Chapter 5
The Wrath, Recorded
The court observer's name was Inspector Luo Mingzhi, and he had been sent to Tianlong by the Ministry of War to assess what the current generation of summoners might contribute to the empire's defense within the next decade.
He was not supposed to stay. He stayed.
He watched four more matches from the gallery, which proceeded more or less as expected: a tier-4 Iron Bear versus a tier-4 Storm Hawk, the usual exchange of raw force and aerial maneuverability; two Serpent-class beasts testing each other's regeneration; Song Baiyu's Celestial Crane disassembling its opponent's summon in forty-two seconds with a targeted resonance cry that made the stone seats vibrate.
He kept returning, in his notes, to the lower bracket.
The issue was not the victory itself. Upsets happened. Junior students occasionally produced summons that outperformed their apparent tier. The measuring instruments were not infallible.
The issue was the methodology.
Every summon he had ever assessed operated on the principle of base-state performance. You saw what a beast could do in combat and you rated it accordingly. The Jade Serpent, in its two Exhibition victories, had demonstrated consistent performance against comparable-tier opponents. Zuo Han ran his summon like a general: maximize strength, exploit regeneration, end fights quickly.
Wei Liang's summon had read the Serpent.
Not just reacted to it — read it. Anticipated the feint. Positioned not to defend against the likely strike but to intercept the unlikely one. That was not instinct. That was not a beast's combat intuition.
That was a thinking combatant.
Luo Mingzhi had been a summoner for thirty years. He had seen tier-8 beasts. He had, once, been present when a tier-9 entity was recorded. He had never seen a humanoid summon perform at any tier above 2.4.
He wrote: "Requires further observation. Do not classify. Do not restrict. Watch."
✦ ✦ ✦
Wei Liang's second match was against a girl named Chu Fei whose Fire Monkey had burned its way through the lower bracket with cheerful savagery. It was a tier-3.8 beast with more aggression than strategy, and Achilles ended it in under two minutes with a shield-rush that knocked the Monkey into the arena wall and a pointed sword that stopped an inch from its throat.
The third match was against Fen Zhu.
Fen Zhu had clearly been training since the combat assessment. His Thunder Leopard moved differently — more disciplined, more aware of range — and Fen Zhu himself was not smiling this time. He was angry in the focused way, which was more dangerous than the contemptuous way.
The Leopard opened with its electrical discharge at distance, trying to force Achilles into defensive posture before closing to melee. It was a smart adjustment.
Achilles walked through the lightning.
Not shielded against it — through it. The bronze armor absorbed some, dissipated some, and the rest he took with a controlled stillness that made Fen Zhu's jaw tighten visibly. The Leopard launched into melee, striking from three angles in rapid sequence, and Achilles let the first two connect — testing — before he caught the third strike with his sword hand, disarmed the momentum, and placed the Leopard flat on its back on the arena floor with enough force to crack the stone beneath it.
It took eleven seconds.
Fen Zhu stood very still for a moment. Then he recalled his beast.
He didn't look at Wei Liang as he walked off the arena floor. He looked at Achilles, and something in his expression was not contempt anymore. It was the beginning of a different kind of attention — the kind that precedes either respect or genuine hatred, and Fen Zhu himself did not yet know which it would be.
✦ ✦ ✦
The final match of the day was not Wei Liang's.
Song Baiyu was seeded in the upper bracket and her path through it had been so efficient that by the time the gallery crowds had eaten their afternoon meal, she had accumulated three victories without her Crane ever reaching full combat speed.
Her fourth opponent was a senior third-year with a tier-6.1 Iron Dragon — not a true dragon, the instructors were always careful to note, but a draconic-lineage beast with true scales, breath weapon, and regeneration. It was the highest-tier beast in the Exhibition. Song Baiyu was the only student it had been matched against because she was the only one for whom it was considered a fair pairing.
The Iron Dragon entered the arena and the temperature dropped. Not from cold — from something else, the atmospheric pressure of a truly large predatory presence that rewrote the surrounding air's understanding of itself.
The Celestial Crane emerged from Song Baiyu's diagram and climbed.
Wei Liang watched from the competitors' preparation hall window as the Crane rose above the arena, above the galleries, until it was a white speck against the afternoon sky, barely visible. The Iron Dragon tracked it, its neck extending upward, breath weapon building in the throat furnace.
The Crane dove.
It was not a combat dive. It was a resonance drop — the Crane falling at full speed, its cry building as it descended, and at the exact distance where the frequency would be most concentrated, it released the full force of its resonance in a single directed pulse aimed at the Dragon's binding point.
The Iron Dragon shuddered.
Did not dissolve — it was too strong for that — but its scales flickered. Its breath weapon misfired, scorching the arena floor six feet left of where it had been aimed. Its eyes briefly lost focus.
In that moment of disruption, the Crane struck.
Not with its beak. With its wings — spread to full span, each primary feather rigid and blade-sharp, sweeping through the Dragon's neck scales with a sound like ten swords drawn at once. The Dragon fell.
The gallery exploded.
Song Baiyu recalled her Crane without expression.
She walked past the competitors' corridor entrance, and as she passed the window Wei Liang was watching from, she paused. Looked in.
"You made the semifinals," she said.
"I noticed."
A quiet moment. "Your summon. The way it fights." She seemed to be reaching for something precise. "It doesn't fight like a tool. It fights like it has something to prove."
Wei Liang considered this. "He said he was very good at loyalty now. That it cost him a great deal to learn."
Song Baiyu was quiet. Then: "That's a strange thing for a summon to say."
"Yes."
She walked on. After a few steps she stopped without turning around.
"Tomorrow's bracket puts us against each other in the semifinals."
"I know."
"I won't go easy."
"I wouldn't ask you to."
She resumed walking. Wei Liang turned back to the window, where the arena attendants were beginning to clear the floor for the evening ceremony.
From inside the soul-space, very faintly, he heard Achilles:
"Good."