Spirit Realm Walker

The stands were abuzz with conversation.

”So round three, the final, is an arena bout. Hmm, when it comes down to one versus one, the arena is the fairest call, but it means Yuanshi Tianzun’s got no edge left.”

”I was hoping for another dungeon round, honestly. It was thrilling, top tier, and it’s to Yuanshi Tianzun’s advantage. I read Grand Scholar of Wenyuan Pavilion’s forum post. If the finals played out in a high-difficulty dungeon, Yuanshi Tianzun might’ve been the dark horse.”

”That’s never gonna happen, though. He’s already got a strong item out of the last dungeon. If this round is also a high difficulty dungeon, Zhao Chenghuang would be the one who gets shafted.”

”I can’t wait. This one’s going to be a hell of a fight.”

”Or it could end really quickly. Didn’t you read Grand Scholar’s breakdown? In terms of level experience, items, yin corpse and spirit servant, Zhao Chenghuang has the advantage in every area.”

”Zhao Chenghuang’s Origin Overdrive increases his power to the level of an early Saint, and he also has a Level 4 yin corpse. What is Yuanshi Tianzun supposed to lean on to win? He was so flashy in yesterday’s round, it almost made me believe that Zhao Chenghuang was nothing special. It took that breakdown post in the forum to snap me out of it.”

The match hadn’t even started, and the audience was already trading takes.

”Sweetie, not one of them likes your Bro Yuanshi’s chances,” Mama Xie said. ”Did you ask him what I told you to ask him yesterday?”

”Bro Yuanshi won’t take the family’s items,” Xie Lingxi said with a shake of her head. ”He said he’d rather lose than use them.”

The day before, Mama Xie had called up the Xie family Council of Elders about lending Yuanshi Tianzun a few items, and the moment the elders heard the Lingxi girl had gotten her hooks into him, they were thrilled, and had quickly put up three items for him to pick from.

The first one was the Red Thread of Love. Tie it onto a target and they’d warm up to the user, and fall in love with them inside half an hour. Only a Saint-tier Musician could undo the thread; no other class could. Of course, the item had its own cost. Love went both ways, and the user would fall for the target just as hard, without any climbing back out.

The second item was Mother’s Petticoat. As the name suggested, it was a woman’s skirt. When wearing it, whatever the user said came out as a lullaby that subdued the opponent. However, for thirty-six hours, they would turn hopelessly into a mama’s boy.

The third item was the Rallying Horn. Blowing it increased the user’s fighting strength by twenty percent, but the user would then crash into a slump half an hour later.

Mama Xie sighed. ”If he won’t accept the Xie family’s kindness, there’s nothing to be done. Sweetie, can he win? Your mother’s got two million riding on him.”

Xie Lingxi gaped at her. ”Mom, if you’ve got money to burn, hand it over here! Why chuck it in the river?”

Mama Xie gave her white lotus[1] daughter a sideways look, pouncing on the crack in her act. ”So you think he’s going to lose too.”

Lingxi went quiet. ”Of course I’ve got faith in Bro Yuanshi. But Zhao Chenghuang’s no pushover either.”

Having faith in him doesn’t mean he will actually win, she thought to herself.

Elsewhere, Bill and Annie were getting ready for the spectacle.

”I bet on Yuanshi Tianzun on the black market,” Bill said. ”The odds are six-to-one. If he pulls it off, it’ll be my fattest deal of the year.” 

”And if he loses?” asked Annie.

She was wearing skin-tight riding breeches and a dark top, with her gold hair hanging loose down her back. Her fair face and blue eyes had a slow pull to them, so striking that the men nearby kept sneaking hot, heavy looks her way.

Bill shrugged. ”Then it’s five million gone, that’s all.”

”That’s hardly in line with your careful streak,” Annie said.

”The boy bought soul healing pills off me, the same ones Chen Shu came to me for,” Bill replied. ”He bought a full year’s supply in one shot, without putting any money down. He told me flat out he’d win. If he does, then the pills are free. If he loses, he covers my bet and pays for the pills. I said yes. Call it a hedge.”

”Some hedge!” 

Elsewhere, Phoenix Descending flicked a look at Ling Jun. ”If Yuanshi Tianzun wins, you clear three million of that debt. If Zhao Chenghuang wins, you’ll clear one million. You can’t lose either way.”

She turned to stare at the back of Fu Qingyang’s head. ”Guild Leader, who’d you put money on?”

”I didn’t,” Fu Qingyang said flatly.

Phoenix Descending nodded. ”That’s our guild leader. No gambling, no vice, just clean living.”

”I’m the house,” Fu Qingyang replied deadpan. ”I opened the book for the elders’ group.”

