As the stronger twin stepped up to the Arena, he noticed that Yan Guo was already waiting with his weapons out. The twin frowned but still introduced himself to Yan Guo anyway. "My name is Ming Yu, may the stronger person win." He bowed in a traditional manner with his fist in his palm. Yan Guo didn't bother gracing Ming Yu with a verbal answer but nodded his head slightly to show that he had heard and approved of the comment.

The referee promptly started the match once the two were on the stage for a good few minutes and he arrived right as the five-minute waiting period was up. "On the count of three. One! Two! Three!"

Ming Yu used his obviously bigger body to try and overwhelm Yan Guo. It was good for Ming Yu that he had fought his brother in the previous round because that meant that his skills and techniques weren't shown too much because they both knew that if either one of them advanced, they would need that advantage.

Ming Yu's fighting style made liberal use of his body to it's fullest extent without even leaving out the most obscure parts of the body to attack. Yan Guo was hard pressed to disappear suddenly because he knew that his technique didn't work well with such a close exchange. With the circumstances in hand, Yan Guo was bound to make mistakes with his technique if he tried executing it at such a close-range.

Yan Guo's usage of daggers was limited due to their being very little space for him to manoeuvre the daggers to stab Ming Yu. He was constantly trying to retreat, so that he could get some distance between the two of them but was hard-pressed with Ming Yu constantly in his face with a brawler fighting style. Yan Guo's fighting style mainly relied on his overwhelming speed with his movement technique but because of the suppression, he couldn't do much.

He was trained as an assassin so it was obvious that being in such an open field would lead to many disadvantages for him. Though this was the case, he bought enough time for himself as he was dodging the attacks to take out several items out of his breast pocket and throwing it down onto the ground. The arena was filled with black smoke instantly, showing the efficiency of the smoke pellet that he threw on the ground.

Ming Yu was unable able to see in the smoke and was attacking wildly. Yan Guo was able to easily find Ming Yu with his observation technique that allowed him to see through the smoke. He quickly utilised his movement technique so he could attack Ming Yu. He stabbed his daggers in Ming Yu's back but was surprised that his daggers were deflected off his body after giving minor scratches to him.

The audience was unable to see into the smoke unless they had techniques to allow them to see. Ye Xiu and many others were able to see due to their techniques. Ye Xiu could see them by following the Qi pools in both Yan Guo and Ming Yu and it was easy to differentiate between the two because of Ming Yu's smaller Qi reserves.

He watched how Ming Yu's back was flooded with Qi as Yan Guo approached him. It was extremely smart of Ming Yu to protect his back with his defensive technique to stop Yan Guo from being able to get a one-shot victory. It was obvious that Yan Guo had mainly relied on the same technique to achieve his results to get to where he was so it was simple for Ming Yu to come up with a plan even while being unable to see.

Once Ming Yu had heard felt the dagger being deflected off his body, he quickly turned around with a reverse roundhouse kick towards Yan Guo's body. Luckily, Yan Guo had moved back the moment his attack had failed and was safe from the attack. Ming Yu started to jump up and down on the spot and caused vibrations to be sent out through the ground. He was doing this to get rid of the smoke but it was futile because it barely lifted the heavy smoke.

Ming Yu scrunched his eyebrows together when he realised that the smoke was too heavy to be moved by such a move. Unexpectedly, he took out two fans from his dimensional storage and used it to fan away the smoke. With his violent movements, the fans made quick work of the smoke.

With the smoke gone, Ming Yu put his fans back into his dimensional storage and looked around for Yan Guo. Yan Guo was to the side of Ming Yu's vision and was just barely outside of his peripheral vision. Yan Guo knew that if his normal attacks didn't work then he would have to use Metal Qi to make his attacks more penetrating. He took out the same dagger that he had used against Shi Die and poured in a generous amount of Qi into the dagger.

Ye Xiu was obviously surprised that Yan Guo was able to pour so much Qi into the dagger because most common materials couldn't withstand holding so much Qi inside of them. If you placed too much then the material or object would be likely to break which is why there were specialised Smiths to make or handle these materials and it was why those types of weapons were the most expensive ones.

Ye Xiu had noted from Shi Die's fight that the dagger probably had some significance to Yan Guo but now that he saw him pouring so much Qi, he could see why he didn't display the weapon until he realised that he could no longer win the fights with just his normal daggers.

