57th of Season of Water, 58th year of the 32nd cycle

  Heroes have dramatic fights in tournaments, full of twists and turns, winning against impossible odds, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and advancing realm to rise to the challenge. A beautiful lady or two or nineteen see him, and he sees them, and things happen. Newt had turned eighteen, so maybe he could consider some companionship.

  His gaze lingered on Elder Woodhopper. Her beautiful features, pale face, and rosy lips. She wore the standard Explorer’s Gate yellow and green, but even the robe could not conceal the moderate curves Newt—.

  She looked towards him. Their gazes met, a chance for magic, and Newt quickly averted his eyes, pretending he was scanning the crowd while stopping the surge of blood rushing towards his cheeks.

  The woman was probably centuries his senior. Maybe older. She must have viewed him as he would a toddler. Newt’s heart fluttered as he recalled Dandelions’s words on relationships between cultivators. They can’t be considered equals unless they were within a realm of each other. He never mentioned age.

  Age doesn’t matter, only cultivation. Only power.

  Newt assured himself, deciding he would reconsider the matter a century or two later, once he was at the sixth realm.

  Focus on the trial.

  Unfortunately, there was little to focus on. Everyone was waiting, from time to time, other disciples fought, and Newt was utterly bored.

  “Excuse me, do you mind if I cultivate?” Newt asked the referee who shrugged.

  “It has happened in the past. Just let the other participants know. It won’t stop them from challenging you if they really want to, but the beating they would receive after being rude and ignoring the warning is usually brutal.”

  The man said it matter-of-factly, yet Newt never considered being especially brutal towards those interrupting his cultivation.

  Newt cleared his throat just after the last fight ended, and most of the participants turned their heads his way. “Hi! If anyone wants to challenge me, now’s your chance, otherwise I’m going to cultivate. Please don’t interrupt me, for both our sakes, all right?”

  The polite threat and nervous smile resulted in a number of awkward faces as people suppressed their laughs, but Newt thought he had done good. Nobody challenged him, they got the message, and he would really beat them bloody if they interrupted him after he had threatened them so nicely.

  With that out of the way, he sat at the center of his ring and entered meditation. He went to the rune he had abandoned and continued digging in accordance with Dandelion’s design.

  Once he finished that one, he set aside the side vent rune project, and focused on the ones which would yield immediate results. He went to a section of fire runes on the main lava flow and split the current into three portions. Dandelion had arranged the runes properly, ready for spell formations, but Newt failed to understand that until he expanded his knowledge in the field.

  Two out of three portions of lava were smaller, meant to power the outer ring which framed the spell formation. The circle had tiny veins flowing inward. But instead of placing them above ground, like he usually did, Newt dug them out a foot beneath the surface to feed the runes. The central flow was the strongest, around sixty percent of the entire lava stream, and it powered the heart of the spell formation.

  Thanks to what he had learned from Magmin’s realm, Newt decided to keep the main lava flow, as well as the one between the runes, underground, both for esthetic reasons and because the extra precision would increase his rune’s potency.

  The one thing which pained Newt the most was that his second realm was stuck as an ugly amateur blunder full of unnecessary trenches and forks.

  “Will I think the same about my third realm in twenty-thirty years when I’m cultivating the fourth?” He had a feeling he would.

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  Newt would continue to improve, making his realm a breathtaking landscape; a colossal volcano covered in runes defining him, his power, and his personality.

  A chime echoed.

  “Already?”

  He opened his eyes, face to face with the referee holding a metal triangle and a smooth wooden beater.

  “The initial round is over.” The corners of the elder’s lips tugged up in amusement.

  “I’ve never seen that before. I always thought it was just a spell formation, not an instrument.”

  The elder’s smile widened.

  “This is the portable version, we rarely use it. Cultivation chambers have a button to press and that’s it. Now, if you would kindly leave the ring.”

  Newt saw the other eight rings were empty and hurried down to join the other finalists. A single glance told him Goodair had failed to pass the elimination round. He was about to stand to the side when Twochains motioned him to approach.

