Realm Walker

He was boxed in.

Zhang Yuanqing felt a chill run through him, but he kept his face level, letting his gaze wander slowly around the circle of six around him.

World Ablaze sighed, kneaded his throbbing temples, and smiled. "Everyone, let's knock Yuanshi Tianzun out together. There are fifty points on the table. May the best man take them."

Tone Deaf had already thrown his lot in with him in secret.

"No argument here," he chimed in as he spun the black bamboo flute between his fingers.

Green Pine grinned widely from within his tangle of green vines. "This dungeon is all about points, first, last, and always. I’m in if it means the one with the highest score gets knocked out."

Yuan Ting and Zhao Chenghuang said nothing, but both had their eyes fixed on Yuanshi Tianzun. They were clearly on the same page as the rest.

Earth God, with a cigar clamped between his teeth, merely chuckled.

Zhang Yuanqing snorted. "Oh, so I'm the fish on the chopping block now, is that it? You're going to carve me up however you like?"

"Aren't you, though?" Green Pine shot back.

While they talked, Zhao Chenghuang and the others closed in, walking in perfect step, drawing the noose tighter without a word between them. The fight was one breath from breaking out.

If I burn every card I'm holding, I can probably get clear. The yin corpse, though, has no chance of surviving. Wrecking the yin corpse isn't breaking any rules, and out of this whole crowd, only Yuan Ting and Earth God are anywhere near friendly. The rest would smash my yin corpse out of spite the second they got the opening. I can't just bull rush my way through. I have to think this through and find an angle.

His mind spun fast, and the angle showed up quickly.

The six of them weren't a team. Leaving aside the little pairings between them, the Five Elements Alliance players and the Taiyi Sect players would never trust each other in a hundred years.

They'd only agreed to gang up on him because there was nothing pressuring them, no threat or no clock. He had to generate one. He would manufacture the exact fear that would make each of them watch their own backs, terrified that any of their so-called allies would shoot them in the back. Once he laid things out like that, the answer was obvious. Dock their points.

No longer a ball of nerves, he turned to Earth God with a smile. "Old-timer, I need a hand."

Earth God rolled the cigar in his mouth. "What do you mean?"

Zhang Yuanqing quietly slipped Little Goofball out and sent him to yank his yin corpse's pants down, all the time keeping his own face blank.

"Look at it this way," he said to Earth God. "Zhao Chenghuang's the strongest one here. If this turns into a real brawl, he will finish me off for sure, and the Taiyi Sect will walk away with fifty points. We can't have that. If I've got to go down at the hands of my own people, fine. But I won't go down to him."

"Fair point."

That happened to be exactly how Earth God saw it. He took the easy road down the hill, chuckling. He stepped sideways, planting himself in front of Zhao Chenghuang and Yuan Ting.

World Ablaze caught on and jumped in at once. "Old-timer, you hold that line. We'll deal with Yuanshi Tianzun as quickly as we can."

What actually suited him best was for Zhao Chenghuang to do the heavy lifting and gutting Yuanshi Tianzun. After that, Earth God and the rest would team up to shove Zhao Chenghuang aside and take the kill. A free-for-all like this was almost akin to the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. It was a case of you use me, I use you. Reality just never played out that neatly.

Still, having Earth God blocking Zhao Chenghuang's way wasn't bad at all.

Things moved quickly. Tone Deaf raised the bamboo flute to his lips. Green Pine snatched a wooden stick out of his Inventory, while World Ablaze drew out a half-meter-long flamethrower with a small gas canister acting as a stock.

And just as the fight was about to kick off, Zhang Yuanqing whipped around toward his vine-bound corpse and bellowed furiously, "You people dare to treat my yin corpse like that? Have you no decency at all?!"

His voice was frantic and high-pitched, as though something unspeakable was being done to the thing.

Huh? Following raw instinct, every last one of them, including Earth God, flicked their eyes to the corpse in that instant, or at least peered at it through the corner of their vision.

That was the moment Little Goofball, on his master's order, whipped the corpse's pants down.

What the hell? While the six players stood there baffled, Zhang Yuanqing, who'd already looked away early, lifted his chin and cried out to the heavens as loudly as he could.

"I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report World Ablaze for peeping at a corpse's private parts. Grounds: breaking the law!

