Chương 66: 65. My Disciple’s Copy-Paste Eyes Are Overpowered!

Between batches, the noise in the arena swells to a dull roar, with thousands of conversations layering over each other until individual words dissolve into a wall of sound. Ling'er and I slip out to a food stall near the concourse. The vendor is efficient, his hands moving from pot to bowl to customer without pause. We eat standing up, hunched over our noodle bowls. No one looks at us twice. No one can hear us.

"Twelve new techniques. I've understood and copied twelve so far." I nod.

"Useful?"

"I tried to focus on ones I haven't seen before. Two of them would be perfect for Mei Lin. Water-aspected. One defensive, one counter. She's been needing something to handle aggressive opponents."

"Write them down tonight when we get back." She nods, chewing. We return to our seats as the next batch is set to begin. I watch Shen Qiao from where he's seated, splitting his attention between the matches and me. The later batches fight differently now. Yan Ruohan's single-exchange victory hangs over them like a shadow. No one wants to be the fighter who looks slow. No one wants to be the fighter who struggles. The matches become utter dogfights. Hundred-exchange affairs; bloody, desperate, exhausting.

The crowd loves it. But I'm still waiting for the other two to make their debuts. At the fifth batch, Mu Jianyu stands. His opponent is from the Iron Lotus Sect; an established institution with a reputation for body refinement cultivators. The man is in his late twenties, Qi Condensation peak, his spear polished and his stance confident. The murmurs around me are dismissive.

"Independent cultivator. No chance." The disciple spins his spear once and plants the butt against the stone. The impact cracks the platform slightly, but Mu Jianyu doesn't react; he just stands quietly at the edge of the ring, one hand resting on the hilt of his plain sword. The signal sounds. The Iron Lotus disciple lunges immediately. His spearwork is excellent.

Sharp, disciplined thrusts that chain together without wasted motion, forcing Mu Jianyu backward across the platform: making him retreat step by step as the spearhead flashes toward his throat, chest, ribs. Metal shrieks against stone. Mu Jianyu twists aside by a hairsbreadth. The spear tears through his sleeve instead of his arm. Someone in the crowd laughs.

"Too scared to fight back!" The Iron Lotus disciple presses harder. His attacks grow heavier, more aggressive, each thrust carrying enough force to crater the platform if it misses. Mu Jianyu continues retreating. Ten exchanges. Twenty. Thirty. The crowd begins losing interest and focusing their attention on other, more entertaining matches going alongside it. The fight settles into an ugly rhythm; spear, retreat, near miss, retreat.

Even the Iron Lotus disciple starts smiling now, confidence bleeding into his stance. That is when I notice Mu Jianyu's eyes. Focused and tracking, something swirling behind his pupils. The spear arcs toward his shoulder again. Mu Jianyu pivots away a fraction faster than before. The next thrust comes low. He avoids it before the motion fully commits. A pattern. He's memorizing the sequence. The Iron Lotus disciple roars and commits fully at last, qi surging down the length of the spear.

The weapon screams forward in a thrust aimed straight for Mu Jianyu's chest. Mu Jianyu finally draws his sword for the offensive. The blade leaves the sheath with a sharp metallic hiss. Light flashes along the tiny formation lines hidden within the steel, too fast for a mortal to see fully. One strike. His sword falls diagonally through the spear shaft exactly three inches below the grip. The spear breaks apart. The Iron Lotus disciple's eyes widen.

Mu Jianyu's blade continues through the opening before the man can recover, carving a deep line across his shoulder. Blood sprays across the platform. The disciple stumbles backward with a cry, clutching the wound. Mu Jianyu steps forward for the first time all match and places the tip of his sword against the man's throat.

"I surrender!" The arena erupts instantly.

"Rigged!"

"What happened? I was watching the other match. Wasn't he losing?"

