《A Purple Path》 Prologue ¡°Foul demon cultivator, the Second Jade Alliance of the Seven Holy Hibiscan Sects has ordained your death!¡± ¡°You purged nine generations of my clan and razed my sect! I will decapitate you!¡± ¡°Eugene, billions must have died from your actions! Hand over the demonic object and I will make your death swift!¡± Eugene caressed the jade rectangle before him. The cultivators assaulting his sect were so unrefined it was hopeless for them to understand what he had created. A tiny sliver of the Holy Book, it contained manifold multitudes of power. He looked down at the assembled army of thousands of inferior enemies marching up the steps. They had been surprised to find a complete absence of the members of the Eugenian Demon Sect. Eugene, it appeared, was so certain of his victory he didn¡¯t even bother mustering his forces. As he meditated in complete serenity, his three dragons circled around him. Some amongst the cultivators readied their attacks. Reticent to allow them to bring him harm, Eugene tapped into the power of the Holy Artifact. ¡°Kevin¡¯s License Plate¡± said Eugene. Every cultivator in the Blue Realm and the Red Realm present instantly died, their heads rupturing in a tornado of blood. Simply hearing the words was enough to break their souls. Those in the Purple Realm were the only ones capable of surviving. Yet, Eugene had only expended 1% of the power of Kevin¡¯s License Plate in that attack. He had not expected it to be so potent. Such was the power of the Shard of Hibiscus! This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. The only enemies left were the few dozen Sect Elders of Jaja rank, the first rank of the Purple Realm. They were thrown to the floor by the heavenly power and only slowly began to rise back up. Eugene could already sense that some fundamental damage had occurred to their souls. The only man on the battlefield entirely unharmed was Eugene. Being of the rank directly ahead in power of the Jaja rank, he did not fear Kevin¡¯s License Plate. Wary to spend any more power of the holy artifact, he prepared the final ritual. After recovering from the devastation, the Sect Elders charged Eugene, throwing everything they had at him in a final desperate gamble. Eugene, unconcerned, meditated in complete serenity. Engulfed in a purple light, he vanished like vapor. The cultivators of the Second Jade Alliance stood dumbfounded. Eugene¡¯s consciousness drifted, untethered to time. The true power of Kevin¡¯s License Plate was that it erased context. To a lesser cultivator, that idea would appear nonsensical. But the true revelation Eugene had was that by taking Kevin¡¯s License Plate from the context of the holy book in which it formerly lay, he imbued within it the power of removing other things from context. After removing himself from the context of linear time, he pondered the question: backwards or forwards? To travel to the past would be to take all his knowledge of future events with him. But as Eugene was deep in thought, he discarded that idea. Going back would be a waste of potential. Why do the same thing over again? His plan of using his Demonic Sect to take over the world would surely succeed if he returned to the past with advanced cultivation and knowledge of how future events would play out. But that lacked ambition. Eugene had been born as an A grade cultivator. Good, but not the best. As he progressed through the ranks of cultivation, his S grade peers surpassed him. Such is the reason why Eugene turned to the demonic arts. But Kevin¡¯s License Plate presented him with an opportunity. Why insert his soul in his old body, when he could put it in the body of an S grade cultivator? And furthermore, why waste this opportunity on a person in the past? Eugene¡¯s heart burned with curiosity. He wanted to see what would happen in the future, how cultivators would further refine the Hibiscan Arts in the years to come. Eugene let his soul drift, searching for a suitable candidate. Ah! This one would do. S grade talent and firstborn son of a powerful and wealthy cultivator, this one was a good choice indeed. Kevin¡¯s License Plate melted to nearly nothing as its power was burned to thrust Eugene¡¯s soul into the future and seize the body. 1. Adjustment Things began to fall apart once Eugene¡¯s consciousness awoke in the new body. First, he felt the 4% remaining energy of Kevin¡¯s License Plate. Eugene had only needed to burn 95% of its power to travel to the future. The next thing his mind detected was the presence of another mind. Hibiscologists had long held there to be a trinity of mind, body, and soul. The body defined cultivation speed, the soul determined cultivation capacity, and the mind guided the process. Eugene had discarded the other cultivator¡¯s soul, but kept his mind. After all, his memories would be extremely useful. But someone¡¯s memories could not be separated from that person¡¯s cognition without causing them harm. The memories do not exist in a vacuum, and need to be refreshed and managed. Thus, the cultivator¡¯s consciousness needed to be preserved along with his memories. However, Eugene had sealed off his mind from the other cultivator¡¯s. Thus, the person whose body he had seized was having his body controlled by another person and had zero idea what was occuring. This cultivator whose body he had taken was only in the Father Amadi rank, the second rank of the Blue Realm, the first Realm. However, Eugene¡¯s soul was in the Eugene rank, and being the dominant soul of the body (the other cultivator¡¯s soul tucked away for potential use), Eugene was still Eugene rank. Theoretically, Eugene could expend the power of the other person¡¯s soul for a burst of energy if the time came. Issues with mind, body, and soul settled, Eugene opened his eyes. Only to find everyone in his classroom staring at him. In the back, someone muttered ¡°What a creep and a weirdo¡±. Eugene burned with embarrassment. Eyes closed, deep in concentration, he must have looked very weird and creepy. ¡°Ahem,¡± the instructor in the front of the class said. Everyone in class redirected their attention to the teacher. ¡°As I was saying, the demon cultivator Eugene¡¯s unleashing of the demon weapon crippled Hibiscan cultivation for a hundred years and ushered in the Dark Age, the first Age of the Era of Strife. Thousands of the most powerful cultivators were instantly killed, and those that weren¡¯t had their cultivation strangled and were unable to ascend beyond Jaja rank.¡± Eugene accessed the memories of the person whose body he had taken. He belonged to the Dawn and Dusk sect, son of one of the elders. This was a mandatory history class! Eugene instantly refocused his attention. This was the reason he had sent his body seven hundred years into the future! He wanted to see what would happen to the Hibiscan world, how they would react to his actions. ¡°It took one hundred years for anyone else to reach Eugene rank. That cultivator rose to lead this very sect. But, he was slain soon thereafter by the forces of demon cultivators. Such is usually considered to be the beginning of the Demon Age, in which the remnants of Eugene¡¯s sects held greater power than those cultivators who refused to slaughter innocents to gain power.¡± The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Holy infodump, thought Eugene. He really hadn¡¯t thought that his Sleeper Sects would really do that much harm. When the army of cultivators assaulted his sect, they found no one but himself, because he had split up his own sect into seven hidden ones designed to annoy the Jade Alliance. ¡°But it was Kambili that finally eliminated all but one of the Sleeper Sects and ended the Demon Age¡±. Eugene was placid and calm on the outside, like jade, but internally was seething like a volcano. A specific cultivator being referred to as ¡°Kambili¡± could mean only one thing. That was the rank ahead of Eugene! For it was common convention among the Hibiscan cultivators that the first person to achieve a rank would be called by the name of that rank. Thus was the reason why Eugene was called Eugene. This Kambili must have been tremendously powerful indeed! Furthermore, the fact that Kambili rank was called Kambili rank meant that the Hibiscan essence intrinsic to Kambili-rank cultivators was of Kambili¡¯s nature. This had profound implications for Purple Hibiscology. It meant that Kambili was more powerful than Eugene! Eugene zoned out for the rest of the lesson, overwhelmed by the implications of this. When class was over, the old friends of the person whose body he had stolen called out to him. ¡°Grzegorz, why were you acting like that!¡± exclaimed a morbidly obese boy. Eugene contemplated how best to respond. As he confirmed by searching through the memory trove, this body¡¯s name used to be ¡°Grzegorz Bielszowicki¡±. He decided to play along. ¡°I had a sudden realization about Purple Hibiscolocy,¡± Eugene declared. ¡°Really? What was it!¡± said the fat one. Eugene determined that his name was Wang. Eugene had to improvise something on the spot. He decided to lie about having some sort of revelation about Purple Hibiscus. It couldn¡¯t be too advanced, lest he become suspicious for knowing Purple Realm tier knowledge. But if it was too basic, it wouldn¡¯t make any sense that Eugene had been extremely distracted during class. ¡°While reading the Holy Book, I was thinking about how Kambili¡¯s household was a microcosm of Nigeria as a whole. Of course, it''s obvious that Kambili is the Nigerian people, and Eugene is Big Oga. But what is Jaja¡¯s role in all this? A protector of Kambili. Much like Eugene''s idea of the ¡°Shield of the Nigerian People¡±. Thus, Jaja is actually the shield of the Nigerian people¡±. Wang and the other boy, who Eugene figured out was named Mieszko, stood in stunned silence for several minutes. Finally, Wang opened his mouth to speak. ¡°Grzegorz, that is the most profound Hibiscan Truth I have ever heard.¡± Mieszko could only nod his head in agreement. It was good to cultivate loyalty. Wang and Mieszko had been loyal friends to the cultivator whose body had been stolen, and both belonged to powerful and influential clans. Giving them a gem of information to speed up their cultivation was nothing but a good move for Eugene. Struggling to think of something to say to break the awkward silence, Eugene gave them a courteous goodbye and left. The classroom was a sphere, just one of many orbiting a much larger sphere. Even that sphere, however, orbited an even larger sphere which was at the center of everything. The Dawn and Dusk Sect was a model of the solar system itself! All of this was encased in another sphere, whose inside showed the movements of the stars. It wasn¡¯t a true object though, instead being merely an illusion, albeit a highly convincing one. Walking across bridge after bridge linking the spheres, Eugene was in awe. The Dawn and Dusk Sect was overwhelmingly majestic. Its old construction seven hundred years ago paled in comparison to the magnificence of what existed now! That was the last class of the day, and students streamed out of the spheres. The more advanced ones could fly out, which Eugene was capable of, but had to hide. Indeed, his Eugene-rank cultivation would have been obvious to everyone (After all, being able to sense the type of Hibiscan essence emitted by a cultivator was a basic skill) if not for him using a technique to hide it. However, anyone of the Purple Realm could easily see through such a deception. Eugene had to be careful to not run into any of his fellow Purples. He approached the final sphere designed to look like the night and burst through, some of it clinging on to him before seeping back to the sphere. It was time to plan his next move. 2. Evaluation After using Kevin¡¯s License Plate seven centuries ago, Eugene was in the void removed from time. Being outside of time gave Eugene the opportunity to truly think about his life and his decisions. It lasted an eternity, but also lasted no time at all. He interrogated his own mind. Eugene sacrificed everything he had ever worked for just for the opportunity to travel in time. But he knew, deep down, that it was what he truly desired. A common question debated by the Hibiscologists of Eugene¡¯s time was if it was better to be the head of the Rabbit or the tail of the Lion. Strongest of the weak, or weakest of the strong? Seven hundred years ago, Eugene was the strongest of the weak. Eugene had the power to completely destroy the Second Jade Alliance, but instead merely toyed with them. He didn¡¯t even bother to have his army face them, instead emerging alone. It was just so boring. The cultivators of his era were so, so weak. Did Eugene miss the unrivaled power? He did. But the only time he felt truly alive was when he had worthy opponents. And the cultivators today were of unfathomable power! No one had ever reached Kambili rank