Chương 120: Chatper 120: Fair Play

Mateo cleared his throat, his expression grave.

"Integrity," he began, "is the foundation of cultivation itself. Every time you compromise your principles, you compromise your Dao. The only person you harm when you cheat is yourself. You may gain a temporary advantage, but you lose something far more valuable..."

"Shut up." Wang Liyang's voice cut through Mateo's monologue like a slap. He jabbed an accusing finger at their chaperone. The team stood in a loose cluster amidst the endless grey stone and grey robes of the Cathedral District, their navy suits conspicuous against the monochrome backdrop. They had just finished the first day of the Grand Formations Summit, and the scoreboard was ugly. America sat at a measly one point, while the Weaver Cult and the Hollow Cult each had two.

"Just shut up. I don't want to hear another word about integrity from the man who sat on a bench and gave us a thumbs up while the other two chaperones fed their teams answers through their sleeves." Leo had never seen Liyang like this. His usual composure was gone. In his place stood a seventeen-year-old who had just lost, and losing was not something Wang Liyang did. Mateo opened his mouth to defend himself, but Liyang cut him off.

"We had no idea what to do about that forbidden formation. None. Zero. I couldn't read it. Leo couldn't read it. Ella couldn't read it. We sat there staring at the formation plate for eight hours while the other two teams scribbled away." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheaf of notes, dense with diagrams and shorthand.

"You know what I did with all that extra time? While the rest of us were twiddling our thumbs? I came up with a system." He held up the notes. The team stared at them.

"A cheating system," Liyang clarified, in case anyone had missed the point. Footsteps rang out ahead of them. Heavy. Fast and angry. The Grey Cult captain stormed past, his ash-colored robes billowing behind him. Leo watched him go.

"He seems upset."

"His forbidden formation got solved by two teams," Danyl said quietly.

"That's humiliating for a host delegation."

"How'd they do it?" Thad muttered.

"We couldn't even read the thing." Every head turned toward Mateo. Mateo's jaw tightened.

"I was watching the other chaperones. The entire time. As far as I could tell, none of them cheated."

"Oh, come on. Even I could tell they were suspicious." Liyang started counting on his fingers.

"The Weaver Cult chaperone scratched her left arm four times while the team was finalizing their blueprints. Four times. The Hollow Cult chaperone requested water three times and food twice, and every single time, his team changed what they were writing within thirty seconds of him taking a sip." Liyang spread his hands.

"What kind of Foundation Establishment cultivator needs to itch? What kind of cultivator demands to eat and drink? These are people who can go weeks without food. They were signaling. They were communicating."

"You don't know that for certain," Mateo said quietly.

"They were wearing robes the size of camping tents, Mateo. They could have been operating a formation microscope under there and we wouldn't know." Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Fine. Fine. Okay. But what was I supposed to do? Stand up and say, 'Excuse me, honored representatives of the ancient and revered cults, could you please stop itching? Your scratching is making me uncomfortable. Also, please don't move, breathe, or exist in any visible way.' That would have gone over well."

"Yes!" Liyang said.

"That is exactly what you should have done!"

"You would have caused a diplomatic incident," Ella said from behind them.

"This is worse than a diplomatic incident," Liyang shot back.

"At this rate, we'll be last place." Leo stepped in before the argument could escalate further.

"Mateo. Seriously. Do you think you can get the rules changed back? Original format, no chaperones in the venue?" Mateo was quiet for a moment.

"I can try," he said.

"But the security justification was real. The cults won't reverse it just because we're unhappy."

"What if I promise to behave? I'll be a model competitor. I won't draw my sword. I won't activate any combat techniques. I'll swear a Dao heart oath if the other teams want proof." Leo put his hand over his chest.

"Scout's honor."

"Leo, a Dao heart oath is not the same as Scout's honor."

"I'm aware. I'm offering both." The sound of measured footsteps reached them from behind.

"Unfortunately," Seraphindë said, joining their conversation, "a reversal of the chaperone policy will likely not be possible." Leo turned.

"Lady Thandril. We were just discussing..."

"I heard." Her expression remained composed.

"Walk with me." She did not wait for agreement. The team fell into step behind her. Grey-robed attendants melted out of the corridor ahead, sensing the shift in atmosphere before any words were spoken.

"What we feared has come to pass," Seraphindë said.

