Wei Jingshu POV

The Alliance Leader announced the start of the match. Xinyi immediately raised her fists, only for Xu Tien to step back in shock. It clearly hadn’t dawned on her, until now, the reality of her situation.

Not until Xinyi ran up to her and delivered a punch from a wide swing that Xu Tien blocked with her upraised hands. Her hands smashed into her face as she clearly hadn’t put any strength in her guard, and Xinyi had put a strong intent to harm in her attack, one that exceeded anything that a civilized and modern girl like Xu Tien thought she would encounter in her life.

She clearly hadn’t ever been bullied before.

That first strike set the tone for the rest of the match. Xinyi managed to grab a hold of Tien’s hair, throwing her bodily onto the floor where she continued to kick the girl, throwing her back on the ground whenever she tried to get up. It was brutal and ugly. It didn’t look like a contest of martial skill at all, but plain old bullying.

Violence.

Jingshu had almost forgotten, underneath all the showiness of the courtyard and the buildings of this complex, and the beautiful nature that surrounded them, they were in a world of martial arts. And martial arts was not a sport here. This wasn’t the regular old tai chi that they had learned in school or watched grandmas perform in the park.

It was a tool for war, as well as their purpose. They had been summoned to be groomed as weapons of mass destruction.

Jingshu cast an uneasy glance towards Wenhao, who was watching impassively, not betraying a hint of emotion. He looked consideringly, genuinely curious to know the outcome, like a twisted fantasy of his had finally been fulfilled, to see who was the strongest once and for all.

Tianming on the other hand, watched with furrowed eyebrows. Corresponding with a thud from the battlefield, Tianming closed his eyes and faced the ground, unable to stomach the sight.

Huh. Maybe Jingshu did have a chance to eke out a number two.

Not that it mattered very much.

Besides, number two was wishful thinking. Wenhao’s cronies had always been quite physically inclined, not to mention a host of other boys that were more fond of sports than he ever was.

No. No reason to lose heart now. Jingshu had excelled where it mattered while these children played make-believe thinking they had a shot in making money with their athletic skill when only Wenhao came close to doing so.

Jingshu would just have to pivot. That was all. His potential was the same as ever; he just needed to put it into martial arts.

Xinyi held a foot on Tien’s back, and she was curled up in a fetal position, flinching with her eyes pressed shut.

The Alliance Leader finally called the match in her favor.

The next match was Mei Ying the wannabe socialite versus the biology prodigy, Liang Mingyu.

This match, to Jingshu’s surprise, didn’t go like the first one at all. Instead, both girls had thrown themselves at each other without any regard for civility, refusing to give one another a good starting position.

It was hair-pulling, scratching and grappling galore, a slow and agonizing descent into physical trauma that no one saw fit to stop. The worst part was, they looked more likely to exhaust each other than actually hurt each other decisively. Liang Mingyu was taller and quite a bit broader than Mei Ying’s short and slim figure, but it seemed that where Mingyu was reluctant to really use her size advantage to the fullest, Mei Ying was more than happy to move with the ruthlessness of a cat being picked up against her will. If Mei Ying was taller, this battle would have already been decided.

Eventually, it was. Mingyu fell down and Mei Ying planted a decisive kick to her face that had her clutching her mouth, moaning and crying in pain.

The Alliance Leader finally called the match.

Jingshu regretted feeling superior to Tianming, who had looked away from the carnage, because truly, this really was quite gross to watch, especially considering these were girls. Something about their outward appearance and the brutality they exhibited… it didn’t mesh.

There was a thrill in watching two students fight, Jingshu could readily admit. He never sought out any fights or tried to become a spectator, and it wasn’t really his cup of tea to begin with, but he could understand why others liked watching it. The elements to a good schoolyard brawl was the unpredictability of the fight suddenly breaking out, as well as the illicitness of the activity. What also made it fun was the inherent timer to all schoolyard brawls. They would inevitably be broken up, if not by their fellow students, then by an authority figure.

This had none of those elements. The fights happened as scheduled, were totally allowed, and no one would come to break the battle up.