in Eugene¡¯s time, but now, if a sect didn¡¯t have at least three Kambili-rank elders, it was seen as weak. The Dawn and Dusk Sect of today was many times more powerful than it had been during the time of the Second Jade Alliance. Eugene¡¯s thoughts turned to the many Jade Alliances throughout history as he remembered the decision he was going to have to make. In times of great need, sects would combine their forces into a Jade Alliance to fight demon cultivators. Today, it was the Fourth Jade Alliance that held the line against the demon sects of the brimstone wastes. The Dawn and Dusk Sect was the most powerful of the Jade Sects, and held a first-among-equals position. Eugene as the scion of a powerful clan would be strongly supported in his journey of Purple Cultivation. But the Fourth Jade Alliance had another enemy. It was the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect that was the most powerful sect of the modern era. And the prospect of joining that sect made Eugene hunger for power. For it was that sect alone that held more secrets of Purple Hibiscology than all other sects combined. But there was another option. Demon sects were still in existence and still strong. There was little information about them, but it was commonly known that they worshiped him as a god. Eugene could prove he was Eugene from the past, and lead an alliance of demon sects. This was the riskiest option, albeit the one with the highest reward. Eugene wanted to reach his true potential, which was only possible now that he was in the future. He was now exposed to seven hundred years worth of Hibiscan knowledge. It would have to be digested and contemplated for decades. But Eugene was the master of time, not the other way around. In order to return back to the realm outside of time, Eugene need not expend any of the power stored within Kevin¡¯s License Plate. If the artifact was in his possession, Eugene could leave time at any moment, and then return to the time he left, without using any power. It was traveling forward or backwards in time that sucked the energy of the holy rectangle. Thus, the plan was simple: obtain the collected published wisdom of the entire field of Purple Hibiscology and the best books about history and the contemporary geopolitical situation. Eugene would bring that, and of course a copy of Purple Hibiscus, into the timeless realm. There, he would absorb himself in a profound Hibiscan trance while contemplating the fundamental nature of the universe and Purple Hibiscology. Simultaneously, he would consider which faction to join and then manipulate to his own ends. The only problem was Czeslaw Bielszowicki, Eugene¡¯s ¡°father¡±. Head of the Bielszowicki clan, and also a Kambili, he would instantly realize that Eugene was a Eugene. Eugene would have to navigate around him to obtain the required literature. The best option was to run into the Bielszowicki clan library, take everything relevant, and immediately retreat into the timeless realm. Czeslaw wasn¡¯t supposed to be there for another few hours, in a meeting of the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s Kambili Council. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The compound of the Bielszowicki clan was within sight of the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s spherical bubble of night. Eugene dashed over there, running as fast as was plausible for a cultivator of supposedly Father Amadi rank to go. The compound was built as a series of layered concrete slabs, each in the shape of a hibiscus, getting narrower the further up the tower they were. At the top was a floating orb, glowing with a purple light. The compound was surrounded by a wall of barbed hibiscuses, a breed of hibiscus that would turn into deathly sharp spikes charged with Hibiscan energy when an intruder was near. Eugene walked through the wall, the hibiscuses melting away for him as they detected the presence of Grzegorz¡¯s soul. Enchanted hibiscus flowers existed in Eugene¡¯s time too, but were much more primitive. Grzegorz¡¯s memories were that hibiscuses could be morphed into nearly any shape for any purpose, but he was unsure of their full capabilities. Eugene hoped that they couldn¡¯t sense that there were two souls in his body. Eugene was strangely calm as he ran through the doors, into the atrium, and up the spiral staircase. The library was on the third-highest floor. The staircase shook as he pulled on his Hibiscan soul to increase his speed. Without slowing down he started picking books off the shelves without even looking at them, trusting his Hibiscan senses to guide him. As he turned to dash off into another section of the library, a purple rift in space opened up. A man clawed his way through. ¡°Son,¡± he said. Eugene threw himself into the timeless realm. His only thought was: How had Czeslaw had known?. Was it the enchanted hibiscuses? Or perhaps some detection mechanism within the library? Regardless, there was only one reason why he would leave the Kambili Council of the Dawn and Dusk Sect, and that was if he thought what had happened to Grzegorz was more important than what the convening of the Kambili-rank Elders of the second most powerful sect of all time were discussing. Czeslaw knew, the only question was to what extent. The worst-case scenario was that he knew that there were two souls and two minds in Grzegorz¡¯s body, and that whoever had possessed him was a powerful cultivator. The best-case was that he only knew that ¡°Grzegorz¡± was of Eugene rank. Regardless of the truth, Eugene had an infinite amount of time to consider the situation. A wealth of knowledge was at his disposal, from both Grzegoz¡¯s memories and the books he had taken. Eugene had only managed to snatch two hundred or so, out of the multiple thousand he wanted. However, it was sufficient. Eugene¡¯s plan was to prepare a way to avoid giving himself away. Czeslaw probably didn¡¯t know that Grzegorz¡¯s body had been hijacked, so all Eugene had to do was perfectly imitate every aspect of Grzegorz and then convince Czeslaw of a reason for why ¡°Grzegorz¡± was now a Eugene. A daunting task, but Eugene had an infinite amount of time and the perfect tools at his disposal. If Czeslaw did know that a foreign mind and soul were occupying the body, then Eugene would simply burn a percent or two of Kevin¡¯s License Plate to travel back in time. As for why Eugene didn¡¯t immediately use the holy artifact when he saw Czeslaw, the reason was that the situation was still salvageable. He would only travel in time if he could confirm that Czeslaw knew. So, Eugene¡¯s first task was to be able to perfectly imitate Grzegorz. Luckily, Grzegorz¡¯s mind was right there. Eugene had kept it intact in order to be able to do this very thing. The mind could simply be disassembled and incorporated into Eugene¡¯s mind, thus allowing him to act like him. Of course, the remnants of Grzegorz would be kept separate from the key parts of Eugene¡¯s mind, preventing any unwanted influence. Eugene set on that task. Eugene¡¯s other goal for the timeless realm was to ascend a tier in his cultivation. Each rank was separated into low, mid, high, and peak tiers. At peak, a cultivator was ready to ascend to the next tier. All that was required was a personal revelation about the Holy Book. Eugene currently stood at mid tier of the Eugene rank. With the huge amount of fresh Purple Hibiscologist research at his disposal, it was inevitable that he would ascend to high tier given enough time. That ascension was critical to his scheme for what he would do after leaving the timeless realm. The timeless realm was a comfortable place. Within it, Eugene was enveloped in a cosmic net. Relaxing in the currents of time, Eugene knew that he had the willpower to solve his main issues. He easily slipped into a flow state of Hibiscan meditation. 3. Manipulation Incorporating Grzegorz¡¯s mind and memories into his own was easy enough. The only thing Eugene had to watch for was the remnants of Grzegorz¡¯s consciousness unwantedly influencing his own, which he guarded against by putting mental barriers in place. Satisfied that he could imitate Grzegorz well enough, Eugene turned to his next goal. While in the timeless realm, he wanted to ascend a tier in cultivation. Once he left the timeless realm a high-tier Eugene-ranked cultivator, no time at all would have passed in the real world. Czeslaw would see his ¡°son¡± advance a tier right before his eyes. Eugene would then explain that he had been advancing through the ranks the entire day, because he had a sudden Hibiscan revelation that no cultivator had ever understood before. But Czeslaw would know virtually everything that Eugene knew about cultivation and more. So how could Eugene come up with a revelation that would plausibly have allowed him to have ascended so quickly? Kevin¡¯s License Plate. Eugene¡¯s explanation would be that he had just discovered something about the most discussed mystery in Purple Hibiscology. For when he removed the license plate from the Holy Book, Purple Hibiscus was permanently damaged. But it was not just that fact that made Kevin¡¯s License Plate such an enduring mystery. Every mention of the plate was removed from Hibiscan writings, and every cultivator except for Eugene had their memory purged of it. No one even knew what it was that Eugene had stolen, only that he had stolen something, and that it was somehow related to Kevin. It was for primarily this reason that Eugene was the most reviled cultivator of all time. The imperceptive cultivator might think he discovered a flaw in this plan. After all, if Eugene was literally the only person who knew what Kevin¡¯s License Plate actually was, how could he pass off the discovery of information about it as the work of Grzegorz Bielszowicki? The answer lay in the fact that the removal of Kevin¡¯s License Plate from Purple Hibiscus didn¡¯t actually remove Kevin¡¯s license plate, the concept, from Purple Hibiscus. The easiest explanation for this was that the Holy Book was like an infinitely repeating self-similar fractal, in which every part of it contained the whole. Thus, each individual letter of the Book contained an infinite number of nested copies of the Book. This idea was only discovered a few years before Eugene traveled through time. From what little he had read of his history books, the Dark Age and Demon Age of Hibiscan history saw barely any research into this topic. It was unfathomably esoteric and difficult to comprehend, much less immediately useful than the practical knowledge of how to fight the legions of demon cultivators. But when the Tortoise Age began and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect reigned supreme over the Hibiscan world, research restarted in earnest. The existence of the Hibiscan Fractal, which previously had only been conjecture (albeit one almost certain to be true), was proven using Hibiscan mathematics. Still, studying the Fractal was of the utmost difficulty, and other matters typically occupied the attention of the greatest cultivators. There had only been a few insights into it, with most not having much practical application. Of course, the true extent of how much was known about the Fractal was unclear, for the masters of Hibiscan cultivation were never eager to share their secrets. Eugene¡¯s excuse for his seeming absurdly rapid advancement in cultivation would be that he had used fractal math to find out what Kevin¡¯s License Plate was. However, Czeslaw would surely ask how exactly Eugene had figured out the plate. And Eugene needed to have an explanation, else he was cooked. He needed to come up with a way that Grzegorz could have plausibly figured out Kevin¡¯s License Plate through fractal math. The only thing to do now was study the Hibiscan books he had brought with him. His task was to understand all important Purple Hibiscologist research in the last seven hundred years, with a focus on the Fractal. Eugene read the books and pondered Hibiscology. The time passed agonizingly slowly and yet very rapidly. While absorbed in this process, a question often floated to the top of his mind: Which would he accomplish first, a plausible understanding of the Fractal, or ascending to the high-tier of the Eugene rank? After what felt like months, he had his answer. Eugene was enveloped in a warm glow of Hibiscan energy as his Hibiscan essence changed to that of a high-tier Eugenian cultivator. Eugene was overcome with both joy and sorrow at the same time. For if it was that comparatively easy to advance in cultivation, then the task ahead of him with the Fractal was truly monumental. But Eugene still pushed ahead. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. The revelation came as he tried to link the Three Kevinian Facts with the Six Kevinian Conjectures. The Facts were the major things about Kevin that could be entirely confirmed, and were as follows:
  1. Kevin was the Achike family¡¯s driver, and did ¡°chores¡± for Eugene.
  2. Kevin had a dagger-shaped scar on his neck, ostensibly got after falling from a palm tree.
  3. Kevin was fired by Beatrice after Eugene died.
Such was the scarcity of certainties about Kevin that those were the only confirmed facts! On the other hand, the Six Kevinian Conjectures were commonly believed to be true, but had not been proven. They were as follows:
  1. Kevin¡¯s story of how he got the scar was false.
  2. Kevin was opposed to the Big Oga government in some important way beyond just disfavoring it.
  3. Kevin had ties to Eugene¡¯s past that went beyond simply his employment.
  4. Kevin was employed by Eugene to carry out tasks of far greater scope than just being the family driver and doing chores.
  5. Kevin was fired by Beatrice for a reason connected to one or more of conjectures 1-4.
  6. Kevin continued advancing Eugene¡¯s goals after he was fired.
The thing that made the Conjectures such a paradox was that if even one of them were to be proven, the rest should be easily provable as well. However, the key to all of this was Kevin¡¯s License Plate. The Hibiscologists were oh so close to proving the Conjectures, but couldn¡¯t. Extensive research into the Fractal had yet to reveal what the carved out piece of the Holy Book actually was. But because Eugene knew, he determined how exactly to find out Kevin¡¯s License Plate within the Fractal. His reasoning was something Grzegorz could have plausibly discovered, to the extent that a supposedly Father Amadi rank cultivator could discover it. Grzegorz did have a particular interest in the Fractal, and had a remarkable understanding of it for someone just in the Blue Realm, so it wasn¡¯t outside of possibility. It was time to explain his discoveries to Czeslaw. Eugene slipped out of the timeless realm. Czeslaw took a step back. To him, no time at all had passed, and it looked like his son had gone from mid Eugene tier to high Eugene tier in an instant. ¡°Father,¡± said Eugene, ¡°I unraveled the mystery of what Eugene stole, and with it proved the Six Kevinian Conjectures.¡± Czeslaw regained his composure. ¡°What was it?¡± ¡°It was Kevin¡¯s license plate, number ENU-506OB. License plates were mentioned in another part of the Holy Book, that being the government license plates of the minions of Big Oga that attempted to bribe Eugene.¡± ¡°A Fractal dive?¡± Eugene nodded. A Fractal dive was when a cultivator immersed themselves into the Fractal, ¡°swimming¡± deeper and deeper. Navigating the depths was difficult, even for experienced cultivators. It was just repeated copies of the Holy Book, but being able to tell what part you were delving through was near-impossible. In addition to that, a novice cultivator like Grzegorz would almost certainly not be able to escape the trance that Hibiscologists fell into when diving past shallow ¡°waters¡±. ¡°How did you succeed?¡± ¡°The simple truth is that it was pure luck. I accidentally went deeper than I ever had before, and stumbled across it. The license plate numbers of the federal agents were not directly written, but could be deduced from context. Then I dove deeper into those numbers, and determined what Kevin¡¯s license plate number was.¡± ¡°When I found it, everything clicked. I meditated for hours straight, as my cultivation ascended.¡± Czeslaw paused to think. ¡°You¡¯ll come with me back to the Dawn and Dusk Sect. There, you¡¯ll go through the process of becoming a Sect Elder.¡± Eugene nodded in assent. Czeslaw tore a purple hole in space and walked through, Eugene following soon after. 4. Establishment Eugene and Czeslaw stepped through the purple portal and into the Dawn and Dusk Sect. They floated up towards an enormous central orb positioned in the center of the entire sect, Czeslaw noting with pride that his ¡°son¡± had already figured out Hibiscan flying. In order to be ordained as a Sect Elder, one first had to ascend to the Purple Realm. Following that, the cultivator would have to pass a few basic tests, including a check to make sure no demonic cultivation methods had been used. The main event was a trial by combat, to make sure the cultivator¡¯s abilities were on par with what was expected from an Elder. The demonic cultivation screening was the only part that concerned Eugene. He was more than powerful enough to prove himself in the required fight, and in fact the main issue was making sure not to reveal his true strength. Eugene¡¯s Hibiscan soul was thoroughly tainted by demonic cultivation. He had killed billions to gain enough energy to create Kevin¡¯s License Plate. Even ignoring that, the foul cultivation techniques he had used to reach Eugene rank stained his soul. He was lucky that the enchanted hibiscuses around the Bielszowicki clan¡¯s estate weren¡¯t able to detect that, because otherwise he would have been found out. No, the ritual to detect demonic cultivators was costly to set up and took hours. But Eugene had already begun the process of cleansing his soul. In the years leading up to his traveling through time, he realized that he actually had a distaste for demonic cultivation, almost wishing that he had never done so. That was when he began to purify his soul, but the process was slow, and he had accomplished little. Right now, Eugene needed to fully cleanse his soul or else be exposed as a demon cultivator. There was no easy way to do this. His first thought was to enter the timeless realm and take what would be years if not decades of time in there. And even then, that might not fully finish the process. No, there was only one way to do it. And that was to burn some of Kevin¡¯s License Plate. He slipped into the timeless realm and took hold of the artifact. Eugene had stored the plate there so that he didn¡¯t have to keep it on his person at all times. He pulled on its energy, coaxing the power out of it. There was only 4% left, and Eugene drained a full percent of it to finish the purification process. Left with only 3% of the artifact, Eugene left the timeless realm. 3% was not very much. It was enough for traveling a few years backwards or forwards in time. If used as a weapon, it would probably kill a Eugene-rank cultivator but merely severely weaken one of Kambili rank. The limited power in the plate left Eugene with few options. Still, it was better than nothing, and would likely end up saving his life at some point. Eugene and Czeslaw flew into the floating sphere, a hole appearing in it for them and closing back up once they were through. A group of Sect Elders were there, wearing cloaks and shrouded in shadow. Apparently Czeslaw had already called upon them. He clasped Eugene¡¯s shoulder. ¡°I never thought this day would be so soon. Make me proud.¡± He turned and walked away. Eugene faced the panel of Elders. The one in the middle spoke. ¡°Grzegorz Bielszowicki. After your sudden ascendance to the Purple Realm, you stand eligible for admittance as a Sect Elder. Your soul will be tested for any impurities caused by demonic cultivation. Do you consent?¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Eugene. He still needed to remove Grzegorz¡¯s soul. He had taken care of that cultivator¡¯s mind, but his soul lay intact in case it needed to be used further. Quickly, Eugene dissipated the other man¡¯s soul, and absorbed its paltry energy into his much stronger and more vibrant soul. All at once, the Elders and the table they were seated at vanished. Eugene could make out a stone plinth that had appeared behind where the Elders used to be. He walked there, and with a moment of hesitation, lay atop it. He let himself succumb to the overwhelming drowsiness that fell upon him once he laid down. Eugene opened his eyes to find himself in a desolate, flat plain of stone. He turned around and was momentarily blinded by the light of the Dawn Sun crawling past the horizon. In that brief moment of incapacitation, Eugene was attacked by a masked assassin. He just barely rolled out of the way and got up as another assassin swung a blade at him. Eugene materialized his own sword out of Hibiscan energy and blocked the attack. The two assassins circled around him, looking for any weakness in his stance. Eugene chose to form a second blade in his left hand. The assassins, one in a blue shroud and one in a red one, charged. Eugene blocked and parried, not even bothering to try to go on the offensive. They were simply too fast. Both of them had absurdly fast reflexes and fought with a wild frenzy. Eugene could only barely hold them at bay. He was losing ground to them, in fact. He would eventually slip and make a mistake under their combined assault. And after that happened, it would be over. Eugene mentally locked in. Eugene was so focused he almost didn¡¯t notice the third. As the sun reached its zenith, a purple-cloaked assassin fell from the sky, sword pointed down at Eugene¡¯s head. Eugene waited for just the right moment, when the blue and red fighters were interlocked with both his blades and the purple¡¯s sword was inches away from his head. ¡°Dimension Expulsion,¡± said Eugene. All four were encased in a sphere. Within it, the stone ground turned vantablack and the sky became a dusty gray. The three attackers were frozen in place. Or, not quite. They were moving, just extremely slowly. Such was their speed that they were only partially affected by the effect of his Dimension. The purple-cloaked made a feeble attempt to swing its sword at Eugene, but he merely stepped to the side to avoid it. Eugene reached up and threw off the mask. Its skin was made of stone. Eugene delivered a flurry of blows to each stone assassin until they crumbled. He let his Dimension Expulsion crack and break apart. Eugene felt a tinge of pain. Glancing down at his left hand, he saw a small cut. Huh, so one of them had nicked him, he just didn¡¯t notice it in the heat of combat. He looked to the horizon. The sun was only half visible, its light dimming every second. When its last light winked out, the world dissipated into smoke. The smoke dispersed, revealing several masked and shrouded Sect Elders surrounding Eugene in a circle. ¡°Impressive,¡± one remarked. ¡°To have already learned the basic Dimension Expulsion,¡± another said. ¡°Proven not to be a fraud after all,¡± commented a third voice. They turned into smoke and vanished. Eugene woke up. He was alone, in a plain bed in a room made entirely out of stone, with a door facing the bed.. He got up and glanced at his left hand. The cut was there. So it had been real, at least in some capacity. He let Hibiscan energy flow through his skin, healing the cut. He felt his reserves of Hibiscan energy were noticeably lower than before the ritual. His Dimension Expulsion must have been real, for what else could have caused that? Eugene had made the correct decision in holding back. He had only used the basic Dimension Expulsion, called a Vantablack Dimension, the one that was the same for all Purple Realm cultivators. It sent the user and anyone within a ten foot radius into another dimension, which allowed the user to apply an effect to anyone within it, of which slowing their movements was one of them. It was easily countered, though. Any skilled cultivator would respond with their own Vantablack Dimension, which would cause them to cancel out and break apart. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Eugene had refrained from using his real Dimension Expulsion. Every cultivator, once advanced enough, could tinge the Vantablack Dimension with his own flavor of Hibiscan essence. This was what created a true Dimension. During the dream test, he had been very careful to keep himself to only a standard Vantablack Dimension because using his real Dimension Expulsion would have revealed his true power level. Even given the fact that it was known that ¡°Grzegorz¡± had discovered a Hibiscan secret that caused him to advance in cultivation so quickly, it would be suspicious if he pulled out advanced techniques that he supposedly would only have had hours to develop. He couldn¡¯t use his true Dimension Expulsion until a few weeks had passed and it would be plausible that he had developed one. Some might call this extreme cautiousness paranoia. But Eugene¡¯s main concern was simply not being found out as Eugene. A cultivator climbing six ranks in a day was highly suspicious. There were countless whispers of Eugene¡¯s return, and what if someone had the idea that Grzegorz became so powerful because he had been taken over by Eugene? It was the talk of the entire Hibiscan world that the Seven Sevens had aligned. That theory had first been born in the aftermath of Eugene''s sixth fight with Bart?omiej Mroczek, leader of the Dawn and Dusk Sect. It had been yet another draw. As the two cultivators parted ways, Eugene shouted ¡°I will return for the seventh, and be victorious!¡±. Eugene¡¯s actions and their aftermath further supported the theory. Firstly, Eugene won that seventh fight. Secondly, patterns of seven continued to appear. Seven billion that died to create Kevin¡¯s License Plate. Seven Holy Hibiscan Sects in alliance against Eugene. Seven thousand killed by Eugene¡¯s artifact. Seven students of Eugene, each of whom led each of the seven Sleeper Sects set up by Eugene that wreaked havoc in his absence. And lastly, seven hundred years since Eugene vanished. The Hibiscan world was watching and waiting. It was all based on a schizophrenic theory that Eugene would return after the seventh seventh, but such was their fear of him that they thought it might be true anyways. Eugene had to be very careful indeed. All this he thought while still in the stone room. He opened the door and walked out. The door turned out to be hundreds of feet off the ground, in an enormous chamber. Eugene slowed his speed and greeted the three people waiting for him. Firstly, his ¡°father¡±. ¡°Congratulations,¡± said Czeslaw. He was holding the traditional Sect Elder robes, and walked behind Eugene to put them on him. Czeslaw was wearing the ceremonial robes of the Dusk subsect. The Dawn and Dusk Sect had three leaders for each of the Dawn, Dusk, and Moon subsects. ¡°Thank you,¡± replied Eugene. ¡°We¡¯ll reveal the Hibiscan secret to them now,¡± he whispered. Eugene understood Czeslaw¡¯s decision. It was necessary to tell the other sect leaders about Eugene¡¯s discovery, else they would have conspired against them. Still, Eugene was frustrated that he had let the situation develop to this point. His monopoly on the solution to the Kevinian Conjectures had disappeared. A stone round table with four seats surrounding it rose from the ground. Eugene and the subsect leaders sat down. ¡°Congratulations on becoming a sect elder,¡± said the leader in a cloak with the rising dawn sun emblazoned on it. ¡°I give you my compliments too. I believe you¡¯re the youngest person to ever become such in Hibiscan history,¡± said the leader in a black cloak with a symbol of a moon on it. The Dawn and Dusk Sect contained the moon subsect, though it didn¡¯t have it in the name. The reason was that the Moon subsect operated purely in the shadows, and outsiders knew nearly nothing about it. ¡°Grzegorz,¡± said Czes?aw, ¡°explain the solution to the Kevinian conjectures.¡± Well, he was getting straight to the point. ¡°It¡¯s surprisingly simple,¡± said Eugene. ¡°Despite the ancient demon cultivator¡± (Eugene typically was not referred to by name) ¡°ripping a piece of the Holy Book out, I pieced together what it was. Kevin¡¯s main duties for Eugene were all related to transportation. He was Eugene¡¯s driver, after all. But, of course, he couldn¡¯t carry out those duties unless he was identified as such. I realized it was odd that the very thing that affirmed his status as a legal driver was missing.¡± ¡°Kevin¡¯s License Plate,¡± said Eugene, though of course he didn¡¯t put any power of Kevin¡¯s License Plate into his statement. The sect leaders were frozen in place. Finally, the Moon Leader spoke. ¡°Astonishing.¡± ¡°A once in a generation talent,¡± said the Dawn Leader. ¡°Explain further,¡± said Czeslaw. ¡°Yes, well, the license plate number is ENU-506OB. I stumbled across it during a fractal dive. I then proved the Kevinian Conjectures. It was trivial to do so, even.¡± The Dawn and Moon leaders were clearly not fully there, their minds too occupied with thoughts of how this would impact cultivation. ¡°We¡¯ll have to leave to think about this. But know this: The Dawn and Dusk Sect owes you a great debt.¡± said the Dawn Leader as he got up and left. The Moon Leader followed. Czeslaw walked out too, Eugene close behind. ¡°I, too, will retreat to my meditation cave. I have much to think about regarding Kevin¡¯s License Plate. It is likely that either myself or one of the other Leaders will obtain the Blue Dragon within a few days. I trust you to handle the affairs of the Bielszowicki Clan. Oh, and I advise that you test your mettle in the fighting rings. You need some real combat experience.¡± Eugene gave a curt nod. The wide hole they were in had a large opening leading out of it. As Eugene and Czeslaw left, Eugene turned around to see that it was a floating orb of stone that vanished as soon as Eugene stepped off it. Czeslaw flew like a bullet towards the Bielszowicki Clan house, while Eugene drifted down to the massive sphere that was the central hub of the Dawn and Dusk clan. Eugene¡¯s thoughts moved to the dragons. Czeslaw was correct in his assessment, one of the leaders probably would soon attain the Blue Dragon. Oh, how he missed their circling around his body, filling him with wisdom and strength. The Three Celestial Dragons were gifts from the gods. The Blue Dragon would go to the wisest Hibiscan cultivator, and grant them with vastly greater speed of thought and degree of memory recall, significantly increasing one¡¯s intelligence. The Red Dragon would go to the strongest Hibsican cultivator, and greatly increase the quantity and power of their Hibiscan energy. If a cultivator possessed both dragons, then a third would appear. The Purple Dragon granted the ability to see the future. It had perfect accuracy within five seconds, which essentially meant that any cultivator with it would always win a fight against any other lone cultivator. However, the accuracy of the foresight rapidly fell off as one looked further into the future. Motions got blurrier, and beyond a few hours, seeing the movements and locations of other entities was nearly impossible. At that point, the precognition offered only vague hints as to what would happen. When Eugene had all three dragons seven hundred years ago, he had peeked into the far future on a number of occasions. The furthest he ever tried to look was five hundred years. It was incomprehensible. After days in a meditative state, he could just begin to make out a few events. He saw wars against demon cultivators, corresponding to what were called the Dark Age and Demon Age. He saw the Five-Headed Tortoise dominate the world, in what he learned was called the Tortoise Age. Next, he saw war to break that hegemony. And finally, he saw peace. But not just peace. The general concept of stagnation was the furthest out thing he could see before the visions were completely reduced to smoke. Was the current Hibiscan world in a state of stagnation? It could be argued so. The rate of advancements in Purple Hibiscology had slowed. Several cultivators had reached the pinnacle of cultivation, peak tier of Kambili rank of the Purple Realm. And yet, no one had managed to go beyond that. Many suspected that true immortality lay beyond that barrier, for the lifespans of Kambilis were measured in hundreds of years but still finite. Eugene was jolted out of his thinking by Grzegorz¡¯ old friends. ¡°Eugene, over here!¡± yelled Wang. Him and Mieszko were waving at him. ¡°I can¡¯t believe it¡¯s true!¡± exclaimed Mieszko. Both stared in astonishment at Eugene¡¯s Sect Elder robes. ¡°I discovered a Hibiscan secret in the Holy Book,¡± said Eugene, ¡°one that will revolutionize the world. My ascension to the Purple Realm is just the beginning.¡± ¡°Walk with me,¡± Eugene said, ¡°to the training rooms near the fighting pits. We¡¯ll spar, and I¡¯ll show you some tips.¡± Overcome with gratitude, Wang and Mieszko could not speak, but only follow Eugene, crossing bridge after bridge to reach an enormous sphere, one of the largest in the entire sect. It was orbited by hundreds of smaller orbs, each of which was an individual fighting arena. As a Sect Elder, Eugene would have privileges in deciding which arena to use. He could pick a premium arena to take Wang and Mieszko to. They crossed onto the large fighting sphere, walking onto the central area where people converged. There were massive screens displaying ongoing spars and others that tallied up wins and losses of certain combatants. However, the most powerful Sect Elders tended to fight without a corresponding livestream to avoid exposing their abilities. Eugene smelled energy in the air. Lightning arced, penetrating the night bubble around the sect and landing in the center of the courtyard. The electricity was withdrawn in and then dissipated, revealing an imposing figure whose Hibiscan energy indicated he was of Kambili rank. He wore white robes and had electric blue hair with two buns. He was unmistakably Kash, the leader of the Boiling Water Sect! Kash¡¯s sect was among the most powerful of the Fourth Jade Alliance, and centered around the study of Eugene (Achike, from the Holy Book). ¡°Hey, Grzegorz!¡± Kash of the Imo Clan shouted. ¡°Let¡¯s spar!¡± 5. Static It was absurd, on the face of it. Kash was considered the strongest cultivator of the Jade Alliance. He was one of four peak-tier Kambilis in the non-demon cultivating world. ¡°Why?¡± asked Eugene. ¡°Because I want to know what you discovered, and I want to know fairly.¡± ¡°And what are your conditions?¡± Eugene was getting straight to the point. When a cultivator challenged another of a lower rank, it was common for their win conditions for the fight to be different, and make it easier for the lower ranked one to win in order to make it even. ¡°Simple. If you land a single hit, I¡¯ll concede.