"I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report Green Pine for peeping at a corpse's private parts. Grounds: breaking the law!

"I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report Tone Deaf for peeping at a corpse's private parts. Grounds: breaking the law!

"I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report Yuan Ting for peeping at a corpse's private parts. Grounds: breaking the law!

"I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report Zhao Chenghuang for peeping at a corpse's private parts. Grounds: breaking the law!"

High overhead, the hundred-zhang-tall spirit slowly drew back its bow and loosed five arrows straight down at the crowd.

Five dark shafts crossed the sky like falling stars.

【Ding! You have been reported by Yuanshi Tianzun. Report successful. Three points deducted.】

【Ding! You have been reported by Yuanshi Tianzun...】

Five of the players, Earth God aside, listened as the notifications played out in their ears, a string of question marks floating across their heads. What just happened? I got reported? I just lost three points, just like that?

The heavenly punishment they had seen earlier had to have been Yuanshi Tianzun feeling out the reporting rules. Even so, this was what he dug up? Zhao Chenghuang's eyes flashed as he got it in a heartbeat.

What Yuanshi Tianzun can do, so can I. He grabbed Yuan Ting's yin corpse and flung it hard into the middle of the group, ripping its pants off by brute force along the way.

Zhao Chenghuang, ever the sharp one, saw the opening at once: the chance to gut all the Five Elements Alliance players in one stroke.

Flump.

The bare-bottomed yin corpse landed among the stunned crowd, and every pair of eyes wrenched away from it at the same time.

Too late.

Zhao Chenghuang looked to the sky calmly and raised his voice. "I, Zhao Chenghuang, formally report Yuanshi Tianzun for peeping at a corpse's private parts. Grounds: breaking the law!

"I, Zhao Chenghuang, formally report World Ablaze..."

Amid the string of reports, the spirit under the vault of the sky drew its bow and sent five more arrows down.

Zhang Yuanqing and the others, except Yuan Ting, all heard the Spirit Realm's chime in their ears.

Zhang Yuanqing's expression shifted slightly. Learn it and turn it right around on us, huh?

"Fu—" World Ablaze was a Fire Sage to the core, and couldn't keep his temper in check anymore.

Immediately, his face twitched and he tacked on, "...nny, the grass is so green today."

It had just hit World Ablaze that if peeping at somebody's privates was a reportable offense, then swearing very probably was as well.

Green Pine and Tone Deaf backed away, step by step, their faces iron-gray, their previous assuredness gone. In under a minute, they'd bled six points, and had only four left. And Zhao Chenghuang still had a yin corpse standing next to him.

Zhao Chenghuang set a hand on his Level 4 yin corpse's shoulder and said flatly, "Not bad, Yuanshi Tianzun. I owe you thanks for that."

"Save the thanks till I've finished reporting you," Zhang Yuanqing said with a thin laugh, then he threw his chin up and called out loud, "I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report Zhao Chenghuang for pulling a corpse's pants down. Grounds: indecent assault!"

The second the words left him, World Ablaze, Green Pine, and the rest all ducked their heads and scrambled backward, like birds that had heard the bowstring once already.

【Ding! You have been reported by Yuanshi Tianzun...】

The chime of a successful report reached his ears, and Zhao Chenghuang's face dropped like a stone.

He hit straight back with the same charge and it went through, but it bought him nothing. He was down to four points himself, while Yuanshi Tianzun had started with fifty. Barring any other surprises, the man still sat on forty-one.

Zhang Yuanqing observed his attackers. Every one of them was wary, feeling exposed. They've cracked and won't trust each other anymore. It's time.

He clamped both hands to the waistband of his pants and shouted, "I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report—"

Before his sentence was even out, both his hands yanked down hard.

All six players dropped their heads as one, ripped their eyes away, and lunged backward as quickly as they could.

His fake-out done, and his pants still fully in place, Zhang Yuanqing winked out of existence. An instant later, he was standing beside Corpse No. 1, swinging the Bloodthirsty Blade as he sheared through the tough vines holding it down, one after another.

The trap was sprung. Tone Deaf put his flute to his mouth, and immediately, a shrill, mournful wave of sound drove its way into every skull like a steel needle, cutting at the soul. The attack was not directed. All across the area, people grabbed their heads, their faces twisting.