Jingshu felt a rising nausea that he quelled, intent on watching the fights continue. Once the first round ended, the second round began, with the champions battling the champions. The women were exactly eight in number, which made this a perfect single elimination tournament bracket without any byes. Four against four became two against two, and Jingshu could only bear to pay attention to Xinyi’s fight, this time against Mei Ying.

Mei Ying had won the first round because her opponent was reluctant to fight a smaller person with their full strength. Anyone with eyes could see that, and Jingshu was curious to know if that would disqualify Mingyu from gaining further training. That remained to be seen. In any case, Mei Ying won because Mingyu threw.

Xinyi didn’t have any such compunctions.

The resulting fight was nasty work.

Xinyi picked Mei Ying off the floor and slammed her bodily into the ground, and that was still not enough to stop Mei Ying from clawing like a rabid cat. Xinyi used her fists to slam Mei Ying down, having recognized the value of pure concussive force over using nails. This wasn’t a fight to hurt and terrorize. This was a fight to destroy, to soundly defeat. An angry opponent could withstand and overcome scratches. No amount of anger, however, could withstand cranial trauma.

Again, nasty work.

“What the fuck,” Jingshu heard somebody whisper.

Wenhao was still watching without any emotional expression to give a hint to what he was feeling. He was just… watching.

Perhaps in another life, Wenhao had been born in the battlefield, death a constant companion. All Jingshu knew was that this Wenhao was not normal in the head.

Jingshu would have to do his best to save Xinyi from him.

In the end, Xinyi won her fight without getting any more harrowing in her techniques, but that was a cold comfort to Mei Ying, who had actually been knocked unconscious, the first KO in the entire tournament.

And then it was the boys’ turn.

“Two and four!” the Alliance Leader announced, not even giving a moment to acknowledge the winner of the women’s section.

Four was Jingshu.

And two was Tianming.

Jingshu didn’t waste any time stepping up to the battlegrounds, facing Tianming opposite to him. The rules of winning were once again announced: no forfeiture. Only ringouts or submission or sufficient damage.

And if Jingshu’s tiny suspicion was right, then the Alliance Leader would feel biased towards giving Tianming the win if the result was ambiguous. Thus, it fell upon Jingshu to make the result as unambiguous as possible.

Besides, Jingshu was taller, by a good eight centimeters. And he was also broader, as he did take care to exercise and jog every morning. Physically, he was in better shape, no matter what that stupid horse training suggested. Maybe Tianming was better at leveraging his internal energy, but Jingshu had to believe that he could do the same if sufficiently pressed. If Tianming could figure it out within hours, Jingshu had no excuses.

“Begin!”

Tianming stood still.

Jingshu decided then, he would walk up—not run, because that could work against him if he didn’t give himself time to react to anything Tianming would try—and readied to punch him.

Once they were less than a meter away from each other, Jingshu threw the punch.

The shorter man took a smooth step away from the punch, a rotational movement that—

Jingshu’s eyes opened to an ocean of blue sky and white clouds swimming lazily by. Then a hand intruded in his vision. He turned to look at the source of that hand. Tianming.

Confused, Jingshu took the hand and was pulled up to a standing position, almost losing his balance once he was back on his feet again. Odd. He was lying on the ground? Why? He caught sight of the Alliance Leader—right, they were in a fight—waving away while looking at him.

Waving him away.

Then he felt a harsh sting on the side of his face that throbbed dully. He opened his mouth, but found that his jaw hurt to move. “W-what…?” was the only thing he could utter.

“Next fight!” the Alliance Leader announced.

Jingshu had lost.

He felt a gaping hole in his soul as the reality of it settled. Jingshu, star student, had lost to the useless, mediocre Tianming.

It's In The Details: Interior Art for Kindar [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wEna6T86--o/UT-buNLIw9I/AAAAAAAAAz8/aZy5fbTUYUo/s1600/Interior+Art+Sword.png]

Li Tianming POV

My knuckles hurt.

Right. No tempering yet. Just regular old mortal bone knuckles. That was reasonably terrible.