¡± ¡°And you want me to tell you what I discovered if I lose?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°And what would I get if you lost?¡± ¡°The Papa Pole. I have it on me, but I¡¯ll agree to not use it during the fight.¡± Eugene considered the situation. The Three Leaders of the Dawn and Dusk Sect were in their meditation caves pondering Kevin¡¯s License Plate. They gave orders to not be disturbed except if the sect was attacked or some equally calamitous event occurred. If Eugene chose to accept the challenge, it would be incredibly risky. The Sect Elders would absolutely not want him to fight Kash on these terms. If Kash lost, then Eugene would get one of the most powerful Hibiscan artifacts of all time, the legendary Papa Pole. But if Eugene lost, not only would he have to give away the information, but the Leaders would be absolutely furious. He was explicitly told not to share knowledge of Kevin¡¯s License Plate with anyone. However, Eugene could simply expend some of Kevin¡¯s License Plate to travel a few seconds back in time to dodge attacks, guaranteeing that he wouldn¡¯t lose. However, Kash would likely notice that. If Eugene suddenly dodged an attack that he shouldn¡¯t have been able to, it would be suspicious. If he did so multiple times in a row, as would probably be necessary, Kash would certainly know that something was up. But it would be good for Eugene to have the Papa Pole, even if it made Kash assume Eugene had some powerful technique that allowed him to fight above his level. ¡°I agree to your terms. Let¡¯s finalize it into a Bondage Vouch.¡± declared Eugene. ¡°Oh, and one more thing,¡± said Kash, ¡°we¡¯ll include a line that prevents you from using any bullshit.¡± ¡°Bullshit?¡± asked Eugene. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kash, ¡°like any hidden techniques you¡¯re keeping that I would have zero way of knowing about.¡± ¡°That¡¯s unfair.¡± ¡°Then it applies to both of us. We¡¯re not allowed to use any abilities in the fight that would be extremely implausible for either of us to have.¡± Eugene considered the situation. This made the agreement far more unfavorable for him. ¡°I agree.¡± What was the purpose of traveling seven hundred years into the future if not to fight against the strongest cultivators? Eugene lived for battle. He needed worthy opponents. Kash had a warrior¡¯s honor and offered him a fair deal. What man would Eugene be if he didn¡¯t accept? ¡°Then let¡¯s get on it,¡± said Kash. ¡°I swear by the blooming purple hibiscuses,¡± declared Eugene and Kash. The Bondage Vouch was struck. The attention of the Four Gods was briefly directed to them, acknowledging their vouch, before moving on. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. It was not the first time Eugene had felt their presence. The years-long process of creating Kevin¡¯s License Plate was the most difficult thing he had ever undergone. Not because of the billions of innocent people he had to harvest. Not because of other cultivators trying to stop him. No, it was because the Four Gods stared at him the entire time. The heavens willed him to stop, and he refused. Such was the mental will he had to exert that he nearly went insane. Yet he survived even that, continuing to defy the Four Gods. So they sent the Oil Avatar. It was presumed that each of the Four Gods had an avatar they would deploy when demon cultivators on Earth became too arrogant and destructive in their actions. The Dawn Avatar was used to save the Dawn and Dusk Sect from an army of demon cultivators. At that point, the Dawn and Dusk Sect was the last bastion of righteous cultivation in the world. Those were the only two that could be confirmed to exist. Apparently the cultivators of the modern era frequently debated which Avatar was stronger, with there being no consensus. The only thing known about the Oil Avatar was that it left Eugene nearly dead after they fought, whereas the Dawn Avatar had more concrete information available from all the eyewitness accounts. Eugene¡¯s fight against the Oil Avatar was unlike anything he had experienced before or since. It was entirely composed of Hibiscan energy transmuted into literal crude oil. It shifted between different levels of refinement and purity during the fight, and would frequently set parts of itself on fire. Eugene started losing the second the fight began: he was only able to chip away at its Hibiscan essence very slowly, while the Oil Avatar did him continuous severe damage. Eugene decided to open his dimension expulsion to end the fight as quickly as possible. He managed to seriously hurt the Oil Avatar, but then it stopped holding back. Its Hibiscan energy increased tenfold. It spit out a glob of burning jet fuel that Eugene blocked with a quick transmutation of his Hibiscan energy into steel. But that was just a feint, for the Oil Avatar dashed behind Eugene, moving faster than it had ever ran before, and split itself into four spears of bubbling oil. Eugene just barely dodged out of the way, sacrificing each of his limbs in exchange for not instantly dying. The Oil Avatar opened its own dimension, instantly overpowering Eugene¡¯s, and hit Eugene with thousands of simultaneous burning oil attacks. Then, the Oil Avatar closed its dimension and slipped away back to the Heavens. Eugene¡¯s followers found him alone, in a desolate, smoldering wasteland that was the result of his fight. He was merely a scorched torso of a man, barely even identifiable as Eugene. They took him away to the Eugenian Demon Sect to be healed. He was back to full strength after a few months, limbs fully regrown. But in that time the Jade Alliance had beaten back most of his armies. And he ordered his remaining loyal cultivators to split up into seven hidden sects, because he would face the Jade Alliance on his own. After he lost his fight with the Avatar, the Four Gods slipped their gaze away from Eugene. He had proven himself to be strong enough to fight the Oil Avatar when it was only using 10% of its power, an impressive feat for a mere Eugene-rank cultivator, so they let him do what he pleased from that point onwards. His fight with the Oil Avatar profoundly affected Eugene and his fighting style. Eugene typically fought by transmuting his Hibiscan energy into rat poison, which burned away at a cultivator¡¯s health and vitality every time they were hit with it. His main Dimension Expulsion was based on that, though he had alternatives he could pull out depending on what kind of Hibiscan essence he tinged his Vantablack Dimension template with. Eugene was at least proficient in nearly all the known Hibiscan energy transmutations, and so could fight with a great deal of versatility. But what he realized is that, as powerful as the rat poison transmutation was, there were many ways of countering it. Eugene had learned the ability to transmute Hibiscan energy into oil, imitating how the Oil Avatar used it, and began building a dimension expulsion centered around that concept. Eugene hadn¡¯t had cause to use that one in a fight, though. Of course, Eugene couldn¡¯t show off his unique dimension expulsions for the upcoming fight, because it would expose him as Eugene. Ideally, he would win without pulling out a dimension expulsion at all. According to the terms of the contract he would be allowed to do so, because of course dimension expulsions in general were a technique that Kash knew of, despite him probably assuming that Eugene wouldn¡¯t be able to perform one. ¡°Eugene!¡± shouted Kash, jolting him out of his train of thought. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± Eugene nodded and followed behind Kash, who was walking towards one of the larger arenas. Wang and Mieszko quickly caught up to Eugene. ¡°Wang, inform the gamesmaster that we¡¯ll be fighting. Mention our respective win conditions. Oh, and tell him to livestream it.¡± ¡°Mieszko, take these purple stones and bet it all on me winning. I¡¯ll give you 10% of the profit.¡± Eugene produced several hundred purple stones from his robes which had previously been stashed in the timeless realm and handed them to Mieszko. Eugene¡¯s companion could barely carry them all, and hobbled off to register the bet. Kash and Eugene flew up to one of the largest sphere arenas orbiting the larger central combat sphere. Eugene glanced back before entering. Spectators weren¡¯t allowed to directly observe such high-level matches, so instead they crowded around massive screens placed in other orbs. Using Hibiscan energy enhanced vision, he saw that nearly everyone in the Sect had paused what they were doing to watch. As the three Sect Leaders meditated, unaware of what was happening, tens of thousands of Dawn and Dusk cultivators prepared themselves to witness the battle. Kash had picked a good time indeed to challenge Eugene. No one could stop their fight, their great wager from taking place. Eugene would have the Papa Pole for himself, and he would be hailed as the legend that won against Kash Imo. 6. God of Lightning Within the arena, Eugene and Kash were isolated. The walls were made of a patchwork of enchanted hibiscus flowers melded with Hibiscan energy reinforced steel. The only thing besides the fighters and the walls were microphones, cameras, and a speaker, so Eugene and Kash could hear the announcer. ¡°In one minute, Kash vs. Grzegorz will begin! Place your bets now. Kash is 83% favored to win, even with his loss condition being Eugene getting a single strike on him!¡± Eugene smirked. They were underestimating him. What fools. Kashimo noticed. ¡°Feeling cocky, Grzegorz? How advanced of a cultivator are you, really.¡± Eugene chose not to reply, instead devoting all of his focus on sensing the emanations from Kash. The Kambili-rank cultivator had begun to transmute his Hibiscan energy into boiling water. If Eugene concentrated, he could just barely hear its sizzling. This was the technique that made Kash so powerful, and was the thing that had revitalized the Boiling Water Sect. The typical technique of those in the sect was to transmute their energy into boiling water. It was easy to control and formed a strong defensive barrier around the user. It was offensively powerful too, but only at close range, and it was easy to avoid. Transmuting Hibiscan essence into lightning was the polar opposite of boiling water. Lightning transmutation was difficult to handle and inexperienced practitioners would often kill themselves with it. It couldn¡¯t defend against much of anything, but was stunningly powerful, especially at long range, when used offensively. ¡°Thirty seconds until the fight begins! The greatest Hibiscan prodigy versus one of the strongest cultivators of the modern age!