“My apologies, Your Grace. I was just recalling the significance of the archway we all passed through before attending the games.” Alex chuckled warmly. “The archway that I suspect every single spectator, contestant, soldier, and member of your most elite guard have all passed through at least once.”

He frowned in thoughtful recollection as Dongfang Hong’s expression went from warm fatherly smile to ice-cold glare in the blink of an eye.

“Ah, I recall! It went something like this: “All who enter this academy give their oath to cause no deliberate harm to Headmaster or academy. Challenges supersede all other oaths. You are free to leave at any time.”

Alex flashed a confidential smile, as if sharing a secret between friends. “And I do note that the oath extends well beyond the duration of anyone’s stay. So for all that everyone is permitted to leave, not one cultivator attending this competition as spectator or contender will ever be able to raise a hand against the school’s headmaster without threatening their cultivation base. And one can only wonder exactly how many rulers and administrators of QuiJing province you invited to partake of the contests, or to simply enjoy the spectacle of the competition, taking their ease in luxurious boxed seats that are almost apartments, where no expense was spared!”

Alex’s smile was all teeth. “As a host you’ve been extremely generous, spending an absolute fortune in Gold and Spirit pearls not just to host this event, but to shell out some of the grandest prizes imaginable! Which is very gracious, but makes little sense fiscally, since most of the staff and teachers of this school are, in fact, your own troops. A prince with the resources of an entire country at his disposal. So what need do you have to tempt wandering Silvers and Golds to teach at this school?”

Even as he dared to utter these words, Alex was of course measuring every movement and gesture made by the prince and his men. Knowing damn well that he was absolutely playing with fire. Particularly when the prince’s gaze hardened, final traces of mirth fading to cold disdain barely concealing the hate Alex could sense seething just beneath.

Alex grit past the surge of dread he felt hollowing out his stomach and continued playing the cocky fool. Knowing his mentor would be proud. Even if it killed him.

As he sensed it had, so many times before.

“Of course, if your objective isn’t simply networking and hiring, but is instead to freeze out the ability of the elites of CuiJing Province and it’s neighbors from mounting any kind of defense or counterattack once you’ve annexed this territory, then maybe this absurd expense actually makes sense! Because you’ve now assured that there are at least fifty odd Golds that can never move against you. Including the entirety of CuiJing’s elites, and most of the city leaders in the territories immediately adjoining Baidushi as well. Now that’s what I call a smart investment. Well done!”

Alex’s mocking clap echoed oddly in the vast arena, the entire crowd going dead silent with a deadly tension he could cut with a knife. Cut like Dongfang Hong’s killing glare, as Jidihu used her arts to the fullest, no longer cloaking, but conveying through whispered words and murmurs of shadow as clear as a bell, exactly what had been said.

Time seemed to stretch and slow, Alex tasting peril screaming through his soul as Dongfang Hong’s countenance twisted in a hate-filled snarl void of any pretext of civility, warmth, or a paternal ruler’s gentle affections. It was the twisted face of an insecure tyrant, replacing fear with fury, desperate to crush anyone or anything that would dare jeopardize his schemes of conquest and dominion.

“Kill—“

Quickness check made!

“I, Alex Hammer, Headmaster of Royal Phoenix Academy, challenge you, Dongfang Hong, to a duel! The stakes are Royal Phoenix Academy, where you will indeed be headmaster, should I submit to your might!”

Alex paused, holding up his flashing talisman of obsidian jade with a crown that instantly caught the gazes of an entire coliseum’s worth of spectators. A talisman that instantly froze six Deep Golds, the true elite of an entire nation, who could have so easily cut him down in an eyeblink. For all that they would have instantly ruptured their foundations while doing so. And no one achieved Deep Gold in this world by playing the fool. Which probably explained why he himself had never gotten past Silver in any incarnation.

Alex forced himself to speak on. “And should I prove victorious, you will assure the immediate safe return and continued good health of Cui Li, Prince Chen Lei, and Princess Xian Hong, your niece, whom you will immediately declare the rightful ruler of YanTu nation!” He couldn’t help but smile at the look of apoplectic fury the prince was giving him. “And win or lose, you will swear never to deliberately cause harm or death or malicious inconvenience to myself or those I know personally or by proxy once our battle is done. And yes, Dongfang Hong, that includes the entirety of every agent or soldier under your command and anyone else who would be acting on your behalf, directly or indirectly!”

Alex’s talisman blazed like the fiery corona around a black hole. He was awed and horrified to see actual darkness flaring so brightly that it was blinding. Yet Alex’s awe soon transformed to dismay, realizing to his horror that, in compelling the will of an entire nation… even with his divine tier talisman, he had taken it too far.

Reciprocity must be maintained.