"He ran the whole fight!" Mu Jianyu ignores all of it. He wipes his blade once against his sleeve, sheathes it, and walks off the platform with the same calm expression he entered with. A solid showing. He didn't leave a deep impression like Yan Ruohan did on the crowd, so he'll be a good bet for the rounds to come. I get up from my seat, leaving Ling'er to continue analyzing the remaining matches. I find Shen Qiao near the Silver Hall.

He is standing at the edge of the crowd, his ledger tucked under his arm, his eyes watching people's hands and tracking payouts.

"How goes it?"

"A few hundred silver," he says.

"And I sold information to some of my contacts. They paid well." I nod.

"Bet on the next match."

"On who?"

"It doesn't matter." He stares at me. Then his expression shifts to understanding, reluctant and resigned, before whispering.

"You're losing on purpose."

"I'm making our betting pattern look like someone else's." I keep my voice low.

"People are watching. Not just the house. Information brokers. Rival bettors. Anyone who might wonder how a minor sect leader and a mortal keep winning. Our communications are careful, but there's no easy way to tell if someone's watching." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Shen Qiao shakes his head.

"No one is watching mortals that closely in the Silver Hall."

"Someone is always watching." He does not argue further. He turns and disappears into the queue. I remain where I am and let the Gaze flicker on the crowd. At first, it is only noise. Mortals clutching coin pouches. Young masters laughing too loudly, placing bets worth several mid-grade stones. Servants running messages between seats and betting counters. Cultivators pretending not to care about odds while watching every board like starving dogs watching butcher scraps.

A man in plain gray robes near the Silver Hall entrance has been standing in the same place for twenty minutes, buying nothing, watching everything. Crimson Dragon Alliance Outer Security - Qi Condensation (Peak) Name: Zhang Wei Age: 43 Spirit Root: Fire/Metal (D-grade) Cultivation: Qi Condensation (Peak) — Stable Role: Visible deterrent. Watches for fights, forged tickets, and obvious cheating. Verdict: Bored. Competent enough to stop idiots. Not important.

Farther back, near a pillar carved with dragon scales, a woman in merchant robes sips tea from a porcelain cup. Her cultivation is concealed, poorly. Foundation Establishment, maybe late stage. Her eyes move from the betting counters to the clerks, then to the people leaving with large payouts.

Crimson Dragon Alliance Internal Auditor - Foundation Establishment (Middle Stage) Name: Xu Mei Age: 47 Spirit Root: Earth/Wind (D-grade) Cultivation: Foundation Establishment (Middle Stage) — Stable Role: Tracks abnormal payout patterns, repeated winners, and coordinated betting behavior. Verdict: She is not looking for rats stealing grain. She is looking for someone stealing the granary. I exhale slowly. There are more. A smiling clerk who is not a clerk.

A pair of guards pretending to argue while their spiritual senses sweep the crowd. A thin man with ink-stained fingers standing near the Jade Hall, recording names of cultivators who bet above a certain threshold. Sect scouts in clean robes, watching not the boards but the fighters' reactions after victory and defeat. And, beneath all of it, the ordinary corruption. A seedy cultivator passes a pouch of mid-grade stones to another man under the cover of a cheering crowd.

A servant accepts a folded betting slip from a young master and vanishes into the Silver Hall queue. Two gamblers exchange tokens so quickly I almost miss it. No one stops them. Because no one important cares. But anything organized enough to move hundreds of mid-grade stones? Anything large enough to bend odds, embarrass clerks, or make the Alliance look blind? That would be crushed. The Crimson Dragon Alliance wasn't careless, it was selective. Once I see that, I cannot stop seeing it.

The visible guards are only the outer shell. The obvious muscle. Behind them are auditors watching payout patterns, tracking promising fighters, clerks trained to remember faces, hidden cultivators pretending to be merchants, servants, gamblers, spectators. Every part of the arena is connected to another part. The betting halls feed information to the scouts. The scouts feed names to the sect.

