Realm Walker

Setting the yin corpses aside, it was four against three. His side was outnumbered, but it was compensated by the quality of the fighters. World Ablaze was already gone. If they knocked out either Green Pine or Tone Deaf, the scales would tip their way.

On paper, Tone Deaf was the softer target. His Music Slaves were spiritual entities, which were hard countered by both Zhang Yuanqing and Sun Miaomiao, while Earth God's helmet completely nullified his sonic attacks. All they had to do was crack that breastplate of his and he was finished.

Green Pine was the problem. He was a close-range fighter, quick on his feet, with stamina that never seemed to bottom out. Alas, he was now carrying World Ablaze's blade as well. Overall, he was a much tougher piece of work than Tone Deaf.

Zhang Yuanqing wanted Green Pine gone first anyway, because of the reporting mechanic. Of the players still standing, only Green Pine and Yuan Ting still had the right to file a report.

From their opponent's perspective, they would most likely want to use that report on the highest-value target available. That was Earth God, who only had a single point left to his name. Since Yuan Ting had already been won over, taking out Green Pine meant that Earth God would be untouchable for the next half hour. That was more than enough to close things out.

Zhang Yuanqing weighed his options, then stepped back, lifted a hand over his mouth, and dropped his voice low. "Sun Miaomiao, tie up Yuan Ting and Zhao Chenghuang. Earth God, keep Tone Deaf busy. Kill him if you get the chance. Green Pine's mine."

He would split up the field and break them one at a time. That was their best option.

Sun Miaomiao remembered how World Ablaze had countered Yuanshi Tianzun's weapon in a single stroke. She looked at the narrow-mouthed blade in Green Pine's grip and her brow furrowed.

"Are you sure?" she asked him. "Fair warning, I can't hold Zhao Chenghuang for long."

Earth God was giving him the same look.

Green Pine was a top-eight individual. He might not be at Yuanshi Tianzun's level, perhaps, but a Wood Demon this nimble, who had just been handed a blade that could split a hair, was much stronger than one would expect. Moreover, Sun Miaomiao was on a short timer. Yuanshi Tianzun might grind Green Pine down eventually, sure, but trying to brute-force it in a short span of time was a completely different thing.

Neither of them thought he had it in him.

Zhang Yuanqing kept his hand over his mouth, keeping the enemy from reading his lips. "One minute. I'll take Green Pine out in under a minute."

One minute? Both his companions' raised their eyebrows. But there was something absolute in the way he said it. Had he been coasting this whole tournament? No... no way.

While the two of them were still pondering this, Zhang Yuanqing disappeared out of sight, and Corpse No. 1 tore off toward Green Pine in a flat sprint.

Me? I'm the one he's after? Green Pine realized, and his blood went cold.

He backed off, blade up, and gave a snappy order. "Move!"

Underneath the fear, he felt anger coursing through his veins. Yuanshi Tianzun thought he was some soft target? That insult landed hard.

Tone Deaf had the bamboo flute to his lips already. The sound came wailing out, low and mournful. The tune drove its way into every skull in the area like needles, a shrill, keening ache that reached down past the ears and into the soul itself.

A Transcendent-tier Musician had three skills: Soothe, Hypnotize, and Rally, but Tone Deaf never touched any of them. His flute played exactly one tune and one tune only, without any soothing, hypnosis, or rallying. That single melody chewed straight through spiritual entities, and when stacked on top of a Musician's raw sonic damage, it hit hard enough that even a Level 3 Nocturnal Specter, a class with significant mental prowess, buckled under it. Class skills were hardly necessary.

Boom! Boom!

The dirt under Tone Deaf's feet buckled upward, dark brown soil balling into two big hands that locked themselves around his ankles. Earth God was already bearing down on him, tearing forward like a warhorse. He'd made himself into a battering ram, and was flying toward Tone Deaf at full tilt. The waves of soul-piercing music rolled off him without doing anything.

The tune from the flute grew shrill and frantic. Two hazy shapes materialized from out of the flute, one full of graceful curves, while the other was huge and slab-shouldered. The two Music Slaves came screaming out and flew straight at Earth God. The sonic waves were ineffectual, but the Music Slaves were fundamentally spirits. They could attack the body directly, not the soul, and the helmet couldn't protect against that.

Both of them slammed into Earth God and started fighting him for control over his own arms and legs. His charge stuttered as he went stiff mid-stride, locked up by the spirits.

"Heh." Earth God pulled in a lungful of air, his gut and chest expanding, and the cigar clamped in his teeth flared cherry-bright.

"Hah!"

He exhaled forcefully at Tone Deaf, a few meters off. Instead of a plume of smoke, a thick, solid rope of fog rolled out of his mouth and swallowed the kid whole, still pinned in place by the earthen hands. The sound of the flute was choked off, replaced by a wet, violent coughing.

Tone Deaf had been poisoned.