After all, the physics of it wouldn’t agree with me in a fight.

In hand-to-hand combat, you hit something with a part of your body that could withstand being hit. Your fist was a good option, but solely because it was the most manipulable and far-reaching appendage that your body had that also wouldn’t compromise your balance, like feet would.

The only problem was, my fists were made of the same thing that Jingshu’s skull was made of, meaning we essentially took the same damage. Well, technically, we took the same force. Newton’s third law of motion and all: for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. Punching a wall was the same as a wall punching your fist for all the force that both objects received.

Martial artists got around the peril of breaking their hand bones against an opponent’s arm bones, skull bones or torso bones by making their fist bones stronger, harder, tempering them into something only short of steel. That was, when they weren’t going specifically after softer targets without much bone in the way, or targets that would take more damage from a strike than their fists would: like how my punch to Jingshu’s skull also affected his brain, while the hit only affected my hand, which I didn’t strictly need to stay conscious, unless it was mangled beyond repair.

Alternatively, they could use internal arts that made it so that their strikes and attacks defied Newton’s third law of motion, with one object receiving more force than the other, thus eliminating the peril of kickback entirely.

But I wasn’t supposed to be able to use that yet, and even if I did, I didn’t have the qi stores to get away with it for the entirety of a tournament.

While my bruised fists were regrettable enough, that just meant I’d have to refine my tactics, hit even softer targets with even harder parts of my body. Knees and elbows meeting throat and groin.

Stay classy, violence.

The young martial artist encountered three great barriers in their training: the difficulty of self-torture, the horror and disgust of causing harm, and curbing a growing sense of hubris.

I never got to that third part, though it wasn’t because I wasn’t strong. After I got picked up by the Shaolin monks, I had plenty of opportunities to realize how much stronger I was than the average Third, Second or First-Rate martial artist. After all, I reached First-Rate without going too far out of my way, and ended up at Peak in the same way within a couple of years, where most martial artists would never make it to Peak in their lifetimes.

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I was stuck at the second great roadblock.

This really was a disgusting line of work I had found myself in.

Wenhao went up next, fighting against Zhou Hao, a moderately successful martial artist in the last timeline, at least before the Civil War wiped most of us out.

“Begin!”

Zhou Hao was grinning. “It’s over for you, Wenhao! We get to learn real martial arts in this world! You’re no longer the strongest!”

“Good point, only you haven’t learned squat yet,” Wenhao said. “If I’m not the strongest, prove it to me.”

He ran towards Wenhao at full tilt. Wenhao kicked at Zhou Hao’s charging form, throwing him off his feet and causing him to land backfirst on the ground, letting out a gasp of breath from the wind that was knocked out of him. Wenhao straddled him and delivered surgical pounds to his face, then stood up and loomed over him, as if daring Zhou Hao to get up.

Wenhao hadn’t scrapped like a schoolyard bully just then.

He fought like a martial artist.

Zhou Hao’s terror was clear to see: he crossed his arms in front of his face, looking away and probably praying inwardly that the violence wouldn’t continue.

It hadn’t taken Wenhao ten seconds to put the fear of the gods in his heart. I grit my teeth. This was who I was up against?

Xu Leifeng went up against Wang Qiang. The former, the Brass Fist and left hand of Wenhao, was shorter and stockier than the taller and slimmer Wang Qiang, who had become the Spear Aficionado, the most skilled spearman in all the lands. In the early days, however, Leifeng was the one who held an upperhand, owing to his proclivity for hand-to-hand combat, which he ended up specializing in.

Predictably, the battle swung in the way of Leifeng, who was putting Qiang in a rear-naked chokehold, foregoing the strikes that he would be known for in the future. That was to be expected: only Wenhao and I knew any martial arts beyond just grappling.

I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I turned to the source of the touch: Jingshu, glaring at me, one hand holding the side of his head, no doubt bruising at this point. “How did you do it,” he seethed. “You practiced fighting in your free time? Is that it?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. If I didn’t know any better, I’d wager that he had tried to peg me a certain way and had his expectations wildly subverted. Actually, that wasn’t such a farfetched concept: I was being wildly different from my normal self, at least the self that he recognized. You didn’t need to be particularly observant to notice that.

