Every morning, after sleeping in the mudhouse I made in the shaggy part of town, I pick up my sword, and I run.
I run until I reach the other side of the city, where I'll train my swordsmanship.
I keep on going. One more swing. One more slash. One more cut.
It's been a month.
I use both my consciousness skill and my processing skill to imagine an opponent. Each day, as I fight that opponent, as I chase for a higher understanding of the sword, I am enlightened.
The sweat running down my clear skin.
The sting my muscles feel when I lunge forward.
That unusual weight I have to lift when I transition from a thrust to a slash.
It feels exhilarating. I like it. It feels good. It feels good to feel good.
It's been a year. And with the coming and going of peoples and celestial bodies, that empty furnace of a body of mine has been transformed. And with it my understanding of swordsmanship. The senses I listed down…
It's all drops in the bucket.
I take in these sensations, lifeless as they are, and I live through them. I experience them. When I pick up my sword nowadays, I am reminded of the amount of effort it took to prove myself worthy, and how I must exert that effort once more.
Some moments later, I realize I am ready.
"Link Start."
Skills:
Skills relating to espionage "
Conditioning LVL. MAX
Basic Swordsmanship LVL. MAX
Processing LVL. MAX
Consciousness LVL. MAX
Will LVL. 4
Resonance LVL. MAX
I've been swinging for over a year now. Every year, the Festival of Beginnings starts.
The city won't sleep for three days.
It's a time for would-be adults to choose their profession, for newborns to be seen by the Yu-Ti, for warriors to enter into sects and make names for themselves.
"Which sect to enter?"
Thunderclap Hall is loud.
Storm Fist Pavilion is too dependent on their weapons. Though their weapons can be bound to them, it takes far too much time, time spent being vulnerable.
Dragon's Roar Sect is also loud.
Heavenly Current Sect, I'm tempted.
Iron Gale Sect, I'm tempted a bit less.
Cloudveil Sect, I'm tempted but then again, smokescreens were never a specialty of mine.
Lightning Fang Sect, I'd like to stay human.
Tempest Coil Sect, I have to use a sword so no.
Silent Storm Sect, ew. They're emo. I don't even know how they get eyeliner around here but they find a way.
Heavenly Current Sect it is.
I promptly made my way to the center of the city, behind that Bodhidharma statue, at the foot of the Yu-Ti's skyscraper.
Thing's gotta be taller than Burj Khalifa. I don't even think that's shorter than the twin towers combined.
After waiting for a bit, more and more people made their way in front of the statue.
Some watch the celebration.
Some spectate.
Some perform.
Some gamble.
And some, like me, fight.
When the clock struck midnight, and the paper lights that hung from lines and lines of string between pavilions that surround the residence of the royals, the top of the tower seemed to glow an unearthly green.
It had wisps of yellow running across the streaks of it, surrounding it like snakes and vines slithering around trees.
And when it seemed like the beacon of gaunt starlight hit the limit of the observable sky, it spread out, as if it was a missile with smaller missiles inside, waiting for the perfect moment to deploy.
The beam, like fireworks, started to fall down, with ever increasing momentum.
Each of the thirteen streams fell down to the tip of each smaller tower that encircled the Yu-Ti's residence.
The tips of every watchtower met with the beams, striking the braziers within and lighting up a fire akin to the Olympic torchlighting ceremony.
Each tower burned differently.
But the reaction was the same.
All the people around me, starstruck with the sight, pun intended, yelled and bellowed from their diaphragms the moment the beams started the flame.
"The Festival has begun!" All were deafened and awoken by all's cry.
Bodhidharma's body split and opened up to make way for the people, like a fancy gate to a stadium. The characters tattooed on his body glowed and floated off of his being and went into each of the prospect warrior's mouths.
In we go.
"The Festival of Beginnings has opened!"
The announcer's voice boomed like thunder rolling down a mountain. It echoed not only from the Bodhidharma gate but seemed to ripple through the braziers and resonate inside every chest present. It seemed like that moment in a sports movie when the centre gets into the stadium and gets blinded by the flashing lights. Except, there are no flashing lights since there are no cameras in K'unlun.
"By decree of the Yu-Ti, thirteen braziers mark the covenant between Heaven and Earth. And by this covenant, all who seek to rise today shall pass through the Three Trials. The Trials of Heaven, of Earth, and of Man!"
The crowd roared again, stamping their feet, shaking the lantern-lit avenues and rows.
The announcer let the sound crest before striking again, voice sharp as a gong.