He spat blood as he spoke his next words. “And I too swear never to deliberately strike at you directly, or with the forces under my personal command, beyond whatever wounds I inflict upon you during our struggle, once our match is over!”

The very instant he uttered those words, the air rang with silence so profound it was deafening.

Reciprocity, at least of a sort, had been achieved.

Everyone was frozen in wide-eyed disbelief. If Alex had thought the pressure had been intense before… now it was as if the weight of all the seas of the realms were crushing against his soul.

“That anyone would dare!”

“The fool should be executed at once for even suggesting such madness!”

Murmurs from the crowd Alex could somehow hear so exquisitely. Just as he did the cold, quiet laughter and bitter declarations.

“That bastard Dongfang Hong set us all up from the start. He’s here for conquest, and all of us were blind fools accepting his invitation! Now, we can’t even defend our own cities,” declared a powerful baritone voice belonging to a Gold titan whose dismayed eyes Alex could feel on the back of his neck.

“But that’s only true if he’s the headmaster,” soothed a female voice beside him. “For that reason alone, I hope the Ruidian wins.”

“You know things are bad if we find ourselves in one the Fox’s tales,” grumbled an older man in the crowd.

“Watch your words!” Hissed a panicked wujen of deepest Silver. “For every story ending with a Ruidian hero, there’s another with a city in ruins!”

So many whispers saturated Alex’s psyche as he glared at the Red Prince’s outraged countenance, trembling with fury, purple veins throbbing on his skull. Alex couldn’t help but note the instant the prince’s fury turned to wide-eyed dismay as his own hand slowly rose up, despite his best efforts, to bring his talisman before Alex’s own as the crowd’s murmurs continued to grow in pitch and intensity.

“Why doesn’t Dongfang Hong strike that little insolent brat down?”

“Are you blind? He can’t! He’s actually bound to the talismans!”

“Wait, that means...”

“Yes! That silver-haired freak somehow became headmaster!”

Dongfang Hong’s fury turned to desperate panic as his darkest secret was revealed. The Golden tile with the false crown tarnished and blackened before everyone’s eyes, until the filth of deception had rotted completely away before the blazing corona of brilliant darkness radiating from Alex’s own talisman.

All that was left behind was a Silver talisman rippling with potency radiating from countless shimmering bands in a rose pattern oddly similar to Damascus steel. Beautiful in its own way, and utterly free of any trace of a headmaster’s sigil.

Alex felt a lurch in his gut when he sensed the power tightly coiled within. That whatever his flaws, the ruthless monster before him was no simple Silver. He was, in fact, very much like Duo Ku, with Silver cords that formed no latticework, but instead wrapped endlessly about a dead core.

But unlike the monstrous bully who only had a single winding Silver cord, this monster had almost a dozen wrapped tightly together.

Which meant that he was, in his own twisted way, following a path of compression similar to Hao Chan and Yinzi. And Alex already knew just how powerful they had already become, even stuck in Silver tier for the moment, as was the Red Prince himself.

Yet none of that changed the fact that Dongfang Hong’s talisman had no crown, or golden sheen at all.

It was a talisman of pristine rippled mercury hue when it flashed in the sunlight, that the entire world could now see.

“Silver! Dongfang Hong’s Talisman isn’t Gold or Jade… it’s Silver!”

“So how the hell could he have become Headmaster?”

“Politics. How else?”

Dongfang Hong radiated a killing aura based on pure hatred as he glared into Alex’s silvery eyes.

“No lesser is permitted to give challenge to a lord, fool, no matter the archaic strictures of this relic of an institution! Now you will rescind your challenge, surrender your talisman to me, and beg for your life, you insolent worm! Else I will purge my entire nation of your kind, and their deaths will be on your head, Ruidian filth!” Dongfang Hong snarled.

Alex chuckled coldly, leaning back against the thin stone balustrade serving as a symbolic barrier to the arena sands some distance below. “Not a chance in hell, asswipe.” His smile grew at the look of apoplectic fury this earned him. “You think I give a crap what you do to several thousand strangers I’ve never even seen? And just for the record, I’m not even Ruidian.”

Finesse Check made! Eternal Fox skillcheck: Critical success!

Alex’s eyes bulged as his features went deathly pale. His eyes rolled up and he plummeted right over the ledge, cartwheeling down to the sands below as his ears rang with mocking laughter and cries of surprise and dismay, Hao Chan and Yinzi’s desperation both ringing in his ears as he managed to crash on his sides upon the arena sands, with his enemy’s laughter washing over him, laden with bitter spite and hate-filled glee.

“Fool!” The man chortled. “That you would dare to lie with a talisman in your hand. This fight is already over, your foundation crippled! Very well, worm, I accept the terms!” Dongfang Hong chuckled coldly, fighting the compulsion no longer as his eyes glittering with feral hate.

