The games began with screaming, the other contestants unable to decide what to do and unclear on how serious their situation was. Everyone spread out, but Jiang stood still. He watched the first stupid children panic their way over the clearly-drawn white chalk outline of their box and be greeted with balls of fire from the soldiers stationed at the front stage, now flying and spreading out in preparation to defend the territory of play. Jiang smiled wider as the first glimpses of panic gave way to terror and defeat.
I would kill the soldiers boxing me in, but sadly that isn’t possible right now. It reminds me of the old days and all the blood— gods above there was a lot of blood— but I’m surprised they’re using such quick-killing techniques. If you want to set an example for the remaining contestants, surely a more painful death would be preferable?
The nostalgia hit him like a tidal wave, the guards and their leaders all vying for control of the same pathetic scraps of nothing they always had, butchering and bleeding each other dry to defend their position against the ladder of a kiddie-pool, all so stupid and incapable of realizing their infighting was what led them to inevitable defeat at the hands of those capable of rising against it. As they slit each others’ throats trying to tear down the ladder they used to climb to heaven, Jiang waited for the ground and the ladder to give way to blood. If his enemies produced a thousand bodies and tore out ten thousand rungs of the ladder, he would simply wait until the bodies clogged the drain and swim past the broken rungs.
That was the one thing these children lacked most: patience.
Jiang sat down, cross-legged, but did not close his eyes. He watched the children dying in front of him, their faces growing more terrified as time passed. More of them were realizing that they never stood a chance of making it out of here. More of them were giving up.
Jiang’s smile slipped but his eyelids didn’t. He stroked his beard. A fireball hit him directly in the face, singing his facial hairs slightly, but it didn’t knock him back. It didn’t even hurt.
A childish girl with long purple hair noticed, about eighteen years old but clearly underdeveloped, her mouth agape. She quickly made her way over to Jiang, who did not speak nor even look at her, and hid behind him. A splash of acid struck Jiang, though his clothes were not damaged. It felt like it would have eaten a lesser man’s skin off in a second, and through his body in two.
“How are you alive?!” she whispered in his ear. Jiang did not answer.
Several others noticed the girl and began making their way to Jiang from the field of charred corpses and acid where techniques let loose like rain.
Jiang ignored them all and studied the techniques on display before him. Mostly it was low-level elemental techniques that even the most pathetic children from the era preceding the stellar betrayal should have known. They flung acid at each other and shot rocks materialized from nothing, failing to appreciate that the earth itself was right there beneath their feet. They wasted their qi on forming material they already had access to and for what? To form slightly harder dirt? The rocks eviscerated hordes of so-called “elders” without hardened skin or qi barriers, but did nothing to the ones with any kind of basic protection. It was laughable that some fifty or sixty percent of the “ancient masters” died to hard dirt. A real master had about as much to fear jumping off a blade of grass hoping to snap their neck on impact with the ground.
The worst part is, Jiang knew some fifty or sixty percent of them would actually die that way. Another fireball formed fully in the air and fired off at Jiang. He spit at it and it evaporated, the fire still hitting his face but the damage behaving as though his spit had deactivated the technique. The fire was so hot for being unable to singe his beard. It was a waste of energy to shoot off such hot fire.
“Finally,” he mused, “enough qi to form a cigarette.”
「A cigarette forms in my hand, already lit.」
A thin trail of smoke began snaking off to heaven. He put the thin white cylinder to his mouth and began inhaling the fumes of his manifested death-stick. His pupils narrowed and Jiang could feel the plaque forming inside his arteries. It would kill a lesser man.
The horde of groupies that were forming behind Jiang marvelled. The purple-haired girl coughed but Jiang did not put down the cigarette. She would already be dead if not for him, what’s a few minutes off her lifespan for that?
The most active of the cultivators had nearly finished culling the masses off the courtyard and were now scanning for stragglers. A small handful had gathered in the corners, fleeing from the center butchery-zone, but now they were forced to face death on both sides. Some would no-doubt prefer death by the hands of their fellow “elders” but just as many would no-doubt choose the certainty of higher-tier flames.
A black-haired man of about twenty or twenty five wearing a black cloak stained red with blood began making his way over to the back-right corner near Jiang. He smiled eagerly, ready to stain the rest of the cloak through, and locked eyes with Jiang, who returned a smile.
“Well, well, well,” he began, pausing for emphasis between every word, “what do we have here?”
He pointed a finger at Jiang and a small fire bolt shot off, striking directly between Jiang’s eyes. Jiang smiled and took another puff of his cigarette, moving his hand away and opting to leave it in his mouth this time. It was about halfway consumed, though he had not bumped off the ash.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A girl screamed from behind Jiang as the fire struck him. He felt a warm body press into the back of his cloak. The crowd had begun crushing up against him in an attempt to protect themselves as much as possible from the black-haired butcher whose cold-gleaming eyes had caught sight of the lambs waiting behind Jiang’s back for the slaughter.