"The Trial of Heaven! Those who believe themselves worthy will step onto the dueling stage. Warriors of the sects themselves, acknowledged by the Yu-Ti, will descend to meet you. One strike may end it, or one hundred — but victory is what severs the heavens from your unworthiness!"
Spectators gasped and whispered. Already, sect disciples in their banners stirred, eager to test fresh blood. This is a new thing for them.
"The Trial of Earth! All weapons stripped, all names cast aside! A ring will be drawn in the dust, and within it, you will brawl until only the strongest remains standing. No allies. No honor. Only survival. Those who endure this storm will be as immovable as the mountains!"
The younger initiates shifted uneasily; others grinned like wolves at the thought of bare-handed dominance.
The Trial of Heaven began under burning braziers, their flames throwing shadows across the jade arena. The scent of incense clung heavy, a reminder that gods — or at least their avatars — were watching.
Across from me stood my opponent: Dragon's Roar Sect novice, though "novice" was generous. His robe hung half-loose, tattered from tavern brawls. Hair wild like a zebra's mane. Eyes bloodshot. A smirk stretched across his lips, too wide to be sober.
"Come at me, unworthy scum!" he shouted, voice cracking halfway into a hiccup. "Blame your misfortune that you face me today! Hik—"
His voice carried, loud enough to make the crowd snicker. Coins clinked as wagers changed hands.
I closed my eyes. Combat analysis mode.
Dragon's Roar Novice. Light-weight frame. Basic broadsword, factory-forged.
Range: Close-medium. Will try to overwhelm with lunges.
Tell: Uneven weight on the right foot → weak recovery on his left flank.
Likely openers: Blind counters, drunken knees, off-balance thrusts.
Weakness: Vocal chanting to disrupt chi. Crush the throat, crush the technique.
Plan: Low guard → parry → trip → throat. Feint high → end it center mass. Cool line. Always the cool line.
"Fight!" The gong rang.
I stepped forward, drawing my sword low, the metal whispering free. The crowd hissed, jeered, some even booed. What kind of fool held their blade like that?
The novice lunged, a roar tearing from his throat.
His blade strikes hard but without conviction. Strength without conviction is just wasted effort. A strike like that deserves no response. It's a bit sad, really.
His blade came down like a falling tree, ragged but fast.
Anticipated.
I slid left, parried at the seam of his guard. His eyes widened as his weight betrayed him. My foot scythed through his supporting leg. He stumbled—
—and my pommel smashed into his throat.
The sound was sickening. Like a pig being butchered, begging for the butcher to make it quick. He gagged, stumbling back, eyes watering, rage flaring. It seemed like he was the victim of a gas attack.
The crowd roared in surprise, voices shifting from laughter to shocked silence.
He lashed out wildly, red-faced, swinging in arcs too wide to matter. A desperate donkey-kick. I angled the flat of my sword and cracked it against his knee. Bone thudded against steel. His cry was ugly, pitiful.
Desperation made him an animal. He rolled, flailing, robe tangling around him like a turtle trapped in its shell. The crowd laughed again, but uneasily now.
I didn't give him the chance to recover. A downward cut hissed, barely missing his temple as he scrambled. Sparks flew where jade met steel. He staggered upright, ribs exposed. My slash landed, shallow but enough to paint his robe with a streak of red.
Gasps rippled through the spectators.
He swayed, gripping his side, sword trembling. His eyes darted to the elders, to the crowd pleading for help, for honor, for salvation. None came.
I stepped in, blade rising in a diagonal slash, the steel gleaming like liquid light under the braziers. He raised his own in panic, sloppy, desperate. Steel shrieked against steel. And the steel faltered.
I pivoted, horizontal recoil slash screaming across the air—
The force of it made the crowd lean back as if the wind itself cut them.
His blade flew from his hand. He froze.
And then his knees buckled. His posture collapsed, his body gave way. The smell of urine stung the night air as his trousers darkened.
Silence.
I stood over him, sword raised. He whimpered. My strike hovered—
—and stopped.
Instead, I reversed the blade, flicked the blood from the edge, and sheathed it in one smooth motion. The click rang louder than the crowd itself.
"You talk too much."
That was all.
For a moment, the quiet ruled. Even the flames seemed to pause. Then the crowd erupted like a volcano, delayed in pressure. Cheers, cries, madness. They stamped feet, clapped hands raw, screamed my name though I had not given one. The jade beneath me vibrated with their delirium.