Phoenix Descending stared, stunned.

Ling Jun’s eyes lit up. ”How are the elders betting?”

The elders dabbled in their own little betting ring now and then, and juniors normally couldn’t get a foot in. But Fu Qingyang was an elder in everything but the title. His promotion was a foregone conclusion, and on top of that, he had money. Therefore, he was running the bets for the elders.

Even so, he sold them out without a second’s hesitation.

”Taiyi Sect all bought Zhao Chenghuang. Most of the Five Elements Alliance elders threw a token bet on Yuanshi Tianzun and dropped the real money on Zhao Chenghuang. If Yuanshi wins, I’ll secure the White Tiger Guard’s operating budget for the next five years.”

”Yuanshi Tianzun’s got this!” the pack of White Tiger Guard members behind them chorused.

***

Down on the floor, Zhang Yuanqing caught the Spirit Realm chime in his ears.

【Ding! You may claim the Indomitable Battle Armor. Do you wish to claim it?】

”Claim it!” he said immediately.

【Ding! Claimed. This armor does not count against your item slots.】

The next moment, a full set of war armor showed up in his inventory, five pieces in total: breastplate, tassets, helmet, bracers, war blade.

He pulled the armor out and looked through the stats. The breastplate was for pure defense. The tassets provided a small amount of defense plus a lower-body boost to power and balance. They also allowed the wearer to root themselves into the ground, which prevented them from getting punched clean off their feet. The helmet guarded the soul from attacks. The bracers enhanced arm strength, and the war blade maximized the amount of power he could output.

In this armor, I can stand toe-to-toe with Zhao Chenghuang in Origin Overdrive and not come off worse, he thought to himself. Still, he set Corpse No. 1 on the task of putting the armor on.

The armor had to go on the yin corpse. That was what he’d written down the night before. Without it, Corpse No. 1 would be blown apart by the Level 4 corpse, leaving him to face both Zhao Chenghuang and a Saint tier corpse alone. There was no way he could hold on in such a scenario. Trading one armor set and his yin corpse to cancel out one of Zhao Chenghuang’s biggest crutches was a bargain.

As for the war blade, he’d wield that himself, which meant there was no need for him to bring out the Bloodthirsty Blade. That saved him an item slot.

”Huh? He gave the armor to the yin corpse!”

”That’s a smart move. Now his yin corpse can face up against Zhao Chenghuang’s.”

”Sure, but then how’s he supposed to deal with Zhao Chenghuang? If he engages Origin Overdrive, the man is basically at the Saint tier.”

”He’s a Nocturnal Specter. He can use Night Wandering, stay away from his enemy, and drag it out.”

As the crowd got busy dissecting his actions, the Armored Swordsman elder came striding onto the arena in his suit of full plate armor.

”Quiet!” he boomed, and the clatter of voices dropped away at once.

”This is the ultimate showdown,” the armored swordsman continued. ”Yuanshi Tianzun versus Zhao Chenghuang. Begin!”

That single word set the hearts of the whole crowd going. Everyone was strung up tight and buzzing as one. Some of them wanted Yuanshi Tianzun to take Zhao Chenghuang down and be the tournament’s dark horse, while others just wanted him to last for a while and not fold like a house of cards immediately. Still others were hungry for Zhao Chenghuang to steamroll him and end it quickly, so they could cash out big.

Black-clad and cold-faced, with a highborn air on him, Zhao Chenghuang swept a glance over the armored yin corpse, lifted a hand, and snapped his fingers.

”Go!”

His Level 4 yin corpse was dressed in a black shirt and trousers too. Its eyes lit up with crimson red light and it shot at Yuanshi Tianzun, a dark streak flying across the arena floor.

Zhang Yuanqing didn’t move a muscle. He snapped his own fingers.

”Wreck him!”

Corpse No. 1 broke loose like a dog slipping its leash and ran straight at the enemy, armor clattering.

The two corpses closed at speed, each cocking a fist and throwing a straight punch. With a boom, their fists met, sending a shockwave out across the arena.

Zhao Chenghuang’s Level 4 yin corpse lurched backward, its right arm snapping backward as though some unseen force was pulling the arm and hauling the whole body along behind it. 

Corpse No. 1’s upper body snapped backward, hard, but its lower half didn’t give an inch. It was rooted to the ground as though secured in bedrock. It drove up through its waist and back and hauled its torso upright. The bracers on its arms hummed as they charged up, and it sprung towards the retreating corpse.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Fists rained down fast, thick as hail, each one a thunderclap. The Level 4 yin corpse, under the barrage of blast after blast, threw both arms up in a hasty guard. The armor enhanced Corpse No. 1’s close-range Enchanting Demon strength, allowing it to show. It was truly the body of a peak-class Walker.

