Pure Jade Realm

The Pure Jade Realm was a realm of pure jade. Jade crystals sprouted from the ground like ferns, and some, the really old ones that’d been sucking qi since the dawn of time, grew to mountainous heights.

The highest peak of the realm, Xalaxia, looked like a cluster of giant broken pillars welded together, striking out at odd angles. Only one set of stairs dared to scale the emerald mass, meandering a route which might take months to trek—a route which crossed through three climes, one sunny, one shockingly windy, one snowy—to reach the top.

At this peak were two buildings: a Spirit Pavilion, and a dojo. And in this Pavilion sat the great lizardman warrior Calxx, Rank #6872 God in the Multiverse. The dojo was his. It was where he and his disciples lived: wearing plain cloth clothing, slurping bland soup meals. The only thing to do here was train, severed from the rest of society.

For Calxx knew that to be among the weak was to let weakness seep into your soul. The eagle does not consort with the sparrow. It was also why the great Houyi—Calxx’s hero—had exiled himself to his island at the edge of the Multiverse…

And if Calxx was to be great—as great as Houyi, he dared to hope—he, too, had to pare the softness from his soul!

Most Gods would be satisfied merely to be among the elites of the Multiverse. Not Calxx, and it was an attitude he drilled into his disciples too. Each day he pushed them until their bodies quit on them, stretched their minds past breaking, just as he expected of himself. For he knew complacency was the province of weak men. And Calxx was no weakling.

It was dumb luck that a certain request popped up, just as he was searching for his morning spar in the Spirit Pavilion.

[Incoming bout request.]

[Alias: Fuck me!]

[Rank: 7833?]

[Wager: 100 mid-grade Spirit Stones]

How… odd. Unnaturally high for a provisional ranking. Calxx blinked at it. And his lips slowly curled down. His first instinct was to decline. But something about the request grated at him. The Alias—what foolishness was this? The rank—provisional? And the wager, ridiculous!

It stank of rank fixing.

Every so a new profile popped up, colluded to fix matches, boost it to a high rank. Then the clown behind it could boast for the rest of his miserable life he’d squeezed into the top ten thousand.

It was an utterly unserious attitude toward the art and discipline of combat. As unserious as the alias this buffoon chose. And it rankled Calxx to his core.

[Accept!]

The world dissolved.

Empty arena. Standard fare. His enemy stood across: dragonkin. Calxx let his contempt show bare on his face.

“Have you no honor?”

The dragonkin blinked. “Not really, no.”

“So you admit it then.” Calxx scoffed. “I’ll not be party to your scheme. No amount of bribery will move me to throw this match. Your cheating ends here, villain!”

“…Eh? I think there’s been a misunderstanding—”

“On guard!”

With a deep-throated roar, Calxx charged. His hands weaved with silver-green light.

“Mana of Heaven!” he shouted, and thrust them forth. And a storm of arrowlike qi gushed from from his open palms. They flared wide, high, low. There was no escaping them. For Calxx did not aim to toy with his enemy, as a lesser man might. Calxx was a teacher, a master—and he would teach this fool the Jianghu had no place for unserious men!

Shadowy qi swirled before the enemy, and his qi ripped into it—

—and broke against it.

Calxx frowned. That had been no trifling attack. That had been a most serious attack, and only a serious defense could’ve warded it off…

“On guard!” He threw another hail of qi, this time fiercer, and it was swallowed just the same.

He frowned harder. This fellow was not as simple as he seemed. Calxx would not underestimate him. Underestimating one’s opponent was the province of foolish men. And Calxx was no fool.

“Whatever.” The enemy sighed. “You’d better last longer than the last guy.”

“Cease your jabbering, buffoon,” snapped Calxx. He settled into a crouch, qi gathering in his hindquarters, loading a blast—

Calxx’s vision went white. A searing pain shot up his eyes, bore hot red holes in his skull. He couldn’t stop the gasp from escaping.

It took him nearly ten seconds to blink the spots from his watering eyes.

What?!

Then he flinched.

For his enemy now stood not a stride from his face—he hadn’t so heard the man move!

And the look on his face was so… strikingly familiar…

It was exactly the look Xynthus used to give him.