The announcer's voice struggled to rise above them.
"Victory! By two dozen strikes or two alone, the First Trial of Heaven is decided! The challenger has prevailed!"
The braziers flared higher, smoke and light blinding, intoxicating. For an instant, the world seemed drunk on victory, and I was drunk with it too. A man who has a why can bear any how. For now, I can only say that it feels good to feel good. I think this is best for me right now. Dueling, getting stronger and all that.
The sword slid home with a final click, and the noise of the crowd dimmed around me.
To them, it was victory. To me, it was silence.
For a breath, I wasn't standing in the square anymore. I was back in the fight. I remembered everything, down to the thoughts I had.
The boy's sloppy guard. His weight rolled too far onto his right foot. The twitch in his shoulder before the thrust. All of it came back to me, not as memory but as concepts. As if the martial art he performed, however novice or poorly done, had an essence that I touched on. Like a tip of an iceberg. A painting stretched before me, every stroke fixed and waiting to be read.
I traced it in my head. The drunken sway of his balance. The blind counter he thought was hidden. The hoarse breath before his roar, circulating something my eyes can't see. Every mistake was a doorway, every weakness a sentence waiting to be finished. He was beaten long before I even touched my blade.
The crowd saw speed. Maybe the elders saw will. But I knew better. It wasn't speed or strength—it was that I looked where others only glanced. The fight wasn't a clash. It was a proof.
When the silence in me broke, the roar of the city crashed back in, drunk on lights and fire. I stepped down from the stage, nothing more to say. My blade was already sheathed, but the echoes of it still rang in their throats.
The clash ended in silence. His opponent lay writhing in the dust, one hand clutched around his throat, the other pawing uselessly at the air as though it could pull back the blow that had already stripped him of his dignity. The youth did not press forward. He sheathed his blade with unhurried grace, and only then did the crowd's breath return to them.
"Did you see how he moved? Like he knew before it happened…"
"Bah, luck. He'll be broken in the Earth trial."
"No sect emblem… who even is he?"
The cheer that followed was not a cheer at all—it was a roar, animal and unrestrained, spilling from the festival square like thunder rolling down the mountain.
But high above, in the shadowed balconies of the Yu-Ti's spectating tower, the voices were different.
"Impossible…" whispered the elder of Thunderclap Hall. His figure was entrenched in the darkness, but his eyes that glowed with farsight did not. His fingers tightened white against the railing, though whether from fear or wonder, none could tell. "Did you see? He struck before ever striking. He saw the boy's weakness… before the boy himself knew it."
"Not sight," murmured the Heavenly Current Sect Master, voice smooth as still water disturbed by the faintest touch. Clad in blue, his eyes narrowed, following the youth below with pupils that shone in water ripples and in lazuli.
"Calculation made flesh. Each twitch, each weight of breath and every thought was devoured, transmuted. That was not instinct. It was a cruelty honed until it became true. He saw that disgrace taught by Liang Zhen's every movement. How come I've never heard of this one before?"
The Silent Storm elder leaned back into the darkness of his thatch hood, words drifting like smoke from burning incense. "No. You misname it. Not perception, not cruelty. Will. Do you not taste it on the air? That was no strike of a child seeking a name. That was the hand of one who has already chosen what he is." His voice lingered, the silence after it heavier than the words themselves.
Iron Gale's elder broke it with a grunt, jagged and bitter, as though to ground them back to stone. In his hand was a wine gourd bound in a ribbon from a brothel. "Pah. Tricks. A gutter-rat's cunning dressed in borrowed poise. No root, no chi, no foundation, no maidens. When true pressure comes, he will collapse. A wooden idol in the rain."
Their voices tangled, murmurs and retorts overlapping like stormwinds. And then—cut.
"…Or he will rise."
The words rang low, quieter than breath, yet every elder froze as if struck.
Yu-Ti hath spoken.
He stood wreathed in the shadow of the tower's vast pillar, his face unreadable, his gaze fixed upon the lone figure in the dust below. His tone was not declaration but judgment, unhurried and inexorable, like stone grinding on stone.
"As none of you did," he said, voice carrying no more than thought, yet heavier than iron. "Look well. This one bears… a shape unnamed. A shadow not yet cast."
The elders fell into silence. Their gazes sharpened, no longer resting on the youth as if on a spectacle, but as one regards the horizon when lightning flickers behind the clouds. A storm that was not yet here… but would be.
And for the first time in the Festival's long memory, it ceased to be celebration. It became augury.