Zhang Yuanqing's blade slowed. Almost at the same moment, Green Pine, the one nearest to him, snarled through the head-splitting pain and lashed out with the stick in his hand.

Crack!

The stick whistled through the air and turned into a long, barbed whip that caught Yuanshi Tianzun across the back, splitting cloth, and drawing a smeared line of red across the exposed flesh.

The item was the Compliant Staff, a thing that shifted shape at will, with each form carrying a different effect. As a stick, it stunned opponents on a successful strike; as a whip, it made the target bleed. It could be used both in close quarters and at range, perfectly tailor-made for a nimble Wood Demon. Even among Transcendent-tier gear, it was top tier.

The searing pain sent a prickle through Zhang Yuanqing's scalp, and it did the opposite of what Green Pine wanted, which was to shake him loose from the influence of the flute's crippling tune. With his head clear and nothing causing him to hesitate, he sliced through the last few vines, hauled the yin corpse away, and vanished from every eye in the ring.

With no Scout around to give them True Sight, the other classes had almost no way to read where a Nocturnal Specter had slipped off to. Zhao Chenghuang and the rest, who had closed in for the kill, could only stand there and watch as Yuanshi Tianzun slipped away.

Tone Deaf, shocked and seething, glared across the distance at Green Pine. "You..."

He hadn't figured the guy for such a reckless idiot. That whip had done nothing but scratch Yuanshi Tianzun, and worse, it had snapped him out of the flute's grip.

Against any other opponent, Tone Deaf would've made a move of his own and set the Music Slave loose. But Yuanshi Tianzun was a Nocturnal Specter. His Music Slave could hold a man down from range with her singing well enough, but up close, a Nocturnal Specter would swallow her in one bite, and that would be the end of her. The flute had been a stalling tactic, an attempt to slow Yuanshi Tianzun's rescue of the yin corpse long enough for the others to close in. And Green Pine had wrecked it all with one swing.

Their prey had torn free of the snare and bolted for the distant hills. The remaining hunters traded looks, hostility and caution filling their eyes.

Who was the next prey?

One second of silence stretched to two, then three. And then, all together, in perfect unspoken accord, every one of them did the same thing.

They grabbed their waistbands.

They eyed each other, gazes sharp, jaws set grimly, ready for mutually-assured destruction.

"Break it up, break it up. Nobody's got any points left, there's no fight to be had," Earth God finally said, waving them off like he was shooing flies. "Go on, scatter."

World Ablaze, Green Pine, Tone Deaf, Yuan Ting, all edged backward, a hand still on their waistbands, like old swordsmen keeping a palm on the hilt of their swords.

Zhao Chenghuang backed away as well, a hand on his yin corpse's shoulder.

Once there was enough open ground between them, they each turned and cleared out as fast as they could.

Yuan Ting left, his pantless corpse trailing after him.

***

In the arena, the mood had gone stiff. The whole crowd looked on as a row of their finest, most-feted star players inched backward in a wary crouch, hands clamped white-knuckled to their own waistbands. Not one person in the seats could wrap their head around what they were looking at.

Every mind buzzed. Pantsing a corpse? Threatening each other? How could any one of them even do such a thing? Weren't they supposed to be stars? Didn't they care about keeping their face at all?

This wasn't the fight anybody had come to watch. How had things swerved this far off the rails?

Was this the slow twisting of human nature, or the collapse of morality? That old adage fit as though it had been made for exactly this moment.

In the elders' row, the seven or eight of them had all gone quiet.

Elder Zhao, a Taiyi Sect elder, glared at the projection, the corner of his eye twitching over and over as a vein along his forehead bulged and throbbed. In the twenty years since the inception of this Tournament, there had never been a fight this shameful. Once word of it got out, where exactly were the official Walkers supposed to hide their faces?

One elder let out a long, heavy sigh. "This Yuanshi Tianzun..."

***

In a stretch of ruins somewhere, Zhang Yuanqing sat with his back to a wall, tallying up his enemy's scores.

Zhao Chenghuang, World Ablaze, Tone Deaf, and Green Pine all have four points each. Earth God and Yuan Ting still have seven. Sun Miaomiao's got ten.

