Book One, Chapter 26 - All According To Keikaku

Raaaaaah! Another one down! Dunno why but I'm feeling motivated at 1am, fuck it, I've been trying to get some momentum all day. Beating chapter 25 got me pumped, so I'll be back again soonish!

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Many sects retain primitive ideas on punishment, considering torture, isolation, and public executions adequate punishment for minor slights. The Empire’s revolutionary approach to imprisonment, re-education, and volunteer programs for the Division of Research, the Division of Altered Cultivation, and the Division of War has profoundly changed and improved on these more barbaric practices, and many sects have, in turn, learned of the ways of the future. Some, however, still hold tightly to their old practices, preferring the simplistic approach to judicial punishment. In creating the Law, and signing the accords with require at least one Arbiter of Law to be present in all judicial trials enacted by a sect, the Empire graciously hopes to bridge this divide, allowing the strengths of both to flourish while guiding towards a better path.

--Primer on the benefits of Imperial Living, mandatory reading in all lower-level governmental education programs.

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“The elders have spoken!” Echoes a voice that Raika recognizes as Elder Ren of the medical hall. What he’s doing presiding over a combat challenge she doesn’t know, but his voice carries wonderfully in the colosseum stands and down to the arena. “For the crime of assaulting an outer sect disciple, the mortal servant known as Rai Ka is to be put to the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect’s absolute justice!”

There’s an accompanying roar from the stands, many of them seeming surprised by the amount of pageantry to this that Elder Ren’s voice brings to the proceedings. He’s got a voice for oration, and it carries.

“Yet in our mercy and respect for this one’s former journey as a cultivator, the Lord Judge of our grand sect has granted leniency!” he continues. “They shall be allowed to fight in a final battle, here on the holy grounds upon which the greatest of glories may be gained! The honorable Shin Ren has volunteered to deliver this criminal’s final moments, that we might all benefit from the sight of his prowess, so recently returned to us from the Imperial Academies!”

Ren. A relation of the elder, maybe? Distantly? Doesn’t matter, really. 

“The accused stands at this final trial; to experience one final, glorious moment of combat as their execution. So speaks the mercy of the Lord Judge, and so stands the judgment of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect!”

At this final proclamation, the arena erupts into applause and cheers, some stomping their feet and shooting off bursts of Qi that have Raika, even all the way down in the arena, snorting to clear her airways (it doesn’t work like that, unfortunately). Whoever this “young master” Shin Ren is, he’s clearly hot shit, enough that the thought of seeing him in action seems to be enough to get the crowd riled no matter who he’s fighting against.

The man in question, however, doesn’t seem to be joining in the festive, eager atmosphere. He looks at her with that piercing glare, with those gorgeous eyes… and he just seems disappointed. Maybe a bit sad, but mostly disappointed, like he doesn’t want to be here and can’t help but be disheartened that he is.

She can empathize, though her disappointment is manifesting more as rage and an incredible rush of adrenaline burning cold in her.

“To all those watching,” booms out Elder Ren, “look closely at the talent and mercy of our sect. To those participating in the final moments; begin.”

Shin Ren doesn’t move first.

She expected him to. She didn’t hear his cultivation, so she figured this would be a bit of a one-sided show, some incredible speed followed up by a flashy technique or two to show off to the crowd.

Instead, he looks her in the eyes, and bows. 

She blinks once. Then again.

“Servant Raika,” Shin Ren whispers, the sound carried to her artfully on a cushion of Qi and kept from the audience; “I honor your death and your struggle in these moments to come. I ask forgiveness that such a show has been made of your final moments. I promise to make it as quick and honorable as I can.”

She blinks a third time, and takes in a very small breath. His scent hits her, then, and it is not the complicated mess of concepts or mish-mash of flavors that so many tend to have. His power smells of ozone and honey, burning in a well-tended and painfully bright flame. It is sweet, and reminds her of warm memories, and the fire beneath it, no matter how hot, only enhances that which it molds with.

That, with his words, is almost enough to let something in her slip. All the unhelpful thoughts crowd forward, pushing against the pieces that scream bloody murder and focus and payback, and she has to stop to hold them back.

So many of the thoughts are of pain. 

She has been in pain for some time. And he goes and says something like that.

She breathes. Lets the thoughts surge, slowly pushing them away and focusing. On the arena, on the crowd, on the stone beneath her feet and the blade in his hand. She gives him a smile, which she meant to be feral and intimidating and as free as she tries to be. It doesn’t quite make it.

“Hardly fair you’re that hot and considerate,” she whispers back to him, certain he’ll be able to hear. “Don’t worry, you romantic bastard. I don’t plan to die here.”

He blinks at her in turn, but smiles, sad and sincere. “Very well, Raika the Bloody,” he says, now loud enough to be heard by the crowd.. “Let us begin, and see whose vision shall emerge true.”