A memory flashed to mind. Calxx, scarcely a teenager, scrawny and gangly with a big square nose. How mercilessly he’d been tortured for it. And the worst of them, big Xynthus, would pin him down and pinch his nose and slap up his face and laugh, and all his friends would too, in a circle spitting and kicking—“Calxx mushroom-face!”—“Calxx twig-arms!”

And little Calxx could only whimper, swearing to himself he would not cry--his hero Houyi wouldn't cry--but not being able to stop the tears. And then he'd rush home and practice his kung fu for hours on end, for though he had one-half the talent he swore to train twice as hard, train until his eyes were shot and his knuckles bled and his knees gave out, train until nothing in him was unbroken but his spirit, for that, he swore to himself, would never break. And how glorious a day it had been—still the highlight of his life, he was embarrassed to admit, when he finally vanquished Xynthus, when he saw the grudging respect in Xynthus’s friends faces, and emerged from that shed scale reborn—no longer Calxx mushroom-nose, no longer Calxx twig-arms, but Calxx the warrior— He caught a glimpse four black knuckles. His heart dropped.

And found himself flat on his bum.

Then the nightmare began.

…

…

…

Thirty minutes later Calxx stumbled out of the Pavilion. Tearing at his hair, he belted out a long, piercing screech.

“How?” He croaked. His hands were shaking. That—that fiend had hit him. He told him how he was going to hit him. And then he did. And again, and again, and blinded him with that dastardly light, and hit him again for good measure, and Calxx, straining to the very limits of his being, simply could not get out of the way.

It was like he was sixteen again. Pinned helpless under Xynthus’s mass struck over and over and over—

And that fear, that terrible panicking fear he thought he’d shed so many centuries ago surged in him again, choking him.

He would not cry. He swore to himself he would not cry. Crying was the province of weak men. Calxx was not weak.

He was not that child anymore.

…Wasn’t he?

His breathing came ragged. Suddenly it all seemed like a farce. This dojo at the peak of the world. His martial arts. This Pavilion. Even his students—how did he have the face to keep students?

“My kung fu…is worth nothing…” he choked.

He fell to his knees.

“Master?” His disciple Yunxi, looking concerned. The same disciple who’d been at his lecture but a day before, when preached the paramount importance of controlling one’s emotions.

“Do you have a bottle of spirits?” croaked Calxx.

Yunxi’s brows shot up. “No, master. I—I thought you told us to dispose of all material pleasures—”

Calxx wept.

***

Fae Realm

Mother was droning, and Princess Thimble was bored.

“When you get to my age,” mother said, “You’ll laugh at how foolish you were. How much of life is wasted on trifling things…”

The older mother got, the more she rambled. Thimble suppressed a yawn. It was always the same talk, too, ping-ponging between mother’s two favorite topics: how much better it was back in the day, and how silly and young and foolish Thimble was. The two seemed to go hand-in-hand.

“All I do is train, mother,” sighed Thimble. “I waste nothing. Need I remind you I’m scarcely past fifty, and already ranked among the most elite Gods in the Multiverse? The way you speak you’d think I was some pampered wastrel—frittering away the hours drinking and—I don’t know—chasing boys?”

Was that what girls her age did? Thimble wasn’t sure, mostly on account of the fact that she had no friends. Girls mostly hated her, since she was prettier than them, and more talented than them, and simply superior to them in every way, which—while she couldn’t empathize with, obviously—she could at least understand. That, and she was apparently an heinous bitch, which she gathered from the many times she’d been told so to her face. Which was a fair critique.

“Life is lived in the in-between,” said mother. And she nodded, looking satisfied, like she’d said something that meant something. “The rose blossoms of Pithia are in full bloom. This weekend—perhaps you’ll come see them with me? A two-day trip?”

“You know I’m up to my arse in training, right? If I’m to be the youngest Empyrean since Dorian I can’t waste time on such—such nonsense!” She felt a stab of guilt at mother’s crestfallen face.

“…Sorry,” she added lamely.

Mother sighed. “You will understand eventually. In my youth, I spent three hundred years with but one single-minded focus—trying to be the greatest sculptor since Yveltan—”

Oh Heavens not this story again—

“After my fourth time failing to breach his Dao of Creation I had what you might call an existential crisis. I saw that there are simply some heights you can never reach—I saw how empty it all was…” She chuckled. “How much I of life I’d sacrificed—and for what?”

