Chương 137: Death in the Arena, IV

"It is our utmost pleasure to welcome you all, as guests of the Martial Arts Alliance. We are here today as part of a tradition that stretches back into the days of forefathers - the tradition of the Winter Solstice Tournament!" There was a cheer at this, but all Wu Hao felt was a desire simply to have this over with.

"Today we begin with the third-grades," Tai Buzhou said.

"These are the youngest talents of our Martial Arts Alliance - our new, rising stars!" Wu Hao tuned the rest of Tai Buzhou's speech out as he droned on about the immensely storied tradition that had stretched down from the aftermath of the first Heavenly Demon War, when the Alliance had been founded, all the way into the present. It hadn't always been held here, in Chongqing. When the Martial Arts Alliance had first been founded, all of the members had simply met in the Central Plains one day in the year.

All the pageantry had come later. Wu Hao hadn't seen those early days, which were almost two hundred years ago now, but he longed for them in a way, mostly because Tai Buzhou just wouldn't shut up. He rambled on and on and on - the just warriors of the Martial Arts Alliance, the promise that the young martial artists here would display, the generosity of their sponsors, all that.

It all sounded very literate, with beautiful metaphors that Wu Hao didn't care for and allusions to famous ancestors that Wu Hao had never heard of. In a way, being rambled at by a man - too in love with his own voice to realize no one was listening and the words didn't matter - reminded Wu Hao of his days with the Red Dawn Sect. His fingers tightened on the grip on his spear.

"Hey," someone said next to him, their voice low.

"You are Hao Wu?" Wu Hao glanced over. Next to him stood a man in his middle twenties, who despite his age was only a third-grade martial artist. He looked rather fierce, though: a wild shock of hair made him looked rugged, while he'd gone to an effort to wear a robe that only showed a single symbol: a still lake, on which a single lotus drifted. Several scars dotted his hands, and he wore a large sword at his hip.

"Yeah," Wu Hao said.

"Who're you?"

"The other winner of the third-grade contest," the man said.

"Ao Ying of the Placid Lake Sect." He extended a scarred hand, which Wu Hao stared at, checking to make sure it wasn't some sort of trap before he shook it. This Ao Ying's grip was firm, but not so much so that it'd be crushing. This wasn't a display of strength, then.

"What sect are you from?" the older man asked.

"None," Wu Hao said honestly. He'd abandoned the Red Dawn, after all. Technically he wouldn't even have become a part of that yet. Ao Ying's qi didn't move, but there was a distinct sense to his movement that suggested it was because it wasn't allowed to, rather than because the statement hadn't made an impression. Wu Hao didn't exactly know how that worked, but he'd long since given up on trying to understand his qi senses through anything other than metaphor and vague feelings.

"I see," Ao Ying said. He turned to the stage, where Tai Buzhou was talking up the virtues of the various sects and clans. He even had to be positive about the Beggar's Union, with his qi being only the most obvious indicator that Tai Buzhou barely considered them worthy of being part of the Alliance.

"They're expecting us to lose," Ao Ying continued.

"Yeah," Wu Hao said.

"I'm not going to, though." Ao Ying nodded.

"Neither do I plan on losing. Heaven willing we see each other at the final fight - but I doubt it'll be that simple." Wu Hao gave him a side glance, wondering what his angle was.

"We'll see," he said, and together they waited in pensive silence until finally - finally! - Tai Buzhou relented.

"But enough about the history," he declaimed, sweeping his arms around. The crowd, realizing that the boring part was over, was caught again on his hook, and Tai Buzhou smiled. Wu Hao could feel that it bit him, though, that the audience hadn't been spellbound by his words.

"Third-grade contestants," Tai Buzhou boomed.

"Make your way onto the stage." Wu Hao took a breath, but then he stepped forwards. Ao Ying was just a few steps behind him, his rugged face calm. The stage looked large from the outside, but standing in it now, for the first time, it looked even larger. All the same it felt curiously small. As they all assembled in a group before Tai Buzhou, Wu Hao didn't bother looking at his opponents.