¡± declared the announcer. Those transmutations complimented each other perfectly, and Kash¡¯s genius was finding a way to combine them into an ultra-powerful technique. By arcing lightning through water, he simultaneously increased its power and made it easier to control. But cultivators had tried that before and largely failed. That was because the real challenge with combining lightning transmutation with water transmutation was that it actually required a far more difficult transmutation. Cultivators when turning their Hibiscan essence into water automatically made it as pure as distilled water. Water only conducted electricity if it had impurities, namely certain suspended particles. ¡°Grzegorz ascended from the Blue Realm to the Purple Realm in a day, but will he be able to defeat the God of Lightning? Fifteen seconds remaining!¡± the announcer shouted. Kash had figured out how to very precisely transmute minute amounts of the water into those particles until he had just the right mixture. It took some time to properly set up, roughly a minute. Even after the difficult setup, it took extreme effort and focus to maintain the right mixture. Any imbalance and the lightning would either dissipate or go wild and out of control. ¡°Three!¡± The announcer yelled. Kash¡¯s boiling lightning was the peak of Hibiscan transmutation, and while others in the Boiling Water Sect were capable of it as well, none were as skilled as him. ¡°Two!¡± Eugene smelled ozone and heard the crackling of electricity. Kash was arcing lightning through the boiling water now. ¡°One!¡± Eugene took a fighting stance, readying his Hibiscan energy but not transmuting it into anything just yet. He wanted to keep the element of surprise. ¡°Begin!¡± Eugene darted forward, eager to fight. Kash jumped back while firing thin bolts of lightning. They were deliberately weak attacks, designed to probe Eugene¡¯s defenses against electricity rather than do serious harm. Eugene merely dodged all of them rather than bothering blocking the bolts, his reflexes quicker than Kash had probably expected them to be. He continued the chase, Kash seemingly not wanting to fight hand to hand. If Eugene¡¯s plan was to get close and then pull out whatever trump card he had, as seemed apparent based on Eugene¡¯s mad dashing towards Kash, then it made sense Kash would avoid melee combat. Kash suddenly stopped darting away, instead choosing to build up lightning for a massive attack. Kash had been playing around earlier. Eugene wouldn¡¯t be able to get away with merely dodging this one. It was time to use his secret weapon. Eugene prepared his Hibiscan energy for transmutation. He wouldn¡¯t complete the transmutation until the lightning had already been fired, to avoid giving his plan away. But, he had no guarantee his defense would work. For the first time since fighting the Oil Avatar, Eugene felt real fear! Kash finished his preparation and released a barrage of full-strength bolts, shooting discharge after discharge at Eugene. There was no dodging these strikes. In an instant, Eugene converted all of his Hibiscan energy into olive oil and formed a shield around him. In order to transmute Hibiscan essence, some Hibiscan energy had to be expended. For stronger transmutations, such as converting Hibiscan energy into electricity, 60% would be turned into Hibiscan lightning and 40% would be spent to power the transformation. A skilled cultivator like Kash could bring it up to an 80% efficiency rate. But olive oil was pitifully weak! It defended against nearly nothing and had zero offensive relevance. Thus, there was a 98% base rate of conversion. Eugene, as a skilled transmuter, could bring that efficiency rate to 99%. Olive oil transmutation had been discovered many centuries ago by experimenters but had been dismissed as useless. Eugene was proficient in transmuting his Hibiscan energy into crude oil, which of course was very different from olive oil, but certain basic similarities between the two existed. Eugene could have transmuted his Hibiscan essence into crude oil, but it would have been much less efficient while still accomplishing the same goal, that being blocking electricity. Olive oil didn¡¯t conduct electricity at all, and so was the perfect defense against lightning attacks. Eugene wouldn¡¯t get electrocuted, but the lightning would simply destroy the olive oil. But because the efficiency rate was so high, Eugene was wasting hardly any Hibiscan energy, while Kash was expending a lot. The lightning burned away much of the olive oil, creating a smoky haze around Eugene. He darted out of the smoke, not wanting to be caught off guard. ¡°What was that defense,¡± asked Kash, ¡°some kind of oil?¡± Eugene nodded. ¡°Olive oil, specifically.¡± ¡°Wonderful! Many cultivators have devised ways to defend against my lightning, but none were as creative as you. I had a feeling the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s sudden prodigy would disappoint, but I was mistaken.¡± ¡°Shall you allow me to fight you hand-to-hand now?¡± requested Eugene. ¡°Let us! I want to see what you¡¯ll do.¡± Eugene flung himself forwards, coating his fists in a thick layer of olive oil. Kash darted forwards to meet him. They traded a flurry of blows, smoking rising from their fists. Their brief moments of contact weren¡¯t long enough for Eugene to put more than trace amounts of olive oil into Kash¡¯s transmutation. Eugene tried landing a solid hit on Kash, but Kash instead grabbed him by the wrists and flipped him over, shocking his body with a surge of electricity. ¡°And Kash flips over Eugene!¡± screeched the announcer. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. But this actually played into Eugene¡¯s favor, because their sustained contact had allowed him to contaminate Kash¡¯s careful balance of transmutation with an injection of olive oil. Kash¡¯s lightning output would be halved until he removed the adulterant, but he couldn¡¯t do that if Eugene kept up the pressure on him ¡°Astonishing,¡± said Kash. He blocked one of Eugene¡¯s punches before jumping back. His Hibiscan energy suddenly surged. ¡°Time to stop holding back.¡± Eugene didn¡¯t dare attack him now that Kash had doubled his Hibiscan energy, letting his full power loose. Kash arced his lightning in a circular pattern. The electricity steadily merged and coalesced into a greater, spherical form. Kash extracted some lightning from his body until he formed an orb of pure lightning spinning in the palm of his hand about the size of a basketball. The ball he had formed was only at half-strength because of the olive oil contamination, yet it still had enough power to end the fight if it hit Eugene! Eugene drew back his right fist, imbuing it with 80% of his Hibiscan energy. He near-instantaneously transmuted it into olive oil, before meeting Kash¡¯s electricity-charged melee attack. But he opened his mouth to speak just before he struck. ¡°Dimension Expulsion: Vantablack.¡± he said, in one-hundredth of a second, using Hibiscan energy to forcibly manipulate his muscles to spit out the words faster. Because of some unknown Hibiscan law, activating the dimension required saying its command words. In a fight between two cultivators, expulsing a dimension first could be the difference between winning and losing. Thus, fast-speaking Hibiscan techniques were essential. Vantablack Dimensions allowed for the manipulation of speed and strength, but only up to a point. For example, Eugene could imbue himself with 10% more speed. However, beyond that, he would have to make trade-offs. An example would be giving himself 20% more speed but weakening his attack power by 10%, or increasing everyone else in the domain¡¯s attack power by 10%. The Dimension he just expulsed was similar. It made Eugene¡¯s attacks 400% stronger, and made Kash¡¯s attacks 390% faster in exchange. However, this unexpected opening of a Dimension strongly favored Eugene in this scenario. Their attacks were a tenth of a second away from hitting each other anyways, so Kash¡¯s speed ¡°advantage¡± didn¡¯t matter. Such a tactic of opening a Vantablack Dimension in the instant before striking someone to enhance your attack was called a... ¡°Grzegorz tried a Vantablack Flash!¡± yelled the announcer. Kash used the same technique Eugene did of using Hibiscan energy to move the mouth faster. ¡°Dimension Expulsion: Vantablack.¡± he said in one hundredth of a second, before their fists met. He didn¡¯t bother to imbue it with any special properties because two Vantablack Dimensions within each other would instantly break apart. The force of the dimensions breaking threw both of them back, but neither was knocked down. ¡°But his Dimension breaks apart after Kash opens one too!¡± the announcer howled. Eugene redirected the coalesced energy from his fists to the rest of his body. Eugene had cleverly saved himself from Kash¡¯s ultimate ball lightning attack, but at the cost of weakening his Hibiscan energy reserves. The more extreme the effects of a Vantablack Dimension were, the more Hibiscan energy it cost to open one. Kash had given his Dimension zero effects, and wasted almost no Hibiscan energy. While it may not have been a win for Eugene, it certainly wasn¡¯t a loss. Better to lose some Hibiscan energy than be turned into an immobile, smoldering near-corpse by Kash. And Kash had been weakened by Eugene¡¯s sneak vegetable oil attack. He was continuously losing some Hibiscan energy right now, as he had been purifying the water the second they were both thrown back. Furthermore, Kash hadn¡¯t lost the lightning used to make the ball attack, merely reabsorbed it back into the water. But to form the ball in the first place took energy to organize it in a spherical vortex pattern, which Kash had wasted. Their brief melee encounter was a slight win for Eugene. Eugene and Kash slowed their momentum from the Vantablack Dimension¡¯s destruction and righted themselves. They walked towards each other. ¡°Interesting,¡± said Kash, ¡°To be honest, I didn¡¯t expect such clever tactics from you. You¡¯ve impressed me.¡± ¡°What Hibiscan prodigy would I be if I couldn¡¯t hold myself in a fight?¡± ¡°True, true,¡± replied Kash, ¡°though I think you¡¯re all out of tricks.¡± Eugene didn¡¯t respond, instead evaluating what had happened so far. He was down to 70% of the Hibiscan energy he had at the start of the fight. His estimate was that Kash had quadruple or quintuple his energy. Kash charged at him again. Eugene¡¯s fists met his, but now Kash had purified the olive oil from his system and wasn¡¯t letting anything like that happen again. Kash started landing more and more of his hits, and kept them brief enough that Eugene couldn¡¯t force any olive oil onto him. But Kash was overextending himself, and during a moment of particular vulnerability for him, Eugene threw his right fist at his stomach. But Kash¡¯s movement was a feint. He had been secretly coalescing a small ball of lightning, and slammed it into Eugene¡¯s arm before Eugene¡¯s punch could land. Eugene was thrown back a thousand feet before tumbling to a stop. His right arm was mangled, bone poking out, though a small upside was that Kash had inadvertently cauterized the wound. Not resting for a moment, Kash threw several bolts of lightning that Eugene was only barely able to block, creating a cloud of smoke around him from the burnt olive oil. Kash fully subsumed himself into his lightning and arced to Eugene¡¯s position, landing and then instantly hitting him with more ball lightning. Eugene, not even able to stand, couldn¡¯t dodge out of the way, and had to expend most of his olive oil defending against the attack. Eugene could have expulsed a Vantablack Dimension, but that would more annoy Kash than anything else. If Eugene kept pulling that trick, Kash would likely open his real Dimension Expulsion, which would cause Eugene to instantly lose. The only thing preventing him from doing that was a sense of respect for Eugene. Eugene¡¯s Hibiscan energy reserves had drained to just 45%, while Kash was in top fighting shape. Kash zoomed in for another lightning ball attack. Eugene let it hit, not wanting to waste any more Hibiscan energy on defending. His body convulsed with electricity, the attack shocking his internal organs into malfunction and scarring the front of his body. He spit blood. ¡°Is that it? Will you concede?