51st of Season of Air, 59th year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt kept going. Cliff after cliff, his advantage over the pack grew a second or two at a time, and by the time he reached the tenth wall, he was ahead by almost a quarter of a minute. His lead seemed insignificant, but it was the hell of the mines all over again. Newt’s vision darkened, his muscles feeling like he was a mortal digging for gems just to eat.

  The familiar feeling was disheartening, but soon others joined the tenth cliff and the pressure retreated. Newt dipped the tips of his fingers into oil, a familiar trap, one which forced him to push his left hand deeper into the handholds or risk slipping. He already knew that meant another trap awaiting his overreaching left.

  Whether that trap was the finger-snapper, the poisoned needless, or one of the other ones mattered little. He had created an opening for the realm to exploit, and its creator seized all revealed weaknesses.

  Newt found the approach unfair and preferential towards those who chose to climb by checking the handholds first. But if that was what the realm demanded, Newt could comply to an extent.

  Instead of visually inspecting them, Newt started climbing by checking the left handholds with his right, just brushing the tips of his fingers inside to feel for traps before committing with his slippery hand. Every now and then, Newt looked up, making sure he was on the course towards the outcropping he had chosen when he had reached the plateau before the tenth cliff.

  The realm’s creator had mentioned rewards, and the area he was heading towards appeared rougher and more difficult to climb than the rest of the cliff, matching her description of the reward sections. In the second challenge, the rewards were random, luck based. That would not be the case in the fourth. Newt had the feeling that, just like with the traps, the rewards will be uniform across all participants.

  He reached the rough patch just as the weight of the wall’s pressure disappeared. A hundred people had already started their climb, the sudden lightness helping Newt slowly recover his stamina even as he climbed.

  I bet the Diamond Talisman’s disciples hate this challenge. They don’t have a single opportunity to shine. Maybe it’s to balance things out. They took first place spots in two realm categories during the second and the third event.

  As Newt thought about it, the challenges seemed to have a flow to them, where the participating grand sects had equal opportunities to shine, favoring different aspects of cultivators’ powers. Endurance, hunting, strategy, and raw personal power.

  Fortunately for him, none had tested weapon ability directly, and he could brute-force his way through the fights. If a realm had sealed his physical strength the way this one had sealed cultivation, everyone on his team could beat him, let alone grand sects’ disciples.

  Hardly thinking about it, Newt weaved his way through the spikes and razor-sharp protrusions, his body recalling the lessons from the Tower of Suffering. He avoided the dagger-like bones and reached the nest-like formation at the center of the jagged patch.

  “Your team has been awarded twenty yards per person, up to eighty yards in total.” The words of the realm’s creator whispered into his ear, and Newt found himself disappointed.

  The reward was adequate for the risk involved, but it felt unsatisfactory. By finishing first, he would get a bit more than half the reward, but he could not disregard it, because if others collected them while he ignored them, they would nullify the edge he had gotten by being the fastest. But that would create an opportunity for someone else to finish first, assuming they decided to ignore the reward.

  The venerable who created this realm was the most hateful person of her era. I feel cheated no matter what I do. She could have left a fifth realm spirit gem, and I would ignore the other rewards while still being happy I picked up something decent here.

  Newt wanted to grumble, but the realm ghost seemed to actively observe the participants, and insulting such a spiteful person in any way seemed like a shortcut out of the challenge. So, he swallowed his complaints and kept climbing.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ***

  The event was a difficult one to comment on. Sleek tried, he really did, but there is a finite number of ways a man can say, “Oh, look random nobodies nobody cares about are falling down again.”

  And Sleek had exhausted his well of inspiration before the fourth cliff. Time trickled by, and for once, he was glad Northstar was his co-host. Hardy would have been just as stumped about what to say about the cursed venerable’s mental torture, but Northstar swam through the boredom like an ichthyosaurus through the sea.

  They must have been kindred spirits, grandmaster killjoys.

  Sleek kept his professional smile, already thinking how he would explain the broadcast’s debacle to his supervisor. He was ordered not to interrupt Northstar and to give her a chance to express herself. It was her own fault she just kept reading a bunch of statistics, analysis of previous events, and then, when she ran out of all the statistics, she started introducing all the noteworthy challengers from the previous three events.

  Saying nothing about the event you are broadcasting represented a major faux pas, a misstep explained in the commentator guidelines, but Sleek neither had the will nor the materials to interrupt the flat, monotonous fact-listing.

  “Well, that’s not really fair.” Anger tinged Northstar’s voice, breaking the monotony Sleek had become numb to. He was startled wondering whether he had started thinking aloud, fortunately, Northstar was ranting at the world in general. “If the contestants can win twenty yards per person, up to eighty, that would put smaller teams into disadvantage. A lone cultivator, Dandelion for example, will gather the bonus and benefit twenty yards in total. A team with three members will benefit sixty yards on average, assuming everyone collects their prize, and finally, the teams with four or more participants will benefit up to eighty yards per person.”

  What are you even talking about? Sleek knew he was poor with numbers, he was born that way. But he understood games. He lived for games, whether the ones he broadcasted or the ones he played in the gambling dens. You do the thing, you get the reward. The players get to choose whether the reward is good enough or not. If it’s not worth the effort, they don’t collect it. That simple!

  But he did not rant. He watched the projection, and as expected, Newstar Blazing Salamander finished the tenth wall first, like all the previous ones. Everyone from the lead group had snatched their reward, and Newstar once more beelined for the next nest. As did the rest of them when they reached the eleventh cliff.

  So much for the reward being unfair. It was a reward and players had to get it, otherwise, they were losing out.

  That’s how games work. Sleek held back a snort and watched the screens. Even in the lead group, people fell to traps quite often. Paralysis passed within a minute after falling, and on the ledges the participants burned or washed away the oil before resuming their climb.

  Some who sprang the traps in the first one hundred feet, jumped back down of their own volition.

  Jump, Newstar, jump, Sleek chanted, not because he had anything against the kid, but because there was nothing for him to broadcast as long as things remained the same. Having a lead so far ahead of the rest killed Sleek’s job. He could push it, ignore the first place and make it an exciting contest about the second or third place, but with Northstar killing his will to live and work, Sleek just could not make himself do it.

  Then, Newstar dipped his hand into oil for the second time and slipped.

  “Haha! He’s falling! Newstar Blazing Salamander is falling, ladies and gentlemen.” Sleek recognized the schadenfreude in his own voice, startled by the fact and the possible implications. His supervisor certainly noticed it, but he could only hope the audience did not.

  ***

  Elder Woodhopper balled her hands into fists when Newstar slipped.

  “Haha! He’s falling!” The annoying commentator laughed; he dared laugh at Newstar’s misstep. Elder Woodhopper gritted her teeth, but she had no time to focus on the annoying gnat. Newstar’s fall was long, some two hundred yards to the cliff base.

  The youth wore a shocked expression the first moment, then activated his full defenses. A young man of his age having fully traced techniques was nothing short of a miracle, one which allowed him to use them in a fraction of the time others needed.

  A layer of black rock materialized itself around him, just before he struck the outcropping with the bonus challenge reward he had already collected. Newstar smashed into it like a boulder, bounced off, and started spinning as he fell.

  Five seconds later, he smashed into the ground before jumping back on his feet and running along the cliff, looking up.

  Elder Woodhopper furrowed her brows. What is he doing?