The security cultivators protect the halls, the halls fund the tournament, the tournament reveals talent, and the talent returns to strengthen the Alliance. A loop. A system. I look toward Yan Ruohan again.

'She is not an accident.' Cultivation rank is only a marker of the floor. Not the ceiling. This tournament proves it again and again. A Qi Condensation cultivator can be far stronger than their stage suggests if enough pressure, resources, and time are applied in the right order. The Crimson Dragon Alliance understands that. They did not need to stumble across a hidden genius in some forgotten mountain village.

They could take a 'good' talent, surround her with teachers, techniques, sparring partners, resources, delayed breakthroughs, and institutional patience, then forge her into someone who could humiliate ordinary peak Qi Condensation cultivators in a single exchange. They had erased the dependency on finding monsters. They made them.

'I could do the same with my disciples.' The thought is tempting. With Ling'er's help, with the techniques we have gathered, we could shore up their foundations. Make them stronger than their ranks suggest. Delay their breakthroughs until they are absolutely perfect. But we also need deterrents now. Not just later. The Coiling Dragon Sect has two Foundation Establishment cultivators who can fight. Everyone else is Qi Condensation. We needed more Foundation Establishment cultivators, not perfect ones.

Just enough strength that predators would think twice before attacking. It was not the Crimson Dragon Alliance way. But major sects planned for centuries. I only needed my people alive long enough to see next year so I could plan the next. A hidden sect with wealth was a target waiting to happen. Sooner or later, we would need enough presence that predators hesitated before striking. I still had no idea how to accomplish that. I leave it for later, as I leave so many things for later, and head back to my seat.

The last batch of the first round commences. Bao Gantian lumbers onto the platform. The crowd boos at his appearance. He just adjusts his grip on his massive sword, both hands wrapped around the hilt, the blade resting against the stone. His opponent is already on the platform, waiting. He is handsome, with a sharp jawline and thick neck. His robes are immaculate, his hair styled, his smile easy. He waves to the crowd. Women swoon. Men cheer.

He looks like a cultivator from a story; the kind who wins gracefully, romances the heroine, and poses for paintings after the tournament. He is also unaffiliated. No sect banners, no patron colors. Just a handsome man with a sword and a crowd that already loves him. The signal sounds. The handsome man moves like wind. His wind-aspected techniques carry him across the platform in flickers, too fast for the eye to track. His blade whistles.

Bao Gantian swings his massive sword in wide arcs, slow and heavy, always a beat behind. The crowd cheers.

"He can't touch him!" The handsome man is strong. Peak Qi Condensation, with a C-grade spirit root and a C-grade constitution that enhances his wind affinity. In Greenstone, he would have been a semi-finalist, maybe a finalist. His evasive style is a nightmare for heavy opponents. But he is showing off. Twirling his blade. Blowing kisses to the crowd. He is not taking Bao Gantian seriously. The exchanges continue until Bao Gantian's hand shoots out. His fingers close around the handsome man's ankle.

The man's eyes go wide, and I can hear Bao Gantian's words. A deep, gravelly rumble that sounds like grinding millstones.

"You got cocky." SLAM! He is smashed onto the platform. Once. Twice. Three times. His beautiful face smashes against the stone, leaving an imprint. The spectators scream, with several women fainting on the spot. Bao Gantian does not stop. He raises the man overhead and hurls him across the platform. The man's body bounces once, then slides across the barrier. He lies still. The announcer calls his victory. The crowd boos louder now, angry and confused.

The handsome man is carried off on a stretcher, the crowd suddenly much less interested in his looks. The cultivators around me shift in their seats.

"Lucky grab."

"The fool got too overconfident." I watch Bao Gantian walk off the platform. He did not use his constitution; he didn't need to. Which meant the crowd still had not seen the real him.

'Good.' Ignorance, properly harvested, was almost as useful as spirit stones. The first round ends, and one hundred twenty-eight fighters remain.