Chương 81: New Enemies

Azure Profound Continent Leo logged back into the Azure Profound Continent. Their hideout smelled like bread and alcohol. Warm light flickered from formation lanterns mounted on the cave walls. Someone had strung up celebratory banners made from spare cloth, the characters painted in uneven strokes that suggested Kevin's handiwork. Arthur stood at the center of the room with a clay mug raised high.

Mike had set up a crude brewing station in the corner, ceramic vessels bubbling with a cloudy golden brew made from spiritual wheat. Kevin was gesturing wildly at Shen Tianyi, trying to explain something with his hands while the Azure Profound Continent native nodded along with polite confusion.

"There he is!" Arthur's weathered face split into a grin.

"The man of the hour!" Leo walked over to the brewing station. It smelled like fresh bread and ripe bananas, with a faint sweetness underneath. The spiritual wheat gave it something extra, a warmth that spread through his sinuses before he even took a sip. He reached for one of the filled mugs. Mike's hand came down on his wrist.

"Hold on, kid." Leo looked at him.

"Seriously?"

"Wait until you're twenty-one." Mike pulled the mug away and handed it to Arthur instead.

"House rules."

"We're in a different dimension. I'm pretty sure the drinking age doesn't apply here."

"My beer, my rules." Mike crossed his arms.

"You can have some of the non-alcoholic batch. Same wheat, same spiritual properties. Just as delicious." Leo turned to Shen Tianyi for support.

"What's the drinking age in the Azure Profound Continent?" But Shen Tianyi wasn't listening. Kevin had grabbed him by the shoulder and was pointing at nothing in particular, his voice rising with excitement.

"And then, right, the serpent comes down, and Leo just sidesteps it like it's nothing. Like he's dodging a shopping cart at Costco."

"This Mateo sounds like a young master who has eyes but cannot see Mt. Tai."

"That's exactly what he is! A young master! See, you get it." Over the past few months, Shen Tianyi had picked up English with alarming speed. His accent still carried traces of the Azure Profound Continent's formal speech patterns, but he could follow Kevin's rambling explanations well enough. Arthur walked over and clapped Leo on the back hard enough to make him stumble.

"We all watched you, Leo. In person. Flew out to Boston and everything." Leo blinked.

"You were at the game?"

"Front row seats. Well, more like section 412. But we were there in spirit." Arthur took a long drink from his mug.

"You looked good out there, kid. Real good." Mike appeared at Leo's other side and clasped a hand on Leo's shoulder.

"You impressed my wife," Mike said quietly.

"And her boss." Leo waited.

"He said you were a promising talent." Mike's voice carried weight.

"That's a big deal coming from him." Kevin looked over from his conversation with Shen Tianyi.

"Who's your wife anyway? You never tell us anything about her." Mike ignored him completely.

"Leo, you made us a lot of money." Mike's eyes were bright.

"We all took out loans and doubled down after that week three loss to Harvard. The odds were incredible."

"We're gonna make even more if you win the championship," Arthur added.

"We're talking life-changing money here." Leo thought about the betting slip back on Earth. The ten million dollar payout that Williams had handed him on the flight back. The Nascent Souls who stood to lose three hundred years of life if Yale won.

"About that," Leo said.

"Coach Williams told me something on the flight back." He explained it all. The sportsbooks teetering on bankruptcy. The Nascent Souls who had staked their cultivation on Harvard's victory. The Gold Cores waiting to take their place. The centuries of human life hanging in the balance.

"The people who currently own those books," Leo finished.

"If we win, they lose everything. Their companies, their cultivation, their nascent souls. They'll regress to Gold Core." He looked around the room.

"Which means I'm going to make some very powerful enemies." Arthur shrugged.

"Sure. You'll make some enemies. We all have enemies." Mike and Kevin both shook their heads vigorously.

"No, no," Kevin said.

"I definitely do not have enemies. I go out of my way to not have enemies."

"I'm a stay-at-home dad," Mike said.

"The most dangerous person I've pissed off is the HOA president." Arthur looked to Shen Tianyi for support. Shen Tianyi stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"The Shen family believes in making friends. As the old masters say: a single enemy blocks one road, but a single friend opens ten thousand." Arthur spat on the ground.

"But anyways," he continued, waving his hand dismissively.

"Just like Tianyi says, friends are way more important than enemies." He wrapped his arm around Leo's shoulders and gestured broadly at the cave around them.

"Think about it, Leo. All expenses paid trip to Vegas. You'll be friends with the people who literally own the city. The ones who take over when the current owners fall." Kevin laughed.