Still, it was a strange feeling, being resented for my strength.

“I’ve learned a thing or two,” I replied. “Why?” My eyes widened in realization. “Ah, I understand.”

“What?”

You thought you stood a chance.

I didn’t say that though. “You thought you knew me,” I said. That was basically the same anyway.

“What is that supposed to mean?!”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You think this makes you better than me?!” He roared. “You?!”

I sighed. “Wei Jingshu,” I said. “Collect yourself. Move on. Focus on what you can do to better yourself. Even if your words destroy me, as unlikely as that is, you still have other roadblocks in your way.”

Jingshu backed away, eyes wide. He looked away from me with an aggrieved expression, then he said nothing more. I considered giving him words of comfort, but I doubted they would work as intended. He needed to pull through on his own right now: his pride would demand nothing less.

The good thing about the boy fights was they didn’t last nearly as long. Only because they were so energetic and filled with movement that a ring out became almost inevitable, which gave the fights an element of chance that didn’t exist with the more controlled and vicious girl fights.

Before we knew it, round two was on.

I stepped up once my number was called, and opposite to me was Xu Leifeng.

He leered at me. “You may think yourself stronger than me just because of what happened back in the normal world, but don’t think you can catch me unaware this time around.”

In the past timeline, Xu Leifeng was what you would term a battle maniac, no different from Wenhao. His type was a breed that I had a hard time trusting or liking. I always maintained that you had to have something deeply wrong with you to want to experience a physical altercation, especially one unbound by the constraints of a sport.

“Strength isn’t what matters,” I said. “You behaved untowardly. I merely defended myself.”

He growled. “You think that lets you off?” he laughed. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

I felt a flare of ugly rage in the pits of my stomach. En…joy this?

I fucking hated battle maniacs.

But I loved fighting them.

Especially if they were weaker than me. These assholes always talked big until they got hurt enough. There wasn’t a battle maniac in the world that could really hold on despite a mountain of pain. Those beings only existed in fiction. A battle maniac only enjoyed the fight as long as they were winning.

But there were ways to make someone lose in utter agony, making them reevaluate their priorities. Make them curse the day they ever spouted bullshit about relishing in a “good fight”.

These sociopathic hooligans needed to learn a lesson.

“Enjoy this, will you?” I said. I smiled, wide-eyed. “Come then. I’ll whip you so hard you’ll be begging to go back to the parents you’ll never see again.”

Xu Leifeng roared and charged me with a straight punch. I held up my elbow, striking the fist with pinpoint accuracy, a genuinely lucky shot. I didn’t have enough control over my body to reliably do such things, and my goal was to deflect the incoming strike, but this was even better. I ignored the flare of pain in my elbow, and the cracking noise that I felt in it. Leifeng stepped back, eyes wide as he looked at his fist. I bent and straightened my arm to make sure my elbow wasn’t fucked. Nope. Just his fists.

If just beating him was my main goal, I would have pressed my advantage. I didn’t. Instead, I waited for his next attack. Leifeng was processing his injured right fist, and eventually accepted that he couldn’t use it. He threw his left fist at me. I caught the hand, rotated the wrist so that he turned his back on me, and pulled his fingers back, popping them out of their sockets, or outright breaking them. He screamed. I kicked his back forward, sending him rolling on the floor. And there I waited.

Without touching the ground, Leifeng tried to get up. He turned to me finally, and looked at both his hands in horror. I raised both my fists, smiling mockingly at him.

“Are you going to forfeit?” I asked. “You know they’ll never teach you martial arts if you do that.”

“You psycho!” he screamed. “How could you—you psycho!”

“Not so fun, is it?” I asked. “When it’s you getting hurt.”

I ran up to him and sent a flying knee to his sternum that lifted him off his feet a few inches. He doubled over and landed on his abused hands. He gasped in pain, not able to muster the breath necessary for a full-fledged scream.

