The second and third day of the tournament went just like the first, with a few interesting or amusing fights in between the long slog of weak opponents hitting each other. I was sure someone that had any idea about fighting would see quite some skill involved, but I only had some martial art lessons as a child, over a lifetime ago.

And those didn't interest me too much back then, much less now. Especially because the martial arts I was taught didn't have super strength and toughness in mind. Anyways, why didn't the idiots tell me my robes protected some of the wrong areas?

Every single one of my previous customers was going to get a very stern talking to! Just watching all these fights showed me at least three places the fighters usually went for that got some of the least qi in the robes.

Oh they were going to regret that! How much I could have reduced the wear and tear of these things if I had known!

"You look like you are planning to murder someone." Lady Chela commented next to me.

"Well, I am not. But some people are about to have some very uncomfortable talks with me after the tournament." I explained.

"And I probably need to learn the basics of fighting both humans and beasts." I admitted sourly.

Her face lit up, after all she did offer to train me.

"Very good. Why the change of mind though?" She asked.

"I picked some things up, watching all these guys beat each other up. And I don't know where to aim, so I don't know where to use the qi inside them to the most effect. And I can't support my work being subpar!" I exclaimed.

"Your reasons might be skewed, but at least you show the inherent drive to improve every cultivator has." She sighed.

Soon enough several days passed, and the last fight was fast approaching. And what a fight it was going to be, I thought. A new challenger was on her way into the middle of the arena.

"I am Lion. And I challenge all of you. Keep up with me and walk on. Don't and your fight will end here!" The woman in the arena roared.

I rolled my eyes, though I had to admit she rolled with her name. Her robe had a lion head sewn onto the front, was at the golden brown color lions usually had, and her hood did look like a lion's head.

Now if she was going to be using anything not in theme with her name I'd be a little surprised, and a little disappointed.

Still, her opponents obviously decided not to risk approaching the bold woman by themselves, and had grouped up as forty nine. Quite stupid. After all she was a single, small human. They were only giving her an advantage by going into melee, limiting the way they could attack, and giving her free reign between them.

Just throwing some long range qi attacks would have been a smarter decision. Someone in the lodge seemed to agree with me too, as I heard someone mutter "Fools."

I returned my eyes on the budding fight, and saw the group had encircled the woman, and was approaching her at an even pace.

"We don't have all day. Come! Fight me!" She roared.

The woman dashed off the moment the she finished her second roar, and a spectral lion seemed to form behind her back.

Qi seemed to manifest around her hands, creating claws ready to rip their victims apart. Qi intent, I guessed. So she was cultivating lion intent qi? That existed?

Perhaps I had to rethink a few more of my general theories about cultivation. After all I though intent only came as a physical reality, but perhaps it just needed an idea. Or a concept you could imagine.

Well, if those things were like the re thing those cultivators were in for a world of pain. A. opinion they seemed to share as the whole group turned on itself, intent to knock out as many of their competitors as possible.

"Cowards." The woman roared.

And sped up again as a lion legs appeared on her legs. She hit the group of fighting cultivators like a wrecking ball. One cultivator straight up flew up more than a metre, a large gash splitting his robe's front.

The nearby cultivators all turned towards her, knowing escape was impossible. She spun, and jumped towards the nearest enemy, one clawed hand on the way towards his face, the other held still near her body.

The cultivator desperately raised both hands, blocking the attack on his head for a bloody wound in his stomach.

As he dropped the woman was moving again, blood dripping from her spectral claws. Her next target, a brown haired woman, panicked, and started running, only to get put down with a bloody gash in the back.

I watched in horrified fascination as the woman moved between her victims, her superior cultivation and qi intent outclassing her enemies by a league.

In the end she dropped seventeen of the requited thirty cultivators herself, with the last one falling to his knees and simply surrendering.

As the stage was cleaned up - mainly just removing any motionless cultivators and putting a little sand over the blood - the mayor stood up.

"Well, this was exciting!" He yelled. "With the first round finished we will stop for today, and return tomorrow. Get ready, because things are only going to get better."

I couldn't help myself. This stupid tournament took too long! Instead of cultivating like planned I was going to test gravity qi.

I knew it was stupid, and risky, but I really wanted to. First some adjustments though. After all I forgot some stuff, got some things wrong. It was time to fix them. The biggest problem I had in my first picture of gravity was the lack of origin. After all as it was now I saw gravity pulling in the direction of the nearest surface, which was plain wrong, and hella confusing.

No, gravity ways pulled towards the center of mass of any object.

My whole vision shifted, lines righting themselves, and the little vertigo I always felt when concentrating on my gravity sense.

Perfect.

Now. I lay a small pebble down in front of me, reached out with a strand of aura, and focused on actually bending the line of gravity connecting us upwards, pulling it towards me at the same time, and burned some qi.

The line actually did bend, if only a little. Nonetheless the stone did a short hop, before being pulled down by the planet's gravity again.

Now, how far could I bend those lines? I concentrated on the line connecting, … wait.

Why a line? Gravity only pulled towards the center of mass, it didn't attack at it. Gravity attacked at every point of a body at once.

My perception changed again, this time it felt like a hundreds, millions of lines combining into one. More realistic, but way too confusing.

I didn't like it. So I focused again, and imagined all the individual lines connecting to the center of gravity of any object combining into one straight vector.

Perfect.

Now back to bending the direction gravity attacked a body from. Which made tero sense, now that I thought what bending the lines meant, but had already worked, so I'd just try again.

I focused on the powerful line connecting the planet's center of mass to the pebble, and just forced the line to bend, right until it did a full turn upwards.

