Realm Walker

【Ding! Cold Iron Helmet equipped by Earth God.】

【All armor pieces have now surfaced!】

Halfway to the fading pillar of light, Zhang Yuanqing felt both delight and let down at once. Earth God got the helmet.

Delight, because he'd finally tracked the old man down. All he had to do was to talk him into an alliance, and the win was practically in the bag. Let down, because every piece of the armor had been claimed, and none of them belonged to him.

No matter. Get an ally, and that ally's armor is as good as mine, Zhang Yuanqing told himself.

"Do you have a way to talk him around?" Sun Miaomiao asked him, matching his quick pace.

"No clue. The truth is, I barely know the guy," Zhang Yuanqing answered truthfully.

Sun Miaomiao nodded, then said, "Hey, Yuanshi Tianzun, are you really not going to think about selling me that little spirit servant? I'll trade you one that's rarer and stronger."

"No."

"Just think about it a little more."

"It's not up for discussion."

The two of them ran with their yin corpses in tow, up and down through the ruins, springing along toward the spot where the light had gone out.

***

Elsewhere, along the old city's main street, World Ablaze was leading Tone Deaf and Green Pine toward the helmet. They moved more slowly, keeping pace with Tone Deaf, who was weighed down by his breastplate.

World Ablaze, who was running point, called back to the others, "Remember, we have to pull Earth God onto our side. That's the only thing that gets us a seat at the table with Yuanshi Tianzun."

"And if Yuanshi Tianzun's already allied with Earth God?" Green Pine asked.

His breathing was even. To him, a long-distance pursuit like this was as easy as drinking water.

World Ablaze vaulted over a heap of loose stone. "Then we find a way to cut a deal with Earth God anyway. With Zhao Chenghuang and Sun Miaomiao teaming up and bearing down upon the rest of us, they've got no reason to say no."

The way World Ablaze saw it, they were all in the danger zone when it came to theirpoints tally, and nobody could affort to be hit with a report. The best strategy was to secure Earth God's help, then ally with Yuanshi Tianzun. That was the play.

They could promise Yuanshi Tianzun one of the final slots. In exchange, he could use his fat point lead to wear down the Taiyi Sect's Nocturnal Specters first, before the rest of them came in to sweep Zhao Chenghuang's trio out in one go. After that, they could determine who got the two final slots. If things panned out like that, then the top three finishers would all be from the Five Elements Alliance, and they could carve up the spoils together. Beautiful.

If Earth God had already allied with Zhang Yuanqing, then their little band's leverage fell off hard, but there was still a deal to be had.

***

Earth God hadn't left by the time Zhang Yuanqing reached his destination. He was sitting on a half-collapsed mud wall, a cigar in his teeth, his weathered face the picture of ease.

Zhang Yuanqing took notice of the helmet on his head. It looked like the old-style helmets in a period drama, albeit battered and worn.

He stopped a few meters off and got straight to the point. "Old-timer, let's become allies. Name your terms, whatever they are."

The way things stood, Earth God's options were slim. He could either throw his lot in with him or with World Ablaze. Once the old man saw that Sun Miaomiao had already made his decision, he was sure he'd ally with him.

𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Earth God didn't answer right away. Sure enough, his eyes went to Sun Miaomiao behind him.

"How'd she end up with you?" he asked, sounding surprised.

Zhang Yuanqing thumped his own chest. "She fell for my unmatched charm. She's one of us now."

Sun Miaomiao rolled her eyes and gave Little Goofball's head a soft rub.

"And you've already got a kid together?" Earth God said with a chuckle.

He mulled it over for a few seconds, then gave a small nod. "I'm alright with an alliance. Win or lose, you pay me two hundred grand. And it only holds for this one stage."

"Done."

"Easy money."

Only then did Zhang Yuanqing bring Sun Miaomiao up to the mud wall and lay out his plan. "The first thing to do is to knock out World Ablaze and his lot. Then, we'll go head to head with Zhao Chenghuang and Yuan Ting."

Earth God chewed the cigar, glanced at Sun Miaomiao, and chuckled again. "It doesn't have to be them first. Knocking Zhao Chenghuang out first works just as well. Take out those two Taiyi Sect players, and World Ablaze's trio will be fish in a barrel."

He still doesn't trust Sun Miaomiao enough. Zhang Yuanqing smiled. "Well I feel that way too. But it also depends on which side we run into first."

Earth God was about to nod when he cocked his head to the side. "We have company."

Zhang Yuanqing and Sun Miaomiao flattened against the wall at once, tucking themselves out of sight, and called their uin corpses over to them to take cover.

Earth God calmly turned to look. It was World Ablaze and his two.

Catching Earth God's eye, World Ablaze stopped, narrow-mouthed longsword in one hand, the other raised high. "Old-timer, can we talk?"

