141: Chapter 141 Nothing special

There was silence for about a second.

Then the audience went wild!

"Is this actually happening?!"

"Wei Xiaoyu refused the Stand Card, and then Qin Ye used it to KO Sword Ghost with one punch?!"

"Then what is she using now?? Titan Furnace??"

"A system made by Qi Yuan's disciple!! Military-grade heavy armament!!"

"Fight!! Fight!!"

"A war between the ex-girlfriend and the current one!! Wait, not girlfriend, it's Magic Card Master!!"

"Who cares!! Just fight!!"

Waves of sound poured down from all directions. Some people pulled out support flags for Wei Xiaoyu, while others held up posters of Qin Ye. The two fan groups shouted at each other across an aisle, their chants surprisingly consistent: "Let your side see who's tougher!"

VIP Area.

War Emperor Wei Potian crossed his arms over his chest. The expression on the War Emperor, who stood over two meters tall, was quite subtle right now—his mouth was flat, but his brows were deeply furrowed.

"...A grudge."

He repeated the word.

"They say we have a 'grudge' against Su Bai."

Wei Xiaoyu stood beside him, her battle-axe resting on her shoulder. Her expression was identical to her father's.

"Just because I refused his card."

"Right."

"And then he slapped me awake with two smacks."

"Right."

"And then I knelt on the ground and cried while admitting defeat."

"...Right."

The two fell silent simultaneously.

After a moment, Wei Xiaoyu slammed her battle-axe onto the ground.

"What kind of grudge is that?"

"I'd like to know that too."

War Emperor Wei Potian rubbed his temples. He had lived for forty years, fought Abyss Demon Lords, withstood the table-slamming of military commissars, and held the top spot on the global warrior rankings. Yet, facing this sensationalized interpretation, he felt an unprecedented sense of helplessness.

"He slapped you to wake you up."

"I know."

"You knelt and cried because you were truly woken up."

"I know."

"So you don't hold any grudge against him."

"None at all... well, I can't exactly say none."

Wei Xiaoyu's voice paused, and she said subtly: "In fact, Su Bai thinks his card is definitely stronger than what I'm using now."

War Emperor Wei Potian was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. The sigh was long and heavy, as if squeezing all the helplessness out of his lungs.

"Oh, that is indeed a grudge. After all, your uncle acted like an idiot before, and I still had to explain it to Li Qingyue..."

"But Su Bai is clearly just daydreaming!"

The father and daughter glanced simultaneously toward the VIP box. Su Bai's card had unknown strength, but the Stand had tons of side effects, and he had indeed fallen out with Wei Xiaoyu's uncle previously.

But, taking a step back, wasn't Su Bai at fault too! How could that card, full of flaws, possibly compare to a card created by Master Qi Yuan's disciple based on his theories?

Therefore, War Emperor Wei Potian still felt somewhat justified.

Su Bai sat there. His right hand propped up his chin, and Kyubey was curled up on his lap, yawning. His expression was as indifferent as if he were watching a match that had nothing to do with him. No anger. No smugness. No details that could reveal any emotional fluctuations.

Wei Xiaoyu withdrew her gaze.

"...He has no expression."

"He never has any expression."

"That's why I feel even more uneasy."

War Emperor Wei Potian raised his hand and patted his daughter's shoulder. That hand could crush the skull of an Abyss Demon General, but as it landed on Wei Xiaoyu's shoulder, it was as light as touching a leaf.

"Fight well, and let him see what a senior is!"

"Mm."

The other end of the competitor waiting area.

Shen Ye leaned against the metal railing, his fingers swiping through the air. A holographic calculation panel floated before him, with a dozen layers of data matrices overlapping and intersecting, each layer refreshing at a millisecond frequency.

His brows were deeply furrowed. The eldest disciple of Qi Yuan, a peak Fifth-Order, and the universally recognized next Ninth-Order talent within the Sanctuary. The data model unfolding before him now was a complete Mental Power spectrum analysis of Qin Ye's match just now.

"Incorrect."

He tapped a certain wave peak with his fingertip. The timeline zoomed in, the waveform expanded, and the Mental Power output curve at the moment of Qin Ye's punch was unbelievably smooth. There was no charging peak, no explosive inflection point, and the transition process from static to dynamic had almost zero latency.

"This is not data from a fighting technique."

Shen Ye dragged over another set of data—it was the public appraisal report from when Su Bai demonstrated the Stand Card in the Imperial City side hall half a month ago. He intercepted a segment of the waveform and overlaid it onto Qin Ye's data. They overlapped perfectly.

"The Stand's Mental Power architecture has already been mixed into her fist technique."

He muttered to himself. "To have this kind of output without even activating the Stand. After activation..."

He didn't finish. He pulled out the correlation coefficient of the two sets of data and glanced at it. 0.97.

Shen Ye's fingers paused in mid-air. He was a rational person. Qi Yuan had taught him for eight years, and the first lesson was "Data does not lie." So, although the conclusion he reached now made him very uncomfortable, the data was right there.

Qin Ye's Stand System, in its unactivated state, already exceeded the average Mental Power conduction density of a peak Fourth-Order. Once the Stand was officially activated, this value would at least triple.

However. Wei Xiaoyu's Titan Furnace was made by his own hands. A star-level energy collapse framework, the core architecture extracted from Qi Yuan's papers. Qi Yuan said the theoretical upper limit of this framework "would not be a problem to increase tenfold in the short term." He had spent half a month tuning the parameters. Every coupling coefficient on the Furnace's core driver had been calibrated by him personally.

Shen Ye closed Qin Ye's data. He pulled up the full-power output model of Wei Xiaoyu's Furnace. With the star-level collapse framework under reckless extreme overload, the theoretical peak could break through the Fifth-Order limit.

He compared the two peak values. The Furnace's curve was four times that of Qin Ye's current data.

Shen Ye let out a breath. He straightened up from the railing and walked two steps toward Wei Xiaoyu. He cupped his hand to his mouth.

"Wei Xiaoyu!"

Wei Xiaoyu turned her head.

Shen Ye held up one finger.

"One punch, crush the opponent!"

Wei Xiaoyu raised an eyebrow.

"Qin Ye can dismantle a sword with her bare hands. Your Furnace's output is four times hers." Shen Ye's tone carried no emotion, a purely data-driven statement. "So you can do it too. One punch is enough. Let her see that our Sanctuary's system—is not inferior to Su Bai's."

This sentence was not loud. But the sound pickup array in the competitor waiting area delivered every one of his words accurately into the stadium-wide PA system.

The entire stadium went silent for a moment. Then it exploded.

"One punch?! He's telling Wei Xiaoyu to use one punch too?"

"Qin Ye uses fists and kicks because she's a gladiator!! Wei Xiaoyu is a Berserker!! Why would a Berserker use fists instead of swinging an axe!!"

"Wait, does he mean the Furnace system far exceeds the Stand System even without weapons?!"

"Shen Ye is Qi Yuan's eldest disciple!! What he says must have a basis!!"

"He just finished analyzing Qin Ye's data live!! He measured the true upper limit of the Stand Card!!"

"The conclusion is four times the Furnace??"

"This is a public declaration of war!! An academic declaration of war from the Sanctuary against Su Bai!!"

"What academic declaration of war, this is a fucking slap in the face!! A slap in the face in front of eight hundred million viewers!!"