***

Across the field, Green Pine watched the whole thing and pondered the situation. Tone Deaf had the breastplate, and Earth God was a brick wall when it came to defense, but was relatively harmless. That fight wasn't ending soon.

He looked over at Zhao Chenghuang's corner. Both he and Yuan Ting were staggering about, lunging one way then reeling around the other way. Even so, every so often, they drifted right back to where they'd started. Sun Miaomiao stood a little way off, her eyes a solid black, the ghost in the sleeping gown hanging behind her as she held the whole illusion together using sheer force.

Pinning down both Zhao Chenghuang and Yuan Ting at once was no mean feat. She clearly merited her ranking. Even so she couldn't cage her two fellow disciples forever.

Once Green Pine saw that, he knew his job. Stall. Drag the fight out until Yuan Ting and Zhao Chenghuang tore loose and rejoined him, then bury the other side under the weight of numbers and flip the whole match around.

Greenery quickly began to spread under his feet until he was standing in the middle of a circular lawn eight meters across. It was the same idea as throwing flour on the floor to catch the invisible man by the footprints he left behind. This was good insurance against an invisible Nocturnal Specter getting the jump on him.

The grass remained undisturbed. Yuanshi Tianzun hadn't approached. The yin corpse hung back at the edge of the grass, watching and not committing. Green Pine wasn't sweating it.

Tone Deaf's flute had wrecked Yuanshi Tianzun's rhythm a moment ago. So why, with the flute suppressed, was he still holding off? In any case, it was fine by him. Every second he burned was a second in his side's favor.

The thought had barely cleared when black smoke boiled up across Green Pine's face. He felt his rationality leave him, giving way to something ugly. His eyes went red and he grabbed his skull and howled, half lunatic, half animal.

Thud, thud, thud.

Out beyond the borders of his circle, the yin corpse came alive and bolted into the ring of green, muscles rolling under its hide with every stride, like a leopard running down its prey.

With one arm still clutching his head, Green Pine stuck his other hand into his Inventory and came out with a three-inch-tall wooden figurine. Smoke rose from the little figurine's carved head with a hiss, growing thicker and thicker, while the black haze around Green Pine's own face slowly thinned.

With a crack, the figurine split apart. The black haze around his face was gone, and his head cleared. He looked at the yin corpse closing the last few inches and let loose a cold grin.

He'd seen this trick before, against Maoshan Warlock. In his book it was one of Yuanshi Tianzun's really dangerous items, worth more than the rest of his bag of tricks, and next to impossible to see coming. Which was exactly why he'd come prepared for it, having purchased one consumable to counter exactly this and nothing else.

It was an object which belonged to Hex Master. Among the Lawful classes, only high-level Water Ghosts and Nocturnal Specters could purify curses and corruption. Perhaps a Scout could do so with great difficulty, but none of that was available to them at the Transcendent tier.

Saint-tier items weren't items he could get near to, let alone use. Therefore, he'd resorted to fighting fire with fire. Pulling some strings, he managed to buy a Substitute Puppet off an elder from one of his family's branches. Any effect related to corruption, defilement or curses would be redirected to the puppet. However, it only worked once.

He flicked the cracked puppet away, held the narrow-mouthed blade in both hands, and drove at the yin corpse. He would catch Yuanshi Tianzun on the back foot. He would lean on the edge that his armor and his weapon gave him to utterly wreck that yin corpse. He could almost imagine Yuanshi Tianzun's expression when it broke, full of fury and hurt.

Still at full sprint, he used his Wood Demon's flexibility to throw his weight sideways, moving at an angle nobody should have been able to manage, sliding away from the trajectory of the corpse's straight punch.

In a flash, he had flanked his attacker. He gave a low grunt and hacked violently with every bit of strength, striking with the full length of the blade, one cut to open the yin corpse up.

Pfft!

The tip of the blade caught against the gray haze of a barrier. The barrier dented inward, right on the edge of coming apart, but held.

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Green Pine's face dropped. This thing has an Earth Wraith's defense?

That was when he saw the little green blades of grass going flat, a line of footprints tracing their way across the green lawn and approaching him fast. It was Yuanshi Tianzun.

At the same moment, the yin corpse next to him let out an animalistic snarl and threw itself at him. With Corpse No. 1's fists right up in his face, even a Wood Demon wasn’t going to survive unscathed.

He didn't back off. He calmly pulled the blade away and yanked a wooden rod out of his Inventory with his off hand. The stiff rod immediately went soft, twisting around itself like a coiling spring and compacting into a shield.

Boom!

He raised his newly-formed shield and at the yin corpse's punch head on, his eyes never leaving the approaching footsteps. The second they were close enough, the muscles in his arm bunched up into thick cords, and he slashed the narrow-mouthed blade outwards.

He would have bet everything that the attack would send Yuanshi Tianzun scrambling clear. In every match he'd been in so far, the man had never once revealed a defensive item. And if Yuanshi Tianzun wanted to trade wounds, that was perfectly fine with him. A Nocturnal Specter had the vitality and the regeneration for it, but so did a Wood Demon with their natural healing ability.