"Can you imagine? Us, with connections to Vegas Nascent Souls?"

"Nascent Soul enemies," Mike said slowly.

"That's serious. These aren't people who forget grudges." Arthur waved dismissively.

"They'll be too busy licking their wounds to come after some kid."

"I'm just saying we should think about it."

"Think about what?" Kevin cut in.

"We're going to be shareholders, Mike. Shareholders." Mike hesitated. Then something shifted in his expression.

"Shareholders," he repeated, and a dreamy quality entered his voice.

"We're going to be shareholders." Leo looked at him.

"Don't you have your retirement invested in index funds? The S&P 500?" Mike's expression shifted to something almost offended.

"That's different. That's letting Monarch Vanguard borrow my money for free. That's handing my spiritual potential to some powerful man who doesn't know I exist." Mike jabbed his finger at the air.

"This is our company. Our shares. We're going to increase our immortal potentials directly." Arthur raised his mug.

"To immortal potential!"

"To immortal potential!" Kevin and Mike echoed. Shen Tianyi raised his cup with a slight smile.

"To fortune earned through righteous action." They drank. Leo sipped from his cup. It tasted like liquid bread with a hint of clove, and delicious in a way that ordinary food never could. He quickly finished his cup and went for more. After refilling his cup he wandered toward the back of the cave, where Shen Tianyi stood apart from the celebration, examining flipping through the English-Common dictionary.

"Can I ask you something?" Shen Tianyi turned. His black robes rustled.

"Of course, young friend."

"Coach Williams said something else." Leo sat down on a nearby stone.

"He said that if I win, the Gold Cores who break through because of my victory would owe their Dao to me. He made it sound important." Shen Tianyi's eyes sharpened with interest.

"What does it mean? To owe someone your Dao?" Shen Tianyi was quiet for a moment.

"In the Azure Profound Continent, the great temples worship Deity Transformation and Void Refining cultivators. To the common people, these beings are gods. The temples exist to serve them." He gestured with one hand, tracing invisible lines in the air.

"The temples give their most pious worshipers access to cultivation techniques. Spiritual qi. Spiritual medicine. Everything needed to break through to higher realms. In return, these worshipers generate faith power for the god they serve." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Leo nodded slowly.

"So the temples are like farms."

"Precisely. But there is another purpose." Shen Tianyi's eyes glittered.

"When a worshiper breaks through using resources provided by the temple, their karma becomes bound to the god above. The debt cannot be measured in gold or favors. It is written into the cultivator's very Dao." Leo thought about that.

"So if the Gold Cores break through to Nascent Soul because I won them their shares..."

"They would owe you their Dao." Shen Tianyi nodded.

"Although you Americans do not understand karma, Nascent Souls will end up understanding what exactly they owe you." He leaned forward.

"For the people of the Azure Profound Continent, binding another cultivator's karma to your own is just as valuable as ascending to Nascent Soul yourself. Perhaps more so. A single Nascent Soul can do much. But a dozen Nascent Souls whose Dao is tied to yours? They would move heaven and earth at your word." Leo stared at the floor.

"I just feel upset," he admitted.

"I spent all this time preparing for a big fight. And I won. But now there's another enemy, and I need to fight again. It never ends." He picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. The celebration noise drifted over from the other side of the cave. Arthur was telling some story about his former car dealership, his voice carrying over Kevin's laughter.

"I thought winning would feel different," Leo said quietly. Shen Tianyi laughed softly.

"You are thinking about this incorrectly, young friend." Leo looked up.

"You already won the fight." Shen Tianyi spread his hands.

"The battle is over. The enemy is defeated. What comes now is not another battle. It is the distribution of spoils." He leaned forward with a grin that had nothing scholarly about it.

"You are fighting for meat. For your reward." He smirked.

"Dogs starve, but wolves eat meat. Which one are you?" Leo was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood up.

"I'm going to negotiate a bigger equity stake." Shen Tianyi's grin widened.

"Now you understand." Leo walked outside, leaving the laughter and bubbling brew behind. He decided to take a look at the excavation camp that Shen Tianyi had set up. Shen Tianyi had brought in some clan laborers who set up a processing station right outside of the confunding formations. Over the past months their operation had become professionalized. Originally they had thought they were making good progress with the flak shells.

After all, they had calculated the field's perimeter had a circumference of about two miles, which meant a radius of roughly five hundred meters. Each shell blasted a hole 7. 5 meters wide. It sounded impressive. Then four weeks later they realized they were running out of shells. Eight hundred rounds spent and maybe three percent of the wheat field destroyed. At that rate, they would need tens of thousands more shells and decades of work. But Shen Tianyi had been watching.