"Evidence has surfaced. Individuals within the summit have been confirmed as carriers of Slaughter Qi corruption." Leo's stomach dropped. He thought of his conversation with Sariya, the careful language about infections and conspiracies.

"Slaughter Qi can't corrupt," Leo said.

"It attaches to the killer. It accumulates. But it doesn't spread on its own."

"You are correct, Captain Chen. Slaughter Qi, in its natural form, does not spread." She paused.

"However. When Slaughter Qi accumulates beyond a certain threshold, when it is fed and cultivated with deliberate intent over centuries, it can achieve something that natural Slaughter Qi cannot." She folded her hands before her.

"It achieves personhood. It becomes a demon." The corridor seemed to grow colder. Leo felt the Grey Cult's ambient formation light dim around them, though he knew that was his imagination. She turned to face them fully.

"A demon," Seraphindë said, "is the personification of Slaughter Qi. A consciousness born from accumulated murder. A will forged from suffering. Unlike raw Slaughter Qi, a demon possesses intent. It can choose. It can plan. It can hide. And it can corrupt." Leo remembered the tendril in the wheat field. The way it had reached for him with patience and curiosity. The bone-deep certainty that contact meant something worse than death. She smoothed an invisible crease from her sleeve.

"Because of this, new procedures will be implemented for tomorrow's competition. Every competitor and chaperone will be personally inspected by a Deity Transformation Monarch before entering the Grand Pavilion." Leo hesitated. He was not comfortable putting himself in a vulnerable position in front of a Deity who could kill him with a flick of a finger.

"What if," Leo said slowly, "someone doesn't want to be inspected?" Seraphindë's gaze sharpened.

"Is there a reason you would object, Captain Chen?" A cold prickle crawled up Leo's spine. He forced a casual shrug.

"My actions turned success at the Battle for Fort Cambridge into a humiliating defeat. Because of me, the divine child of the Oblivion Cult is disgraced. What if he has friends among the monarchs?" Leo held her gaze.

"If one of them decides a spiritual scan is a convenient opportunity to settle a grudge, I have limited options for self-defense." Seraphindë's expression turned frosty.

"You need not worry about petty vendettas, Captain Chen. The Great Ascension cultivators reside deep below. Their protection extends to every participant in this summit. A Deity Transformation monarch who abused the inspection process would answer to powers that make Deity Transformation look like Qi Refining." She stepped closer, looming over him.

"You will submit to the inspection, or you will withdraw from the competition. Those are your choices." She paused.

"Unless, of course, you can provide proof that you are free of corruption." Leo grinned. It had been a long time since he last had an opportunity to show off his merit stamp. Seraphindë had just served him the perfect opening, and he wasn't about to let it pass. With a flourish, he reached into his suit and withdrew a fresh jade talisman. He held it up between two fingers for Seraphindë to examine. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Her brow furrowed as she studied the blank surface.

"What is this?" Leo's grin widened. He pressed the talisman to his forehead with an elaborate gesture. Light flared. Characters burned themselves into the jade, etched in spiritual fire: Luo Mingxia, Nascent Soul Leo handed it over to Seraphindë.

"Is this sufficient?" She stared at the shining proof of Leo's feat, eyes wide. For the first time since he had met her, genuine shock cracked her iron composure.

"Where," she whispered, "did you get that?" Leo met her gaze, still grinning. He let the moment stretch. Then, with relish:"I earned it." Silence. Seraphindë looked from the talisman to Leo's face and back again.

"It might be sufficient."

The next morning, as they walked to the Grand Pavilion for the second round of the competition, Leo noticed the heightened security. Gold Core guards flanked their group, radiating divine sense outward and scanning for threats. Checkpoints marked every intersection, manned by inquisitors who inspected each passerby. Formation barriers shimmered, sealing off sections of the city.

"This is going to get worse every day, isn't it," Vivian said. Leo didn't answer. The escalation spoke for itself. Yesterday, chaperones. Today, the group had escorts and inspections. Tomorrow, if the corruption wasn't found, he dreaded what measures came next. The clock was ticking, and every hour without answers wound the spring tighter. As their escort led them into the plaza outside the Grand Pavilion, Leo's eyes caught on a large tent beside the entrance.

Its walls pulsed with the soft glow of formation arrays, reinforcing the structure against the dense spiritual pressure inside. Deity Transformation. A line of competitors and chaperones stretched from the tent's entrance, each waiting their turn to step inside and face the Monarch's scrutiny. But before the rest of Leo's team could join the queue, a figure intercepted their path.

