Year 663 of the Stable Era,

  Twenty-second day of the eleventh month

  Five minutes past the start of the 6th Inner Hour

  The two disciples circled, each probing the other in their own ways.

  Chao Ren maintained the approach, doing his best to remain within two steps of striking distance. Close enough to capitalize on an opportunity, while still leaving enough room to avoid whatever technique his opponent might unleash.

  Lim Yuze, on the other hand, seemed determined to leave at least a third of the stage between the two, clearly opposed to the idea of their fight escalating to close quarters quite so soon. He wove around the mismatched tiles of the arena, his path erratic as he familiarized himself with the terrain. He had an elegant cultivator’s spade in his hand, the silver of its curved and crescent blades balancing each other on either end of the tool turned weapon.

  For this fight the arena’s usually pristine gray stone was broken up by rough brown, as a smattering of the smooth stone grid had shifted to loose soil. An accommodation for the Thousand Grain Pavillion’s style, to prevent what Shen had referred to as “the tournament technique fallacy”. Quite a few techniques, such as those related to plants, relied upon ordinary environments to function, a situation that meant that the supposedly “fair” neutrality of well-maintained stone ring was actually inherently stacked against them.

  That was not to say that a water user would be granted a pond or a cultivator from a true desert sand, as circumstances could easily place a cultivator away from such a resource, but for dirt…well, that was a common enough thing that an exception could be made for it.

  In a more elaborate tournament the arena might feature a more complex field, to test a cultivator’s ability to adapt their techniques to less sterile environments. Bao had seen jade slip fights of miniature towns, bamboo groves, and mountain passes—even a full pier, complete with ocean and beach in one particularly impressive instance. But for a match between early disciples, in something as trivial as the New Disciples Exhibition, dirt on a flat field was the most they were likely to see unless the Sect had something up their sleeves for the finalist rounds.

  The two combatants’ paths began to spiral, their asymmetrical movements setting them along a pendulum’s path that wove back and forth across the arena. Almost like a pair of drifting leaves, dark and light green robes flitting along their paths.

  “Get on with it!” someone in the audience yelled, as though their sheer annoyance would allow their words to pierce the sound array isolating the fighters from the outside world. Bao almost considered glaring at them, before realizing that the gesture would be about as effective as their shouting.

  Suddenly, Chao Ren flicked his staff to the side. Its butt skidded along the ground, a moment before a tangle of vines burst forth just to the left of its arc. He advanced to strike in three quick steps, dipping past another sudden eruption of greenery as he did.

  “Ah, tricky,” Shen said, rubbing his chin. “He surreptitiously dropped some seeds for a trap, but Chao Ren caught on to him before they could burrow too deep. A good trade, to be able to make his opponent waste his qi on a failed attempt.”

  “Maybe not,” Lee Han interrupted. “I think it might have been a double—ah, never mi—"

  He was cut off as Lim Yuze made his next move, throwing a handful of seeds at Chao Ren just as he drew within striking distance. His staff rose for another deflection, but as he did the loose seeds sprang apart from each other, their disparate vines weaving themselves into a net midair. It stretched almost ten feet in diameter, far too large to simply swat aside and too wide to evade.

  Unable to dodge, Chao Ren clenched his staff as he committed to his action. He twirled its end in tight, rapid circles, catching the center of the net as he furiously spun his arms. Faster and faster the staff twirled as he turned with it, his footwork working to maintain its momentum. By the end the net was wrapped around his staff like the gossamer of a sugar stick, forming a thick, unsightly lump about the size of the children that would typically order such a sweet.

  He swept his arm straight as he halted his spin, throwing the bundled vines to the side as Lim Yuze struck. The haft of the spade met Chao Ren’s staff with the clack of wood on wood as he intercepted it before its blade could reach him, its tassel flicking towards his eyes in an attempt to blind him as the curved crescent moon of its back blade rose for a second strike. Chao Ren backed off just in time to preserve his vision, his staff clacking against Yuze’s again as the two began to trade blows in earnest.

  Bao bit his lip as the two matched each other for a further five strikes, before Lim Yuze attempted another surprise attack—a quick low kick that swept towards Chao Ren’s extended right foot just as he deflected the spade’s wide blade.

  His friend deftly blocked it with his left shin, using the movement to step into his opponent’s guard and deliver a spectacular shoulder check that sent Yuze reeling. The butt of his staff met Yuze’s stomach as he knocked him on his back, the hand of the Thousand Grain disciple flailing towards the weapon as he fell.

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  “Damn! He’s going for it again,” Lee Han said, leaning in as Yuze’s free hand clenched into a hand sign, his first two fingers extended towards Chao Ren as his qi flared. “That’s the move that he used on nunchuck guy in Round 4.”

  Fuck, he was right, Bao thought to himself, as verdant wisps of qi, pale against Yuze’s bright green robes, rose from the disciple’s form. An aggressive move, to use his qi so roughly, but clearly a risk that he’d decided was worth taking. The seed he’d attached to the end of Chao Ren’s staff swelled in response, surging forwards like a kudzu vine. The crowd roared around him as they sensed a turn in the fight, drowning out his worried gasp as they did.

  In seconds the vines were around Chao Ren’s arms, thin tendrils redoubling into thick coils as Shen sighed, the sound loud to Bao as it slipped between the lull of the two waves of cheers.