And was already working on improving the operations. Tianyi had set up a camp outside of the profundity an d brought over dozens of Shen clan laborers. The workers took the blasted soil and sifted it over inscribed wire meshes to extract the shrapnel and roots, then loaded the clean dirt onto carts to be transported to the farm they were building deep in the mountain range. Leo walked over to a wooden rack and picked up one of the finished explosives. It was a ten-foot-long, heavy iron pipe.

Tianyi called it a Breaching Cylinder. It was a masterpiece of recycling. The laborers sifted the T3 shrapnel from the excavated dirt, melted it down, and recast it into these pipes. But the real genius was the payload. You couldn't recycle an explosion, so Tianyi used the field against itself. The severed T4 wheat roots were baked under heat arrays, milled into dust, and mixed with cheap fire-beast blood to create a highly volatile spiritual gunpowder.

Leo traced the chained-detonation array etched into the cylinder's iron cap. He had seen the new method in action. The efficiency was undeniable. Instead of digging a shallow hole, the group now sledgehammered these cylinders horizontally into the very bottom of the three-meter dirt wall. They smeared the exposed cap with stealth mud to bypass the field's spiritual suppression. When it blew, the linear blast had nowhere to go. It sheared straight through the tough root network at the foundation.

Gravity did the rest. A single tamped cylinder brought down a massive thirty-foot stretch of wall in a catastrophic cave-in, clearing five times the area of a flak shell. It was a perfect, self-sustaining loop. The more they blew up, the more root-powder they harvested to make bigger bombs. Leo set the heavy iron cylinder back on the rack and wiped his hands on his robes. For the last few months, his fifteen-hour respawn timer meant he had been the primary excavator.

He took the brunt of the Monarch's executions while the Foundation Establishment guys waited out their seventy-five-hour death cycles. Without Leo, it would take another three years of constant deaths before they hit the hard part. The last ten percent of the field would be covered by the Monarch's divine domain directly. But even if they couldn't steal all of Monarch Scatterstraw's farmland, losing ninety percent should be enough.

The Monarch would decay on his own, unable to patch the growing holes in his body fast enough. Time was on their side. Leo turned his back on the labor camp. It was time to return to the divine sense press and work on increasing his Si. It stood at 7324 Si, and he wanted to make sure he maxed it out to the limit of 9999 before he advanced to Foundation Establishment next year.

Yale Bulldogs Training Complex Leo stepped out of his dorm at the Yale Bulldogs training complex. The facility had gotten a lot busier overnight. A group of security guards rounded the corner and greeted him with curt nods. They wore the signature insignia of the Medici family: a red shield with five golden balls embroidered on their sleeves. He walked toward the main training dome and saw more unfamiliar cultivators everywhere. Rockefeller guards in red and gold. Walton security in yellow and blue.

A few flak cannon batteries had been set up along the rooftops, their barrels sweeping slow arcs across the sky. Leo slowed his pace. Someone was expecting a fight.

"Wild, right?" Jimbo walked up beside him, protein shake in one hand and phone in the other.

"When did all this happen?" Leo asked.

"Started arriving around three in the morning. My mom called to let me know our people were inbound." Jimbo gestured toward a cluster of silver tents near the eastern wall.

"Sinclair brought forty. The Rockefellers brought over a hundred." Leo watched a supply drone descend toward a checkpoint near the kitchens. Two cultivators intercepted it before it could land. One held the drone in place with a spell art while the other ran scanning equipment over every package.

"We're under locked down," Jimbo said.

"Nobody in or out until after the national championship. Two weeks of house arrest."

"What about classes?"

"Since when did you attend classes?" Jimbo laughed.

"Anything we need gets delivered and inspected. Food, equipment, mail. Everything goes through three separate screening protocols." They started walking toward the main training dome. More security teams passed them. Leo thought about the weeks leading up to the Harvard game. The talking heads on television dissecting his every move. The debates about the Thousand Talents program. All of it had felt like theater, a performance staged for an audience he couldn't see.

And even if the latest scene hadn't gone how the directors wished, the play would continue without him. This was different. The Nascent Souls who owned the sportsbooks and casinos were facing bankruptcy. They would have their source of income, and immortal qi taken away from them. These were enemies with names and faces. People who would lose centuries of life if Leo won, and who would stop at nothing to prevent that.

