The Reliance Sect's annual competition was a bloodbath disguised as a tournament. Every Outer Sect disciple below the age of twenty was required to participate, and the bottom ten percent would be expelled — which, in the Reliance Sect, meant being thrown off the mountain with no cultivation resources, no travel permits, and no guarantee of surviving the beasts in the valley below.

Meng Hao had been training for this competition for two months, and he was still going to lose.

He was at the peak of Qi Condensation Level Two, which placed him squarely in the middle of the Outer Sect's rankings. The problem was that the competition was not about rankings. It was about combat, and Meng Hao had never been in a real fight in his life. He had avoided every conflict, bribed every bully, and fled every confrontation. His survival strategy had worked perfectly — until now.

'The Demon Sealing Hex,' he muttered, staring at the bronze mirror, 'is supposed to be one of the most powerful techniques in the universe. Can't it help me not die?'

The mirror pulsed once — which, with the mirror, could mean anything from 'yes' to 'you're an idiot' to 'please stop talking.'

But as he focused on the Hex of Binding, Meng Hao realized something. The Hex wasn't just a binding technique. It was a sealing technique — and sealing could be defensive. He could, in theory, seal away the force of an incoming attack, redirect its energy, or even turn it back on the attacker.

In theory.

He practiced his new defensive technique against the training dummies, against rocks, against walls, against anything that could approximate a combat experience without actually killing him. By the night before the competition, he could deflect a single Spirit-level strike with about sixty percent reliability. The other forty percent resulted in him getting blasted across the training yard.

Sixty percent was better than zero.'Tomorrow,' he told the mirror, 'I'm going to survive. Probably. Possibly. Maybe.'