Ten Day Ultimatum

This round, Terrestrial Rabbit moved straight toward the door leading to Jiang Ten and opened it.

It was naturally the most logical choice as Jiang Ten’s position was closer to room {Ten} and room {Fourteen}. By heading in this direction, Terrestrial Rabbit would naturally advance toward the participants’ locations.

Seeing his door swing open, Jiang Ten slowly rose to his feet and glanced back at Chen Junnan next door. “Idiot Captain, are you really not going to close the door?”

“Hmm?” Chen Junnan looked at him in mild puzzlement. “Don’t you need this young master here cheering you on, boosting your morale?”

“Are you right in the head?” Jiang Ten pursed his lips. “He’s coming to give me a good thrashing, why would I need your cheerleading? You want me to face it with heightened morale?”

“You’re one ungrateful runt!” Chen Junnan also pursed his lips.

In actual fact, Chen Junnan was eager to witness the strength of {Unbreakable Spirit}. Observing at such close range was ideal, though it came with a clear drawback: if Terrestrial Rabbit realized {Unbreakable Spirit} was nearly impossible to defeat, all his attention would naturally focus on Chen Junnan himself.

With that in mind, he continued with nonchalance, “I’ll be right here watching. Make sure you perform well.”

“I promise I definitely won’t cry,” Jiang Ten declared seriously.

Chen Junnan watched as the main group moved from room {Six} toward room {Ten}. Yet, the door remained neither closed nor locked, seemingly leaving a contingency for himself.

“Captain,” Cui Fourteen’s voice sounded. “The {Divine Artifact} isn’t in {Ten}. We’ll be heading to {Fourteen} now.”

“Got it.” Chen Junnan nodded. At this point, he had no mind left for the matter of the {Divine Artifacts}.

After all, Terrestrial Rabbit had already chosen the battlefield. Before long, this place would be awash in blood.

‘{Unbreakable Spirit}...’ A trace of tension crept into Chen Junnan’s heart. ‘Let this young master see what you're made of.’

“All {participants} have completed their actions. {Earthly Branch}, please proceed.”

As the broadcast faded, Terrestrial Rabbit rolled his wrist, an icy pressure radiating from him as he stepped into Jiang Ten’s room.

Jiang Ten remained squatting on the ground, hands tucked lazily behind his back. He lifted his head to look at Terrestrial Rabbit’s towering figure, the stark mismatch in their sizes forming a jarring contrast.

“Kid...” Terrestrial Rabbit slowly worked his neck, veins rising across his face. “Haven’t you been begging for death all along?”

“Hooah...yeah.” Jiang Ten nodded expressionlessly. “Begging for death... so how exactly do you want me to die?”

“Heh...” Terrestrial Rabbit slowly raised his fist. From where Chen Junnan stood at a distance, the sheer size of the fist seemed almost as large as Jiang Ten’s head.

Jiang Ten remained crouched, impassive, his eyes following the massive fist as he muttered softly under his breath, “Am I...about to die?”

At his words, a perfectly timed chime echoed from afar, and Terrestrial Rabbit’s fist followed suit.

Jiang Ten responded by arching his body backward, using his right hand to brace against the floor, handspringing through the air with a remarkably fluid motion.

The punch missed entirely.

“Hooah...” Jiang Ten landed gracefully, resuming his squat with hands tucked behind his back. “Not all that fast, huh...”

“Can you be any less like a monkey?” Terrestrial Rabbit furrowed his brows, staring at the boy before him. He could not comprehend how someone who appeared to be barely thirteen could possess such martial arts skill.

Chen Junnan, who was watching from the sideline, noticed an oddity.

Jiang Ten’s earlier back handspring was something he had seen countless times himself. It couldn’t be considered {martial arts}, the movement was too precise, too stylized; it resembled an acrobatic stunt of martial role from a Peking Opera show.

“Calm yourself,” Jiang Ten lifted his head and smiled faintly. “As the saying goes... Wine runs poison through the vein, lust is steel that gnaws the bone in pain...”

(TLN: He’s quoting Shan Tianfang (1934-2018), a pingshu performer[1] who would often recite poems at the beginning of his storytelling performances. This one is from a long story from 1920s called ‘Sancai Sword (三侠剑)’.)

Terrestrial Rabbit lunged forward and swung his leg in a downward kick, clearly adding more force this time. Yet Jiang Ten executed a back handspring once again, creating distance with fluid precision.

A muffled thud echoed as the floor seemed to shudder, yet the kick failed to connect.

Landing lightly, Jiang Ten tucked his hands behind and continued slowly, “...Avarice is the seed from which misfortune grows, temper...sparks like thunder, smoke, and cannon blows.”