“I see,” said Thimble dryly. Please, oh please, let a Roc crash in through the ceiling. Anything to spare her this conversation—

[Incoming bout request.]

[Alias: Fuck me!]

[Rank: 5028?]

[Wager: 300 mid-grade Spirit Stones]

“Got to go!” She leapt to her feet. “Training awaits!”

She leapt to her feet and dashed out, the sound of mother’s sigh trailing her as she went.

…

…

…

Thirty minutes later, Thimble limped in with bloodshot eyes and her silver hair in a disheveled frizz, looking like she’d been struck by lightning. One eye of hers wouldn’t stop twitching.

“…Mother,” she croaked. “Would you like to go see the rose blossoms this weekend?”

Mother beamed.

***

Dorian beamed. Four days into training and his skills were coming along quite nicely. His Flash Technique made for quite the devastating stunner—it wiped out sight and sound. It made a piercing blinding light like a solar flare, and the shriek that accompanied it was its equal in intensity, only in sound.

The Fist, too, was proving quite vicious. The neat thing about it was its versatility: it could go fast and sharp and explosive, brimming with fire qi—Rising Moon, or slow and brutally heavy, thick with dark qi—Falling Star, and he could switch between them so fast it made his punches impossible to predict!

As skills at the God level, they proved much more challenging to master than those of mortals. Laws were finicky bastards. Some Gods took a century to master one punch.

For Dorian? He figured these two weeks would be plenty.

***

[Incoming bout request.]

[Alias: Fuck me!]

[Rank: 4119?]

[Wager: 300 mid-grade Spirit Stones]

…

[Level-up!]

[Fist of Falling Star, Rising Moon]

Lv. 1 -> 2

…

[Incoming bout request.]

[Alias: Fuck me!]

[Rank: 3882?]

[Wager: 500 mid-grade Spirit Stones]

…

[Level-up!]

[GODKING HOUYI’S SOUL DESTROYING LIVER OBLITERATING NINETY-NINE HEAVENLY FISTS!]

Lv. 1 -> 2

Dorian winced. System—new name! [Supernova Fist.]

…

[Incoming bout request.]

[Alias: Fuck me!]

[Rank: 3061?]

[Wager: 700 mid-grade Spirit Stones]

…

[Level-up!]

[Supernova Fist]

Lv. 1->2

…

A troubling issue presented itself near the end of the week.

He had just two weeks to stack as many levels as he could on top of his Techniques. And the harder the fights got, the more his Techniques would grow.

Level 10 was when a Technique could be deemed ‘mastered.’ No way he was getting that far, but surely he could manage halfway, right?

Only… he was too suspicious-looking. A new account with a provisional ranking that high? Rank-fixers only got so far before being flagged by the system and pulled down—and he was well past when he should’ve been caught if he was cheating. It was very rare that true elites made alternate profiles, but not unheard of. It was the only explanation. Now he was getting ducked. Sometimes training match searches took three or four hours. Gerard and Sun and him had all agreed to meet up at the end of the week, so he could hardly drag them in as training dummies. Sun wouldn’t be much of a challenge anyways, and Gerard always was horrible at moderation. He simply could not spar—it was kill, or don’t fight at all. He wasn’t like Meng, who kept some semblance of control—always both Warlord and kindly grandmother at once.

When Gerard flipped, he flipped. And Dorian had no desire to face that monster again.

Hmm…

“Spirit of the Pavilion?”

“Yes?” said the Spirit.

“Can I eliminate the wager? Send out a challenge, say—if they win they get…. 100 high-grade Spirit Stones? And if they lose they pay nothing?”

Each difference of spirit stone ranking a hundredfold increase. Which meant he was offering 10,000 mid-grade spirit stones, for no cost. It was an eye-poppingly absurd number.

“You will need to provide the funds beforehand.”

It was all the money Gerard had given him. Most of the money they had.

“Done.”

Dorian rubbed his hands.

Not even the top-tier Gods would be able to resist, surely.

Give me a real challenge!

He got his wish.