¡± Kash asked. ¡°Your loss condition technically hasn¡¯t gone into effect yet,¡± stated Kash, ¡°because you are still technically capable of fighting.¡± Seeing that Eugene didn¡¯t seem like responding, he continued. ¡°So, I ask you: do you concede. I don¡¯t want to hit you with my balls until you¡¯re fully incapacitated and out of Hibiscan energy, but I will if I have to.¡± Eugene opened his mouth to reply. Kash was eager to hear his victory declared. ¡°Dimension Expulsion: Zero-Electron Olive Oil Coating.¡± Eugene and Kash were instantly encased in what looked like the inside of an olive. They were both subsumed in a full olive oil coating. It took 20% of Eugene¡¯s Hibiscan energy just to create it. Eugene could just barely hear the faint noises of the announcer going wild while describing what had just happened. Kash¡¯s electricity instantly died, and he didn¡¯t bother starting to purify his boiling water, instead opening his mouth. ¡°Dimen-¡± Eugene interrupted him, and using 5% of his Hibiscan energy, forced his tongue to say the words in a thousandth of a second, barely beating Kash to the punch. ¡°Dimension Expulsion: Last Oily Rays of the Setting Sun.¡± Kash was stunned, completely caught off guard. ¡°Grzegorz¡± had not one, but two different fully realized dimensions! Eugene was now down to none of his Hibiscan energy. Eugene had expulsed the classic Dusk Dimension powered by dusk energy. It was nearly night. The sinking light of the dusk sun winked out, and Eugene grasped its final ray with his scorched left hand. A thirty second timer appeared. Eugene coughed. ¡°The restriction placed upon you is that you can¡¯t open a dimension for thirty seconds, and I¡¯m required to tell you that.¡± Eugene spoke in a dry, cracked voice. Eugene had severely weakened the power of his own dimension in exchange for not allowing Kash to open his for a limited period of time. There was only one ray of light, as opposed to the dozens that were normally in the Dusk Dimension. And Eugene had to physically use it himself instead of directing them to attack merely with his mind. Kash had to last for thirty seconds, and then he would win. All he had to do was stop Eugene from using the ray, which must be his final ultimate attack! Kash darted over to Eugene, intending to cripple his ability to use the ray. He closed in instantly, expanding his sphere of boiling water twenty feet around him, enveloping Eugene and boiling his entire body, rendering him unable to move. His boiling water was still corrupted by olive oil because he hadn¡¯t had any time to purify it. But Eugene didn¡¯t need to throw the ray, because the instant Kash¡¯s boiling water and olive oil reached it, it struck, piercing his body. The ray in fact traveled fastest within the medium of olive oil, in an inverse of how electricity worked. Eugene got one hit on him. Kash had lost. Eugene collapsed the dimension. Both his arms were a mangled mess of bone and scorched flesh. Most of his internal organs had failed. He was incapable of moving. If he didn¡¯t receive immediate medical attention, he would die. He was in a similar state to how he was after the Oil Avatar was finished with him. Kash may have lost, but so did Eugene. He was completely unable to continue fighting. If it were a real fight, Kash would have won. But the terms of the Bondage Vouch meant that it was technically a draw. The God of Lightning walked over to him, burnt by the ray but largely unharmed. ¡°You were magnificent, Grzegorz. I shall never forget our fight for as long as I live.¡± Cultivators dashed into the arena, picking up Eugene¡¯s near-lifeless body and taking him to the medical wards. Kash leisurely walked out, a bit sore from the fight. Eugene let himself slip into unconsciousness. 7. Wager Fulfilled Eugene opened his eyes. The unblinking stare of the Four Gods rested upon him. His Bondage Vouch with Kash demanded to be fulfilled. According to the terms of the Vouch, both of them had lost the fight, and so not only did Kash need to hand over the Papa Pole, but Eugene needed to tell him about Kevin¡¯s License Plate. Eugene was resting in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. An array of Hibiscan machinery churned behind Eugene, monitoring his vital signs and managing his medical care. A cultivator trained in the medical arts opened the door and walked in before bowing deeply. ¡°Sect Elder, Kash wants to enter.¡± ¡°Let him in,¡± replied Eugene. The doctor left, walking past Kash. The Kambili-rank cultivator grasped the Papa Pole with his right hand. It was a dark gray metal rod, surprisingly only about a foot long. It rippled with latent Hibiscan energy. ¡°Grzegorz, you look much better already.¡± Eugene¡¯s scarred face only stared at him. ¡°I hate to part with my pole, but a deal¡¯s a deal.¡± He handed the Papa Pole to Eugene. Eugene felt the Papa Pole¡¯s essence penetrate his mind. It was in a resting state, and thus gave off only a minute amount of ambient Hibiscan energy. Eugene attuned to the Hibiscan artifact and felt a transferral of ownership. ¡°Is that it?¡± asked Eugene. Kash smirked. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s all. You¡¯re the official owner and have full control of it. Technically, explaining the details of how it works wasn¡¯t in our contract, so have fun figuring that out.¡± ¡°Heh, you re-¡± Eugene coughed up blood, ¡°really are salty about losing.¡± ¡°A draw,¡± said Kash. ¡°It was in practice a loss,¡± Eugene said, ¡°and let¡¯s not argue semantics.¡± Eugene ripped out the IV with a spray of blood and carved a purple hole in reality. ¡°Time for my end of the deal,¡± he said. ¡°I guess I shouldn¡¯t be surprised you already know how to make Hibiscan portals,¡± said Kash. Eugene crawled through. Kash walked after him. They emerged into an anechoic chamber, enchanted Hibiscuses lining the walls to deaden any sound. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°In addition to sound barriers, the room is warded against non-authorized purple teleportation and scry-¡± ¡°Blah, blah, blah, just tell me,¡± said Kash. ¡°It¡¯s quite simple, really,¡± said Eugene, ¡°and not very significant.¡± ¡°Uh huh,¡± said Kash. ¡°Stumbling across Kevin¡¯s license plate was a most comedic turn of events.¡± Kash froze. His mind instantly connected the dots. The demon cultivator Eugene had stolen Kevin¡¯s license plate from the Holy Book all those centuries ago! But how had Grzegorz found out? ¡°You see, I found it in the fractal, essentially by accident. The most important discovery of our age, and it was found by me diving too deep into the Hibiscan fractal, like a fool.¡± Kash was too stunned to respond. He knew Grzegorz must have discovered something truly profound in order to ascend several realms in an afternoon, but this was above anything he would have suspected. Everything clicked into place. Grzegorz¡¯s Hibiscan fighting style was clearly based on his knowledge of Kevin¡¯s license plate. Any cultivator who didn¡¯t know about KLP would be missing a fundamental part of the Holy Book, and thus their cultivation would be inherently crippled. That explained how Grzegorz had managed to get the upper hand in the fight a few times. ¡°I-I need to think about this.¡± ¡°Have fun,¡± said Eugene. They both opened different portals and entered them, Eugene going back to his hospital bed, but not before dropping the Papa Pole. After crawling back onto the bed, Eugene closed his eyes. He could clearly feel the throbbing of the Pole, its location apparent to him. He mentally grasped it, and it instantly appeared into his hand. How convenient. The Pole was fully charged with Kash¡¯s lightning energy. Eugene had read accounts of Kash¡¯s fights in which he deployed the Pole. The last time was eight years ago, when Kash wiped out the remaining known forces of the Multiplying Rabbit Sect, one of the most powerful demon cultivation sects. He killed hundreds of cultivators, including a dozen Kambilis, with three strikes from the Papa Pole. That had been part of a joint operation between the Fourth Jade Alliance and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. The Multiplying Rabbit Sect was caught trying to infiltrate a diplomatic summit between the Fourth Jade Alliance and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect, and so it was decided that it had to be eliminated. The other demon sects did nothing, cowering in fear of the united power of the entire non-demon cultivating world. Part of the reason why the Fourth Jade Alliance and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect currently felt so comfortable with waging their cold war against each other was because they thought the demon cultivator menace had been severely weakened to the point of irrelevance. Of course, the Multiplying Rabbit Sect hadn¡¯t been exterminated, and now was nearing the power it had before it was ¡°destroyed¡±. Those thought to have been killed eight years ago had been somehow reborn. It was unknown exactly how, but such things weren¡¯t surprising considering that sect¡¯s patronage to the Infinite Rabbit, one of the four Heavenly Beasts. It was one of two that had turned to demon cultivation, the other one being the Manifold Lion. The Five-Headed Tortoise and the mysterious Dog were the other two Heavenly Beasts, and both held rivalries with the demon cultivating Heavenly Beasts. Eugene directed his thoughts away from the past, instead thinking about what to do now. He entered the timeless realm and dropped the Papa Pole off there, the same place where he kept Kevin¡¯s License Plate. He slipped out. Even that brief excursion into the anechoic chamber exhausted him. The internal and external damage done to him had been mostly healed, but he was still far from peak physical condition. Even considering Hibiscan healing methods, some things could only be mended with time. Eugene drifted off to sleep, deliberately inducing a Hibiscan coma that he would only awake from in a week or so. That would get him back to 90% of his normal strength once he woke up and would speed up the process of getting to 100% strength. It was time to rest. 8. Triumvirate Eugene emerged out of his self-induced Hibiscan coma, opening