Bing Yekong walked up to the stone table.
The one-eyed fat man raised his right eye to glance at him, his gaze lingering on the number tag at Bing Yekong's waist. Then he pulled out a stone slab from beneath the table and pushed it in front of him.
"New here? Signing up?"
"Signing up."
"First time?"
"First time."
The one-eyed fat man tapped the stone slab with a finger. "Press your fingerprint here and stake a drop of blood. Place the back of your number tag against the slab so I can register you."
Bing Yekong did as instructed. When he pressed his finger down, a dim light rippled across the slab's surface, as though it were absorbing some information from that drop of blood.
Then he flipped over his number tag and pressed the skull-with-a-sword-in-its-mouth design on the back against the slab. The slab gave off a faint hum.
The one-eyed fat man took back the slab and looked at it, then nodded. "9507. Registration complete. There are two matches today, the first in the morning and the second in the afternoon. Which one do you want?"
"The first."
"Fine." The one-eyed fat man made a note in his ledger and looked up at him. "Do you know the rules for entering the arena for the first time?"
"Tell me."
"Nine people per match. Only one gets to walk out alive. There's a referee in the arena. The referee only handles the start and the end, nothing in between—not even the dead. There are no rules and no restrictions. Use whatever methods you want, as long as you're the last one standing." The one-eyed fat man paused. "For a newcomer's first match, the opponents will be relatively weaker. But weaker is relative. Last month, a Soul Ancestor had