He moves so fast that she’s ducking before she’s even noticed where he ended up, reacting the instant she realizes he’s not where she’s looking.

A whistle of compressed air shaves off a bit of her hair, less than a centimeter from her scalp, the blade behind it moving with a speed and weight that almost pulls her off balance.

Almost.

No holds barred. Everything she is against whatever he decides to throw at her, for as long as she can last.

Familiar territory at last.

She can feel herself moving, muscle memory enhanced by cognition and her altered biology, controlled almost perfectly. She swings her arm back and up against where he should be standing. The remaining manacle, open and heavy and edged in sharp corners, whistles through empty air, but she doesn’t stop, throwing herself forward in a roll that she forces her body to come out of much faster than she should be able to.

Her heart beats, pumping hard, pumping violent, her blood cycling in her body like a tornado of fear and survival instinct. She is alive and she refuses to let go of it. She uses the heartbeat, how it carries her will and her focus, and forces her body to adjust, the Qi trapped and forcibly bound to tattooed skin and flesh adjusting so her spine straightens and her left leg holds firm when she puts all her weight on it, even reaching out and making a tremendous series of popping noises as her right knee is forced to move just enough that she can plant the foot and its stance.

All that effort, the universe seems to laugh, to just barely be able to stand.

In the time it takes to force her body into shape, he’s moved again. Not blitzing her, not angry; if anything his expression looks curious in the instant she glimpses it. Then she has to physically yank herself back and onto the ground to avoid the swipe he casually sends at her.

From half the arena away.

The cut still carves into the pillars, almost fifty feet past the edge of the arena.

She knows why they didn’t announce his realm, now. It would be a loss of face to mention how improper this matchup is out loud.

Nascent Soul Realm. 

The very start of it, perhaps, or maybe just a very talented Core Formation disciple with a good spear, but the cut smelled only of him, the air ringing with a purity she’s only smelled in the presence of the elders. Low Nascent Soul, maybe. Peak Core Formation, if she’s “lucky”.

Whoever the fuck Shin Ren is, the Imperial Academies seems to have served him well.

She sprints at him, throwing herself forward as hard as she can, bones creaking as she uses everything to move towards him, to get in range and take any initiative. His eyes follow her movement, taking careful note, neither underestimating her nor losing track of her. She can’t hear the audience anymore, it’s a waste of processing power, but she can imagine their reactions as she survives a second cut from him and then charges him like a mad bull.

He vanishes again, but this time she’s more ready, every nerve singing, every beat of her heart burning. 

 She swings at the space to her right, momentum twisting her body in a pattern that she can’t reach naturally to avoid the counter swing coming down at her. Her spine is going to scream at her later, probably a rib or two as well, but she twists even as she strikes.

He dodges, effortlessly, looking like he just decided to not be where the swing hit. She grabs the chain, shortening it and swinging faster, in shorter arcs, pretending it’s a broken nunchuk, pretending that her body can move as it used to. She takes one step, two, jumps almost five feet into the air to avoid another cut. She uses the momentum, swinging out a kick with her good leg-

He sidesteps, and the thing she knew would happen the instant she got airborne hits a quarter-second later, impaling her through the chest and slamming her down into the stone floor.

She feels the spear go all the way through her and then deeper, into the stone, feels the way the marble shatters and stabs sharp edges up into her back. The sound of breaking stone and carved flesh are loud enough to echo.

The arena itself issues a “crack”, the stone shifting ever so slightly, the blade going all the way in and through her chest and out the back, pinning her like a fly. She spasms, blood spitting out of her mouth, splattering all down her front as one of her lungs collapses on impact. 

It hurts. 

It hurts.

He’s faster than her, so much faster. He set her up so she had to leap or lose, or die, and the instant she couldn’t maneuver, he hit her with a graceful, tactful, precise maneuver. A perfect strike. She feels things that should not move shifting, feels something that is more panic than pain as her body and brain try desperately to understand the level of damage that has been done to them.

Shin Ren is there, above her. Natural light flows down from the sky beyond him, whispers of powdered stone and misted blood floating around him like a halo as he looks down at her. He has slowed, moving at normal speed, and she watches him, her body shivering and juddering against the blade, looking up at his face, trembling as he shifts the blade just enough to disconnect it from the stone, that she might not be so immobile.

“You fought well,” he whispers, just between the two of them.

She raises her arm, feebly. The entire limb trembles, shock and pain and blood loss leaving it a juddering mess, like a faulty doll. She reaches towards him, like a supplicant, like someone asking for help. 

“G- pl-” she gurgles.

He takes her hand, in one of the kindest acts she’s ever experienced from a cultivator.

“It’s alright,” he whispers.

And then she flicks her wrist, the shortened chain of the manacles moving in a twitch made perfect with what control she still has, and locks the heavy, mechanical, Qi-warded, heavily runed manacle made to imprison cultivators around his wrist.

“Gotcha,” she snarls past the blood.