The match lasted less than a minute from the referee's opening call to its conclusion.
Two members of the Royal Fighting Team Two had been tackled off the arena by Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun respectively, in circumstances that would be discussed in Heaven Dou City for some time. The remaining five, still frozen in the particular paralysis of people who have witnessed something that hasn't finished processing, had been ambushed by Tang San's Blue Silver Grass, systematically incapacitated, and removed from the arena before any of them had managed to do anything useful.
Flander and Zhao Wuji descended on Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun with the speed and grim efficiency of men who had identified a crisis and had a protocol for it. Soul power sealed. Both young men removed from the premises in the direction of the establishment best equipped to handle their current condition. The matter was handled.
The match was over.
In the stands, tens of thousands of people who had come to watch a Soul Master competition sat in complete silence for approximately two seconds.
Then they expressed their feelings about what they had just witnessed. Not with applause. Not with cheering. With the collective, unambiguous contempt of a crowd that has been presented with something they did not come here to see and are not pleased about.
"Referee!" The teacher leading the Royal Fighting Team Two was already on his feet, voice carrying the raw edge of someone who has just watched two of his students be publicly humiliated and five others beaten into a bloody pile. He was pointing at the Shrek Academy side with the conviction of a man who is absolutely certain he is correct. "I protest! Shrek Academy employed unfair methods in direct violation of the competition's standards! I demand immediate disqualification!"
Behind him, two of his students were sitting on the arena floor, entirely lacking their previous attire, covering their faces with both hands, producing sounds that conveyed their feelings about recent events with more clarity than words could have managed.
The referee had been staring at the arena for the last thirty seconds with the expression of a person trying to locate the applicable regulation in a mental rulebook that was not written with this scenario in mind. He turned a careful, assessing gaze on the Shrek Academy team.
Tang San met it without flinching.
He was aware — with complete, unsentimental clarity — that public sentiment was against them. He was also aware that losing this match was not an acceptable outcome, and that the gap between what was unfair and what was against the explicit rules was, upon careful examination, navigable.
He raised his voice to carry.
"Respected referee — is there a rule against one competitor removing another from the arena one for one, without causing permanent injury or death?"
The referee thought about it. "No," he said, carefully.
"Is there a rule against launching an attack after you've declared the match started?"
A longer pause this time. "No."
"Then on what grounds does the Royal Fighting Team Two's instructor claim unfair methods?" Tang San let the question land, and then continued before anyone could interrupt. "Their team members were distracted at a critical moment during a competitive match. In an actual battlefield, no one would pause to accommodate a distracted opponent. That is not unfair — that is the nature of competition."
The logic was clean, technically speaking. It was also, and Tang San knew this, exactly the kind of technically correct argument that wins the procedural point while losing everything else. The audience had ears. They had heard him. Their assessment of the argument's moral quality was visible on every face in the stands.
Three referees conferred at the edge of the arena in low, rapid voices, glancing periodically at both teams and at the two students still sitting on the arena floor in a state of comprehensive dishevelment. The discussion was brief. There was not, it emerged upon examination, a rule that covered precisely this sequence of events.
The head referee stepped forward.
"The first match of the first round, preliminary stage — Shrek Academy wins. The result stands." He paused, and his voice took on a different quality — the particular register of an official delivering both a ruling and a warning simultaneously. "However, in light of the significant negative impact on the competition's proceedings, the relevant individuals and the team leader will receive a formal severe reprimand. Any recurrence of conduct of this nature will result in immediate disqualification and a fifteen-year competition ban."
The response from the stands was not quiet.
It wasn't unified either — there were threads of shock, dissatisfaction, outright fury — but the dominant note was cursing, and it was directed at one team in particular.
"The Shrek Three Musketeers — genuinely despicable. Actually doing that in a competition. And that plagiarism master of theirs, Yu Xiaogang—"
"Shrek Academy? They should rename it. Brothel Academy. And those three should be the Brothel Three Musketeers."
"Brothel Academy." The name spread through the stands with the speed and inevitability of all the best nicknames — catching, spreading, already permanent before anyone had decided it was permanent.
In the VIP section, Emperor Xue Ye's face had settled into an expression of someone dealing with an event they would prefer had not occurred on their watch. He had overseen several All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Elite Tournaments from this seat. In none of them had anything remotely like this happened. This was, he concluded, a new and unwelcome category of experience.
At least, he reminded himself with a grim edge of satisfaction, Xue Xing had had the foresight to expel Shrek from Heaven Dou Academy's orbit years ago. Whatever this was, it was not Heaven Dou Academy's problem.