Ao Ying stood next to him, and though he was of average height, compared to the group of thirteen-to-seventeen year olds, he looked larger and older than his years. Watching him fight them, if no qi would have been involved, should have looked like a tiger bullying a group of pigs. Just judging by the qi that each of them showed, though, it was Ao Ying who was the pig, being eyed by a group of hungry tigers.

The clan heirs' focus wasn't even on Wu Hao or Ao Ying; they were all focused on each other, whispering things under their breath that set the others' qi off into spirals of excitement and anger.

"The system is simple," Tai Buzhou explained. Just a tiny strand of his qi separated from his core and leapt into his sleeve, where with a distant fizz in Wu Hao's senses an array activated, the qi perfectly regulated as it ran into channels so finely woven into the cloth that even Wu Hao's senses couldn't make out more than a blur. In the next moment, Tai Buzhou was holding a bag made of fine cloth, which he jingled demonstratively.

"In this bag," he said, "there are a total of sixteen tokens. That's right - one for every participant. They are emblazoned with the symbols of the sects they represent. Each round, we randomly draw two tokens, and whoever is drawn must fight!" The crowd gave appreciative murmurs at this.

"But - but! There are two exceptions. For, you see - the winners of the public matches - since they represent no great sect, are part of no great clan - we allow them the privilege of not only going first, but of choosing their own opponents from the bag!" Wu Hao's eyes narrowed. The privilege, Tai Buzhou had called it, of going first. It was clear enough to him that Tai Buzhou simply wanted them gone first to stop stinking up the matches. He doubted that the tokens would all be selected randomly.

No, it seemed to him that they were definitely rigging this thing. It was the smart thing to do. It still might be a problem, though. As he was thinking, though, Tai Buzhou had already reached the end of his explanation.

"Now, I've kept you all waiting long enough! Let's begin! Ao Ying, first winner of the public matches, please come here!" Ao Ying walked up to Tai Buzhou, who offered him the bag. From it, he drew a token which showed a lightning bolt striking the earth. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Mo Ritian, of the Zhongnan Sect!" Tai Buzhou announced, holding the token up high in the air.

"Will all other competitors please leave the arena?" The Zhongnan Sect, huh. They were famous for their rapid movement techniques, which coupled with their famous sword arts to make them a competitor for greatest sword masters in the world. It wasn't a sect that he'd had experience with before, so he studied the boy in the azure robes who had perked up when his name had been called. He seemed lazy, in a word. Hair hung in a shapeless tangle, obscuring most of his eyes and his age.

He wasn't a tall boy, but he couldn't have been much older than Wu Hao himself. Fourteen, at the most. Drawn from a muttered conversation with the Peng clan's representative and a few others, Mo Ritian ambled to the center of the arena. The impression of laziness was further reinforced by his slouch. His sword swung from his hip and Mo Ritian drew it, casting the sheathe aside to clatter to the ground nearby.

It was a beautiful sword, and Wu Hao was jealous of it almost immediately: clearly of good steel, it drew the eye by its sheer mirror-like reflection of the sky above. His qi crackled with potential. Compared to Ao Ying, who seemed to be maybe somewhat stronger than average for a third-grade, the difference was immense. Mo Ritian had about the same amount of qi as Wu Hao himself did, and he'd always considered himself on the highest end when it came to qi capacity. It made sense, though.

Wu Hao had his qi from the White Tiger's Core that he'd technically stolen from the Jin; this Mo Ritian would've had all the treasures he'd need handed to him right off the bat.

"Introduce yourselves, please!" Tai Buzhou called, already scuttling to the edge of the arena when the last of the contestants had walked down the stairs and had retaken their places outside the arena. Ao Ying held his sword high, the point aimed squarely at the sky, before he abruptly reversed it and let it hang back down, the tip thudding into the stone of the arena.

"I am Ao Ying," he said. His voice didn't reach across the arena like Tai Buzhou's had, but some clever array work made it carry further than it would have, otherwise.

