The next cultivation session went more smoothly. My stomach and wounds weren't as painful anymore, though they still stung a little, as if the new, regenerated flesh wasn't entirely mine and my body was rejecting it just a bit. It wasn't ideal, but it was manageable.

As for the cultivation itself, everything remained steady. There wasn't much I could change unless I decided to throw myself into traditional cultivation like Bao and Denis. But for that, I'd have to get beyond the walls.

You'd think that with our level of dispersion, mine and that of the other cadets at the late first stage, and with so many cadets packed into one place, the dormitory would be humming with qi. But no. There wasn't any excess qi in the air. It was all gathered by special formations and redirected into the Flow Chamber system.

My neighbours had found a workaround. They combined traditional cultivation with pasture duty. Watching over feed beetles and waving your arms to catch scraps of qi wasn't actually that hard.

I respected their method and found it perfectly valid, but it wasn't for me. First, I had money. Second, a day still had only twenty-four hours, and I hadn't gained any extra strength. My energy level had returned to normal, and Evening Sun wasn't available for public sale. Apparently, you needed a licence to use that tea.

My schedule was already packed, and I didn't want to spend the few free minutes I had left. Trying to perceive Space Qi in the storage ring might have looked simple at first glance. But give it an hour or two, and the mental strain could cause a solid headache, a sense of directional confusion, and temporary stupidity.

Rest was important, if I didn't want to lose my mind. And I didn't.

Besides, I had other ways to occupy myself during the times when I did feel an energy surplus. Beyond the ring, there were also the drugs and the study of specialised qi.

That's how it was with the mace. I was watching tournament fights when it hit me: the main attribute of mace techniques was weight. A standard hammer strike left dents in armour two or three times larger than the actual head. That had to mean something.

I tested my theory that same evening at the mutual support club, asking Kowalski to demonstrate his technique.

And I sensed it! No, it wasn't weight. Not exactly. It was pressure — direct and simple.

I had the sense I hadn't grasped it fully, and my understanding of Mace Qi was still partial, but it was enough to register in my danger sense. That was already more than I'd managed to get out of Wood.

I tried to apply the same approach to Wood Qi but ran into a different problem. My brain couldn't isolate anything specific to focus on.

Growth, life, elasticity, flexibility...

My understanding of Wood Qi was once again postponed.

Apart from twisting my brain over the many types of qi, I had something else occupying my attention — drugs. No matter what Liang Shi or Novak said, I'd firmly drawn an equals sign between demons and drug dealers. Novak, by the way, had examined the suicide's trinket himself. It turned out to be just a regular good-luck charm. Nothing unusual.

The whole trap came to nothing, but I was pretty sure I could still talk Liang Shi into giving Kim ten points. My main argument was that Liang himself believed the second-period was involved. Kim had earned the bonus by pointing to the right person. Still, I didn't want to draw any more attention to him. In fact, while reviewing the video footage on the tablet, I came up with a new plan to divert attention from him, just in case. A rather nasty plan, to be honest, because it involved setting up Tariq.

Getting to Kim without anyone noticing was ridiculously difficult. So, like a classic thief, I ambushed him in the toilet while he was washing his hands after some dirty work.

"Fucking hell!" he cursed when he saw me.

I quickly checked the stalls to make sure we were alone, then handed him a dose of Pure Thoughts, wrapped in a plastic sweet wrapper. I had plenty of the stuff, and it wouldn't run out unless I flat-out refused to take part in tournaments.

"Pure Thoughts. Red-grade," I told him. "Find me some drugs."

"You want me to end up like the last guy I pointed out?"

Kim refused to take the 'sweet'. I had to shove it into his pocket myself.

"I'm going to set up Tariq," I said. "If anything happens, say you were asking around for him."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"How?" Kim asked, confused.

"You'll see," I replied.

Catching Tariq was easier. I didn't have to avoid people quite so carefully this time. In fact, I wanted to create the illusion that I was trying to avoid them. But I needed an audience — one or two people besides Tariq and Kim. I needed witnesses. That ended up being the ginger guy from Tariq's squad.

I intercepted them on the stairs.

The bullies tensed, but I calmly held out the 'sweet' to Tariq.

"What the hell is this?" he asked.

"Pure Thoughts. Red-grade," I repeated what I'd told Kim.

"And you're giving it to me?"

"You've earned it," I said.

Tariq didn't move, so I tried to slip the 'sweet' into his pocket.

That got a reaction. He jerked as if whether or not that wrapper made it into his pocket was a matter of life and death.

Jerk like that on the stairs is not a good idea. Tariq lost his balance, stumbled, and nearly went tumbling headfirst down the steps. I caught him by the collar of his jumpsuit with the same hand holding the 'sweet', leaving him dangerously tilted backward.

