On the arena floor—
"Well, well. If it isn't the Shrek Three Musketeers." The Royal Fighting Team Two's opening contribution to the pre-match atmosphere arrived before anyone had taken a single step into position. The speaker had the particular confidence of someone who has done their research and is enjoying the results. "Coming to put on another bayonet show? Just a word of warning — my fists are on the heavy side. I'd hate to accidentally damage anything important."
"You want to die?" Dai Mubai's fist came up immediately.
Tang San's hand was on his arm before he'd finished the motion. "Save it, Mubai. We'll have all the time we need once the match starts."
The Shrek Three Musketeers. The name had the peculiar quality of a wound that reopened every time it was touched — and it was being touched very enthusiastically today. Each time Tang San, Dai Mubai, and Ma Hongjun heard it, the same night surfaced with the same unwelcome clarity. They had all independently arrived at the conclusion that they would prefer to never think about that night again, and the universe appeared to have made the opposite decision.
The Royal Fighting Team Two's representative had fixed his gaze on Tang San with the settled contempt of someone who has prepared material for this occasion.
"You're Tang San, right?"
"And if I am?" Tang San's voice was level.
"Nothing much." The boy shrugged, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Just a great admirer of your — what was it — your Jockey's Disdain for His Ancestor approach to life." He paused, and then, with the thoroughness of someone who wants to make absolutely certain the joke lands: "In case anyone isn't following — 'jockey' means riding a horse. 'Disdain' means to look down upon."
(T/N: This is a wordplay joke that doesn't translate directly. The original phrasing creates a crude double entendre suggesting Tang San performed an act with his teacher Yu Xiaogang that one ought not perform with one's elders. The Royal Fighting Team is implying Tang San treated his own master as a subordinate during the infamous bayonet incident.)
The atmosphere between the two teams achieved something close to combustion without any formal ignition.
On the Shrek side, it was worse. Tang San, Dai Mubai, and Ma Hongjun had been targeted as the Shrek Three Musketeers before the match had even begun, and the crowd in the stands had been happy to join in. But it was the teammates — Tailong, Jing Ling, Huang Yuan, Jiang Zhu — who were the real problem, all of them making dedicated, valiant, thoroughly unsuccessful efforts to keep their faces under control. Several were staring with intense focus at the middle distance, a technique that was not working.
Tang San felt the chill settle behind his eyes — the specific cold of a decision made cleanly and without heat. The rules of the Soul Master Competition prohibited killing. They said nothing, when interpreted with sufficient creativity, about the full spectrum of outcomes short of it. He made a quiet mental note about the Royal Fighting Team Two and what the next several minutes would look like for them.
The referee stepped forward. "Both sides bow. Non-competing members, clear the arena."
The obligatory bow was performed — on both sides, with the bare minimum of sincerity the rules required — and the extra members stepped back. Seven Shrek students remained. Seven members of the Royal Fighting Team Two took their positions.
Shrek arranged themselves in a 3-3-1 formation: Dai Mubai, Tailong, and Ma Hongjun anchoring the front line; Tang San positioned at the center; Jing Ling and Huang Yuan flanking him; Jiang Zhu holding the rear position alone.
The Royal Fighting Team Two countered with a 5-1-1: five broad-shouldered young men at the front, a slight control-type Soul Master in the middle tier, and a young woman at the back whose presence there suggested a support or ranged role.
In the VIP section, the match had provided Emperor Xue Ye with what appeared to be a satisfying opportunity for conversation. He leaned toward Ning Fengzhi with the relaxed curiosity of a man who has heard an interesting piece of gossip and wants confirmation from someone who might know the source.
"Sect Master Ning — this Tang San. Who exactly is he? And what is this business about a jockey and his ancestors?"
Ning Fengzhi's lips did something small and controlled. He shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the details." He was entirely familiar with the details. He had been briefed on the details from three separate sources, including his own daughter. He had no intention of recounting them in the current company.
"Sect Master Ning's information networks appear to have some gaps," Platinum Bishop Salas said pleasantly, into the silence. "This matter is common knowledge in Heaven Dou City at this point. Even I — a recent arrival — have managed to hear the full account."
"Oh?" Emperor Xue Ye's interest sharpened. He turned to Salas with the attentiveness of a ruler who has just located a more willing informant. "Then please, Bishop — enlighten us."
Salas needed no further invitation.
He had, it emerged, a genuine gift for narrative. His account of events unfolded with the structure and pacing of someone who has told a story enough times to know exactly where the pauses belong, what details to emphasize, which images to allow the listener's imagination to finish constructing. Emperor Xue Ye's expression moved from curiosity through amusement through something that could only be described as impressed horror. Prince Xue Xing, seated behind them, made a sound as though he had swallowed something incorrectly. Even Ning Fengzhi, who had promised himself he was above this, felt the corners of his mouth doing something against his instructions.
The names Shrek Three Musketeers and Tang San's Jockey Ancestor had been, Salas concluded, very fairly earned.
In the Crown Prince's seat, Qian Renxue — wearing Xue Qinghe's face with the absolute, practiced completeness of someone whose disguise has long since become second nature — allowed a smile to surface that was too controlled to be visible to anyone looking at her directly. Just a slight, private curl at the corner of the mouth. Then her attention shifted upward.
She extended her soul power, careful and probing, toward the sky above the arena.
