45th of Season of Air, 59th year of the 32nd cycle

  “Morning, Pumpkin.” Maelstrom waved at Newt and his group of fifteen disciples as they approached the gathering spot. Tidebreaker Abyss had forty-two disciples present on the half-full square, meaning they outranked Explorer’s Gate by a large margin.

  “Why did she call you Pumpkin?” Stegorock whispered in Newt’s ear, intrigued by the beaming young woman.

  “Some obscure folktale. Yesterday, she joked about having to return me to the inn before midnight, lest I turn into a pumpkin.”

  Stegorock shrugged, every bit as confused as Newt was the previous evening.

  “Newstar!” Everlast waved. “How have you been? We heard about what happened, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  “Greetings, Senior Apprentice Sister.”

  Everlast was about to say he was overly formal, but Maelstrom spoke just as Everlast mouthed the words.

  “You have friends at Everfrost Palace?” Maelstrom detached herself from her group, much to their elder’s dismay.

  “Everlast!” Dandelion’s shout made more than half the disciples turn around and focus on him. He promptly ignored them and approached the blushing woman. “How have you been? I have heard no news of your sect, but I guess in our world no news is good news.”

  Newt noticed other disciples greeting their acquaintances from other sects, but their encounters were much colder, some mere posturing and taunts, completely different from the amicable atmosphere around Dandelion.

  In the corner of his eye, he spotted the elder from the Tidebreaker Abyss casting a glance at the elder from the Everfrost Palace. It was a mix of pleading and threat, but before the woman could do anything, Dandelion spoke.

  “I think we need to break this up, everyone with their sect, we can get together for a drink after the first trial is over. Winner’s treat.”

  Everlast and Newt nodded, but Maelstrom pouted, pretending she could not see the frustrated elder. As time passed, the crowd swelled, until it reached twenty-four hundred disciples evenly split amongst three realms.

  Once everyone had gathered, a man wearing the green and gold of imperial servants appeared on the balcony high above them. The golden robe only had hints of green, meaning the man held an extremely high position, and while he remained a void in Newt’s third eye, his experience with high realm cultivators allowed him to guess the man was at the eighth or ninth realm.

  “Greetings honored guests, loyal subjects of her majesty the emperor.”

  Everyone bowed deeply and held the position for three seconds before standing straight again.

  “It is with great pleasure that I can announce the start of the Sage’s Realm tournament. While I know you all know the rules, it is my duty to repeat them. The tournament has four main events, with two day breaks between each of them. The challenges are random, and your safety is assured. Should a challenge with rewards of resources or items appear, you are free to keep whatever you find. You are also free to fight over treasures. While death during the challenge isn’t permanent, the realm itself might eject you, and anything you may have gathered will remain behind, should you leave prematurely.”

  The man spoke without pausing for breath, his voice official, dignified, and yet completely monotone.

  “The Sage’s Realm also has challenges where mortal combat has lighter consequences. Should you die, you may suffer from impeded movement, vision, or other penalties; the realm may transfer you to an easier or more difficult level of the same challenge.”

  The man spoke on, and the crowd listened, nervousness flaring as the official kept them away from the imminent challenge.

  Finally, the man showed mercy.

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  “With all the basic rules explained, I wish you good luck.”

  Space around Newt twisted, and he found himself in a ten-foot-wide white corridor, his fellow disciples around him, a wall behind their backs.

  “I bid you welcome to my realm,” an aged, matronly voice said. “Like many, I believe the best way to test one’s ability is through might and tactical thinking. Since the challenge I am supposed to set up revolves around teams, the rules are simple. You are inside a maze, your group will face other, randomly chosen groups, depending on which path you take. Once you face a rival group, the paths leading to your group will close for others until the number of groups is halved. This will repeat until there is only one group. The losers will travel to the lower level, where the same challenge will take place, giving them a chance in case their elimination was due to poor luck.”

  Newt considered the rules so far, they sounded like a complicated way of drawing lots, with lots of luck involved in the process.

  “To prevent cheating, I shall obfuscate everyone’s robes and faces, and the only information you will have is the number of opponents and their relative strength. You will not have the same information about your teammates, if you have any, which brings us to the final portion of this introduction, the combat.”

  The voice paused, to give a chance to everyone to focus.

  “For combat, your group will choose a champion, and that champion will fight your opponents until victory, replaced only upon defeat. Everyone who falls during the battle will be transported to a lower level, where they will have the chance to advance further, following the same process. The battles persist until one side is exterminated, or until the smaller group defeats twice its number of disciples from the opposing group. Any survivors from a defeated group will be transported to the lower level, where they will rejoin the rest of their team. The same champion cannot start two battles in a row, unless they are the sole member of your group. Choose your champions wisely.”

  The speech ended, and the corridor was silent.

  “I guess I’ll be our champion whenever possible?” Newt said, looking Twochains and the others in the eye.

  “I’m not sure that’s wise, senior brother,” Redleaf, another third realm core disciple, said. “Whenever we encounter someone the Sage’s Realm considers a low threat, you should refrain from fighting, even if it’s your turn. That way, we can save you for tougher battles.”

  Newt wanted to argue. Given the number of participants and the event format, it was impossible to fight more than ten battles, and even nine seemed improbable. He bit his lips, hesitating, then realized he was the leader and highest ranking disciple of the group.

  “I think my plan is sound. This challenge will have few battles, and even if we are unlucky and encounter a powerhouse who can defeat all of you without effort while I’m unavailable, I will simply fight second, and we will pass.”

  What do we do if we encounter Dandelion? No, there’s no if. It’s only a matter of when.

  “Did anyone bet on us winning this one?” he asked, and they all raised their hands.

  “Did anyone bet on Dandelion?”

  Nobody said a word.

  “Well, I can tell you I split my spirit gems evenly between us. He has ten-to-one odds, while we have thirty-to-one.”

  Newt’s fellow disciples stared at him in confusion.

  Well, I guess that didn’t help raise their morale.

  “Let’s go, we’re wasting time.”

  The group advanced and after a hundred feet came to a fork. The path split in four, two gently rising slopes, and two gently sloping down. Newt took the leftmost path. Dandelion always went right, so if he kept taking the right path, they would certainly meet after a while, but if he took the left path, it all depended on where they were relative to Dandelion. If they were to the left, they would avoid him until the end. At least Newt hoped that logic would work.

  Every one hundred feet, the path split in four, until ten minutes later the path ended in a large circular chamber, a sandy arena at the center.

  “A dead end?” Redleaf said.

  Newt turned around, but the way back had vanished, replaced by a wall.

  “I guess we wait for our opponents here.”

  The group stood, looking around in confusion. With nothing to do, they could only wait for their opponents.

  Luckily, they did not keep them waiting for long. Half a minute later, a section of the wall disappeared, and a yellowish-orange outline entered the room. The cultivator was alone and faced them.

  “Choose your representative. The threat is assessed by color, the spectrum starts with blue, moving through green, yellow, orange, red, and black.”

  Yellow, bordering on orange, that’s as close to middle as it can get.

  Newt looked at his teammates, they needed a way to estimate their ratings, and with him, they would not lose the round, even if they lost a member of the team.

  “Twochains, how about you take him on?” The man nodded and stepped towards the center of the room, where a see-through wall rose from the ground, reaching the twenty-foot-high ceiling in two seconds.

  Newt thought his decision was correct. Redleaf and Skillhorn were weaker than Twochains, and Flare was the second strongest, she should be able to deal with someone of middling threat.

  “Fight,” the long-dead matron gave the order, and Twochains’s kama flew towards his opponent.