Five days passed between Esposito's murder and the monthly tournament. The entire school was convinced the drug trade had finally been stamped out. Everyone — except the addicts, who continued buying their product from the dealers still working for the demons.
I had no idea what the Order's higher-ups believed, but officially, the three failures had been blamed for everything. Rumour had it they were sentenced to life in a special Earth-based prison where cultivators were used as living batteries — drained of their qi day after day, until their cultivation was ruined entirely, leaving them no more than ordinary mortals.
Those stories directly contradicted the widely accepted axiom that breakthroughs couldn't be reversed easily, but who really knew?
I wasn't particularly concerned with the drug trade. I had a tournament ahead.
Eighty-eight participants had registered in total. Five dropped out before it even began — they'd fought in the weekly tournament the day before and been too badly injured to compete again so soon. A few more had taken some knocks, but were still willing to roll the dice.
Luck played a big role in these tournaments.
I wasn't lucky enough to get a bye into the second round. That was standard practice, used in weekly tournaments as well. When the number of participants didn't reach the bracket limit, some fighters would automatically advance to the next round, to keep the structure clean and avoid having something messy like three fighters in the final. It also made things easier for the organisers, cutting down the total number of matches.
This time, only 21 matches were held in the first round instead of 64. Alongside the 21 winners, 43 cadets advanced automatically, creating a neat bracket of 64 fighters for 32 second-round matches.
Of course, some of the first-round winners were too badly injured to continue and dropped out, which meant two lucky fighters didn't have to fight at all until the third round.
As I said, I wasn't one of the lucky ones. My first fight was relatively easy, but the second made me sweat.
The bracket pitted me against a wood cultivator who fought with two ridiculously long vine-whips, each nearly twenty metres long. He'd crushed his last opponent after binding them tight — those vines hit harder than a hydraulic press. If not for the arena layout and my training with Bao, I'd have been in serious trouble.
The arena had several concrete pillars, which made it difficult for him to swing horizontally whenever I positioned myself so the pillar stood between me and the attacking vine. Mad Monkey made that sort of movement pretty easy for me. But for him, trying to bend those whip-vines tighter than I curled my own Hooks just to reach me was a challenge. And that, in turn, slowed down his ability to pull the vines back for the next attack.
I, on the other hand, didn't need to reset my projections before launching the next strike.
That's how I took away his biggest counter to my strongest technique — Iron Head. All he had to do to interrupt it was tangle my legs. But with all my side-to-side hopping, I forced him into using vertical strikes, which he dropped between the columns while I bounded around like a rabbit. And thanks to the sheer length of those vines, each blow took a few full seconds to land.
I deliberately avoided moving in close — not while the pillars were still keeping him from hitting me cleanly. Bao didn't just strike with the ends of his hybrid mace-whip; he could use the middle of the vine too. If he got a proper grip on you, that was it — game over.
I just couldn't give him time to react. So after the whip in his right hand lashed the concrete to my left, I shifted to the right, but not two jumps like before. Just one. Then three more in rapid succession to the left. A blur of columns flashed past my face. He had to adjust his aim mid-swing.
I ducked my head and charged at him like a mad bull.
The whip cracked behind me, missing to my left. The vine slapped my shoulder, but by then I had enough speed that it couldn't catch hold. It simply slid off my armour — slicked in the energy sheath from my technique.
In an instant, I was on top of him.
A clash of metal! Qi detonation and backlash locked my legs in place.
My opponent went flying. He lost his whips mid-air, and his left arm was twisted like it had been personally restructured by a mace cultivator.
I'd misjudged the strike. Maybe it was because I'd slid along his vine all the way to his hand, but I didn't manage to knock him out in one hit. The damage was limited — just the arm.
His shoulder was bent upward and pulled slightly behind his back. The forearm dangled downward and off to the left, while his fingers jutted out in completely different directions. A couple of them were off by a full 180 degrees.
He screamed. Shrieked, really so loud and raw it even got to me. As soon as the recoil from my technique passed, instead of going in for the finish, I looked for the referee.
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Opponent's armour auto-injected him with a painkiller, and he stopped screaming. Still, he didn't go for the whips again, and just like that, the match was over.
In the third round, I ended up against Okoro again — one of the easiest fights I'd had. He hadn't taken much damage in the earlier rounds, but I'd already beaten him a few times before. Apparently, that stuck with him. He gave up a few minutes in, after I pelted him with a barrage of projections, all of which were blocked by his defence formation.
Round four gave me my first free pass. My opponent had taken damage and couldn't continue.
Good. I needed to prepare for round five — against Cinar.
Technically, he'd already beaten me in the arena.
Factually, he'd smeared me across it in sparring.
Both memories pressed down on my mind, on my confidence and my ego.
I had to beat Cinar.
I had to crush him fast and clean, before he could punch holes in my armour. His pick had a thick beak. That wasn't some slender blade you could fight through after getting nicked.
My stomach turned cold as I remembered how he'd skewered poor Okoro like a bug on a pin.