The Moderator stood before them, his posture stiff and his demeanor alert, a far cry from the composed authority he had projected the day before.

"Captain Chen, Lady Thandril informed me of your claim. You possess proof of spiritual purity?" Without a word, Leo reached into his suit and withdrew a jade talisman. He pressed it to his forehead, and light blazed across the stone, spiritual fire etching itself into the surface in sharp, unmistakable characters. He held out the glowing talisman, but the Moderator made no move to take it. Instead, he leaned back almost imperceptibly, hands remaining hidden within his sleeves as if to avoid any chance of contact.

His eyes flicked from the talisman to Leo's face, and for a moment, something inscrutable passed behind his gaze.

"That is sufficient," the Moderator said at last.

"You may proceed inside." As Leo walked past, a voice rose from the Grey Cult delegation. A young competitor stepped forward.

"Why does he get to skip? What makes him special?" Thad turned around. He had been waiting for this.

"Oh yeah." Thad's grin spread wide.

"You know how he killed six Nascent Souls?" The plaza went quiet. Every head turned. Thad let the silence linger.

"Actually, it was seven." He raised a finger.

"We found out about the seventh one yesterday." The Grey Cult boy stepped back. Competitors shuffled closer to their chaperones, eyes drifting to Mateo. Thad laughed.

"Now you realize you should have brought bodyguards instead of formation masters?" He showed his teeth.

"It's okay. We'll keep you safe." Thad let his gaze drift toward the Pavilion entrance where Leo had disappeared.

"After all, you never know what might happen during a formation competition." A pause.

"With all this Slaughter Qi going around, I mean."

The Moderator's voice carried across the floor.

"The second round of the Grand Formation Summit will now commence. The American delegation will present their two formation problems." Leo rose from his seat. Every eye in the Pavilion turned toward him. Leo walked to the center platform. He let the silence settle before he spoke.

"Honored competitors. The American delegation will present two intermediate formations." A ripple passed through the audience. Two intermediate formations. At the Grand Formations Summit, intermediate problems were considered free points. America had just announced they were forfeiting their chance to present a forbidden formation entirely. Leo continued.

"For generations, intermediate array runes have been considered impossible to draw. They exist beyond the standard count of their numerical systems. A Seven Stars formation splits qi seven ways. There is no eighth pathway. The Left Auxiliary and Right Assistant stars influence the formation only through gravitational distortion of their neighbors." Heads nodded around the Pavilion. This was textbook formation theory.

"This has always been treated as a fundamental limitation. A law of formation work." Leo paused.

"Our team disagrees." He let the words land.

"If intermediate runes are a way of describing the Heavenly Dao, then they should be drawable. Something must be preventing us. Either our understanding of spiritual qi is incomplete, or our tools are insufficient." Leo swept his gaze across the four tables.

"Today, the American delegation will present our answer. The reason intermediate array runes cannot be drawn is the medium itself. Spiritual brush and ink limit the possible array runes to those within the standard numerical count. The brush divides qi along predetermined pathways." He straightened.

"Today, we will transcend spiritual brush and ink. And we will demonstrate what becomes possible when you do." Leo drew Moonrider from his Dantian. Beside him, Thad pulled out his own blade. Their other four teammates stood in unison. Vivian, Ella, Danyl, and Liyang each produced flying shuttles, clipped them to their belts, and activated them with pulses of qi. Six bubbles of divine sense locked onto the American team from the observation positions, two from each opposing delegation.

Leo felt them settle against his awareness like fingers pressing against glass. He had expected this. They all had. Professor Vogt had drilled them relentlessly in similar conditions for months to ensure they could perform Cranesong under such scrutiny. Leo launched himself skyward. Thad rose beside him, mirroring his trajectory. The others lifted off a beat behind, gliding on their shuttles with steady grace. Then, as one, they opened their mouths and sang.

What came out was not human song, it was a crane's call, high and keening, wavering between two notes that chased each other without resolving. Thad's rich baritone wove beneath Leo's soaring melody, the sounds colliding in the space between them and setting the air alive with spiritual qi enhanced song. The other four team members joined in, and all six of them sang. Then someone laughed. Leo couldn't blame them. He knew what they looked like.

