IV

Free-For-All

“There it is,” Han Long whispered, taken aback by the sight, “the natural spirit essence.”

The spring of fire Qi looked like a small puddle of water. Its smooth surface reflected a version of the sky aflame. Scorched ground surrounded the epicenter from which heavy smoke rose high along with traces of Qi. It condensed behind the clouds where a fire in the shape of a bird watched its nest warily.

A natural spirit essence is born in a place where no cultivator or beast can reach it. It requires both time and an abundant amount of compressed Qi for it to mature. Once it gains a sliver of sentience, it joins the world as an infant, seeking out sustenance like any other living being. On the day of its emergence, it’d take note of the first sentient life it came across. That’d become its foundation, the nature of its being, and the future of its growth, as it tries to imitate what it seeks to become.

We’d found it on the third day of the trial, and not too soon, it seemed. The fake-bird stayed hidden behind the clouds, drawing large circles and flying out of our sight as it gathered more Qi from its surroundings. A spectacle to observe, but it was a common distraction tactic of its kind. Its essence, the core of its being, lay within the spring until it fully matured.

“What do we do now, Brother Shin?” Li Zhun joined Han Long in ogling the essence from afar.

“Let’s wait, for now,” I said. It wasn’t much of an original idea. We set up camp, waiting for nothing to happen like many of the others who were hidden within the shadows. We’d noticed at least two other groups and no one wanted to be the first to enter the clearing. In the end, I came up with the idea to meet each group separably. We'd hold a few duels in good conscience to settle this with the least possible casualties, and offer them a good result in return. But any idea I could've had became redundant at sunset.

“You may leave now,” a group of three strolled into the clearing as the voice echoed strong, undoubtedly backed by Qi, “this natural spirit essence already belongs to the Scarlet Flame Sect."

Two of them wore the scarlet colors of their sect whereas the third one, an elderly man, didn’t quite fit in with them. One of the two sect members sat in front of the puddle, as if it was already his, readying himself for the process without delay.

“Has your sect fallen that far?” From the shadows, another voice rang out, indignant. I wasn’t sure this time whether the man had strong lungs or likewise Qi at his disposal. “You won’t get away with this! Breaking the rules and going behind the back of the Guild? You should be ashamed!”

“I don’t see anyone stopping us,” the girl from the Scarlet Flame Sect said, smirking confidently and unashamed as she added, “for your information, we’ve met this kind senior only recently. Elder Chen joined the trial a mortal like anyone else and he is merely repaying a favor of ours.”

A blatant and daring lie. Chen flared his prowess, solidifying his presence to those able to see it. The earthen Qi gathering around him placed him at least at the third level of Qi-Gathering. Why was the overseer allowing this? How had he joined the trial in the first place? The implications left the clearing quiet, except for a few rustling leaves. The first had begun to leave in defeat, but it wasn’t a conclusion everyone agreed on. One young man, in particular, stood out.

“N-No!” He shouted. I spun around, stunned as I saw him enter the clearing.

“Li Zhun, you…” the words failed me. Han Long stuck to the foliage behind him, reaching out with his arm in a pointless gesture. I looked next to me and back at them. When had either of them left my side?

“Y-You can’t do this!” He said with a teetering voice,” t-this is unfair! We all have a right to compete for the essence, you can’t just claim it for yourself!”

“We can’t?” The cultivator chuckled, stepping towards Li Zhun who flinched back. Regret doused his face, but he refused to back down.

“That idiot,” I cursed under my breath. I was already willing to give up on the essence; what was he doing? The risk to their safety wasn’t worth it. As if to put truth to my thoughts, the cultivator grabbed him by the neck with ease, raising him up. His arm moved in a throwing motion and my gaze followed his trajectory towards the spring. He wanted to make an example of him. I dashed out with haste, reaching them before he threw Li Zhun.

“I apologize for his rash actions, senior practitioner,” I held him back by his arm, “please, forgive him.”

“B-Brother Shin!” Li Zhun stammered with tears in his eyes; his hands clutched into tiny fists, “w-we can’t give up now!”

I tightened my grip on Chen’s arm and he did a double-take, studying me with interest. However, his patience was running thin, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him if he put his mind to it.

“If I say we back down,” the tone of my voice left no room for dissent, “we back down, Li Zhun.”

“No! I refuse to!” I was bewildered by his outcry. His voice barely functioned and his body trembled, begging him to stop, yet he pushed on. Courage? No, it was sheer madness. What demon had possessed him?

