Chapter 163: Understanding The Ability
Space knit itself back together with a sound like a held breath releasing, and there, in the center of the destroyed land, Tianzun appeared.
He floated above the endless abyss that still hung where the stage had been, the barren dark yawning beneath his feet, and he did not fall. He simply hovered there, serene, unbothered, a man standing on nothing above a hole in the world.
And cradled in his arms was Vixen.
She had fainted, her head resting against his shoulder, her dark miasma gone, her second awakening spent to the last drop. The monk held her the way one might carry a sleeping child, carefully, gently, with that same calm smile resting on his face.
For a moment, the entire world paused.
Sixty thousand people in the stands and two hundred million more behind their screens stared at the image, and every one of them tried to make it fit and failed. They had watched these two vanish. They had watched Vixen unleash something that swallowed the arena whole, something that had left even the monk hidden from sight. And now the two of them had returned, except it was all backwards. It should have been Vixen standing over a beaten opponent. It should have been her power, her victory, her arms.
Instead it was Tianzun who floated calm and unhurt, and Vixen who hung senseless in his hold.
The colosseum didn’t know whether to cheer or to mourn.
[JoseRoselReduble: wait. WAIT. why is HE holding HER. that’s the wrong way round]
[Zerox4575: she deleted the entire arena and he’s carrying her like a grocery bag???]
[MarcoTiebosch: I need someone to explain what happened in the black part because my brain has filed a complaint]
[Cyndy9338: she gave EVERYTHING. her whole awakening. and he didn’t even put her down hard 😭]
[AuraNova: three years undefeated suddenly makes a lot more sense and I hate it]
[Marypaz13: he’s holding her so GENTLY that’s what’s breaking me. he’s not even cruel about it]
In the commentary platform, Julie sat frozen with her microphone halfway to her mouth, her jaw slack. Then the little speaker crackled in her ear again, and she jolted back to life.
"Uh, RIGHT! Yes! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a result!" She scrambled upright, her voice climbing back toward its usual roar. "The eighth match... no, the tenth... the match, THE match, goes to CHINA! Tianzun advances, and Vixen of America has been defeated!"
The screens flashed their cold arithmetic over the abyss.
{VICTORY: TIANZUN. CHINA}
{POINT TRANSFER IN PROGRESS...}
{VIXEN: 200 PTS. TIANZUN}
Tianzun rose higher, drifting up out of the pit with Vixen still cradled in his arms, and turned toward the American alcove.
He crossed the open air of the arena unhurried, sixty thousand pairs of eyes tracking him, and came to a gentle stop just before the rail. Then he held Vixen out, offering her back to her people.
Dana stepped forward and took her, easing the unconscious woman carefully into Nectron’s waiting arms.
"She’s a strong one," Tianzun said, his voice quiet and warm. "She reached further today than most reach in a lifetime. Be proud of her."
Then his calm gaze slid past Dana, past Selena, and settled on Nicholas.
The two of them looked at one another for a long moment across the rail.
"If you look next time," Tianzun said gently, "I don’t know if they’ll be merciful."
Nicholas’ eye narrowed a fraction.
’They?’
The word caught on something in him and held. Not it. Not I. They.
He had seen one thing behind the monk. One statue, one wheel, one vast attention turning toward him. But the monk had said they, as though the thing on that wheel was not a single presence at all, as though what sat behind Tianzun’s smile was a multitude wearing the shape of one, and the carvings Nicholas had glimpsed, the thousands upon millions of beings etched into that turning rim, stirred uneasily in his memory.
But the monk offered no explanation. He simply inclined his head, the picture of courtesy, and turned away, drifting back out over the arena toward the Chinese alcove without another word, leaving the single syllable hanging in the air behind him like a splinter.
The others turned to Nicholas at once.
"What was that about?" Selena asked, her voice low and sharp. "What’s he talking about, ’if you look next time’? Look at what?"
Nicholas let out a slow breath, his gaze following the monk’s retreating figure across the ruined arena.
He didn’t answer right away. There were sixty thousand people around them and a live broadcast overhead, and what he had to say was not for any of them. So he simply watched Tianzun go, filing the word they alongside everything else he had learned today, and waited for a wall of noise to hide behind.
In the background, Julie’s voice rang out over the stunned colosseum, cheerful and strained in equal measure. "Alright, folks, that was... a LOT! We’re going to take a short break to, ah, put the arena back together, since it is currently a bottomless hole! Sit tight! Grab a snack! Do NOT go anywhere!"
Down below, an official was already on his radio, and a name passed quickly up the chain to the terrain division.
Get Tor here. Now. We need a floor, and we needed it five minutes ago.
By the time the crews began ferrying equipment down toward the pit and a quiet, unremarkable man named Tor descended toward the abyss to coax solid ground back into existence, Nicholas had already told his team everything.
He kept his voice low, pitched only for the alcove. He told them about the Third Eye, and what it had shown him where the cameras found only black. He told them about the collapse, the shredder, the precision of it, and about the man who had strolled through it without a scratch. And he told them about the thing he had seen behind Tianzun, the great seated statue, the wheel, the millions of carvings, and the moment it had begun to turn its attention toward him, the same way it had once nearly emptied him out through his own eye.
When he finished, the alcove was silent.
Selena had gone pale. Nectron’s jaw was tight. Even Dana, who was never at a loss, took a moment to find her words.
"So you’re saying," Dana said slowly, "his ability isn’t something you, or anyone else, can comprehend."
"Not quite," Nicholas said.
Everyone turned to him.
"I think I understand it now."