Cinar, like me, had reached this round unscathed. I'd watched his previous matches — they were quick and efficient wins.
Kate had watched them too.
"No Iron Head," she said.
"Worried I'll end up skewered on his spike too?" I asked. Point cultivators were particularly good at piercing Fist shields.
"No," Kate surprised me. "I think with your formation and the Giant Black Turtle Shell, you might survive a head-on clash. I'm afraid Piper's already told him not to go for it. I would have, in her place."
"Explain," I said.
"You freeze after executing the technique. That's the best time to stab you. I'd advise him to dodge and counter after you complete the move."
It was solid advice. Made perfect sense.
"So what do I do with him?" I asked.
"Take his weapon."
I looked at Kate like she'd gone mad. Then reminded her:
"It's Wood."
"It's big, heavy, and slow wood," she corrected me. "The beak is the hardest and least flexible part of it. The shaft's got more give. Grab the beak."
That was a gamble and a half.
Sure, disarming had worked well enough for me against both Point and Mace cultivators — but Wood? Trying to take a weapon from a Wood cultivator was something only another Wood cultivator, or an idiot, would attempt. Wood could bind you.
Still, Kate had a point. The shaft of his pick was more mobile than the beak.
"Don't skimp on stimulants. Start with standard tanking, pelt him with projections. Make him break your shield. If the arena's got columns or high structures, try climbing one. Attack from above. Force him to stretch his pick out."
Naturally, we got a rubbish arena. Sand and rocks. The biggest boulder barely reached my waist. Judging by the fresh, glossy breaks, they'd been larger earlier that day, until some previous fight shattered them.
Cheetah's Impulse, God of War's Fist, Giant Black Turtle Shell — all of it was already coursing through my blood before the judge gave the signal to start.
Neither of us rushed in. Cinar shifted his pick back, planting it in the ground as he waited for my charge. I walked towards him at a measured pace.
Cinar adjusted his stance and raised the pick so it hovered parallel to the ground.
When less than twenty metres separated us, he gave it a lazy swing. The massive weapon, part scythe, part war pick, with a vicious beak, began building momentum, so that at the right moment, Cinar could redirect all that force straight into the target.
At seven metres, I took the classic stance for Chain Punch and unleashed a hail of projections at my opponent. Cinar surged forward — no technique, just the enhanced physicality of a cultivator.
My projections shattered against the shaft of his flail, which he spun like a propeller and held in front of him.
We'd been in this exact situation during our sparring match.
Back then, I'd hit him in the hands, and he'd dropped his weapon.
I didn't have time to line up a repeat. Cinar intentionally let a few of my next projections through, trading minor damage for an opening. He brought the pick down from above. I triggered my shield just as he swung.
The pick bounced off it, and Cinar used the recoil to twist the weapon back around, smashing it into me again, this time with double the force.
That strike broke through the shield, but the pick's beak hit the barrier of my formation. A stack of miniature hexagonal shields, like layered cards, forced the point to slip downward, tearing and gouging at the outer layers. With each successive layer, the pick lost more of its momentum until it finally came to a halt.
To attack again, Cinar would need to lift and spin that massive weapon all over again.
I felt a weak pulse of Point Qi radiate from the pick, but the danger wasn't aimed at me, it was off to the side. Cinar was using a technique, pouring the bare minimum of qi into it, just enough to guide the pick telekinetically and make it spin faster.
This was the perfect opening for a counterattack. I could have landed a solid Hook projection to his jaw, clean and precise.
But I did what Kate had told me.
I grabbed the beak of his weapon with both hands. My right clamped near the tip, my left farther down where the beak was thicker and my fingers couldn't quite close all the way around. Still, I locked on with all the strength I had — the force of a cultivator's enhanced body and the servo-motors in my gauntlets.
I held, yanked back, and monkey-leapt away, pushing off with both feet.
Cinar didn't stay on his feet, but he didn't let go either. He had the advantage — the weapon clung to him like it was alive. I dragged him about a metre through the dirt, but he held tight.
The beak in my hands started to twist like a living thing, but I was faster. My right foot slammed into the front plate of his helmet before the pick could wrench free.
Bam!
A qi burst detonated beneath my boot, knocking him off balance. His left hand slipped from the shaft, and I yanked the weapon in closer. Then I brought the edge of my palm down on his right wrist to finish the disarm.
Success.
I sprang back, grabbed the pick by the shaft, spun on the spot, and hurled it out of the arena.
As I turned, Cinar scrambled to his feet and lunged to recover it, but I extended my left arm to block him. He crashed into it like a runaway train, nearly bowling me over, but the pick was already mid-air. Out of reach.
And then pain exploded through my left side.
Cold and jagged, it shot down my leg, nausea punched through my gut, and weakness crashed over my head. My arms gave out instantly, and the world spun around me.
What the hell!?
I looked down.
Cinar was pulling his fist out of my side.
From his gauntlet, a long, blood-slick wooden spike jutted forward.
Same side. Different angle. Sharper pain.
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