First Battle, First Display of Prowess
On the day the age-group tournament began, the Martial Arts Square was packed with people.
The turnout was several times greater than at the exchange meet three years earlier. Flags fluttered across the stands, the colors representing the various academies mingling into a sea of brilliance. The contestants lined up below the platform in their age groups, waiting for their matches. The eight-year-olds stood at the very front, every one of them holding their head high and chest out, trying to look taller than they were. Long Tian stood among them, neither the tallest nor the shortest, his old blue-cloth shirt looking especially plain amid the brand-new competition uniforms.
Zhao Xiaopang wore a gray event volunteer's vest and carried a tea tray back and forth behind the contestants' area. Whenever he passed Long Tian, he would quickly slip a piece of candy into his palm, whisper, "You can do it," and dash off again. Chen Hao waited with the thirteen-year-olds. He nodded to Long Tian across the sea of people, then looked back toward the platform.
The draw results were posted soon enough. There were forty-eight contestants in the eight-year-old group, competing one-on-one in an elimination tournament. Long Tian's first opponent was named Wei Lan, whose Martial Soul was a Wind Blade Crane. Wei Lan's Soul Power was at level eleven, a good deal lower than Long Tian's. By rights, Long Tian had a strong chance of winning, but he fought with great care-without going all out, he used only Light Bullet's ordinary power and Shadow Stealth's basic interference to force Wei Lan off the platform. Wei Lan was still dazed upon landing, seemingly unable to understand how the match had been lost.
His second opponent was a little stronger, a level-twelve Fire Lizard Soul Master whose Martial Soul had a burning effect. Long Tian activated Yin-Yang Body Protection and took two tongues of flame head-on. The light membrane dispelled the heat completely, leaving even the hem of his clothes unscorched. While the Fire Lizard Soul Master was stunned, a shadow coiled around his feet, and Long Tian sent him off the platform with a strike of his palm.
Two consecutive victories were nothing unusual in the eight-year-old group. What truly caught the attention of the experienced spectators in the stands were his two Mixed-Color Soul Rings and his Martial Soul's form, which he had never fully revealed. People began whispering among themselves: "That child's Soul Rings are the wrong color." "Where did those Two-Color Soul Rings come from?" "What backwater is Bluestone Town's academy from?"
Zhao Xiaopang carried his tea tray through the crowd, his ears pricked up. After overhearing a few of these remarks, he quietly committed them to memory and ran back to repeat them to Long Tian. Long Tian only smiled and paid them no mind.
In the third round, he faced a tough opponent.
Her name was Murong Qing. She was nine years old, with the Mystic Frost Butterfly as her Martial Soul and Soul Power at level fifteen. She was a year older than Long Tian, her Soul Power was at the same level, and her Martial Soul was a rare ice-type mutation. As she stood on the platform, her entire body was shrouded in a layer of cold white vapor. Two Soul Rings revolved slowly around her, giving off a dry chill like morning frost in the depths of winter.
When Long Tian stepped onto the stone platform, Murong Qing sized him up from a few paces away. Her gaze swept over the Mixed-Color Soul Rings at his feet, and the corner of her mouth twitched slightly. "Two-Color Soul Rings? Do you have a Mixed-Birth Martial Soul?"
"Something like that." Long Tian offered no further explanation.
At the referee's command, Murong Qing moved first. She spread her arms, and her Mystic Frost Butterfly Martial Soul condensed into two translucent ice wings over her back. Her First Soul Skill, Frost Blade, sent three ice-blue edges shooting from her fingertips at three points on Long Tian's body. Long Tian gave his left wing a slight beat and dodged, then his right wing flashed gold as he pulled away to open the distance. His First Soul Ring lit up, and he returned fire with three golden Light Bullets.
Murong Qing's movements were exceptionally nimble. With a slight flutter of her butterfly wings, she glided out of the Light Bullets' path, and all three missed. But as she moved, her foot suddenly caught-Shadow Stealth had long been lying in wait against the ground, and it wrapped around her ankle the instant she stepped down. Frosty vapor surged from the top of her foot, freezing and shattering a layer of the shadow, but the snag had already checked her movement for an instant.
Long Tian seized that instant, both wings bursting into motion at once. Golden and black streams of light propelled him to Murong Qing's side, and he struck down with a blast from his right palm, packed with Soul Power. Murong Qing turned sideways and blocked with her frost wing. With a boom, ice chips flew everywhere. She was pushed back three or four steps, and fine cracks appeared along the edge of her frost wing.
"Not bad." Once Murong Qing regained her footing, she showed no anger. Instead, interest flared in her eyes. She brought her palms together and abruptly unleashed her Second Soul Skill-Dance of the Frost Butterflies! Hundreds upon thousands of ice-blue butterfly phantoms burst from around her and danced across the sky. Each carried a bone-piercing chill, engulfing Long Tian like a blizzard that had descended without warning.