Yuanshi Tianzun had the edge inside the opening exchange, and the stands went off like a bomb.

Zhao Chenghuang shot a look at his corpse suffering a beating and didn’t seem to care. If anything, it elicited a small laugh out of him.

”That’s more or less what I figured,” he said to his opponent. ”You did put the armor on the corpse after all. Are you planning to use Night Wandering and dance around me, then?”

Fifteen meters away, Zhang Yuanqing cocked an eyebrow. ”Is that a problem?”

His Origin Overdrive couldn’t last forever. The second the man went into it, he’d drop into Night Wandering and run, letting time tick down. That was the best strategy.

”There’s no problem,” Zhao Chenghuang said evenly. ”I’m just letting you know I saw it coming, and set up for it.”

As he spoke he opened his palm and brought out his first item.

Wisps of grey, hazy smoke wafted off his hand and knotted together into a little clay figure with rough, stubby limbs and a face that was smudged and blurry. It was the kind of mud doll a kid pinches together in a minute, but there was a strange, mysterious weight coming off it; looking at it was like looking up at a mountain.

Soft earth yellow rings pulsed out of the little clay figure, and wherever they washed over, the hard flagstone floor quickly turned to sand, soft and loose like the sand on a beach.

Zhang Yuanqing stepped backward twice and looked down at the prints his own feet had made in the ground. His stomach tightened.

Night Wandering couldn’t hide footprints. Going invisible meant nothing now.

”There are plenty of ways to break Night Wandering,” Zhao Chenghuang said mildly. ”Yuanshi Tianzun, I’m not handing you the opening you want. Since you put the armor on the corpse, I’ll finish this quickly.”

Despite the lack of emotion in his voice, he had an aura of arrogance. 

With the clay figure still in his palm, Zhao Chenghuang bent over slightly, his muscles heaving as an agonized snarl ground its way out of his throat.

The change was quick. Within a few seconds, his skin turned blue-black and took on a metallic sheen. Black veins wound their way through the knotted muscle like dark roots, and his nails extended out into jet-black, razor-sharp claws.

The sand under him slowly turned white, freezing. The ring of frost continued to spread as a bone deep chill settled over the whole ground.

A new wave of noise went around the stands.

”Hold on, that’s a foul, right? That mud doll’s a Saint-tier item. No Transcendent-tier item can control the earth. That’s nuts!”

”Elder, he’s cheating!”

On their own raised platform, close to twenty Sovereigns sat quietly and said nothing back. 

Zhao Chenghuang hadn’t committed a foul. The thing that decided whether an item crossed the line was its function. Using a Saint tier item to outright win the fight would obviously be a foul. But when it came to support items, it came down to how strong its effects were. Converting stone to sand was clearly power beyond a Transcendent-tier Earth Wraith, but it wasn’t considered a Saint-tier effect, and it was supportive in nature, not a strike aimed at the enemy. It could be considered similar to Yuanshi Tianzun’s own curse-filled tricks.

Seeing that their protests were going nowhere, a good number of the Five Elements Alliance Walkers got twitchy.

”That’s it. His Night Wandering’s shut down.”

”That’s the mud doll from the Jiang Jingwei fight. There’s some decent defense on it too, if I remember. He uses Origin Overdrive for strength, and the doll to trap him. Zhao Chenghuang’s going all out from the first whistle. He wants to beat Yuanshi Tianzun quickly.”

”Bloody hell, he’s out to slap the whole Five Elements Alliance in the face.”

Every eye in the stands swung towards Yuanshi Tianzun. What would he do in the face of something so ugly?

Of course it’s never that easy, Zhang Yuanqing thought sourly.

He had come up with three answers to Origin Overdrive. The best was to use Night Wandering and stall for time, but it was also the easiest to shut down. And sure enough, Zhao Chenghuang hadn’t left him the gap to crawl through.

Plan B, then. He opened his inventory and called up the Yin Yang Spell Robe.

The robe threw itself open midair, tongues of flame stitched along the hem and blue waves across the chest, with the Taiji symbol on its back. A tidal wave came surging out of the black side of the Taiji fish symbol, while red flame billowed out of the white side. Water and fire twisted down out of the air together, laying out a Taiji formation thirty meters across, enclosing Zhao Chenghuang and both yin corpses inside it.

This was the first time he’d activated the robe’s array with every eye in the house on him. It was time to reveal a trump card.

1. A white lotus is slang for an individual who portrays purity and innocence, but is actually secretly manipulative or deceitful.