The smirking would-be conqueror floated down with the power of enchanted boots that were of course at least as good as those worn by his elite airborn troops as he slowly withdrew a changdao blade so sharp with Metal Qi that the air itself howled over the edge of the artifact rippling in the ill green light it emited, torn asunder by a killing edge so exquisitely sharp that it would cleave through even a Gold’s limbs.

Alex lurched back with a hiss, eyes widening at the sight of quicksilver death flickering through the air.

Alex’s heart was pounding as he stumbled back yet another clumsy step as Dongfang Hong flashed a truly feral smile, wondering if perhaps he had managed to overplay his hand. Of course he knew about the Gold tier wards and protections the monster wore. Appreciating anew just how difficult it would be to slip past those defenses. But the wicked Gold tier artifact that seemed so thirsty for his blood was one that neither his senses nor Jidihu’s information had even hinted at. Not until the monster had actually drawn the weapon. A final trump card that had been hidden so well in its sheath that not even a kitsune master of Shadow had realized it was there.

Dongfang Hong filled the air with his malicious laughter, no longer bothering to hide his hunger or his hate under the fatherly smile of a so-called champion of justice.

“And you must be Alex Hammer. The mortal my master hates above all others!” Dongfang Hong said with a sneer as his blade lazily flicked through the air.

Duck!

Alex didn’t question it, he twisted and leaped aside far quicker than anyone with a cracked foundation had a right to as the very air split and bled before the invisible knife blade of Qi extending a good handful of feet beyond the tip of the blade.

And seeing a now flustered Alex scrabble was clearly a source of fierce pleasure for his opponent.

“That you would dare make so many accusations against, me, Ruidian filth!” Dongfang Hong roared, pinning Alex with his cold, furious gaze. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging me to grant you the simple mercy of death!”

Alex forced a laugh, even as his gut screamed that something was terribly wrong. There was no way he should know anything about Alex’s vendetta with Shalu. Fog of War should have prevented it. Unless, somehow, tales were already being told in certain circles? Alex understood it was a method his master WiFu had used for millennia to make sure the world learned the fox’s tales, despite all the measures their enemies had taken to crush and suppress Silver Fox’s heritage and history. Who was to say that the other gods didn’t have their own ways to slip their own legends past the strictures and edicts of countless shadowy games played in the heavens above? For all Alex knew, sharing those stories was a right grandfathered in long before all others, seeing as it had to do with the foundational fount of belief Alex supposed that all Gods rested the pillars of their existence upon. And even if those tales would never reveal Alex in the flesh, a military genius probably found it easy enough to put all the pieces together when Alex was actively taunting him in his face, after ruining so many of his plans.

Alex’s heart raced as he sensed the prince’s arrogant smile, the way he nodded at his half dozen wujen honor guard who slowly began to encircle the arena while twirling lazy moulinets with his crimson blade, the air turning red with its passage, as if actually bleeding before the infernal edge of that awful weapon.

Alex choked down the sudden desperate desire to flee for all his life, sensing his death in the bloodforged artifact his enemy how wielded.

And the confident, knowing smile of a man who had no doubt butchered hundreds if not thousands with his very weapon… One way or another, Alex knew had to throw the Red Prince off his game, if he was to have any hope of surviving this round at all.

He forced a mocking smile of his own.

“The mercy of death, is it? I guess that’s a step up, compared to the mercy you were showing all the royals you had tortured in the bowels of the palace and here at the college! Somehow, I don’t think you’ll be able to count on the Emperor’s forbearance, once he finds out that you tortured and corrupted every one of Cui Zhe’s children in a desperate effort to get her to ‘voluntarily’ surrender her province to you!”

Dongfang Hong froze, gazing at Alex in apoplectic fury. “You! Everything in the palace… it was all you!”

Alex chuckled. “Don’t think I’m stupid enough to answer that trap of a question. But I do note… and I’m sure everyone gazing down at us so raptly notes...”

Duck!

Alex’s reflexes screamed, Bullrush alone allowing him to dodge the furious waist-high slash that would have completely bisected him when Dongfang Hong used a Fire and Steel technique to sprint forward and close the distance with terrifying speed.

“… that you failed to answer the question! Do you deny holding and torturing multiple royals captive in Cui Zhe’s own palace? How about five hundred elite Silver tier Troops hidden in the underground barracks surrounding that pit of depravity? More than enough troops to suppress and slaughter ten million basic cultivators and mortals if they failed to submit to your rule. No?”

“You should be writhing on the ground!” Dongfang Hong hissed. “I know full well what happens to cultivators who break their oath in this school!”