"I represent the Placid Lake Sect. I hope -""Mo Ritian," his opponent said. His sword was slung over his shoulder, and he didn't bother bringing it down into a combat stance as the announcer scrambled back. Instead, he just slacked back slightly.

"Zhongnan. Let's get this over with, old man." Tai Buzhou looked at both of them, before he swung his hand down.

"Begin!" Again, that sensation of something wanting to move emanated from Ao Ying's qi, but it was suppressed. Slowly, all of his qi began to seep out from his skin, forming a fog around him that probably only Wu Hao could see. His sword moved achingly slowly, but it seemed almost to ripple through the air as it went, thin pulses of qi spreading out like a stone had been skipped into a lake's surface.

Mo Ritian's qi flickered like lightning - sparks ran from his core outwards like a storm, forming into the shape of a loop that was more refined than most Wu Hao had ever seen before. It had been completed in the space between breaths, without any wasted movement or effort, just perfectly regulated qi. Then Mo Ritian took a single step and disappeared.

There wasn't even the characteristic blur of a movement technique - Mo Ritian had just moved so fast that between one moment and the next, the only proof that he'd been there at all was the sparks that grounded themselves against the arena stones. He reappeared already beyond Ao Ying, taking another step and then disappearing again. In that single breath that he'd been visible, though, his sword had moved into a position that made it clear he was preparing a technique.

Ao Ying's qi contracted and went absolutely deathly quiet as he turned, his sword moving into a blocking position. How he had seen Mo Ritian's move, Wu Hao wasn't sure - in all likelihood, though, he was simply relying on his instincts and guessing.

"Placid Lake Art," he roared. But before his technique could complete, Mo Ritian appeared beyond him again, returning to the place where he'd first stood. His sword was wet with blood and his expression surprised, if anything.

"Shit," he said.

"Thought you'd have an amulet. Sorry." Ao Ying stared, as did the crowd, before he looked down. The hole where his left lung had once been - a hole that yawned wide in his chest - began, slowly, to fill with blood. Ao Ying's next words were a gurgle of blood which spilled from his lips. His sword didn't fall from his suddenly-stiff hands, but Wu Hao had had those sorts of injuries before. He wasn't surprised when Ao Ying toppled to his knees before falling on his face.

Mo Ritian's hadn't even decided whether he'd come close or leave the arena yet. Tai Buzhou jumped up to the stage again.

"Victory to Mo Ritian of the Zhongnan Sect!" he roared.

"What a talent! Did you see those Flowing Cloud Steps? My word!" The crowd cheered, still half-hearted, but slightly less so than they had been earlier. There were several loud shouts of "That was too short!" and "Barely a match!" There was some laughter, but what Wu Hao felt most of all was derision. No one said it in those specific words - but he knew what what they were thinking: that this was all the public matches had amounted to.

Ao Ying was carried off by a group of burly men, his great sword lain across his body as if he was dead. He still lived, but his breathing was shallow and his face was as pale as if he was three steps from the grave. If he didn't see a physician soon, he might die despite Mo Ritian having avoided any lethal injuries. Wu Hao's grip tightened on his spear. Fuck this, he thought. He stepped up to the stairs, one of the assistants at the side stopping him.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I am."

"And here comes our second public contestant!" Tai Buzhou shouted, drawing the crowd's attention away from their discussion of the last match. Wu Hao stood there, enduring their jibes, their mockery, their whispers.

"Hao Wu!" He offered the bag of tokens to Wu Hao, beckoning for a silence he didn't get while Wu Hao's arm disappeared inside. He felt the silk of its sides and pulled his arm out the moment he'd gotten a grip on the tile. Then Wu Hao handed the token over to Tai Buzhou's assistant without even looking at it and walked away to his place. After all, it didn't matter who he faced. In the end, he would win.

"The second match," Tai Buzhou boomed, moments later, "will be the other winner of the public matches, Hao Wu - versus the rising star of the Qingcheng Sect, Su Biao!"