Some training took place in quiet contemplation, and some took place on the field of battle- or at least a representation of true battle. Sparring never quite hit the same heights due to the lacking necessity, but it was still a valuable tool.
As the stronger side of the exchange, John felt like it was important for him to act in a manner that promoted learning. Anna Evensen would receive little value from a swift victory, and it could even be perceived as insulting to her and the sect. John intended to take a more measured approach, unless she made a mistake so critical that it would be more rude to ignore it.
Though there was the slightest chance that Anna was able to fight above her cultivation level, it was unlikely she could stretch so far ahead that she could defeat John while still in the Consolidated Soul Phase. The circumstances with Ursel and Abritt were an exception. Not only was her equipment extraordinary but her totems were extraordinary from third on. Finally, she even had an elemental advantage. None of those appeared to be true of Anna. Her equipment was fairly ordinary, her totems mainly in the third and fourth tier, and she had at least a partial elemental disadvantage.
The battlefield itself did bolster her abilities somewhat. Not only did it possess the naturally high earth element levels of the region, but placed strategically throughout were a number of plants to be used by cultivators on either side of the battle. John knew more than a few things about plant control both before and while training with the Succulent League, but he wasn’t a specialist by any means. It was simply expected to use whatever the locals did.
The two faced off against each other. John was tempted to begin with a volley of fire, but aside from that being outside of his usual repertoire, it might actually be expected. Instead, he used wind to whip up a sandstorm, limiting vision inside the arena. Anna countered by taking control of the earth in her immediate vicinity, but anything more than that would likely take more of her spiritual energy than she wanted to commit.
Anna’s energy spread through the ground around her, doing little to hide her intentions. Not that everyone needed to do so. Knowing that she was going to take control of a cactus next to him and whip it around didn’t mean he didn’t have to dodge. Or he could take the hit directly, but he wasn’t interested in direct clashes unless they served a purpose.
John had concealed his spiritual energy to go along with the sandstorm, or it would do very little. Anna still had a good estimate of his position before that, so she was able to sweep the cactus through waist level attacks, which seemed optimal given her lack of knowledge about his exact position.
She didn’t simply stop with that, however. The various limbs of the cactus were manipulated to sweep high and low following the first few rotations as the plant spun through the sands. Her spiritual energy stretched the reach of her attacks, and though she barely grazed John that was all that she needed. The feedback from the clash let her more precisely determine his location.
John did use flames, then. They swept over the cactus as Anna diverted her attention to other plants in the area. She could have easily resisted his assault, but John’s ethereal flames didn’t immediately reveal their effects, even as it burned through her energy and began to destroy the plant. Most likely in her distraction she would only feel a slight numbing of the energy. Once his attack reached the cactus itself, it was already too late for her to quench the flames.
With his location revealed, John moved quickly across the sands. He continued to maintain the winds, as that would likely be his most effective use of his air element. Darkness was infused throughout his actions, keeping Anna guessing as to his exact location even after she briefly spotted him.
Low to the ground plants with serrated edges on their leaves began to whirl towards John from multiple directions. John disrupted their movements by heaving the sand upwards beneath a select few, disrupting the attacks.
There was a nice barrel cactus ahead that Anna had not yet exerted her dominion over, and John began to infuse it with his water and earth element. As he danced around it, it blocked some of the incoming plants without revealing his actual location.
Anna was searching through the area for him not just with her control of energy but with her body, knocking the sand down around her. That constantly revealed her location to John, though not much more than the rest of her efforts.
John could have likely avoided her completely, but he allowed her to pick out clues. This was for the sake of learning, after all. If she took control of just a thin layer on top of the sand, for example, his whirlwinds would immediately cease to create a sandstorm. She was simply focusing too much immediately around her.
Destroying too much of the arena’s features was a bit rude, so John limited the number of plants he set alight. He didn’t completely stop, and even became more blatant about it with a few. Anna needed to be able to react once they actually clashed.
Earth and water were still locked up in the single barrel cactus, and the intensity was actually increasing. John was actually drying out the air, storing up the water so that it couldn’t be used against him. Even if Anna wasn’t a water cultivator, having moisture in the atmosphere would still benefit her.
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Anna caught a glimpse of John as she nearly passed him. She immediately sent a crashing wave of earth element to knock down the sands around him, revealing him to her eyes. At that point, John let his whirlwind drop. That was his inevitable intention, as the disciples needed to be able to watch at least some of the match.
