Another week passed. wo, if you counted from the last tournament I fought in.
I'd signed up for the next one. So had Dubois. Last time we'd ended up in the final by chance, but this time we agreed one of us would register early, the other late. That way, we wouldn't have to fight each other before the finals.
It wouldn't be a good look if we beat the crap out of each other in the first round, only for some weakling to finish off whichever of us was left standing.
That little agreement ended up being the highlight of the entire week. Especially considering Dubois nearly missed registration — it closed just a few hours after opening. Most of the real fighters missed it!
Nothing else broke the rhythm of training: no accidents, no attempts on my life, no surprise revelations. Even the drug investigation had stalled.
I still couldn't sense the Space Qi. The ring wrapped around my finger like an ordinary band of metal. No energy. No aura. Just silence.
Maybe Novak had been wrong about my potential. Or maybe potential wasn't the issue at all. It was the same with Wood. And though I'd struggled with it much longer, Wood Qi still remained elusive. Too complex. Too alive. That constant sense of standing before a riddle I'd nearly solved… only to have it slip away again.
But I did have a breakthrough.
Not a literal. I felt Palm.
I'd literally set it against Fist and gained more understanding than I had with any other qi, except for my native Fist.
The best way to describe it was as an all-pervading softness. But not passive softness. No. There was just as much determination in it as in Fist. Well, maybe a little less, since Palm didn't respond to resistance — it ignored it. It didn't break, didn't punch through, didn't even seek weak points. Though, weak points suffered the most. In a way, Palm Qi resembled the Flow in the Chamber. Flow penetrated just the same, so unless you could block it completely, it was better to let it pass through you.
And then… there was Chain Punch.
I hadn't completed the upgrade to red-grade, the channels still weren't fully narrowed. But my accuracy had already improved. Each strike carried more control, more energy that actually reached the target.
In spars with Cinar, Chain Strike didn't show much improvement. But that was mostly because Cinar himself had improved too. We'd both gotten better, but neither of us was going all out. That mode was reserved for tournaments.
My time had come. I had the armour with the formation, a new set of stimulants, and I was ready to kick arse from the moment the day began. My head was full of strategy and tactics. I was thinking about the participants who'd already made some name for themselves and who I might run into, which made me drop my awareness of my surroundings a little. So the hard shove to my shoulder caught me by surprise.
I was just rounding the second corner after leaving the cafeteria.
My reflexes kicked in instantly, my body reacted before my brain caught up. My arm came up, muscles tensed, I braced for a fight... and only then did I see the cause.
A cadet I didn't recognise stood in front of me. Tall and solid, almost my height, though narrower in the shoulders. Her hair was pulled into a tight, odd-looking knot at the back of her head — more a lump than a hairstyle. Dark skin, narrow face, and eyes that fused into a single expression of pure contempt.
V. Harn, first year, though I didn't recall her among the top cadets. At the very least, she hadn't taken part in any tournaments.
"Hey!" she barked. "Watch where you're going, dickhead!"
"Excuse me," I said calmly. "You're the one who walked into me." I'd got used to regular cadets being afraid of me. Used to them avoiding me. So my first thought was demons.
A new attack?
No. Demons wouldn't draw this much attention, unlike this loud-mouthed girl.
"Actually, it was you who bumped into me," I said, scanning both her and my surroundings. Coincidence? Or something planned? "I suggest we go our separate ways. No need for trouble."
"Trouble?!" she repeated, loud and dripping with contempt, making sure everyone could hear, then burst out laughing. "You think you could cause me trouble? Wow, someone's confident today, prick."
Still no clear sign if she had a plan, but one thing was obvious — she wasn't backing down. And I had no idea if the system had flagged the conflict. Strangely, I wasn't angry. I didn't count her as a real opponent. The real ones were waiting for me in the tournament.
"Winning a weekly tournament does boost your confidence," I said, hinting. "I took one two weeks ago and I'm signed up for today's. If you'd be so kind, we could settle this misunderstanding after it's done."
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
I watched her face carefully.
No reaction at all to the mention of my win.
It was a setup.
"Oh my God!" she shouted a second later, mockingly. "We've got a real champion over here!"
Her hands flew up to her face in a ridiculously fake show of fear, then her right hand reached for the knot of hair.
By the time I realised it wasn't part of the act, she'd already pulled a ten-centimetre needle from her hair.
My danger sense screamed. I felt the sharpness of Point Qi, but it was already too late. My body hadn't yet obeyed the instinct when her wrist flicked, and the needle shot at my stomach like a bullet.
Jing! Like someone had tapped a crystal glass.
The needle struck a silver shield, one I hadn't managed, couldn't possibly have managed to summon in time, and bounced off.
I didn't even have time to curse.
The needle went straight into her left eye. No resistance. No slow-down. No trace of defence. It simply vanished into the pupil, as if sucked in.
Her head jerked, eyelids twitched, lips parted in a surprised sound that never formed a word.