Xiao Se had arrived at precisely the right moment — which was to say, the worst possible moment for two specific members of the Shrek Academy team.
He looked down at the arena from altitude, taking in the scene below with the expression of a man who has identified an opportunity that he did not go looking for but is not going to walk away from either. The Fallen Heart Flame stirred in his meridians, quiet and obedient, awaiting direction.
He gave it direction. A small, carefully targeted direction.
Two carefully targeted directions.
Warm, invisible threads of Fallen Heart Flame energy drifted downward and found their marks in Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun with the precision of something that knew exactly where to go.
Below, both young men shifted slightly in their stances.
Qian Renxue's soul power probe reached him a moment later. He didn't bother deflecting it — simply let it arrive and find him, the way you let someone knock on a door you were going to open anyway.
The familiar quality of his aura registered in her awareness. Her eyes, behind Xue Qinghe's face, lit with something that was equal parts recognition and delight. She murmured, so quietly only she could hear it: "Dad is really something else."
"The First Round, First Match of the Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament Preliminary Round — officially begins!"
The referee's announcement had barely finished when Dai Mubai's arms went wide.
"Brothers!" He had the decibel level of a man who has been sitting on that declaration for the last ten minutes and is releasing it with compound interest. "Release your Martial Souls! Let them see what Shrek Academy is!"
The soul rings appeared.
Dai Mubai: yellow, yellow, purple — three rings, blazing. Tailong and Ma Hongjun beside him: two yellow, one purple each. Tang San at the center: two yellow, two purple, the most impressive configuration on the field by a visible margin. On the flanks and rear, Jing Ling, Huang Yuan, and Jiang Zhu each presented three rings — two yellow, one purple. Without exception, every member of Shrek Academy carried an optimal spirit ring configuration, the product of Flander's relentless insistence on standards and two years of targeted hunting.
And then, approximately two seconds after the soul rings appeared, something went wrong.
Specifically, something went wrong with Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun.
The evil fire that their martial souls generated had been, until this precise moment, a manageable if persistent background problem. The previous night's release had brought it to a temporary equilibrium. That equilibrium had just been comprehensively disrupted. The fire came back not at its previous level but at something considerably beyond it, amplified by whatever external factor had just applied itself with invisible precision.
Both young men's faces went scarlet simultaneously. White vapor began rising from their nostrils in twin columns with the enthusiasm of a kettle that has forgotten it had other options. Their eyes, which had been sharp and focused a moment ago, acquired a quality that could be most charitably described as single-minded.
In the space below both of them, something stirred. And rose.
The arena went silent.
Then it went extremely loud.
The crowd had initially leaned forward with the collective anticipation of people expecting a powerful spirit skill to manifest. The first half-second of silence had the quality of something building. The second half-second had the quality of several thousand people arriving at the same conclusion at approximately the same time.
The sound that followed was not the sound of respect.
He really does live up to his reputation, the crowd collectively thought, in the way that crowds think things — all at once, in the same direction, without anyone needing to organize it.
Only Qian Renxue's expression, behind Xue Qinghe's face, was something other than shock. Thoughtful. Connecting dots.
In the Shrek Academy rest area, Flander was on his feet.
"This is bad." His voice had the flat, certain quality of someone who has watched a situation become a problem before and is watching it become a problem again. "Mubai and Hongjun's evil fire—" He pressed his hands to his temples. He knew better than anyone except Oscar and Yu Xiaogang exactly what happened when those two lost control. This was going to be— this was going to be a thing that happened, in front of everyone, at the most watched event of the year.
Liu Erlong, beside him, said nothing. Her silence had a specific quality.
On the arena, the two afflicted members of Shrek Academy swept their burning gaze across the available options in a radius of approximately three directions: left, right, and front.
To the left and right: Tailong. Level thirty-seven, Mighty Ape martial soul, considerably larger than either of them, currently giving off an energy that clearly communicated do not.
That left forward.
The Royal Fighting Team Two's front five had barely finished releasing their own martial souls when Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun, operating on a motivation that had nothing to do with winning a Soul Master competition, selected two suitable candidates from among them and moved.
The resulting event happened quickly. The sounds it produced were specific and unmistakable: impact, protest, the tearing of fabric.
Every person on the arena froze.
Every person in the stands froze.
The Royal Fighting Team Two's remaining five members, who had been building up to a coordinated opening assault, found themselves instead standing perfectly still, staring at their two colleagues, not attacking anything, not doing anything, simply existing in the stunned state of people who have just watched something that doesn't fit in any available category.
Tang San's mind worked faster than anyone else's.
The plan had deviated. The plan had deviated considerably. He could spend time thinking about what had just happened, or he could spend that time winning the match while the Royal Fighting Team Two was still operating in a state of categorical confusion. He made the obvious choice.
"Move!" His Blue Silver Grass erupted outward — tendrils of blue-silver light shooting across the arena floor with the controlled aggression of a technique that had been refined through two years of daily practice. It found the five stunned opponents before any of them had recovered enough to respond, wrapped around them with efficient, mechanical precision, and then Tang San, Tailong, Jing Ling, and Huang Yuan hit them in sequence.
The Royal Fighting Team Two's remaining members went off the arena in a tidy, rapid, somewhat undignified series of exits.
Shrek Academy, by default and in circumstances that would be extensively discussed afterward, had won their first match.
(End of Chapter)
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