  “Ah, a shame,” the young dragon lamented, leaning back as he took another long gulp from his gourd. “That was probably his worst move there.”

  He spoke with such certainty that Bao almost felt his heart sink for a moment, before his brain recognized the tinge to his voice.

  “Yup,” Lee Han agreed, a wide grin stretching across his lips as Bao fully realized Shen’s implication. “If there’s one thing that guy’s not going to beat Chao Ren in, it’s qi control.”

  The vines wrapped around Chao Ren’s arms shuddered, violently writhing as their tips began to smoke. The air began to ripple as the two cultivators’ will clashed, streams of mist-like qi swirling into whirlpools. Unlike the streaming mist rising from his opponent ‘s body, Chao Ren’s qi was almost invisible. Not a speck escaped his skin, save for the twin currents of white steam streaming from his nostrils with each breath.

  Lim Yuze’s eyes narrowed, his shovel clattering to the stone as his other hand rose, his fingers interlocking into a tight hand sign as his knuckles went white. His left leg slid back, bracing himself against the force that he was pushing into the technique that was struggling to envelop his foe. His lips began to move in a chant that Bao couldn’t hope to hear over the rising racket around him, clearly unwilling to let Chao Ren escape now that he was so clearly within his grasp.

  His qi surged as his lips moved faster and faster, but the vines only continued to writhe, falling from Chao Ren’s staff one by one as they failed to gain any further purchase. Worse, he was starting to lose ground, the bright streaks of green lighting his dark nephrite robes dulling to a dry brown as the flaring qi faded like the last fleeting embers of a firework.

  Veins bulged along Yuze’s forearms as Chao Ren forced the vines back to their roots, until at long last the lump of seed at the end of his staff fell to the ground, trailing the mane of its desiccated growth as it did. Bao could swear that he could hear the sound of its limp thumpff as it hit the stone over the stunned silence of the crowd, as hundreds of cultivators gave the display the respect it deserved. He hadn’t even noticed the silence as it had fallen, too caught up in the moment that they’d been sharing to remember to react.

  Lim Yuze was one of them, his eyes still locked onto the fallen seed as Chao Ren struck. One of his arms barely rose in the first movement of a block as the staff connected with his side—far, far slower than it needed to be.

  A bit belatedly Bao realized that he must have been supplementing his physique with qi as the staff connected again. A prudent strategy to cover for a weakness, but a useless measure now that he was clearly suffering from the backlash of overextending himself so much on his last technique.

  With a quick one-two strike Chao Ren knocked his opponent’s arms aside with the same ease and motion as sweeping leaves from the ground, leaving Yuze completely open for another thrust to the kidney that sent the green-robed disciple stumbling. As he did, he leapt into a flying kick to the stomach, following him to the ground with his staff raised for a devastating downwards strike to the skull.

  Yuze rose just in time to slam his head into the frozen end of Chao Ren’s staff, colliding with the length of wood with the exact same sort of outcome that the referee had been attempting to prevent by halting the weapon. The crowd ‘oofed’ as he fell back, clutching his head as his mouth moved in the prayerlike repetition of a swear. The referee had the decency to look a little embarrassed by his mistake, moving Chao Ren’s staff back with his technique as his partner hurriedly announced the victor of the round.

  “I knew he could do it!” Lee Han cheered, smugly rising to his feet as Bao clapped along with Li Lee and Shen. “Ah! Move it, move it! I need to just…get…out of here!” The tiger hurriedly pushed past his friends, rushing back towards the gambling booth while the majority of the audience was still too preoccupied with applauding the winner as he bowed to his opponent before fleeing the stage.

  “And a good job doing it too,” Shen agreed, laughing as Lee Han sprinted up the stairs. “He preserved a lot of his qi, using the weakness in his opponent’s comprehension to distort the technique the way he did. It took far less for him to defy than it took his opponent to attempt to oppress, which was ultimately the cause for his downfall.”

  “And here’s to a Teal Mountain Finish!” Li Lee shouted, finally taking his seat as the last wave of cheering finally broke into the discordant murmur of dozens of different conversations about the outcome of the match. Bao laughed, something clattering to the ground as he did.

  Ah, his rice. In the thrill of it all, he had almost forgotten that it was there. Even more inedible now than it had been at the start of the match. He swept the fallen grains and cold, stiff shrimp into his wooden bowl, sighing as he did.

  “I’m going to go get something else to eat,” he said as he rose, already scanning the different food booths to tell which would have the shortest lines. He still had two more bowls of shrimp fried rice left in the day, and he was hungry for more besides that. “Anyone else want anything while I’m up?”

  “I’ll take some tea,” Li Lee said, passing him a flask. “I ran out a bit ago. And maybe a few of those buns that Lee Han had. They smelled good.” He massaged his leg as he looked over at the lines forming around the stalls, and then back at the seats again.

  “Don’t worry, I can watch the seats while you’re up,” Shen said, his loong tail stretching from the end of his robes as Li Lee rose to leave, bowing in thanks to him as he did. “I’ve been up and around all day, so I could use a bit of time off my feet.”

  “Thanks Shen,” Bao said, as the young dragon sprawled over across their stretch of bench, lazily taking another drink from his gourd as he used the full length of his side to secure their seats.

  “Just grab me something crunchy,” he replied, shooing him away as he closed his eyes for a short nap.