On the vast broken fields, a student rushed between the shattered trees. It was the very student that gave Himo one C-coin.

“Stop!” a yell sounded from behind him.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t look back. He just kept running. 

But he wasn’t fast enough. From his side arrived a fireball.

He leaped to avoid it, but another student attacked him mid-air. He took a shield to block the latter’s sword—the impact threw him down and he crashed on the ground. He’d broken a few ribs. He didn’t care. Holding his wound with a hand, he stood up, but four students surrounded him. Just as the thought to surrender surfaced in his mind, he widened his eyes at the sight of a massive wall a few mounds from him. 

It was a water-like blue dome. From the ground it sprung up and claimed a portion of the stadium as its own. The melody of a violin sounded from within, calming down his throbbing heart.

To see this… are we already inside an illusion realm? Such a huge illusion is made by a student? Wow… He looked at the four students. Somehow, when seen beside the massive dome in the distance, they looked like tiny, tiny beings. A smile crept in his lips. “I… haven’t lost yet.” He threw a pill into his mouth.

“What?” One of the four stepped back as the other three raised their weapons. “A whirlqi pill?!”

The surrounding qi coalesced like a tornado around the student. His muscles contracted and relaxed a few times in rapid succession. “Exactly.” A confident smile brought him to brandishing a shield. Pushing his legs to their maximum strength, he sprung to the stunned student and rammed onto him—before the four could react, he broke out of the encirclement.

The four turned to chase after him but stopped when they saw where he went. 

He plunged into the water-like dome. The outer wall sucked him in like a membrane, and he found himself on the other side.

He had escaped.

While he glanced at the blue water wall he had walked past, the melody of the violin reached his ears. It was close. He turned toward it. “Eh?”

It was another world.

Dragons danced beneath the vibrant blue sky, water fountains burst rivers toward the skies, and rings of clouds moved to the rhythm of the violin’s play. The ground was foggy, made of white, soft clouds. Tens of students sat on the clouds, looking in silence at the center of the world, where a child seated on a flying rock played a violin while water rings and small, vibrant flames moved playfully around him.

The student’s presence was soon noticed by the others. Some looked irked by his disruption, while others waved at him to get close and sit down. Speechless, the student did as they signaled and sat on a cloud to gaze at the orchestra of entities.

-----

The headmaster, seeing the ring of students sitting around Himo, gasped speechlessly. This is an exam! Take it seriously for once! Just the thought of Himo’s past actions sent his mind into disarray. Are you seriously here just to show off?

-----

“How boring.” Leaving behind a few craters—four of them—Azusa strolled on one of the few unblemished areas. Soon, she heard something. A melody. A violin sounded from afar, and she turned toward its source. “This is…” She blinked in search of answers, when the image of a child holding a violin flashed in her mind. “Is it him?”

A smile blossomed on her face and she sped toward the source of music. Soon she found the water-like dome. In silence, she flavored the melody of the violin for a few seconds, but she didn’t enter. Instead, she thought about the gaze Himo held after seeing her fight.

She nodded to herself and departed from the ground. She flew as high as the dome’s ceiling. Grinning, she raised a hand. “Well then…”

-----

Meanwhile, Himo kept entertaining his guests. His fiddlestick danced on the violin and his surroundings followed behind its movements. But suddenly, he opened his mouth. “So, the challenger has arrived?”

His comment shook the students out of their trance. He didn’t care. He kept playing his violin, altering however its rhythm to a faster and harsher one. It sounded like the beginning of an arms race. Dragons, rivers, and clouds sped up, following the crescendo of his play.

That alarmed the students. As cultivators, their sixth sense made them more sensitive to serious threats. And at that moment, their sixth sense was ringing of danger. Soon, they realized what was about to happen. Aura Azusa was coming.

Just as they were about to scatter, however, the water-like ceiling exploded in many parts and formed tens of gigantic holes. She was there.

The gazes of students darted to the skies, followed then by pale faces and tremors. Their legs turned weak as their last hope was stomped mercilessly. In their arrogance, they had once believed possible to avoid her meteor. Even with such belief, they froze.

In the skies, a girl stood atop a descending meteor—tens of meteors accompanied her descent. And their aim was Himo. Soon they heard her voice, a voice reminiscent of a devil that brought calamities upon the world.

“Meteor shower.”

But while the students panicked and ran away, Himo smirked. He looked at the cluster of meteors in nonchalance as if they were but random pebbles. Glancing at her, he said, “Did you think a few meteors would be enough?”

She chuckled. “Of course not. If this much was enough, it’d be no fun.”

“Indeed.” Himo nodded, and, with a chuckle of his own, plunged a formation rod into the cloud beside him.

The near clouds puffed like freed air and revealed the green field beneath. A green field unlike another, for nine rods stood straight above it. And with the tenth he had just added, they formed a circle—one that looked straight at the meteors.