"Never underestimate a cornered animal," Leo said. Jimbo nodded.

"That's what my dad said when he ordered our people here. The current owners are looking at regression to Gold Core. That's three hundred years of life on the line. People do crazy things when they're facing that kind of loss." They passed through a checkpoint staffed by Walton security. The guards waved them through after a brief divine sense scan.

"Hey, Jimbo. Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"When did your families get involved?" Leo frowned.

"They couldn't have known I had a trump card against Mateo. I know you guys kept our preparation a secret." Jimbo laughed.

"You think they bet on you because they knew you'd win?"

"Didn't they?"

"My dad has never seen me so focused on Flying Aces." Jimbo shook his head.

"The families didn't bet on you, the mysterious prodigy. They bet based on how their kids were acting." Leo considered that.

"Harry was different during practices," Jimbo continued.

"More intense. More driven. When the parents saw that, they figured something was up. The odds were too good to pass up. Might as well take a punt." They reached the entrance to the training dome. Leo stopped before going in.

"I want to ask for more," he said. Jimbo raised an eyebrow.

"An equity stake. The betting slip payout is fine, but I want ownership." Leo hesitated.

"I'm just not sure how to ask. Or if it's even possible." Jimbo clapped him on the shoulder.

"Just text Coach Williams. Tell him what you want. They'll work something out."

"It's that simple?"

"What you're asking for is easier than you think." Jimbo grinned.

"People have already been talking about giving you extra voting rights once the consortium takes over the casinos." Leo blinked.

"Voting rights?"

"Think about it. The Gold Cores who are going to enter the Nascent Souls realm, they care about dividends. Cash flow. They need to pay spirit vein fees to maintain their cultivation. Actual governance of the companies? That's a headache they'd rather avoid." They started walking again, entering the dome's outer corridor.

"You're too far away from Nascent Soul to think about turning money into spiritual qi," Jimbo explained.

"For you, cash is just some dollars. But voting rights? Control over company decisions? That has real value for someone in your position."

"And it makes the governance easier," Leo said slowly.

"Instead of splitting power among hundreds of thousands of Bulldog fans..."

"They can consolidate decision making authority with people who actually know what they're doing." Jimbo grinned.

"Welcome to high finance, Leo. It's all about aligning incentives. Win win so to speak." They turned a corner and almost walked into Major Isabella Santiago. She stood in the middle of the corridor with her hands clasped behind her back. She wore a fitted black jacket over combat boots, her only military signifier a small rank pin on her collar. The last time Leo had seen her was months ago, when she had given him tips on how to thread the mountain domain.

"Chen. Park-Sinclair." Santiago acknowledged them with a curt nod.

"I need a word." Leo and Jimbo exchanged glances.

"I overheard your conversation with Park-Sinclair." She addressed Leo directly.

"I'll make sure your request gets to the right people."

"Major Santiago." Leo snapped a salute before he could stop himself. Old habits.

"I didn't expect to see you here."

"At ease." Her posture remained rigid, but her tone softened slightly.

"The consortium requested a military liaison for the protection detail. Given our prior working relationship, I volunteered." Leo lowered his hand. A question formed in his mind, and he decided to just ask it.

"Are you one of the Gold Cores who will break through if we win?" Santiago's expression didn't change, but something flickered behind her eyes.

"Affirmative. Lord Newmont has a significant position riding on your success. If Yale takes the national championship, I'll take the infant transformation pill and form my domain." She paused. When she spoke again, her voice carried an unfamiliar weight.

"I've been considering what character to engrave on my gold core. Strange thing to contemplate after thirty years of service under the Lords." Jimbo nudged Leo.

"Better win, then. Can you imagine trying to explain to her why she doesn't get her extra three hundred years?" Santiago's focus snapped back.

"On that note. The briefing starts in five minutes. The rest of the team is already in the conference room." She turned and started walking. Leo and Jimbo fell into step behind her.

"What kind of briefing?" Leo asked.

"Scouting report on your next two opponents." Santiago glanced back at them.

"Ohio State won't give you trouble. Texas A&M is another story." They passed through another checkpoint, this one staffed by Medici guards in red and gold. The conference room lay just ahead, its doors flanked by two more security teams. Santiago paused at the entrance.

"One more thing, Chen." She turned to face him.

"The consortium authorized me to relay their terms. Win the championship, and you get everything you're asking for." Her eyes met his.

"Lose, and none of us get anything. The current owners retain their positions, their nascent souls, their power. And they will come after everyone who bet against them." She pushed open the doors.

"No pressure."