She staggered and collapsed.
She just dropped. Without a sound. Like a puppet with its strings cut.
At first, there was silence all around.
"Is she dead?" someone asked quietly.
I felt a chill crawl down my spine.
I stood there, staring at the body. There was no way she was alive. The needle had disappeared entirely into her pupil. It had to have reached the brain. Her body was probably dead before it even hit the ground.
Fluid mixed with blood began to leak from the eye, though the expression of surprise still lingered on her face.
Fucking hell. What a —
And then it hit me.
The amulet. Novak's amulet.
He'd warned me it would only activate in a situation of real, lethal danger.
I didn't think that attack could've killed me. She'd aimed for my gut, not my heart. But the needle could definitely have pierced right through me. Apparently, that was enough for the amulet to trigger.
I slowly raised a hand to my chest, where the amulet hung under my jumpsuit, strung around my neck. It had grown warm. I could clearly feel the qi stored within it spreading outward. It wasn't pure Fist Qi. It was some kind of blend.
In a few minutes, the Order personnel would be here, and I'd have to explain how I came to possess such a powerful artefact.
I needed to warn Novak.
I opened my interface menu, and my hand hovered over the holographic button. There weren't many names in my contact list. But there was one who might be more useful at this exact moment.
Instead of Novak, I called Johansson.
The call connected just as I heard the jet engines of incoming boards.
"Yes," Johansson said.
"I was attacked," I told him without preamble. "She's dead."
"What? You killed a cadet?"
"She killed herself," I said, loudly enough for a pair of cultivators who were jumping off their boards to hear. Both had threes on their collars. One held a mace. The other wore gauntlets.
To avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings, I raised my hands and made a clear show of submission.
"How exactly?" asked Johansson. Then his younger colleague on the scene, the one with the mace, repeated it in slightly less polite terms.
"How the fuck did it happen?"
"Maybe watch the security footage first?" I suggested, still keeping the call open. Though if demons were involved, the footage might already be tampered with. "She threw a needle at me. It bounced back into her eye."
"I need details!" Johansson demanded, but his colleagues on-site didn't have time to ask a single thing.
The medics arrived at the scene. And this time, the lead wasn't a student-cadet — it was an actual staff member, a cultivator of the fourth stage.
He scanned the girl's head with a handheld device, glanced around at the cadets, then shook his head. After that, more bluntly, he grabbed her chin, turned it, and looked into the eye socket.
"Brain damage is fatal," the doc said. "She died instantly."
"Jake!" Johansson barked in my ear. "I need details!"
"Your people are here..." I hinted, which also served to inform the others that I was speaking with someone.
"Cut it," ordered the one closest to me — the one with the mace again.
"Names," Johansson demanded.
"D. K. Saller. K. F. Vormann," I read their names from the interface.
"Hey! I told you to end the call!" Saller snapped, raising his mace as a threat.
"Does Novak know?" Johansson asked.
"No," I replied.
"What!" Saller shouted, clearly thinking I was still speaking to him.
"Sorry, that wasn't for you! Ending the call now!" I said, before the third-year decided I needed a lesson.
I didn't manage to hang up, Johansson disconnected first.
"Who were you talking to?" Saller demanded sternly. But he got the answer before I could even open my mouth. I saw his eyes flick from me to a notification in his interface.
He clearly didn't like the name he saw there. But ignoring it wasn't an option either.
After one more hostile glare in my direction, Saller accepted the call.
"Listening, sir."
Their conversation was short, and from the cadet's end, made up entirely of brief affirmative replies.
After that, I was quickly sent to the nearest standby Order station, one of many scattered across the School. It was something like the room where Liang Shi had served us tea after Marek. Except I hadn't known that these rooms had capsules behind the wall. I was placed in one of them. After being stripped down to my underwear.
Apparently, the capsules were used instead of detention cells to save space.
I wasn't complaining. At least it saved me a few hours of anxiety and boredom. The only downside was that by the time they let me out, the tournament was nearly over.
Johansson informed me that all charges had been dropped and personally returned the amulet that had caused the 'accident.' Then we watched the finals together.
In the last match, the twins Lian and Liara Daro faced off. Both of them were Palm cultivators.
Liara won, but instead of applause or an award ceremony, she was taken off the stage by Order officers.
The Daro family wasn't one of the great cultivator families, but they were without question one of the wealthiest. Lian and Liara didn't stand out in technique or cultivation talent, but they were clever and utterly ruthless. With near-limitless resources behind them, they crafted the perfect tournament path — they bought every spot in the bracket. Literally paid off weaklings they could easily beat to register first.
A few randoms still made it into the tournament. Dubois and I were among the most dangerous, so the plan was to take us out before the tournament even began.
Harn hadn't been a demon. She wasn't working for them. She was just carrying out the Daros' job. And if she hadn't died, those two would've got away with everything.
The School could overlook many things — but not the death of a cadet.
If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.