World Ablaze? Talk about timing... Zhang Yuanqing dropped his voice to a whisper. "Earth God, stall them. Sun Miaomiao and I will jump them."

"Talk about what?" Earth God said around the cigar in his mouth, his tone as flat as ever.

"Well... Before we talk, could you raise both hands to show that you're clean?" World Ablaze replied.

Green Pine and Tone Deaf behind him promptly put their hands up too, showing their sincerity.

Do you think I'm that kind of shameless character? Earth God fumed inwardly as he swallowed a mouthful of curses that nearly tore loose from his throat. He raised his hands to play along.

"If you've got something to say, say it!" he grumbled.

"We want to ally with you and take on the Taiyi Sect's Nocturnal Specters together," World Ablaze shouted over."We're trying to court Yuanshi Tianzun's as well. The way I see it, the Five Elements Alliance members ought to work together and lock down the top three places before splitting the rewards evenly."

Earth God thought about it. "And how can I trust you lot?"

"Easy," World Ablaze answered. "We'll swear it in front of the elders, the stewards, and all our colleagues. We all have reputations to keep. Go back on your word and none of us could ever show our faces again."

Earth God worked the cigar in his mouth and pretended to be in deep thought, dragging things out.

"I suppose I've got no reason to turn it down," he finally replied. "Fine, an alliance it is. You three, go on and swear."

Just then, Zhang Yuanqing, who was well into Night Wandering, poked his head out for a look.

The three of them were standing strangely. All of them were looking upward at a forty-five-degree angle, so that Earth God's lower half never fell into their field of view.

Yanking a yin corpse's pants down and popping it out into the open won't cut it, he thought to himself as he observed the situation. The normal instinct is to snap one's eyes toward anything that suddenly appears, but I've run that once already, and World Ablaze got burned by it. He's braced himself for the possibility it might happen again, and won't fall for it that easily.

We'll have to take them head on. Tone Deaf's got the breastplate for defense, Green Pine's a Wood Demon with regeneration, and World Ablaze has fire resistance and no telling whether he's got a defense item on him.

After all his deliberation, Zhang Yuanqing settled on the oldest trick in the book: a surprise attack. That way, even if they had defenses up, both he and Sun Miaomiao, with their combined fighting power, could pin the enemy down fast.

The two Nocturnal Specters slipped out from behind the mud wall and split up, one left and one right, closing slowly and carefully on World Ablaze's group.

Night Wandering hid both sound and scent, but some things couldn't be hidden. Such as footprints pressed into soft ground. Or a pebble kicked loose underfoot as one walked. In this wrecked, weed-choked ruin of a city, that kind of little tell was the easiest thing that could give them away.

Ten meters, eight, five... Zhang Yuanqing walked with real care, keeping clear not just of sand and gravel, but even skirting around patches of moss.

Right as he was about to burst out and kill, Green Pine's face flickered and he barked, "Watch it! Ambush!"

Green Pine had been quietly communicating with the plants all around them, braced for just such an eventuality: a Taiyi Sect Nocturnal Specter using this opportunity to sneak in cloaked.

This was where the final armor piece had dropped, after all. Zhao Chenghuang, Yuanshi Tianzun, and the rest were bound to be converging on it as well, and the odds of everyone running headlong into each other at this exact spot were sky high.

Sure enough, the plants had given him a heads-up.

Were we spotted? Zhang Yuanqing fretted, a chill running down his spine. He stopped second-guessing, gripped the Bloodthirsty Blade, and lunged.

World Ablaze, having been warned in time, reacted a moment faster, kicking himself off the ground and throwing himself backward. Zhang Yuanqing's blade stabbed through empty air.

Mid-leap, World Ablaze whipped his right arm out like a whip, dragging the narrow-mouthed longsword around in a flat sweep. The edge carved out a deadly line through the air.

Zhang Yuanqing checked his momentum, pulled his own blade back and snapped it up vertically.

The two weapons clashed with a violent ringing of metal on metal. The longsword skated off along the Bloodthirsty Blade. Zhang Yuanqing saw sparks jump off his weapon as a jagged notch was carved into the edge of his trusty blade.

His heart tightened. Transcendent-tier items cannot keep pace with me much longer.

Off to the side, Tone Deaf lowered his head and played a wailing, mournful note from his flute. The wave of sound rolled outward, piercing the soul. Everyone in the area clutched their heads with pained expressions, all except Earth God, who was untouched.

Sun Miaomiao's fine brows drew together. Unable to hold Night Wandering any further, she flickered into view. She was a Level 3 Nocturnal Specter with an experience bar that was ninety percent full. Her spirit was already monstrously strong, so the flute hurt her least of all.