Six teenagers flying in circles above a formation competition, flapping their arms and screeching like birds. But the laughter faded into stunned silence as the Qi above the audience began to stir. The colliding harmonies birthed something new, Qi with properties beyond the standard formation systems, carrying within it the memory of wind and motion and song itself. Pale lines of power etched themselves in the air, drawn not by brush and ink but by pure sound and movement.

As they danced, aspected qi began to coalesce in the air around them, only to scatter a heartbeat later as the bulk of their movements acted as obfuscation, a veil of confusion to mask the true heart of their work. The Grey Cult captain leapt to his feet, his eyes tracking the dance with laser focus, his divine sense straining as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Then Leo and Thad shifted. They engaged Third Person Perspective simultaneously. Their movements changed.

The other four teammates continued their practiced routes, their songs holding steady. But Leo and Thad began to jitter. They twitched through rapid, completely random variations. To any observer trying to record and replicate what they were doing, it would look like madness. Hundreds of precise movements, each lasting fractions of a second, layered on top of each other in sequences that followed no visible logic. That was the point. Most of what Leo and Thad were doing was meaningless.

Only a handful of specific moments mattered. The rest was just to make their work impossible to copy. Any team that tried to replicate their performance by memorizing and reproducing every movement would drown in data. The signal was buried in an ocean of noise, and there was almost no way to tell which moments mattered and which were distractions. Beneath the encryption, Leo and Thad's real work was the harmony itself.

At Skyhome, the Cranesong Leo had developed focused on dissonance, forcing qi into configurations that cranes couldn't normally achieve, compensating for the weaknesses of aerial formation work. This was different. Today's Cranesong leaned into harmony and resonance. The way two voices joined together. The way flight carried qi through space in ways that a stationary brush could never replicate. The dance lasted four minutes.

When the last note faded, the six Americans spiraled downward, bringing with them a lattice of pale light. It hung suspended for a breathless moment before settling onto the formation plate with a soft pulse. The plate flashed. Three copies materialized and floated toward the waiting delegations. Leo landed on the center platform. He straightened his suit, cleared his throat, and spoke.

"The first formation we present to you is the Wind Intermediate Array Rune of the Five Elements." The copies reached the three tables. Cultivators snatched them from the air and bent over them immediately, probing with their divine sense. Leo watched the three delegations as they received their copies of the Array Rune. Their confident expressions quickly turned to bewilderment as they realized what they were holding onto. This challenge was far more complex than a forbidden formation.

Although forbidden formations contained special energies and thus were difficult to solve, they still possessed a structure. With structure came substitutions. However, what lay before them was a single array rune. The smallest, indivisible unit of formation work. It had no lines, no pivots, and no structure. When activated, it would perform a single function. Generate wind qi. Such a feat was supposed to be impossible. Intermediate array runes could not be drawn with spiritual brush and ink.

Instead, cultivators 'drew' intermediate runes indirectly, calculating their gravitational pull and warping the surrounding standard runes to account for it. Every cultivator present knew how to create wind qi within a formation, but doing so required the use of other basic array runes from the Five Elements formation. The closest they could get would be to use the Wood and Fire array runes to imply and generate wind qi.

However, this approach would result in an answer that generated Wind, Wood, and Fire Qi, which did not match the 'formation' presented by Leo. The challenge before them had no traces of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, or Water Qi. It was pure, undifferentiated wind qi. If the other teams wanted to replicate the formation, they couldn't use any other array runes. The only way they could provide a correct answer would be to fly up into the sky and start singing like a crane.

O ver the countless years of cultivation history, with billions of cultivators and vast amounts of accumulated knowledge, it was likely that some had discovered other ways to inscribe intermediate runes. Leo's true accomplishment was making sure no other team could copy how they did it. Cranesong abstracted the process of formation drawing from the formation itself. Leo's team spent four minutes flying around in mostly random directions to create a single array rune. The other teams 'enjoyed' the spectacle.

But had no idea where to start because they couldn't tell which movements were real and which were just obfuscation. The teams stared at their plates in silence. Leo cleared his throat again.

"And the second array rune we will demonstrate for you is the Silver Crane Intermediate Array Rune of the Four Symbols." Every head in the Pavilion snapped upward. Leo waited. He could feel the question hanging in the air, unasked but deafening. He smiled.

"The Silver Crane Intermediate Array Rune generates Song Qi."