John turned his winds into personal deflections, redirecting cacti that were launched through the air at him. He dodged and twisted around them while focusing darkness directly on Anna. She didn’t know quite what he planned, but she struggled against the fog he put around her even as she continued her attacks.
All at once, John swapped his efforts to a different element. The veil of darkness was pushed away by Anna’s efforts, and John reached towards her. He had the intention to make use of every element… including the one for which he had no totem. Anna looked straight at John as he released a burst of light she wasn’t prepared to defend against. Her defenses were tuned to push away exactly the opposite, after all.
In her moment of blindness, John tossed several throwing daggers coated in ethereal flames, impacting her defensive energy. From a previously passive stance, John began a series of attacks to overwhelm her, cycling through his various elements. Even as she was doing her best to divest herself of the flames, John created a lightning strike. He followed up by creating a layer of ice on the sand around her. Finally, he launched his prepared barrel cactus at her.
The cactus was infused with a large amount of spiritual energy, but mainly to increase its solidity. As Anna felt it coming, she raised her own defenses. Her earth element formed a solid defense around her, but the impact sent her sliding backwards on the ice, tossing her into the sand. During the continuous assaults, she had lost her control of most of the surrounding plants, as she only had so much spiritual energy she could rally at once.
Thus, there was very little to stop John from continuing his attacks. She was still trying to blink away the images in her eyes instead of completely giving up on sight as John entered melee range. Her defenses weren’t completely negated, and her energy shaped itself into spines just about as long as his own blade, but the precision of the angles was off, giving him an opening to stab through.
Shortly after his first strike hit, Anna admitted defeat. “I surrender. You have bested me.”
“It was a good match,” John said. He had an overwhelming advantage in cultivation rank, so a different outcome couldn’t be expected. He just hoped she would learn something about how different elements could cause her trouble, even if they didn’t seem as threatening as fire.
“I didn’t expect the light,” she admitted. “You don’t even have a totem for it.”
“Not yet,” John agreed. “But someday, perhaps.” He still had to reach the late Ascending Soul Phase, which was proving to be quite stubborn on its own. Then after advancing three ranks, he actually had to be capable of breaking through to Exalted Soul Phase. He didn’t exactly have any prior guidance on that step. In fact, he hadn’t seen or even heard of one in the modern age.
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“If you find the opportunity, I would suggest coming to see or perhaps participate in the tournament,” John said. “You will find a great variety of styles there, and there are many connections to be made.”
The tournament was a good way to gather people together in Astrein, and John still believed that having people interact in positive ways was helpful. Yes, they were still there to battle- but it wasn’t an actual war. Obviously people sometimes got a bit too into competitions, but there was more than just the tournament. During the months around the ten-year tournament schedule, people from all over were gathering and interacting mostly peacefully.
It helped that the Six Elements Crossroads was supported in the endeavor by many other sects and clans, both large and small. It might not be able to last forever, but for now there was internal peace. Adding more people to that was the goal.
While gathered together, people were able to trade for a wide variety of different resources. Some were more highly coveted than others, but with sufficient quantity and variety of cultivators everyone had some opportunity to get what they were after through peaceful means. A few decades prior, people might not even speak about what they had, even if they didn’t want it for themselves. That meant many things languished and went unused, providing no benefit for the possessors or anyone else.
Anna nodded to John’s invitation. “We will take the opportunity to attend the next one.”
John liked the Succulent League. Was he biased because their sect head had been polite coming off of a rejection in the Muted Crags? Potentially. And the fact that he got to keep his now-fuzzy little cactus certainly helped as well. But mostly, he was just glad to find people that were decent human beings again and again.
It was easy to believe more people were troublemakers than not, but really it was just that trouble was more obvious and stuck in the brain for far longer. The continent had still needed a shift from infighting to cooperation to stand up to various threats, but things could have been worse. Even in the early days of his time in this world John had traveled frequently and remained generally safe, it was simply that the few negative encounters stood out far more.
Returning to the rest of the Rolling Dunes, John didn’t expect to encounter particularly many sects on the level of the Succulent League. It was recently founded in the grand scheme of things, but it had clearly developed rapidly. He wouldn’t pass by others simply for being weaker, but neither he nor his disciples would gain as much from a protracted stay.
After they finished their business in the Rolling Dunes, the plan was to head north and west back into the Muted Crags. It was possible the other groups would similarly reject any interaction, but there was some hope that the previous conflicts with the Black Peaks hadn’t permanently tainted their relations. And if he never tried, there wouldn’t be any chance in the region.