“Li Zhun,” I said, gritting my teeth and I slapped him across the cheek. He turned to me, shocked, “listen to me, we-”

It all happened at once. The arrow flew straight, striking the shoulder of Chen’s raised arm, and he dropped Li Zhun as a result. Another arrow burrowed itself deep into the back of my left arm, bringing me to my knees. I drew a breath in pain, casting my contorted face downwards where I noticed two small, round objects. Li Zhun was already running away, carried by his fear as my eyes widened. Too small as I knew them, but they sizzled as firebombs would.

I jumped for distance without thinking. The explosion that followed shook me to my core, assaulting all of my senses. I had no idea how far I flew until I felt the echo of the ground reverberating through my bones. My ears rang with a shrill sound and I could barely make out what was happening from my tottering vision. I stumbled to my feet, looking around me in a daze. It took a long moment for everything to sink in.

Chaos had ensued; the explosion marking the beginning of it all. About a dozen people scattered around the clearing, drawing their weapons in blood. The disciples from the Scarlet Flame Sect weren’t spared from the fighting. Li Zhun was among the fray, waving his sword like an amateur on a limping leg. Han Long was next to him, wielding his knife less than he did his fists. Meanwhile, the cultivator Chen, whose presence had previously ensured peace and order, now focused his gaze entirely on me, dripping with animosity.

“You were distracting me,” he said, his hand clutching the arrow around its shaft, “I applaud you for your boldness. That was a convincing act.”

I had an arrow of my own stuck in my arm, proving him wrong, but he seemed in no mood to heed my opinion. When I probed my wound, the arrow fell out almost on its own, lacking barbs. Chen was worse off. He broke the shaft in half, unable to pull the arrowhead out. I swallowed one of my healing pills and he did similarly. It staunched the bleeding, but it helped nothing against the foreign substance I found coursing through my veins. The poison weighed heavily on my limbs. I couldn’t expel it while focusing on the cultivator who approached me at the same time.

“Aren't you supposed to protect them?” I tried, nodding to the disciples fighting behind him. He wanted none of it. Rage had evicted his mission from his mind. He felt humiliated, and that might be worse than provoking any beast.

Talking was pointless now so I went on the attack first. We both lacked the proper use of one arm, but the poison seemed to affect him worse than it did me. His movements trailed behind my own, too slow for my fist that shot for the spot beneath his ribs. He took the brunt of the attack without being fazed and returned the gesture. I dodged the slow swing brimming with enough power to burrow me beneath the ground.

Our further exchanges played out the same. He couldn’t catch me, yet none of my attacks left any lasting damage behind and my hands throbbed in pain from each impact. It was a horrible match-up for me. His wall of earthen Qi draped over him like a coat, protecting him from the force of my strikes. His control over it was impeccable for his cultivation stage.

My concentration wavered for a brief moment when I saw Li Zhun about to be slain. Han Long rammed himself into the assailant, barely in time, almost tumbling into the spring of fire with his victim. I sighed in relief, dodging the blow coming toward me. The two of them remained battered and wounded around the spring, panting in exhaustion as the brawl continued. How long could they hold out?

I grabbed the knife off my hip, aiming for Chen’s throat in one swift motion. A bit too hasty, I realized; the opening was bait. A thin, concentrated layer of his Qi formed like a blade of his own to meet my attack, and my knife shattered in half. The act left him exhausted while I lost any edge I could have had over him. In a last-ditch effort, I target his eyes with my fingers shaped like a spear. They clashed against another wall of Qi still as hard as stone, almost fracturing my bones. Neither of us was getting anywhere. I was a blunted knife, hammering away on the shell of a turtle, entering a battle of attrition as the poison circulated through our veins.

The clamor of steel around us was silenced by the cry of a bird. It was a poor imitation of a beast, sounding like an infant as it spread across the small battlefield. The weak cry was tinged with fear. My heart drummed in alarm and the same dismay was visible on my opponent’s face. Fire descended like feathers, foreshadowing the arrival of the natural spirit essence as it swooped down. Both Chen and I aborted our fight as if we’d agreed upon it, dashing towards our companions. It turned out, I’d been wrong in my earlier assumption about the importance he gave to them.

“Han Long, Li Zhun, get away from there!”

Someone had messed with the essence’s core and we both knew the consequences of that. I reached out to them, but they were too far away; only Chen made it in time to the disciples. The bird born of fire descended, plunging into its nest. The puddle throbbed once and I motioned my body through the martial arts technique, knowing I had no other choice. Instead of saving my trump card for the deciding moment of our fight, I struck the ground before I could even complete the motions. It cracked into a shallow dent where I dropped down, offering the slightest protection.