Pfft!

The edge of his blade bit into something, but there wasn't the resistance he expected. It almost felt like it had gone through... What, water?

He heard a splash as his opponent's cover was blown. Yuanshi Tianzun flickered into view, covered in a dark robe, crimson flames stitched down the hem and the cuffs, and a silver wave motif working its way across the chest.

The Nocturnal Specter let the flat slash pass through him as he stabbed a forty-centimeter yanagiba straight into Green Pine's chest.

The agony wrenched Green Pine's face apart. A Water Ghost skill. He's carrying a Water Ghost item.

He booted Yuanshi Tianzun off him, absorbed two more of the yin corpse's punches, dumped the narrow-mouthed longsword, and quickly retreated. His heart had been run clean through, but he could still move. Blood spurted out of the wound in his chest. Green light gathered at its edges, desperately trying to close it, but everything he did only slowed the bleeding to a crawl.

The Bloodthirsty Blade's hemorrhage ability had shut his regeneration down.

I’m not beaten yet. I have Revival. I can push things to the brink and then come back good as new. I'll slip around Yuanshi Tianzun and the yin corpse, stall for time until Revival activates.

Green Pine didn't flinch, but built his next plan on the fly. He'd ditched the narrow-mouthed blade as it was too heavy, and in the state he was in, the weight would only hurt him. In this moment, his natural Wood Demon quickness was everything.

Out of nowhere, he felt two flat cracks against his back. His shoulder blades split apart, and he was pushed forward.

An ambush?

He whipped around, furious and scared. A few meters away, a pair of brand-new red dancing shoes rose and fell in a strange rhythm, moving up and down as though an invisible person was wearing them and keeping time.

A Nocturnal Specter item? The sight of those shoes caused his expression to twist further. A single thought went through his mind in a constant loop: Why does he still have so many items? How could one man have so much?

The shoes broke into a quick run as they went for him, tapping their way across the ground.

He shook the balled shield loose into a whip and flicked it forward, his right arm snapping viciously, going straight for the shoes. The two items met midair, but neither one touched the other, as if they weren't even in the same realm.

There's no substance to them? No, wrong. If there's no substance to them, then how did they manage to kick me a second ago? Green Pine threw himself sideways, dodging the kicks aimed at his chest. He hit the dirt and kept rolling as the shoes left two little craters in the ground behind him.

Zhang Yuanqing worked his way in behind the shoes and followed up with his own flurry of attacks. Even though none of them struck the Wood Demon squarely, the way they were chained together put Green Pine purely on the back foot.

The instant he came up off the ground, there were fists in his face. He tucked his head and ducked the punch, but his chest wound was torn open again as the red dancing shoes came down upon it.

Green Pine lost his sight. The world went black. Having been hammered by one blow after another, the tough Wood Demon was finally exhausted. He tipped over the edge and into a near-death state.

With his next breath, a raw flood of life energy surged into his wrecked body, like water being poured into split, sun-baked ground. His head cleared instantly, and strength flowed back into every limb.

I'm alive. I'm back.

His whole face lit up, right up until he heard the chime of the Spirit Realm.

【Ding! You have died. You have been eliminated!】

The last thing Green Pine saw was blood fountaining out of his own throat, Yuanshi Tianzun standing over him, the blade in his hand coated in blood. Then he broke apart into white light and was gone.

A second player was eliminated.

The Wood Demon who had picked up a precious weapon had suffered a nonstop beating from Yuanshi Tianzun and had been dealt with in just under a minute.

Earth God, who was still holding Tone Deaf off, just stared, honestly caught off-guard. "It hasn't even been a minute yet. You little punk, you've been taking it easy this whole time."

Sun Miaomiao spun back around and caught the last sight of Green Pine dissipating into motes of light.

Is he really that strong?

Whatever pride a top-three contestant was supposed to have vanished. She'd been dead sure, right up to a minute ago, that she had more left in reserve than Yuanshi Tianzun. Now, the only word that fit him was "dangerous."

***

In the stands around the arena, the crowd finally quit holding their collective breaths. Noise flooded back in waves, whistles and roars rolling over each other.

This was the quarterfinal. This was worth showing up for. Threatening to drop one's pants as an opening move, was that really a tactic a human would sit down and invent?

"That was brutal! Green Pine was hardly in it."

"All the momentum was solely on Yuanshi Tianzun's side. That man just power-spiked out of nowhere!"

"What do you mean, 'out of nowhere?' He clearly wasn't going all out before."

"Hold on. Hold on! Has this guy been sandbagging every single fight up to now?"

"So basically he'd have made top three even in a straight round robin."

"Ease up. He was holding back, sure, but those shoes and that robe are hardly scary. They're mid-tier at best. Those items won’t give the top three any fear."