The way things stand, it can go two ways. One, those with a low points tally will eye those with a higher score. Those with high scores won't trust the others, and therefore, everybody will be guarding their own neck. Their alliances will falter, with people quietly knifing each other for points. That suits me best.

Two, to patch up the trust that's been shaken, whoever's got a head for the bigger picture will find a way to shore the alliances back up. The best tool for that is outside leverage, something off the board.

This was a tournament, after all, not a real Spirit Realm run. Losing did not mean death. At worst, one's ranking slid and the payout shrank. Therefore, dangling an off-the-board favor to rebuild trust between allies would actually work.

Making and breaking alliances is one of the dungeon’s own mechanics, so it's not cheating. Which means I get to work external leverage too, to split them up or pull some over. The two closest to me are Earth God and Yuan Ting, but I don't know the old man's temper or his tastes. Yuan Ting's though... I know.

The idea came to him quickly. He'd trade a little private gossip for Yuan Ting's backing.

Like how the little bitch at Elder Teddy's zoo had turned up mysteriously pregnant. Like how Chi Yue'an, back in his days with the Zhu family, had walked in on his wife tangled in bed with her stable of kept men. Like the buried truth behind the massacre of the Chu family. Like the women Demon Lord had bedded over the years. Like how the Flowery Young Master, as a boy, had been worked over in turns by the two Fu ladies.

He knew too many secrets.

***

Tone Deaf, Green Pine, and World Ablaze were in a small ruined building that had held together fairly well, with each taking a corner of the room.

They didn't trust each other. They watched each other in silence. Yet they wanted to maintain the alliance all the same.

World Ablaze said in a low voice, "We've each still got four points, which is enough to take two reports. If Yuanshi Tianzun and Zhao Chenghuang pull that grubby little stunt again, we're finished for certain. We have to band together."

"Band together how?" Green Pine replied flatly. "What's the trust supposed to rest on?"

World Ablaze smiled. "No need to be so on-guard. It's a tournament, not a fight to the death. Every word we say here is being heard by the elders, the stewards, and a whole crowd of colleagues. They're our witnesses.

"We're all people with a name to protect, yeah? So I'll make a solemn promise. However the three of us place when this ends, we'll split the rewards evenly. The elders and everyone else outside can hold me to it."

This was a complete contrast to the backstabbing that could happen during this match. Once World Ablaze put his reputation on the line, with elders and stewards and colleagues standing as witnesses, there was no walking it back.

Green Pine thawed at once. "What've you got in mind?"

World Ablaze said, "The first thing to sort is who we go after. If Yuanshi Tianzun's is still running as a lone wolf, we try to pull him in and pit all of us against the Taiyi Sect trio. If Earth God and Yuanshi Tianzun pair up, we sit on the hill and watch the tigers fight. From here on out, when it comes to tactics, things get dirty. Nobody's got any points to spare. No more showboating."

Once the two of them nodded, World Ablaze went on, "One more thing. Yuan Ting saw his own corpse's privates just now too, but Zhao Chenghuang did not report him. I think we need to test something, which is whether a report can be filed after the fact. If it can, we report Yuan Ting right now, then we also report Yuanshi Tianzun, because he swore while he was scrapping with us over the breastplate."

Tone Deaf gave a nod. "I heard it too. But we don't have the spare points to go poking at rules."

A failed report cost one point and sealed the reporting function for half an hour. They each had four points apiece, so it would take two successful reports to take them out. But if one of them lost a point because of a failed report, then a single report after that and it would be all over.

World Ablaze thought it over and sighed. "I'll do it."

If he wanted to lead the group, he had to be the one to take the risk.

He lifted his head and called out, "I, World Ablaze, formally report..."

【Ding! Report successful.】

World Ablaze's face lit up. "It worked."

***

"I, Yuanshi Tianzun, formally report Yuanshi Tianzun for swearing, on the grounds of moral failure!" Zhang Yuanqing called out toward the heavens from somewhere in the ruins.

【Ding! Report successful.】

【Ding! You have been reported by Yuanshi Tianzun. Report successful. Three points deducted.】

He smiled to himself. So it still works after the fact. Good. Earth God swore too, so that's a free hit waiting.

One more rule, mapped.

***

Inside their rundown little hideout, Green Pine urged, "What are you waiting for? Report Yuanshi Tianzun, now."