The dagger that he was using was probably a Qi Weapon and would cause envy to many students and it might even force them to forcibly claim it for themselves. The price of a Qi Weapon wasn't cheap but it shouldn't cause too much envy between the students because of the huge number of students that had the amount of money to throw around for a single weapon due to their families.

The only reason why a student would possibly want to hide the usage of their Qi Weapon is if it was of high quality. The difference in the strength of a Qi Weapons depends on many factors. As far as Ye Xiu could tell from his knowledge from smithing was that the amount of Qi that was being poured into Yan Guo's weapon definitely exceeded a Grade 1 Qi Weapon by a huge margin which was probably why Yan Guo was hiding the weapon in the first place.

Ye Xiu wasn't too concerned about the Qi Weapon because he was able to craft his own weapon which was actually much better compared to buying it from somebody else. It was due to the fact of the bond that he could possibly form with his weapon or that the weapon would be a much better suit to his tastes and style if he personally made it because he knew himself pretty well and would know if the weapon wasn't right for him.

Yan Guo finished pouring his Qi into the weapon and pounced at the opportunity to attack Ming Yu. He was going to pretend to assault him from the side before using his technique when he turns to get behind him and use his offensive technique. This offensive technique was sure to pierce Ming Yu's defences in his eyes because he knew that he was able to pierce the defences of those at the 8th or 9th stages of the Qi Cleansing Realm with ease with the technique.

He didn't deliberately make his footsteps be heard because that would be too much of a giveaway to what his plan was and continued to run towards Ming Yu. Ming Yu who spotted him in his peripheral vision as he was slowly turning readied his Qi around the front of his body to protect himself. He kept some Qi to fuel his defensive technique at the back because it was always better to be cautious.

Ming Yu's caution was definitely well-deserved as Yan Guo executed his plan. Yan Guo vanished at a much faster speed than he usually did and attacked Ming Yu's back the moment he was behind him. Yan Guo didn't aim for the spine because that would cripple Ming Yu without the proper medical attention so he aimed for the paralysis spot on the back of the neck.

Ming Yu turned to try and defend himself when he realised what Yan Guo's plan was but was too late as Yan Guo's weapon had already reached its destination. With that simple plan, Ming Yu lost the battle to Yan Guo's offensive technique that pierced his defences easily. Ming Yu was obviously stunned that Yan Guo was able to pierce through his defences when he was able to easily deflect his earlier attacks with ease.

He and his brother had focused on their body to be their main force of attacking and defence but Yan Guo had managed to pierce through their efforts with ease the moment he brought out his other weapon. He was obviously dissatisfied with the outcome of the fight and the way he had lost it but didn't want to make it a big matter. He just sighed internally and vowed to be stronger than those who used weapons together with his twin.

Both of the twins were great at fighting individually but their capability increased by multiple times when they worked together to fight opponents due to their synergy and knowledge of each other's fighting style. Even though the twins looked like they had all the same abilities and techniques, they had reserved the most of them from the public's eye because they had wanted to use it to their advantage to win the fights later on.

Even though he lost this fight, he knew that he still had a few tricks up his sleeve as long as his opponent didn't pierce his defences as Yan Guo did. He closed his eyes and waited for the referee to call the match as Yan Guo's victory. "Yan Guo advances to the Finals for the First Years! The Finals for the First Years will start after the conclusion of the Semi-finals for the Second Years. There's an hour break right now so take the chance to rest and do whatever you need before coming back!"

The referee was announcing what was going to happen later on in the day and everybody was relieved that there was a resting period currently. Mainly the second years who were fighting were relieved because quite a few of them weren't mentally prepared. Many of the second years had experience fighting against each other through the many spars in the Arena grounds through the year but were still unsure of other's abilities because nobody would ever go full out in a public spar.

As Yan Guo walked off the arena with all his weapons concealed or placed away, he looked in the direction of Ye Xiu and grinned. He started to mouth a few words towards Ye Xiu. Ye Xiu could barely make out the words from Yan Guo's lips but was able to get the gist of it. "I hope you don't disappoint me like your friends did. If you give me a good fight... well we'll see."

Ye Xiu watched as Yan Guo continued his way off the arena and into the crowd, he frowned at the words that Yan Guo had said to him. He had not thought for Yan Guo to be such a person to be directly mocking him in person. He hadn't said any words at all to any other participants but he took the liberty this time to say something to him? It was extremely strange in his mind because as far as he was concerned, Yan Guo's temperament wasn't anything like this from what he had observed of his fights.

Ye Xiu shook those thoughts out of his head and went to find his friends.