I football kicked him in his face, sending him sprawling on the floor, utterly insensate, my little bit of mercy. I could have forced him to forfeit and lose out on his opportunity to learn martial arts, but then I’d be deemed the monster, for purposefully torturing a classmate of mine.

No. Unlike this asshole, I had moral limits.

The Alliance Leader announced my victory while a group of servants carted Leifeng away.

The next fight was Wenhao against Li Ren, who barely put up any fight at all. It was a one-sided slaughter, less malicious and more purposeful than my own fight against Leifeng, which sent a spike of shame going through me. Going at Leifeng like that was truly unbecoming, even if he deserved to learn a lesson that no one would ever teach him in this twisted world.

Even if Leifeng would have done no better than me, that didn’t matter. I wasn’t Leifeng. I shouldn’t compare myself to him. Anyone could justify any amount of evil by comparing themselves to an even more evil person.

That all being said, what else was I supposed to do? Talk my classmates out of their violent tendencies? Debate the great Supremes and Transcendents of the jianghu into setting down their blades and clubs for all time?

Violence was evil in essence. That was what I believed.

Still, it was the only thing that could reliably move anyone. It was a surefire method to get your way, as long as your way didn’t include love.

The third fight was Du Lin Vs Xung Da. In past fights, the boys had gone at each other with much energy and excitement, living out their baser boyhood fantasies of gratuitous violence. If Round One was fantasy meeting harsh reality, then Round Two was like boys going to war. There wasn’t much excitement anymore: just grim anticipation, and a slight amount of hope and conceit, just enough to let them hold their heads high and not think too much about the horrors to come.

The wet smacks of bone hitting flesh was no longer accompanied by rallying war-cries, but grunts of anger and pain.

In the end, it was Du Lin who won, by throwing his opponent bodily over the edge of the ring. Neither opponent was too injured, but for some light facial bleeding and bruised fists.

The Alliance Leader called mine and Wenhao’s names, summoning us to the stage. Then he told Du Lin to remain.

Servants approached us with healing elixirs, and I drank mine, recovering my bruised elbow and fists within seconds. Du Lin’s healing was far more dramatic. Wenhao’s fists regained a healthier complexion, but even then, the elixir hadn’t needed to heal any cuts at all. That was how much Wenhao’s body had been tempered, that none of his bare-knuckled strikes had even broken his skin.

“You will all fight at the same time,” the Alliance Leader announced. “Last man standing wins. Godspeed, everyone.”

I caught Du Lin’s eyes, and he gave me a resolute nod. I knew immediately then what the plan was: go after Wenhao.

We stood equidistant from each other, and I caught sight of Wenhao staring only at Du Lin.

Crap.

“Begin!” the Alliance Leader announced.

Wenhao booked it towards my impromptu teammate. I ran towards him as well. Du Lin, bless his naive soul, decided to stand his ground against Wenhao’s demonic charge, fists raised and body braced for impact.

Wenhao got there far faster. He jumped at the last step before reaching Du Lin, knee pointed unneringly towards Du Lin’s skull, breaking through the boy’s anemic guard, and cracking into his face mercilessly, sending him flying back.

Wenhao got to his feet and turned just in time to barely manage to dampen my elbow that cracked into his mouth. I didn’t waste time playing with him like I did Leifeng, instead kicking his ribs as hard as I could while he was still stunned from the elbow strike.

Then I jumped onto him. Wenhao’s balance was insane. Instead of falling over, he kept to his feet, broke my own balance, and sent me flying to the ground back first. I gasped, but didn’t let the lack of oxygen in my lungs stop me from reacting to his ground pound, dodging his fist at the knick of time. He hit the ground so hard that I heard the harsh thud, and the way his expression screwed into agony told me that I had inadvertently scored a beautiful hit on him, using the ground of all things.

This would cripple the strength of his right hooks severely. Great. I pulled him by his collar, lifting myself up and delivering another right elbow to his face. He blocked the elbow fully with his injured right hand. I let go of his collar and switched my grip to his hair, using it as leverage to throw him off the straddle he had me on. I clambered up to my feet and made to take advantage of having him on the ground, but he was already standing.