The ice butterflies struck Yin-Yang Body Protection, and a layer of white frost quickly formed on the surface of the light membrane. Long Tian felt his Soul Power draining rapidly-each butterfly phantom the protection withstood cost him a trace of Soul Power. Murong Qing's move was a sustained attack over a wide area; if the fight dragged on, he was certain to lose. I have to end this quickly.
He took a deep breath in a gap between the butterfly phantoms and opened the gates of his First and Second Soul Rings at the same time. The two streams of Light and Dark Qi undergoing refinement in his dantian abruptly fused for an instant, and chaos-colored light surged from his dantian into both wings! A hazy chaos-colored halo enveloped the edges of his golden and black wings, and as he beat them, the fused power crushed swathes of ice butterflies around him. Riding that momentary burst, Long Tian broke through the butterfly phantoms. Golden light condensed into a blade on his right wing, chaos color clinging to it, and he slashed down!
Murong Qing's pupils contracted sharply. She drove her frost wings with all her strength, crossing them to block-but the instant the chaos wing blade struck, the ice wings shattered! Fortunately, Long Tian held back thirty percent of his strength at the last moment. The wing blade grazed past Murong Qing's shoulder and struck the stone platform by her feet, cutting a half-inch-deep scorch mark into it with a bang. A thin layer of black frost coated its edges.
Murong Qing stood where she was as fragments of her ice wings pattered down from her shoulders. She glanced down at the small piece of cloth shaved from her shoulder, then at the scorch mark by her feet. After a moment's silence, she raised her hand and conceded.
"There was something strange about your last attack," she said quietly as she passed Long Tian on her way off the platform. "It wasn't simply light or darkness, but you don't seem to have full control of it yet. Let's have another match when we get the chance."
Long Tian nodded. "All right."
Below the platform, Zhao Xiaopang had already shouted himself hoarse. The tea tray he carried was empty, and he had long since drunk all the water in the bowls himself. Chen Hao glanced over from the thirteen-year-olds' waiting area in the distance. The corner of his mouth lifted, then he suppressed it again.
With his third-round victory, Long Tian advanced to the final four of the eight-year-old group.
After the day's matches ended, Long Tian and the other two returned to the inn. Zhao Xiaopang went downstairs and brought up three bowls of hot noodle soup. Long Tian sat at the table eating, his mind still replaying the day's fight. His final attack had used the fused power of light and darkness that he was still refining. It was indeed much more powerful than a simple light wing blade, but it also consumed a great deal, and the fusion was highly unstable. If it had lasted another two breaths, that mass of chaos might have dispersed on its own. He needed more practice to make the fusion last longer and hold more steadily.
After finishing his noodles, he climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged to cultivate as usual. When he reached for the rolled-up drawing at his chest, he suddenly stopped-the edge of the drawing was different. Before going out that day, he had folded it and placed it inside the inner layer of his robe, together with his token and jade pendant. Its edges should have been flat. But now the lower right corner of the drawing was slightly curled, as though someone had unfolded it to look and folded it back again. There was an extra crease.
Long Tian pulled out the drawing and examined it carefully. He confirmed that none of its contents were missing or damaged, but the new crease was certainly suspicious. People had been coming and going around him constantly in the waiting area during the day. He had been jostled twice, Zhao Xiaopang had bumped into his chest once, and someone had turned back his collar to check his identity plate when his cultivation was inspected before the matches-someone could have tampered with it at any of those times.
He folded the drawing again and tucked it close against his body, inside the innermost layer of his clothing, then pressed against the hard edge of his token. Someone had gone through his belongings but had not taken the drawing. That meant the person had not wanted to intercept the information, only to see what he had.
Who was it?
Outside the window, the night hung heavy, and scattered lights glowed through windows across the city. Long Tian gazed at the hazy outlines of a stretch of roof tiles outside and suddenly remembered the note Old Chen had sent through someone that evening. It contained only five words: "The file is back in storage. But the copy hasn't been returned." He had burned the note that same day and washed the ashes into the drainage ditch in the inn's rear courtyard.
The original file had already been returned, but someone had made a copy beforehand. Old Chen did not know who had that copy now. Neither did Long Tian. But since that person had looked through his drawing without taking it, the purpose was clear-to determine how much information Long Tian had in his possession.
He closed his eyes and sank into his dantian. Three Soul Rings revolved slowly, their gates more than halfway open. The Light and Dark Qi undergoing refinement subtly mingled and separated again. As he practiced, he went over every stranger he had come into contact with that day, from beginning to end. The lamplight flickered on the tabletop, illuminating his frowning profile and casting a long shadow on the wall behind him.