4/2/26 A/N: Is this a third chapter written in one day, you ask (and five in two days)? Why yes. Yes, it is. I do really appreciate all who stuck with me through my recent issues. I really think that challenge of the Writeathon was exactly what I needed to get back on track.
Writeathon Status: 5 Chapters, 10,213 Words
Benton had no time to wait for a response from Kang Ya-Ting. He had to decide immediately whether to attend the meeting or not. Both carried risk.
The meeting could be the prelude to an ambush. It was possible that his enemies knew he’d changed the signal emitted by the contingency rings and were using the meeting to lure him to the site of the attack instead.
Of course, if that were the case… so? He’d simply proceed with his plans for the ambush. It had to happen at some point, so what did it matter if it were triggered that day?
On the other hand, the meeting could be legitimate, and if it were, his enemies might use his lack of attendance as an excuse to levy sanctions against him and/or his sect. Which wasn’t acceptable.
There apparently was a downside to not attending and not one for attending, which made his decision pretty darn easy.
Since he’d been to the meeting location previously when he’d gifted the City Lord’s representative, Qiu ZhenKang, a sword, Benton could simply Teleport in. Thus, he waited until dawn broke before doing just that. Being punctual was, after all, polite, and it wouldn’t have been a good idea to show that he was at all worried by arriving early.
He popped into that back of the room and found all four committee members, including Kang Ya-Ting, seated at a table in the front. The elder gave him an apologetic head nod.
“Good,” the arrogant lady representing the Swift Blizzard Sect said, “the accused has arrived. We can finally get started.”
Benton watched without saying a word. Without hearing the charges, there was no reason to try to defend himself.
Besides, while he expected both the Swift Blizzard and Jade Chameleon to be against him, Kang Ya-Ting should be firmly on Benton’s side no matter what the others said. And Qiu ZhenKang was more like to be neutral than to take any other position. Considering that Benton had done nothing wrong to the best of his knowledge, the committee would likely be deadlocked two to two.
“The sect leader,” the Swift Blizzard Sect lady said, making the title sound like a curse, “is accused of tampering with the integrity of the Quinquennial Tournament by killing a Golden Core, his junior, in the arena outside of a sanctioned match or duel. This committee member demands justice in the form of reparations and both the sect leader and his disciple being made to publicly kowtow to myself as the primary representative of the aggrieved sect here in Sixth Flawless Flowing City.”
It took Benton a moment to unpack that statement. She was saying that his killing the cultivator who attacked his disciple somehow disrupted the tournament? And demanded he both pay monetarily for killing the lady but also submit to public humiliation?
Nope. No. Nyet. Non. No gracias. No way.
“Does the committee member’s motion have a second?” Qiu ZhenKang said.
“The Jade Chameleon Sect seconds.”
Benton raised his hand. “May this sect leader ask a question?”
“You may,” Qiu ZhenKang said.
Benton cupped his hands. “Elder Kang, if the sect leader of the Poison Claw Sect were facing this committee due to a similar accusation, how would he react?”
“Objection!” the Swift Blizzard Sect representative yelled.
“I’ll allow it,” Qiu ZhenKang said. “The sect leader has been called before the committee on short notice with no prior knowledge of the accusation against him. Leeway shall be granted in matters related to procedure.”
Benton nodded at the man.
“To answer the question,” Kang Ya-Ting said, “my sect leader would never submit himself to the authority of this group. If he were subjected to such an accusation, he would either laugh at the sheer audacity or lash out, killing every person at this table.”
It was as Benton suspected. Might made right. Period.
He cupped his hands toward the friendly elder. “Gratitude.”
Benton’s light hearted tone disappeared as he met the eyes of the Swift Blizzard Sect representative and the Jade Chameleon Sect representative in turn. “Counter proposal. I kill both of you, and we reconvene when your sects send your respective replacements. Then, I keep making my counter proposal until some eventual set of representatives accept. What do you say?”
The man from the Jade Chameleon Sect looked imploringly at this counterpart.
She let out a huff. “Fine. The Swift Blizzard Sect drops the accusation. You may go.”
For a moment, Benton seriously considered following through with his threat and killing her, but that wasn’t his way. If someone acted against him or one of his with violence, he took no issue with responding in kind. Words, however, were like water off a duck’s back to him. They were only so much noise, certainly not worth killing over.
On the other hand, her idiocy had woken him earlier than he’d wished and made him attend a meeting of a kangaroo court, so maybe…
No. Those still weren’t justifications for killing someone. He refused to let living in a cultivation world affect him that much.
***
Yang Xiu faced her opponent across the sands, Xue Yong from the Poison Claw Sect who had defeated his sect sister, Kang Lin, in the last round. It was the finals of the low Foundation Establishment division. If Yang Xiu won the match, she was the victor of the entire division. If she lost, she took second place.
