Meng Hao's third match in the competition was against a Foundation Establishment Level Three cultivator named Fatty Zhang, who weighed approximately twice as much as Meng Hao and wielded a spirit sword that was approximately twice as long.
'I heard about your binding technique,' Fatty Zhang said, settling into a defensive stance that made him look like a very well-armed boulder. 'It won't work on me. My spiritual foundation is solid. No cracks.'
Meng Hao had been gambling on the Hex being his secret weapon through the entire competition, and now his secret was not secret. He would have to win with pure cultivation — and pure cultivation was not his strength.
The fight lasted four minutes, which was three minutes longer than Meng Hao expected to survive. Fatty Zhang was slower than his reputation suggested, and his techniques, while powerful, were predictable. Meng Hao dodged, evaded, and retreated until Fatty Zhang's spiritual energy began to flag — the weakness of a solid foundation, it turned out, was that it burned through spiritual energy faster than Meng Hao's cracked, leaking foundation.
By the fourth minute, Fatty Zhang was gasping, his strikes growing sluggish. Meng Hao, who had spent his entire cultivation life operating on a spiritual energy budget so tight it squeaked, was still fresh.
'How,' Fatty Zhang panted, 'are you still standing?'
'Practice,' Meng Hao said, and then he punched Fatty Zhang in the face. It was not a sophisticated technique. It was not a cultivation move. It was just a punch, delivered at the exact moment when his opponent's guard was down and his spiritual energy was exhausted. Fatty Zhang toppled like a felled oak.
The crowd was silent for a long moment. Then someone laughed — a shocked, delighted laugh — and the silence broke into chaos.
'Meng Hao wins,' the referee said.
Meng Hao shook out his punching hand, which hurt quite a lot, actually, and walked off the platform. Three wins. One more and he would survive the elimination rounds entirely. He might actually live through this.