No way. How could those two ever become allies? World Ablaze stared at Yuanshi Tianzun and Sun Miaomiao, dumbstruck. "You two! Did you form an alliance?!"

"Me too!" Earth God cried as he launched himself skyward, blasting the mud wall to pieces in the process, turning himself into a meteor aimed squarely at World Ablaze.

World Ablaze clamped a hand to his waistband. "Stay back!"

Green Pine and Tone Deaf reached for theirs the same instant. That was three reports, locked and loaded.

Earth God's tiger-leaps-off-the-mountain plunge stalled. He wrenched himself off his original course by sheer brute force and slammed down beside Zhang Yuanqing with a boom.

"Yuanshi Tianzun, you've got us all backed into a corner," he complained loudly. "This match has turned into a miserable slog."

Even as he spoke, the old man clapped a hand on his own waistband too, and tipped his head back so he was looking upward at forty-five degrees.

Zhang Yuanqing mirrored his move and gave his three opponents a sidelong look. "Threats, huh? Bring it. I've got the points, who's scared of who!"

"Bring it!"

Both sides bellowed with their chins up, looking all haughty as though they were hard men who didn't fear death, leveling guns at each other, and not at all like a bunch of idiots about to undo their belts.

"What a lively bunch," a cold voice cut in from off in the distance.

The shouting on both sides sputtered as they all sent sidelong looks toward the source of the new voice.

The newcomers were Yuan Ting and Zhao Chenghuang, in their black shirts and black pants, with two yin corpses trailing behind them.

Zhao Chenghuang's deep-set eyes settled on Sun Miaomiao. "Why have you allied with Yuanshi Tianzun? Sun Miaomiao, don't forget who you are."

"My business is my own. Do I need you to teach me how to act?"

Sun Miaomiao glanced down at her little skirt, then quietly called her yin corpse to her and clamped a hand on its waistband. A threat. Seeing it, Yuan Ting hurriedly grabbed the coat knotted round his corpse's waist and tipped his own face forty-five degrees toward the sky.

Zhao Chenghuang's brows drew together tightly. His whole being balked at what he was about to do, at the feeling of being dragged along, but he called up his corpse and copied Yuan Ting's actions, tipping his own face upward to the same angle.

All three sides were deadlocked.

Nobody liked fighting like this—torturing each other, threatening each other—but nobody could afford not to do it.

It was all Yuanshi Tianzun's fault.

***

On the live projection, the eight players stood around, each one with a hand on a waistband, their chins tipped haughtily up to the sky. A vendor in the stands stopped, shocked, a scoop of roasted nuts hanging in the air. Whole rows of spectators just stared, forgetting the food in their hands.

Among the Taiyi Sect and Five Elements Alliance elders, some watched with the corners of their mouths twitching on and on, while others had gone iron-gray in the face, and still others looked on with a vein or two bulging on their forehead.

The biggest scandal in the official organizations' twenty-one-year history had just been born.

Every one of those eight would be getting a stern sanction. No, they'd be expelled!

***

Back in the ruins of the old city, Zhao Chenghuang was the first to break the silence.

"Fine," he said flatly. "Since you want to help Yuanshi Tianzun, so be it. How you square it with Elder Sun is your own affair."

He turned to give Green Pine's group a sidelong look. "Let's join forces. Knock them out, and I'll hand one of the two slots to you."

World Ablaze gave Zhao Chenghuang the same sidelong look. "How can I trust you?"

"Do you have a choice?" the Nocturnal Specter replied coldly. "If you'd still rather ally with Yuanshi Tianzun in a bind like this, then forget I said anything."

Green Pine jumped in at once. "Fine. We'll ally."

World Ablaze opened his mouth, flicked a sidelong glance at Yuanshi Tianzun's camp, and could only say, "An alliance, then."

With the alliance sealed, the three sides were now two, and still nobody threw the first punch.

The reason was simple. In a standoff, one could afford to look upwards at forty-five degrees. But who could fight properly with their necks craned to the sky like that? The second somebody played dirty and dropped their pants mid-brawl, the odds of eating it were huge. The risk of getting caught off-guard was too great.

It was a stalemate.

Zhang Yuanqing's mind raced, weighing the point difference on both sides. World Ablaze's only got three. Green Pine, Tone Deaf, Zhao Chenghuang, and Yuan Ting have four each. We're outnumbered, sure, but we're ahead on points, and a new round of reporting would be mutually-assured destruction. They wouldn't dare to rely on that method to wear us down. To claw back an edge, to flip this, they've got to try to knock one of our scores down.

The thought had barely surfaced when he heard Zhao Chenghuang say coldly, "To celebrate the alliance, allow me to send you a little gift first."

With his face still tipped up at forty-five degrees, he called out, "I, Zhao Chenghuang, formally report Earth God for peeping at a corpse's private parts, on the grounds that it breaks the law!