(TLN: Continuation; ‘wine, lust, greed, and wrath’, otherwise known as ‘the four cardinal vices’.)

“What’s wrong with this kid?” Terrestrial Rabbit frowned. There was an unusual aura about this boy; somehow, he seemed far older and more experienced than his age suggested.

Witnessing this, Chen Junnan allowed himself a faint sigh of relief. Terrestrial Rabbit’s physique was impressive, reminiscent of Zhang Shan, muscular and capable of tremendous raw power, but he lacked finesse in actual combat techniques.

The punch and kick just now had been straightforward, unchoreographed brute force, the kind of moves used in street fights. He relied on sheer strength to subdue Jiang Ten, yet the boy’s agility, combined with his foundation in the stylized movements of performance, made him far less vulnerable than an ordinary child. It seemed unlikely he would be killed anytime soon.

There was a vast gap in agility between the two, yet {Earthly Branches} possessed endurance far beyond that of ordinary humans.

Terrestrial Rabbit faced no time limit when killing participants, while Jiang Ten, for all his evasiveness, had to mobilize his entire body each time he flipped through the air. He might avoid injury for now, but how long could he truly last?

Just as Chen Junnan had anticipated, after eight consecutive back handsprings, Jiang Ten was already breathing hard. He did his best to keep his distance, yet Terrestrial Rabbit steadily forced him to retreat, inch by inch, until he was pressed against the wall.

“Not jumping anymore, kid?” Terrestrial Rabbit humphed coldly, his broad frame sealing off every possible escape.

Seeing this, Jiang Ten swallowed lightly. “Pity... I only mastered back handsprings and haven’t figured out forward rolls.”

“Hah.” Terrestrial Rabbit laughed despite himself. “In that case, don’t accuse me of picking on a kid. I’ll send you to your death right now.”

Jiang Ten drew a slow breath, slipped his hands out of his sleeves, and flexed his small fingers, loosening them one by one.

“With a meter Longquan sword and endless scrolls in sight; Heaven shaped my will, what course shall I fight?” Jiang Ten closed his eyes. “If I cannot serve my country and secure the world, how dare I call myself a true man*... We now continue from where we left off: when a massive rabbit demon cornered the hero without mercy, one strike fell as the wind whistled like thunder, blinding the eyes...”

(TLN: Again, Shan Tianfang’s revised lines from ‘Alone, Guan Ventures to the Banquet with a Single Sword (关大王独赴单刀会)’, a Yuan Dynasty (1271~1368) zaju (a form of Chinese opera). It recounts the heroic story of Lord Guan Yu, who successfully attends a crisis-ridden banquet of his enemy state alone with nothing but one single sword.)

Terrestrial Rabbit’s eyes shifted slightly, no longer paying heed to the seemingly deranged child. A domineering and ruthless fist descended from above, slamming into Jiang Ten’s left cheek. With a sharp crack, his head twisted violently to the side in a horrifying display, the neck appearing nearly severed, held together by little more than a layer of skin.

The speed of the blow was so extreme that shards of skin from Jiang Ten’s face scattered across the ground.

A gust from the punch swept past, and Jiang Ten lay motionless.

“Hey...No–No way...” Chen Junnan stared in horror at the scene before him. He had expected Jiang Ten to be hit, but never anticipated a single strike would incapacitate him. “Kid, aren’t you {Unbreakable Spirit}? Activate it!”

Jiang Ten’s head slowly drooped to one side, and his body slumped lifelessly onto the floor.

Chen Junnan quickly glanced toward the distant room where Cui Fourteen was stationed. “Fourteen jie, uh... what’s happening? The kid got hit and now he’s not moving...”

Cui Fourteen ran a hand through her hair, considering carefully for a moment before speaking. “Though I did not witness what transpired, Ten ge might just be momentarily disoriented. He’s fine, don’t worry.”

“Momentarily disoriented?!” Chen Junnan was utterly bewildered. “His head went a complete ten-eighty!! You call that ‘fine’?!”

TL Note: There’s no doubt in mind that Jiang Ten aspires to be a pingshu performer.

Also, there were no official English translations for these performances, so all of Ten’s quotes are done in-house. So please have mercy if I make a mistake in the translation. I haven’t watched opera since I was four. 🙏🙏🙏

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Footnote:

[1] Pingshu (评书) - or pinghua (评话), also called shuoshu (说书), is a traditional Han Chinese storytelling art without music. It’s called pingshu in northern China and pinghua in the south. Performers usually wear a changshan and stand behind a table with a folded fan and a gavel, which they use to get the audience’s attention or emphasize points. They often add their own commentary on the story and characters, so the audience is both entertained and educated.