For a moment, everyone froze. The ginger stepped back, so I used my left hand to pull the 'sweet' from my right, dropped it into Tariq's pocket, then hauled him upright again.

Smiling, I patted him on the shoulder and said,

"I'm glad we finally understand each other," I said.

"What the hell are you on about?" Tariq asked fairly enough.

I glanced at the ginger and put on a look of sudden realisation.

"Oh! Just a whim. Don't mind me."

And with that, I walked away.

"Looks like they knocked all the sense out of you in that tournament!" Tariq shouted after me.

"You're absolutely right!" I called back without turning around. I was afraid the ginger might catch the grin stretching across my face. Though to be fair, he didn't strike me as particularly sharp.

The trap was set. Now it just needed time to work. Everything needed time. I spent the next week in slow-grind mode: gym, Chambers, Kate, sometimes with Piper and Cinar, though on a very light schedule. Cinar had decided to join the tournament too.

Naturally, I kept an eye on him. He was slightly ahead of me in our spars, which made me curious. On one hand, I was rooting for him. On the other, my ego wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of him sweeping through the bracket.

He skewered his first opponent straight through with a pick. If Dubois ended up in the infirmary for a week after a stiletto, I had no idea how long this poor guy would be laid up.

Cinar clearly didn't want to lose in the first round, so he overdid it. He won in three seconds using a dash technique — the same move he'd once used to knock me flat. He shifted the form of his weapon, turning the pick head forward and pulling it out like it was a spear. The tip pierced his opponent's abdomen, though not too deeply. Then Cinar lifted the guy up like an insect pinned with a needle, raised his weapon as high as he could, and slammed it straight down onto the floor. The end of the shaft hit the plastic with a dull knock, and the inertia forced the 'bug' to slide down the curved 'needle'. The point emerged from his back. The referee called the fight.

The second opponent, after watching that match, simply refused to compete. That's the only explanation I can think of. He hadn't been injured in the previous fight.

Cinar won the third round just as quickly. He broke through a fist cultivator's shield and drove the pick into his side.

The fourth one withdrew, too, after a brutal match in the previous round where they'd nearly killed each other.

And then came the fifth opponent. A rare beast — a cultivator of both Point and Mace. The cadet had a sort of spear, but instead of a regular tip, it ended in a massive round head with five thirty-centimetre, four-edged spikes. One pointed forward like a proper tip, and the other four were angled ninety degrees from the shaft and from each other.

The fighter definitely used a Point-type dash movement and a fast, piercing technique based on the same type of qi. But for serious damage, it was likely the Mace technique doing the work. It was hard to tell just from watching the fight.

Still, I figured out one thing. Why Cinar and that cadet were able to swing such massive weapons with ease. It wasn't about muscle or at least, not only muscle. They were using the same Point telekinesis to lighten the weight of their oversized weapons and give them better control and precision.

Both of their hulking weapons moved like butterfly wings, but their defence was on the same level as their offence. Both cadets went for a rush tactic, pure brute confrontation, where Cinar lost out in raw strength despite his larger size, but won thanks to the superior mobility of his weapon.

At one point, he nearly tangled his opponent's legs with the shaft, which even surprised me. But his weapon wasn't quite fast enough in the 'grow' manoeuvre, and the opponent managed to break away.

After that, they shifted to a more cautious strategy — waiting and assessing.

That was a mistake for Cinar, one that nearly cost him the fight.

I suspect he didn't have a clear sense for Mace Qi and mistook the opponent's weapon swings for simple feints rather than the start of a technique.

But it was an ultimate move.

After a few long swings, the cadet poured a ton of Mace Qi into his weapon, raised it high overhead, jumped a good five metres into the air, and came crashing down at Cinar like a missile.

Somehow, Cinar managed to catch the incoming weapon with his own and push himself partially clear, though not far enough. The impact of the ultimate was so strong that the ground around the point of contact sank into a shallow crater nearly a metre wide.

One of the heavy spikes embedded deep into the earth, while the mace's head pinned down the tip of Cinar's pickaxe.

His left foot got caught in the attack radius. The reinforced toe of his exo-boot was deformed and partially flattened. I saw him flinch and arch in pain. But Piper had trained him to endure, and he didn't lose control. His opponent's weapon had dug into the ground. His own was merely pinned.

Cinar yanked the pick free and struck before his opponent could do the same.

The other cadet tried to dodge, but the tip of the wooden weapon bent at just the right angle and reached his neck.

The puncture was small, almost invisible, but blood began to seep through the armour, and the referee called the match.

Cinar entered the final limping.

His opponent, a cultivator of Palm and Air, smeared him across the arena in seven seconds.

I did feel bad for the guy, but my ego was satisfied.

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