  “We won’t climb the rings until the others are done. Seven of them fighting in three rings will speed things up considerably. You can just sit beside the ring where you plan to fight and cultivate, I’ll call you, as will the elder in charge of the matches of your chosen ring.”

  As Twochains spoke, the rings sank into the ground, then three larger ones rose.

  “Congratulations on making it here,” the venerable said. “The rules are the same as before. I wish you good luck.”

  Newt’s first reflex was to sit and cultivate to minimize the waste of time, but on second thought, he wanted to see the six most talented inner disciples fight.

  He moved back, Twochains following him. Six of the seven remaining contenders headed for the rings.

  A pair of swordsmen climbed into the first one, earth versus water. An air-attributed, petite woman wielding a fan and a whip faced a burly, earth cultivator with a stego mace in the second, while the final ring pitted a water-attributed youth wielding a trident with a sword-wielding fire-attributed woman.

  “Don’t split your attention between multiple fights, you’ll learn nothing. Focus on the one you’re the most interested in and pay attention to details.”

  Newt mumbled a thanks, then considered the combatants. The swordsmen did not interest him at all, the air cultivator with a bronze fan and a whip was unusual and exotic, a combat style he had never seen before, and the burly earth cultivator formed a stark contrast, a strong maybe, while the final pair had someone fighting with a spear-like weapon; it was entirely possible to learn something from a person wielding a weapon similar to his, but with an opposite element.

  Like usual, curiosity won against practical value, and as three judges simultaneously shouted for matches to start, Newt observed the apprentice sister with the most unusual choice of weapons.

  The earth cultivator lunged towards her while she opened the fan with a flick of her wrist. Its edge gleamed in the sunlight, hinting at razor-sharp blades, and with another flick, which sent an unnaturally strong gust of wind towards the ground, the girl was jumping over the earth cultivator’s stego mace.

  Newt expected she would jump high to escape her enemy’s reach, but she instead kept so close to the mace, that it was grazing her clothes. She waved her fan-holding arm in a bronze blur, slashing at the earth cultivator’s inner elbow, climbing up his bicep, and cutting at his neck.

  Sparks flew, and the bronze fan struck the earth cultivator’s eyes. Again, sparks flew as bronze met the solid shield made of spiritual energy. She whirled past her enemy like a storm, dealing no damage. With the danger over, the earth cultivator opened his eyes, but then the whip snaked through the air like a living creature. Newt watched the air-attributed spiritual energy twist around the weapon, leading it to strike at an impossible angle. The barbed tip struck the earth cultivator’s eye just as he opened it, and he roared in pain.

  He spun, smashing with the massive, spined mace, but the air cultivator dropped to the ground, doing a side split. She rolled to his blind side and floated, wind carrying her an inch above the ground before she twisted and jumped back to her feet behind his back.

  With one hand on his blind eye, the earth cultivator spun, swinging the mace in the other. His sweeps were powerful, but he never caught the sight of the air cultivator, who danced around him. It was impossible to see with regular sight, but Newt clearly saw the defenses on the earth cultivator’s legs grow thinner, so that he could move faster.

  He did not know how the air cultivator knew, but the next time the earth cultivator spun, she dropped down, slithering between his legs, which flanked her like thick columns.

  Newt expected she would slash his groin, but she did not. Instead, her whip followed behind her and floated up, wrapping itself between the earth cultivator’s legs. Like nearly half the crowd, Newt closed his eyes, groaning and grabbing his crotch in sympathetic pain as the earth cultivator’s roar of pain turned to whimpers.

  “Ruthless as ever,” Twochains said, and Newt opened his eyes.

  The burly earth cultivator was curled on the ground like a shrimp, his hands cupping his groin while the air cultivator hopped back onto her legs like nothing had happened.

  Two seconds passed, and the referee remained silent.

  “Do I need to dig out his other eye? I’ve had enough time to kill him five times over, regardless of his shell.”

  The referee nodded and cleared his throat.

  “The winner is Gale Calmriver!”