Jiang flashed another smile and the man pointed at him again. A firebolt shot at the cigarette, but Jiang caught it in his fingers, pinching it as it absorbed into his skin. The man raised an eyebrow and broke eye contact with Jiang, pupils moving a few inches upward as Jiang recognized his new targets.
The center of the courtyard was torn up, the bricks scattered and destroyed haphazardly, revealing dirt beneath. Mud had formed in many places, remnant of ice and blood. It smoked all over.
The left corner near Jiang had begun screaming, some other number of butchers at last coming for the lambs that had cowered there. Fireballs rained down from the soldiers that protected the sanctity of the one rule of the game. Shouts echoed from the few who dared confront front-facing death, but they quickly fell silent. There wasn’t anything to be done by these lambs against their butcher. They could run into fire or accept the knife’s edge, but there weren’t any other options for them.
How lamentable it was to go to sleep or seclusion in an attempt to ascend, only to be met with such a death at the end of the process. They had only wanted to stave off death one more year, one more day, one more second, and now they were forced to choose the means. This was what it meant to become a cultivator, Jiang knew. You either lived a life dedicated totally toward power and immortality, or your life was cut short by those who would, often both.
The far edge of Jiang’s back-right corner also began screaming, some other butcher replacing the black-haired one before him. Jiang spit out his cigarette with some third or so remaining. It smoldered on the ground as he stood, brushing the dust off his backside with both hands.
“Ther—” Jiang began saying, but failed, coughing instead. The man laughed.
“What was that? Are you so pathetic?”
Jiang didn’t feel any embarrassment over the state of his lungs. “There’s nothing I can do to stop you from killing these sheep.” he began as the tension built behind him.
“But there’s nothing you can do to kill me, either.”
The man laughed maniacally, raising his arms up to the sky as a small orange dot formed overhead, quickly growing.
“Say your prayers, children, because the sun above your heads is setting for the last time.”
Jiang smiled in return.
“If you’ll spare them, I’ll let you live, or at least the girl.”
None of them knew which girl he was referring to.
「When the sun sets as we all say goodnight」
「The children play and scream until the end」
「Knowing all the while that bedtime cometh」
What a patronizing scripture, Jiang thought, calling us children while himself a child.
Jiang stood up straight.
“Your fire can’t hurt me.”
Jiang could feel the trembling of the girl behind him slow. He knew that some half or more of those behind his back were fleeing. Most would die whether they left or stayed as the other butchers in the corners made their way toward the center. He didn’t have the power to protect them all— he didn’t have the power to stop the small star from forming over the black-haired blood-covered butcher’s head.
Jiang stepped forward anyway and a small number followed. He crushed the cigarette under his heel and kept walking slowly forward. The black-haired butcher didn’t react— he didn’t need to— Jiang wasn’t posing any threat. So what if he came forward? The butcher was faster. So what if he brought friends? They would all die.
The fireball was so hot that Jiang could feel the trembling purple-haired girl part ways from him, unable to withstand the heat any longer. He took one step back and felt her again. There were about ten feet still remaining between him and the star. Jiang smiled and raised open arms.
「My path doesn’t mean survival,」
The butcher threw his arms forward like tossing a beachball.
「It doesn’t mean protecting others,」
All darkness was blasted away as if the heat and light of the sun itself approached.
「It means conquering life.」
Jiang smiled, arms still open to embrace the coming of the sun, ready to embrace his encroaching death by incineration.
「And it means conquering death.」
He could feel the girl slumping down, her trembling so high-pitched it could no longer be detected. Jiang knew there were others behind him preparing for the end. Even if they fled now there was no way for them to escape. It was almost too powerful a technique for this field of play. He was sure even those on the other side of the arena must have been forced to shield their eyes and protect themselves from the coming of a star.
「The conquest of life means the embrace of death and the triumph over it.」
Jiang closed his eyes but the orange-red impression of a star still blinded him through their thin skins. He smiled and the star made contact with his face and upper chest. Jiang could feel his beard-hair singing. He allowed it to burn, the void receding from it.
And in that moment of climax where the butcher thought he would destroy all his foes and render the needed number of deaths there were none. Light gave way to darkness and Jiang continued smiling, opening his eyes and embracing the terrified gaze of the would-be reaper. Jiang’s eyes glowed with the would-be fire of a has-been star.
“At last, a clean shave,” he mused triumphantly.
His eyebrows and hair were still intact. So were his clothes.