No matter. Wenhao was a passable student, and his body was strong, and while I was never the diehard martial artist in either lifetime, it was an indisputable fact that I was more skilled right now. At least mentally.

That had to count for something.

He tried to kick me. I wasted no time preparing to catch his leg, only for the trajectory of his kick to suddenly switch as he rotated his pivot leg around. A Brazilian kick.

A less experienced fighter would have let the strike crack into my neck or head, but I managed to readjust my guard just in time to grab the kick, rotate his leg, and spin him around, making him land on his back. I made to stomp into the knee of the leg I was holding, but his strength was far stronger than my grip. Stupid move. Should have gone for a more sure hit. Didn’t matter. Still had time to football kick him on his back just as he was getting up. The kick interrupted his maneuver, causing him to fall again. I tried to kick him again. I hesitated for a split second, which ended up saving my knee from getting kicked in by him. Instead I moved back, giving him just enough time to get up.

Fuck.

I threw a left. He blocked it. Right. He deflected it. Left feint, turning into a kick, which he blocked with his shin, sending pain exploding up my leg.

I cursed the very concept of martial arts at that moment, mind boggled by the sheer absurdity of throwing a body against another and expecting yourself to remain unharmed. No matter. I had to keep going.

I threw a straight right to his face.

Wenhao nodded, cracking his forehead into my fist, sending klaxon alarms of pure agony up my entire arm and into my head.

I definitely broke something.

Whatever. Now, I should—

Instead of throwing my left fist, my body took control. I stepped back.

I clutched my right fist and groaned dully, hardly able to breathe.

What was going on? Was my body being controlled? What was doing this?

Wenhao threw a punch right into my face. I shot back, stunned. What the hell was going on? I needed to raise my guard!

But when I looked at Wenhao, and felt the pain coursing through me, the situation became clear to me. My mind, of thirty three years of age and over a decade of martial arts experience, was no longer in control. Instead, I was once again the spindly, short and gangly teenager without an ounce of physical talent to his name, or the pain tolerance and discipline to overcome hardships such as ruinous injuries.

It all made sense when one considered the body’s nervous system to be made up of exactly the same cells that was in your brain: neurons. The body was its own network of nerve cells and signals, far less complex than the brain, but no less capable of processing some limited form of thought.

Especially one of the most primitive forms of reactions embedded in our humanity, that had kept us safe for the tens of millions of years that we as mammals had been around.

Sheer, unbridled panic.

My body wanted to turn around and run. It also wanted to eschew all notion of technique and throw itself at Wenhao to fight tooth and claw like nature intended.

Those dual impulses collided, and like two equal forces acting on an object in opposite direction, I froze.

Wenhao didn’t hesitate.

Thud. Crack. Punch.

Stop it…

Stop it.

Stop it!

STOP IT!

I threw ineffectual, useless strikes, but Wenhao was still operating at perfect mental capacity, like none of my own strikes had even come close to throwing his humanity off his helm, reverting him into the useless animal that I now was, a penned beast with only instinct to guide it.

Samadhi.

I had internal energy now. My energy body existed once again. All I had to do was reach for total collectedness and bury the beast within me once and for all.

I closed my eyes, and in my mind’s eye, my third eye opened.

All my panic disappeared.

Wenhao’s attack flew towards me. I blocked. Still, I had to take a step back to fully regain enough distance to toss a counter. With any luck, this would knock him out instantly, once and for fucking all! He was just a kid, I was the Supreme Peak Master!

The hit landed, right on his chin. Wenhao staggered backwards and fell on his knees, inches from losing consciousness, as was proper.

“Battle over!” the Alliance Leader announced. “Number one wins by ring out!”

I nodded. Then I paused mentally. One was… not my number. I was number two.

And Wenhao hadn’t stepped over any line. What—?

I looked down at my foot, the one that had stepped back from Wenhao’s strike.

My heel was well outside of bounds.

Fuck.