"I, Zhao Chenghuang, formally report Earth God for swearing, on the grounds of having no morals!"

Under the sullen vault of clouds, the hundred-zhang-tall spirit drew back its great bow and loosed two arrows down at the group. One struck Earth God, and one struck Zhao Chenghuang.

The first report traced back to the very first time Yuanshi Tianzun had yanked his yin corpse's pants down. Yuanshi Tianzun had pointedly skipped reporting Earth God that time, but Zhao Chenghuang had never forgotten.

The second report, Zhao Chenghuang had thrown out based on his read of Earth God's fondness for cursing. Unfortunately, the second one failed.

"Does this old-timer look that dumb to you?" Earth God grumbled as he listened to the notifications.

He'd entered the instance alone, so there'd been nobody to curse at, and right after that, he'd gotten a full demonstration of Yuanshi Tianzun's shameless use of the reporting mechanic. Therefore, Earth God had kept his guard up, and across several hours of in-dungeon time, he hadn't let one curse slip.

"You're down to four points yourself now," Zhao Chenghuang said flatly. "Everyone, we just have to find a way to knock Earth God out with a couple of reports, and the win will be ours."

The crack had opened.

World Ablaze mulled it over for a few seconds. Find a way to report Earth God and get him kicked out. Right. Earth God just lied to us about allying...

His eyes lit up, his face twisting with the thrill of it, and he called out loud, "I, World Ablaze, formally report Earth God..."

Earth God, Sun Miaomiao, and Zhang Yuanqing all went pale. This is bad!

"I report World Ablaze for public urination, on the grounds of having no civic decency!" Zhang Yuanqing cried out, rattling it off as fast as he could, like an incantation.

The spirit in the heavens loosed an arrow on the spot, straight into World Ablaze.

"...on the grounds of brea—" World Ablaze never finished his sentence. He saw the arrow fly into view and heard the Spirit Realm chime in his ear.

【Ding! You have zero points. You have been eliminated!】

The next second, World Ablaze vanished from the dungeon, gone from everyone's sight.

They all froze, Earth God included.

World Ablaze got knocked out?!

Somehow, he had actually become the first player to be eliminated.

Tone Deaf opened his mouth, at once furious and frantic and confused. "You! The format of your report was wrong! How did it even go through?"

World Ablaze had lost because of this. He'd taken too long to speak and Yuanshi Tianzun beat him to the punch.

Zhang Yuanqing snorted. "Doesn't filing a report only require the whistleblower to state the offence and the grounds for which it was being filed? That was what the dungeon announced when we all entered this round. The whole idea of a formal structure was something I threw in. Who told you that it had to be worded in that way?"

As he spoke, he let out a mental sigh. That report had been half a guess, and he'd gotten lucky.

The other contestants stared at him, faces stiff. What?!

Since Yuanshi Tianzun had been the first to crack the reporting mechanic, whatever worked for him had to be correct. The others had been running on that assumption, and nobody had questioned whether the format mattered at all.

Not that it mattered anyway. As long as the report went through, it went through, and nobody was going to split hairs over a detail that trivial.

Once the shock passed, every eye in the circle lit up all at once. They had all hit upon the same thing based on Yuanshi Tianzun's report.

More than four hours had already passed since they had entered the dungeon, from the first round to this current round. Transcendent-tier heavyweights still had to eat, drink, and use the bathroom. Somebody in this crowd had definitely relieved themselves.

The next second, a clamor of reports broke loose.

"I report Yuanshi Tianzun for public urination on the grounds of lacking civic decency!"

"I report Zhao Chenghuang for public urination on the grounds of lacking civic decency!"

"I report Sun Miaomiao for public urination on the grounds of lacking civic decency!"

"I report..."

The spirit overhead drew its bow back again and again, sending arrow after arrow down into the group.

Most of the reports failed. Only Green Pine's report on Earth God went through.

The other four—Yuanshi Tianzun's report on Zhao Chenghuang, Tone Deaf's on Yuanshi Tianzun, Sun Miaomiao's on Tone Deaf, and Earth God's on Yuan Ting—all failed.

And because Yuan Ting had no target to report (he didn't need to), he alone did not fail.

Just like that, only Green Pine's and Yuan Ting's reporting functions were still live. Everyone else's was sealed.

When it came to points, Earth God had one left. Tone Deaf and Zhao Chenghuang had three, Yuan Ting and Green Pine had four, and Sun Miaomiao had nine. Yuanshi Tianzun was still on thirty points.

"The three of them just lost their reporting functions," Yuan Ting said in a low voice. "There's no more need to worry about the pants..."

This meant they were free to fight.

In a heartbeat, the air grew thick with murder.