Ning Fengzhi's face did something small and involuntary. He pressed his lips together. He looked at the arena. He thought about his daughter, currently associated with this institution by enrollment if not by conduct, and felt the specific, clear-eyed regret of a parent who has made a decision he cannot now undo.
This, he thought, is a brothel academy. This is not some monster academy. This is a perverted institution masquerading as an educational one.
In the Shrek Academy rest area, the atmosphere had the quality of a room that has survived something and is not entirely certain it should have.
Liu Erlong's face was a specific shade of controlled fury. She had positioned herself in front of Yu Xiaogang, who was currently attempting to merge with his clothing through sheer force of will, his face cycling between white and red with the commitment of a man who has given up on a third option.
"Is this the strategy you prepared for them?" Liu Erlong asked.
"Erlong, I—" The sentence didn't have anywhere to go. He let it stop.
Liu Erlong made a sound through her nose that communicated everything remaining to be communicated, turned her head, and did not speak to him again.
Her frustration was not simple. Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun operating on evil fire was one thing — regrettable, visible, embarrassing, but explicable. What her disciple Tang San had done — calmly assessing the situation, identifying the window of opportunity created by his teammates' involuntary contributions to the chaos, and executing a calculated sneak attack while the entire arena was too stunned to react — that was something else. Technically effective. Utterly without shame. She was, against her better judgment, somewhat impressed. She was also deeply unhappy about being impressed.
In the corner, Xiao Wu sat with an expression that reserved its contempt cleanly for the two obvious targets while quietly excepting Tang San from her assessment. He had been dragged into this by association, she had decided. He was above it. She was firm on this point.
Ning Rongrong sat nearby, frowning. The Brothel Academy title had just attached itself, with great public enthusiasm, to an institution she was currently enrolled in. Thanks to the butterfly effect of Xiao Se's prior interference with the timeline, she had never fully warmed to Shrek Academy as a place — she was here, and she was civil about it, and she genuinely liked Liu Erlong. That was the extent of her investment. The fact that her name was now institutionally linked to whatever had just happened on that arena floor was a problem she had not anticipated when she'd agreed to come here.
And Oscar — Oscar had found a corner of the rest area and had been making himself as small as physically possible since before the match started. He was a compact young man and he was using every centimeter of that compactness effectively. When the incident on the arena floor unfolded, he had watched it happen, gone pale, and placed both hands over a specific part of his anatomy with the protective instinct of someone for whom certain events were not abstract. He had made a decision, quiet and absolute: Ma Hongjun and Tang San were people he would be keeping a great deal of distance from, effective immediately, for the foreseeable future.
Moon Craft Gate assassin, he thought, with the private vocabulary of a man who has developed terminology for his trauma. Too dangerous. Far too dangerous.
While the rest area processed its collective experience and the stands continued generating their opinions at volume, Qian Renxue's attention had drifted toward the main entrance of the arena.
A figure had appeared there.
Tall, slender, unhurried. Black robes with gold trim catching the ambient light at the edges, the kind of attire that managed to look like it belonged to someone even in a crowd that wasn't looking for it. The arena's interior lighting was uneven, and the distance was not small, but none of that mattered — she had been carrying the memory of that face for two years with enough fidelity to recognize it under any conditions.
The dark eyes. The particular quality of stillness. The way he moved, with the easy confidence of someone who has stopped needing to think about where to put his feet.
Something in her chest moved, swift and warm and immediately contained.
She rose.
"Father—" She addressed Emperor Xue Ye in the front row with the careful propriety of a Crown Prince taking leave, the disguise intact and flawless. "A friend of mine has arrived. If you'll excuse me."
Xue Ye, who was still dealing with the aftermath of whatever had just happened on his arena, waved a hand without looking up. Dismissed.
Qian Renxue stepped down from the VIP platform and moved toward the main entrance with the deliberate pace of someone who is trying very hard not to move faster than the pace she has chosen.
Everywhere she went, wearing Xue Qinghe's face, drew attention — the Crown Prince of the Heaven Dou Empire did not typically walk through the general entrance of public venues. People noticed. People watched. Curious eyes tracked her path from the VIP section toward the main entrance, trying to determine who or what had drawn the Crown Prince out of his seat and across the arena.
She reached the entrance.
She looked up.
And for a fraction of a second, behind Xue Qinghe's composed princely face, something entirely different lived — something that was Qian Renxue, and not the Crown Prince, and not the Spirit Hall's agent, and not any of the roles she wore with such discipline.
Just a young woman who had been waiting to see someone, and was now seeing him.
(End of Chapter)
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