The giant wave of fire howled past above me, sweeping through the entire clearing. I curled up into a ball within my ditch, writhing from the aftermath of my technique torturing my weakened body. My pathways burned like nerves on fire, highly oversensitive as the poison kept wreaking its havoc.

I waited, taking a few recovering breaths to ease the spasms before I crawled out on all fours. The fire had extinguished on its own, leaving smoking bodies burnt unrecognizable in its wake. Chen was smoldering on the ground, coated in soot. He coughed out mouthfuls of blood as he rolled over to the side. The disciples beneath him were unconscious, covered with searing-red wounds. They were in no condition to compete any further, nor was Chen who finally succumbed to his injuries.

I crept over the hot and charred earth, looking for survivors. I found none in my vicinity. Where are they? With each corpse I passed, unable to even make out their features, the dread welled up within me, building into a tower that threatened to smother me. I brought them here, the words echoed, I did.

“B-Brother Shin…” The familiar voice I thought impossible to hear again cleansed me of exhaustion as I started running. Crawling out under two bodies was Li Zhun. His leg was now broken. Some of his hair had burnt off, and the back of his body was burnt into a putrid yellow-red.

“Don’t move,” I held his head, putting the healing pill into his mouth. “Where is Han Long?”

“B-Behind…” he stammered in pain, looking straight at me.

The sword that struck me in the shoulder contained barely any strength, but it left a deep cut behind as the steel slit back out. I stifled the screaming pain within me, turning around to find Han Long. He was battered and bruised, adorned with wounds and burns. He could barely hold himself straight, leaning on his sword for support.

“You’re truly amazing, Brother Shin,” he said with a ragged breath. The robe he wore was a different one. Runes flickered off it with a dying light as they lost their protection. A spatial pouch poked out behind its torn fabric. “Even back when I was still a cultivator, I’d not have been able to carry out the same feats as you’ve done today…”

“You started it all,” I said as it dawned on me, clutching my new wound. The pill from earlier still worked, but not for long. I tried raising myself off the ground when my arm gave out beneath me. More poison had invaded my body and a much stronger version of it at that. I had neither the reserves nor the intact pathways to expel it.

“The poison is from the flame-tongue python,” Han Long said with a satisfied smile as he sunk to the ground, resting for a bit, “I can still produce fractions of it.

“I wouldn’t have done this,” he continued, looking at the essence with longing, ”if it wasn’t a spring of fire Qi. All I wanted was another python... Brother Li was a great aid, but it was thanks to you in the end. That makes two lives now, Brother Shin, that I owe you. Curse me all you want, you have the right, but this is my Will.”

He raised himself back up, grabbing his sword. I couldn’t move. Not even words could leave my mouth. Would he cut me down? Was that it?

“No!” Li Zhun jumped off his one remaining intact leg, ramming himself head-first into Han Long’s back. They tumbled to the ground, wheezing.

“I won’t let you!” Li Zhun screamed, throwing himself on top of Han Long. They entered a fierce struggle, slugging at each other with weak punches. When they had no more strength for that, they resorted to clawing and scratching. They bit each other, reached for the eyes, and pulled on hair with every fraction of strength left in them.

“You deceived me!” Li Zhun screamed through the scuffle, his eyes as green with envy as his dripping blood was red, “but the essence is mine! Mine! Don’t you hear it!?”

“Get off of me, you damn brat!” Han Long howled back with bloodshot eyes, his voice drowning in his obsession, “I’ve come too far to lose it now! I am its rightful owner! Everything will be different this time!”

I pushed the last remaining pill I had to the rim of my mouth, but my body failed me before that. It didn’t go over the edge of my lips and it dropped down to the ground. I watched them both, flailing at each other. Neither would stop until the other was down for good. They were mortals still, yet they fought with a will and grit like a true cultivator. It was hardly any different; be it tiny fists or mighty spells.

At that moment, I didn't know what to feel. Should I be furious at them? Sad? Hateful? Revengeful? Lay the fault with me or with them? My thoughts faded into the alluring dark when from some distant corner, a picture emerged in the form of a memory that engraved itself on the back of my sinking eyelids.

'Sometimes, my friend, I believe the path of immortality to be one of regression,’ the man said, staring into the distance. One by one, the foundations of the tower we stood upon fell to ruin. Slowly. We had not seen the cracks at first. Surely. Stopping it now was impossible. There was pain in him. Fear and regret. But most of all, acceptance. He turned to me, his face undecipherable, as he handed me the ball of light with a listless smile, and I fell to my knees, crying.

Familiar yet not; I lost sight of it all when I passed out at last.