Alex flashed a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes, holding his own fangtian ji at the ready. “Will you at least give your oath that you didn’t order any of your men directly or indirectly to break their oaths so you could witness firsthand the destruction of their cultivation bases?” Alex tilted his head when Dongfang Hong did nothing but roar and slice the air with a furious series of crosscuts.

Quickness Check made!

But Alex had already Bullrushed a good thirty steps back, carefully noting how far the sands swirled in the wake of the unseen blade stretching beyond the tip of his enemy’s wickedly deadly two-handed sword.

He hissed. Five feet. The monster was able to project Gold Tier cutting Qi precisely five feet beyond the tip of his blade. Could his own Fangtian Ji, pulled from storage as he leaped back, have any hope of countering such an attack? Would greater beast core infused indestructibility really allow him to counter such devastation, or would he have to rely on Silver Wing and Qi Deflection in desperate tandem?

If there was a single silver lining to facing that nightmare artifact, it was that even Dongfang Hong was panting as he glared Alex’s way. Just how costly was it to use a Gold tier artifact’s powers when one oneself was only a Silver? No matter how warped and powerful a Silver he might be. Alex had no idea. It might be absolutely effortless, and Dongfang Hong could butcher an army with it. Or it might have already drained him to the point that the bastard prince would be a fool to risk further straining his foundation.

All Alex knew for certain was that he didn’t dare stop his patter. The moment he went silent and allowed his foe to fully focus on the fight would be the beginning of the end.

“You will pay for your crimes, Ruidian!” The Red Prince roared. “And all your prevarications, Shadow Qi, and attempts at deception will avail you nothing then!”

“So says the conniving bastard prince not above torturing royalty and binding them to infernal contracts in a pathetic bid to annex CuiJing Province!” Alex shouted right back, darting away when he sensed the sudden tremendous buildup of spiritual energy emanating somewhere from within the crowd spectators, wincing in sympathy when he understood what was happening, and why.

You have successfully placed dimensional gates between spectators and arena!

The Prince’s hate-filled glare turned to a cold smirk. “Think you can run, do you, Ruidian monkey?”

Alex winked. “Run like you wouldn’t believe. And you’ll note that I’m not crumpling to the ground in unspeakable agony after declaring to the world that you’re a sadistic monster who shed the blood of his own kin in order to consolidate his power.”

Dongfang Hong forced a laugh. “And yet you still stand after daring to say such things about your betters! After daring to imply that you’re anything other than a Ruidian. Clearly the oathbindings no longer work!”

A code, perhaps, or a bone of hope thrown to someone forced to act under the most hideous of compulsions… a woman’s desperate scream echoing through the crowd as blinding white light aimed right for Alex’s torso flashed through the air… only to sputter at the edge of the sands for long seconds as another precious Golden star crumpled to ash in the stands above.

Alex shook his head in regret for the life destroyed, for all that he knew better than to turn his head before this foul foe. “Let me guess. Another Gold you had enslaved to infernal contracts, forced to heed your bidding even at the destruction of her foundation, the centerpiece of her entire life? Because you really are that foul a bastard, aren’t you, Dongfang Hong? How many Gold jewels of the empire will you destroy in your bid for power, just to compensate for the fact you despise your own failures, your inability ever to ascend past the depths of Silver?”

Alex’s pitying smile turned hard and cold. “How very like Shalu you are, you pathetic wretch of a cultivator.”

Dongfang Hong’s mocking expression turned to wide-eyed disbelief when the fatal blast of plasma was stopped cold, no matter that Alex had performed a similar feat before. It was different, perhaps, when you were involved in the machinations of the plot and saw the incongruity firsthand, as opposed to a flash of strikes and counters so flash that no one not Deep Silver in Quickness would have followed even half of his exchanges that day, no matter how much they might otherwise front or pretend.

But now there could be no doubt, though it was a long second before Alex’s insult registered on the shocked-looking prince.

His features mottled with fury, glaring at Alex with a hate that defied mere words.

Alex couldn’t help smirking his contempt right back at the man, for all that a part of him was screaming that he was playing the utter fool, goading on the master of countless battlefields with a kingdom’s worth of ancient treasures at his fingertips, a foul bastard of a prince who wasn’t at all above enslaving others to infernal contracts to get what he wanted.

Before he burst into mocking laughter and began to glow a deep crimson hue. And Alex realized to his dismay that he hadn’t been the only one stalling for time, as the sonorous chants of the six wujen sentinels heightened to a crescendo as crimson sigils began blazing upon the arena sands, not stopped in the least by the massive tetrahedron of inert gates Alex had hastily erected to block any attack below Jade hue.

Which meant that the sudden influx of vile crimson power tasting of the screams and agony of his friends was either Jade tier or higher… or somehow emanating from below the arena sands.