She had no intention of taking second.
As soon as the match started, she pelted him with arrows, each impacting his shield. Which surprised her. She’d expected him to block as he was rapidly losing the battle for qi efficiency, which he couldn’t afford considering she likely had the bigger pool available.
He was not idle, however. Instead he built up a massive amount of qi, powering some technique.
Yang Xiu wasn’t worried. No matter how massive a blow he directed at her, there was no way he’d conquer her shield with a single shot. She kept up her barrage of arrows.
By the time he finally triggered his technique, he’d already been hit a dozen times, and between his shield and the amount of qi he poured into his attack, he had to be, as Master would say, running on fumes.
His technique didn’t turn out to be an attack, however. Instead, a swirling dome of Fire appeared above both of them.
For a moment, she was confused. The large semicircular mass of qi didn’t do anything to drain her qi. When he applied his movement technique to charge her, though, she understood.
The dome’s purpose was to keep her on the ground. It was apparently his answer to her Feather Fall, and unless she missed her guess, it was a new addition to his arsenal. Given the time it took for him to activate it and the massive amount of qi he had to use versus its effect, she would have bet against astronomical odds that he only had achieved Small Success with it.
With the match barely started, he’d already consumed a large portion of his qi, giving her an enormous advantage. There was also a problem, though. Like her previous opponent, it soon became obvious that Xue Yong was much faster than her. She only hit him once before he closed to within melee range, and she understood intuitively that there was no way that she could get the separation she needed to use her bow.
She activated her movement technique anyway, both to stall for time to think of a better solution and to make him continue expelling qi to keep up with her.
The issue was that he seemed to have no trouble doing so, continuously attacking her with his blade and triggering her defenses. Though her shield was tremendously efficient, it still required more qi to block than it did for her opponent to enhance his attack.
Would him using attacks and his movement technique exhaust his qi pool before her shield used up all of hers? Or was it possible that his stamina give out first, leaving her as the victor?
Yang Xiu couldn’t rely on either scenario coming to pass, not against one of the best martial artists on the continent. He surely knew his limits.
She had to determine an actual solution, a way to win instead of hoping he’d lose. The only place she could think to start was a mental inventory of her techniques.
- Slippery Sharp Arrow, her bread and butter, currently useless because she couldn’t gain enough separation.
- Automated Slippery Ice Shield, which was currently saving her tournament life.
- Feather Fall, which would be perfect if not for the dome preventing her from using it.
- Peerless Peering and Perception, it did give her some advantages in combat. If she watched closely enough, she could pick up on her opponent’s tells.
- Foundational Archery Essentials, Very useful… if she could get separation.
- Slippery Steps, again very useful, just not quite fast enough.
- Foundational Spear Essentials. Ugh. She’d only ever gotten it to Small Success. Trying to fight with it against a superior martial artist would be like a toddler taking on an adult.
Seven techniques. Zero obvious solutions to her problem.
Maybe she should simply give up. Her opponent, after all, wasn’t even an enemy, considering he belonged to an allied sect. And Master only wanted to see her do her best, which she had. There was no shame at all in second place. It would be the highest finish of any Rising Tide Sect member thus far.
Before she could act on those considerations, a voice from deep inside her surfaced, a leftover piece from the person she’d been.
“No,” it said.
The voice reminded her that she used to believe that it was never okay to give up. Since she’d finally achieved some measure of power, she had a responsibility to continue fighting until she either won or was defeated.
While it was difficult for her to pull up any emotions associated with the voice’s desire, it did give her just a little push, enough so that she looked over her list of techniques one more time.
Another question arose, but it came from a place of reason, not emotion. Why did she assume that the dome would prevent the use of Feather Fall? Just because an opponent tried something didn’t mean it would work, and she’d observed that his technique was at Small Success at best.
And what was the likelihood that he’d suddenly come across a top heaven grade scripture? Most probably, his technique wasn’t even earth grade. Pitting her Ice shield against a profound grade dome of Fire was likely to result in favorable results.
At worst, she’d try and fail, leaving her no worse off than she was already.
Yang Xiu bent her knees, activated her technique, and leaped. She ascended quickly, reaching the low dome fast. Fearlessly, she watched as her shield met her opponent’s technique.
And just like that, she was through.
As expected, her defenses shredded the swirling Fire. Even better, her breaking through had left a gaping hole.
Penetrating the dome didn’t end the match immediately. Xue Yong gave it all he had, hiding from her arrows underneath the flame. But when she came down, she created another hole, and her activation of Feather Fall for the second time created yet another gap.
She aimed strategically on the way up and on the way down, reducing the places where he was out of sight, and slowly, she whittled down his defenses with hit after hit until finally he surrendered.
Yang Xiu had done it. The Rising Tide Sect had won the martial portion of the low Foundation Establishment division, the first non-Big Three sect to do so.