite of me to fear one I have so thoroughly defeated."

The beast's head cocks to one side, like an inquisitive animal facing a puzzle. "Oh? But… well, I don't recall surrendering."

"You are hardly in a condition to continue the conflict, junior."

"Ah. I… apologize. It would seem I have given the wrong impression."

A crack, like that of an eggshell breaking. Her knee joint, bending in ways it shouldn't, in ways it no longer can… but clearly just did. She lands on the ground, one leg and two limbs (both on the same side) landing her on the ground like a crippled spider. Even as he watches, her flesh is swimming, carbon-black shards of that strange under-armor growing like crystals along patterns of regeneration. Her frame readjusts, in a way he can't quite get, in a way that reminds him of the artful way she parried his technique- perfect control of muscle, aligning it to a specific point and purpose.

"I'm afraid you'll have to do just a bit better than that to force me to give in, senior. I'm happy to let you try again, though."

He can't help it- he laughs.

The beast is mad.

And yet… it is not in the nature of a true cultivator to shy away from such an opportunity.

Besides- he's two thousand years old. He so rarely gets to let his own madness out to play.

"So be it, junior!" he roars, his Qi thundering, the space in his Domain transforming into woven techniques and eldritch formations. "But I shall take my reward promptly when I claim victory!"

A faceless smile, all sharp angles and beautiful, inhuman eyes.

"I have Strength of my own. Let's see to who victory falls."

And then, pressing down with a pair of legs that is still only half-formed and barely healed- she launches herself across the glassed landscape at him.

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