The pebble flew upwards, followed the bend of the line, and landed back on the ground. I grinned. That took a lot less energy than directly cancelling out gravity.

I pouted, this wasn't something I could use without some serious practice, after all if I were to fly this way I'd just fall sidewards. What happened if I stopped bending the line while it was still falling along it?

Time to try.

I repeated my previous experiment, but bend the line up a little farther, to have more time to react and observe. I also slowed down my perception of time by about fifty percent.

I watched the stone fall up again, and noted curiously that I had no idea how strong gravity on this planet actually was. Well, it wasn't all that important for now.

As the pebble reached the halfway point I let go, and watched as its previous speed was bled by the right gravity reasserting itself.

Good.

I checked my qi, and saw I had most still left, meaning I could sustain about half an hour of flight like that. Well, at least if I could survive reaching terminal velocity, and the eventual stop. Which was doubtful, even considering my improved constitution.

Well, flying should stay a last resort for now, it was far too dangerous to do without a lot of practice.

Well, I still had plenty of qi left, so it was time to train! That pebble was going to be flying through the air all night long! And in the coming nights too, after all flying under their own power was every human's dream. Planes just couldn't compare. Well, perhaps flying one on your own did, but I never did that.

The tournament started bright and early on the next day, with me being a little early. I took a moment to appreciate the arena's exterior.

It was build a little like the colosseum, tall wide arches of white stone holding the large construction upwards. It looked a bit squashed though, seeing as it was only three stories tall, but nearly three hundred metres wide and four hundred long.

Well, perhaps it'd get another story when the mayor broke into the fourth realm. Though if seemed to be the more likely moniker, considering the secrets of the fourth realm were well kept, and he didn't have a friend he could just ask like me.

Though I had avoided anything more than general questions so far, after all I didn't befriend the fox for the benefits I would gain by doing so. And discovering stuff on my own was more fun, I just had to know it was there!

Anyways. The arena. You could enter for a small fee, about as much as a whole week of food costed for a mortal, so not cheap, but not hideously expensive. Well, it would probably take some time until the mayor made back the money he invested into this, after all you needed a lot of money just for the materials, let alone hiring the builders.

I should suggest a few things like the romans did. Fights against wild animals and beasts, fights against death row prisoners, all the good shit.

Yeah, people would like that. Perhaps a weekly event?

Still, I felt pretty sure the arena was more of an investment for later than for now, after all a town, even as big as ours had grown to be, couldn't support such a big arena for long.

Mortals weren't made out of money after all, and they made up a very big part of the population, so they'd be responsible for the biggest part of the revenue.

"Hello there beauty." A voice whispered in my ear.

I spun around, and slapped the jerk in his face.

"And you are?" I asked cooly.

"You don't know? Didn't you see my martial prowess in the arena?" The guy asked.

"Nope. Doesn't ring a bell. You can't have been too impressive then." I said, and turned to leave.

Qi invaded my aura, so I apun around again, and letting my qi loose. There was no fight, seeing as he didn't have any qi intent.

"Do that again and we are going to have a problem. Understood?" I asked.

The cultivator dropped to his knees, and nodded up and down like his life depended on it.

"Good. If you tell anyone about what happened I will find you." I said.

Looking around, I saw we had attracted some attention. All mortals though, so I gave them a warning glare, and marched off.

Enough time wasted, it was time to get back into the arena. Lucky I didn't use all my qi for training though, or this could have gotten unpleasant. Well, no need to waste a second thought on this guy.

"Welcome to the second round of the tournament." The mayor yelled. "Let's get to what we all were looking for, shall we? The one on one fights!"

The arena exploded in sound once again, yet the sounds in the lodge stayed at an acceptable level. Strange, but probably some qi shenanigans.

My eyes turned towards the arena's floor, where all four hundred eighty remaining participants stood. And ten wooden fighting rings.

Well, those would be trashed by the end of the day.

Soon enough the first twenty participants were gathered on the ten stages, and I noticed all of them were from the last group of fighters.

Interesting. So all those teams would have to eliminate themselves before advancing a round?

Well, that was easily exploited too, but as good an attempt as any.

Who to concentrate on though? The lion woman's opponent was shaking in his boots, just about ready to collapse on the spot.

What a wimp. He wasn't one of my customers though, so I wouldn't see how my products held up in front of a second realm cultivator. Ah well, some other fight then? My eyes scanned the arena, and I finally managed to spot a cultivator donning a simple robe - one of mine. It was strange, but all of my robes looked simple and plain when compared to a cultivator's usual robe. Their colors were reserved, I added no garish decorations, and kept them simple and practical.

I couldn't understand these people. Why fight in a robe at all? Sure I made mine with as few restrictions to mobility as possible, but they were still a robe in the end. And robes weren't meant for fighting!

Yet none of the cultivators even entertained the idea of using more practical clothes even once. There had to be some cultural significance to robes I didn't get. Perhaps yet another way to elevate themselves above mortals? I had never seen a mortal wearing a robe after all.

That seemed likely. And stupid, like all restrictions on mortals. After all if you saw yourself as better than someone else, as simply superior, you didn't need to suppress them to prove that.

Which made cultivators seem very insecure to me. If they needed to elevate themselves above their origins so desperately.

Anyways. Now I only had to sit through twenty four of these fights, which hopefully wouldn't take as long as the first round had. The mayor should have eliminated more people in the first round, having most of our population not working for an extended period of time was a recipe for economic disaster.

Not my problem, I had more than enough funds to start anew in a new town. Or perhaps a small fishing village on the other side of the forest? I was sure I'd find something.

Well, so far the mayor seemed to know what he did, so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt before asking a friend to move me to a different location.