his eyes. A medically-trained cultivator walked in, checking to see if Eugene had awoken. He opened a portal and went through. Soon afterwards, the three leaders of the Dawn and Dusk Sect walked through. Czeslaw, draped in the ceremonial robes of the Dusk subsect, was awash in the light of the Blue Dragon. He was smirking. Eugene realized that he had ascended to the peak tier of Kambili rank, making him one of five alive in the world to have reached such status. The other two members of the sect¡¯s triumvirate of leaders were much less amused. Czeslaw had proven his superiority in Hibiscan knowledge, officially chosen by the Four Gods to be the wisest cultivator. The Three Celestial Dragons were not among the Four Heavenly Beasts. Instead, they were a blend of organic and mechanical elements, crafted by the Four Gods as gifts to those cultivators that were above all others. The Dawn and Dusk Sect was built on the understanding that, while each of the three leaders of its triumvirate were balanced in authority, one would be first among equals. Typically, that position went to the Dawn leader, who would be the face of the entire sect. But that position now passed to Czeslaw due to his gaining of the Blue Dragon. The Moon leader was largely unperturbed by this development. It was his job to remain in the shadows. But the Dawn leader was coping with this new reality. While he rationally knew that it was a huge benefit for the sect and for the Jade Alliance as a whole, it didn¡¯t stop him being frustrated. All this Eugene saw from their expression and subtle body language. The Five-Headed Tortoise Sect¡¯s leader had had all three dragons for a decade now, but now was stuck with only one. It was a momentous occasion, and a moment of joy for every cultivator belonging to a sect of the Fourth Jade Alliance. ¡°So, Grzegorz,¡± said Czes?aw, ¡°might you tell us why you went against our orders and told Kash about the plate?¡± ¡°Yes, we know about that. Because,¡± he continued, ¡°Kash has been sparring constantly for the past week, testing his new strength, and his fighting style is clearly tinged with knowledge of the plate.¡± Eugene sat up in his bed. He called upon the Papa Pole, summoning it from the timeless realm. Normally, Eugene would have to go into the timeless realm himself, hold it, and then leave. Such was the power of the Papa Pole that it would instantly appear in his hands when called for. Eugene felt its sizzling lightning energy from the last time Kash charged it. Once Eugene expended it, he would have to charge it with his own Hibiscan energy, which wouldn¡¯t be as effective as Kash¡¯s top-tier electricity transmutation. Thus, Eugene was saving it for when he really needed it. ¡°I understand,¡± said Czeslaw. ¡°Yeah, we made a deal. If Kash lost, he would give me his Papa Pole. If I lost, I had to tell him the secret that let me advance to the Purple Realm.¡± ¡°And now someone else knows about the plate,¡± interjected the Dawn leader. ¡°Were we not going to tell our trusted ally Kash about it anyways?¡± Eugene mockingly asked. ¡°It would be self-defeating not to,¡± he continued, ¡°at least this way I got the Pole out of it. Really, you should be thanking me.¡± ¡°It was still a risk that he would get the secret and you would get nothing,¡± the Dawn leader replied. ¡°Did you not listen to what I just said? I thought we were already going to tell him. Once one of us got the Blue Dragon, Kash and the other high-ranking Jade Alliance leaders would demand that we tell them. This was the best strategic move.¡± Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Eugene ended his rant to find Czeslaw and the Dawn Leader glaring at him. The Moon leader still had a dispassionate expression. ¡°That isn¡¯t how Sect Leaders are spoken to,¡± Czeslaw stated. ¡°Apologize, and kowtow.¡± Eugene hesitated for a moment, before getting out of bed and kowtowing on the floor. ¡°My apologies, Dawn leader.¡± The Dawn leader whispered inaudibly to Czeslaw, who nodded before glancing at the Moon Leader, who slightly inclined his head. Eugene stood up. ¡°We¡¯ve decided your punishment, both for recklessly engaging in the fight with Kash and for insulting a Sect leader.¡± Eugene grew slightly nervous, a rare emotion for him. ¡°You¡¯ll be assigned on a diplomatic mission to the LitRPG Sect. You¡¯ll try to bring them into the fold of the Fourth Jade Alliance.¡± Eugene¡¯s inner mental state returned to a placid sea. This was nothing more than an inconvenience, a task set upon him to curb his hubris. The LitRPG Sect had long refused invitations to join the Fourth Jade Alliance, but they had also avoided being conquered by the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. They were relatively powerful, having six Kambili-rank Sect Elders, and were one of the three independent sects, the only sects that were part of neither the Fourth Jade Alliance, nor the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect, nor the Demon Pact. They were a bizarre, incomprehensible sect, centered around the creation of board and video games that allowed them to further attune to the Holy Book. In addition to that, its members deluded themselves into thinking that reality was like a video game, or more precisely, like a novel in the litRPG genre. They constantly referred to their ¡°XP¡±, ¡°stats¡±, ¡°level¡±, ¡°class¡±, and ¡°skills¡±, despite such things not actually existing in real life. ¡°You¡¯ll depart in a week,¡± said Czeslaw, ¡°and we¡¯ll allow you to select your own retinue, subject to our approval. One there, you¡¯ll negotiate for a fortnight and then return.¡± ¡°I understand,¡± said Eugene. It was a completely futile task, one meant to humble him rather than to actually accomplish anything for the sect. The Fourth Jade Alliance sent an entourage to the LitRPG Sect every year, each of the nine sects in the alliance rotating off for the duty. It was the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s turn this year. The LitRPG Sect always joyously welcomed the diplomats and invited them to participate in their game tournaments, but every year rejected the offer to join the Fourth Jade Alliance. The alliance knew that the LitRPG Sect wouldn¡¯t be convinced to join, and instead kept up the annual tradition to maintain friendly relations with the sect. What made the situation so absurd was how tightly intertwined the Fourth Jade Alliance was with the LitRPG Sect, despite the latter¡¯s insistence on never joining. They both frequently cooperated with each other in rooting out demon cultivators, and had a treaty to share certain Hibiscan discoveries. Czeslaw turned to the other leaders. ¡°I¡¯d like to speak to my son in private.¡± They nodded and left, the Dawn leader closing the door behind them. ¡°Congratulations on de facto winning the fight. Mastering multiple Dimension Expulsions is highly impressive.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Eugene. ¡°You understand why I had to do that. And your punishment isn¡¯t much of one at all. It¡¯s primarily a way for you to gain experience while doing something relatively low-stakes.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll still put in my best effort,¡± said Eugene. ¡°Of course,¡± replied Czeslaw, ¡°and we will send one of our veteran diplomats with you. That is the one requirement for your mission. Otherwise, I¡¯m giving you a lot of leeway.¡± ¡°I appreciate it. I¡¯ll use it well.¡± ¡°I¡¯m proud of you, Grzegorz. It¡¯s good to see that you¡¯ve nearly fully healed.¡± Czeslaw ripped open a purple portal and left. Eugene smiled inwardly, though his facial expression betrayed nothing. He had been successful in every one of his goals. He had slipped into a position of substantial power and influence in the Dawn and Dusk Sect and now possessed one of the most powerful Hibiscan artifacts of all time. The task he had just been weighed down with may actually be a blessing in disguise. He would get to inspect up close one of the most unusual sects of the modern era while also forging ties with both said sect and the members of his diplomatic retinue. Eugene decided that he would stick with the Dawn and Dusk Sect for the foreseeable future. It was a stable base of power and would serve him well in the future. All Eugene wanted for the time being was to grow his influence and ascend the ranks of cultivation. He was situated very well for such a thing. He opened a purple vortex and left his hospital bed for the central hub of the Dawn and Dusk Sect. He needed to assemble his list of people that would accompany him. 9. The Buried One Saddam Hussein had been cast down from the heavens. Once the dictator of Iraq, he now ruled over naught but a hole in the ground with an air vent and a fan, its entrance hidden by bricks and rubble. Laying in his tomb like a Sumerian god-king of old, he had nothing better to do than think. And his mind kept returning to a ripple he had felt in October. Hibiscuses kept blooming in his mind as he saw visions of a young girl in Nigeria living in an abusive household. It was a book of some sort, he was sure of that. After much meditation, he deduced that it was called Purple Hibiscus, and that it had been published in October 2003. This was his first awakening. The sheer mental force of will required to figure out the book¡¯s title caused him to ascend to the first Hibiscan rank, that being Amaka rank. From there, he further felt the Hibiscan currents. The book being released and the subsequent rise of people like him gaining mental abilities from understanding it was truly a fascinating phenomenon. He developed his ability to the point where he could sense if American soldiers were near. He managed to successfully disrupt their efforts to find him by sending out waves of Hibiscan energy to his former followers the Americans were interrogating, pushing them to say nothing. As he used this newfound Hibiscan energy to influence the world, he found himself being able to crudely reach out and affect physical things as well. He further secured the entrance to his cave, burying himself deeper and deeper, the rock and dirt molding around his touch. The Americans couldn¡¯t find him now. He was left alone to cultivate. Saddam Hussein no longer desired wealth and material possessions, instead seeking only to advance his knowledge of the Holy Book. Over the next few decades, he reached Father Amadi rank and then Papa-Nnukwu rank. But after getting to peak tier of said rank, he was stuck. His progression had stopped. He had reached the pinnacle of what he realized was called the Blue Realm, but couldn¡¯t advance. Saddam Hussein instead contented himself with feeling the Hibiscan energy waves and observing the state of the world. The world was absorbed in chaos as so-called ¡°cultivators¡± like him fought for supremacy. The countries of old collapsed and were replaced with Hibiscan Sects. As he observed this never-ending chaos, he slowly understood the reality of power and of leadership. Emerging ¡°demon cultivator¡± sects were typically led by tyrannical, power-hungry bastards. They reminded Saddam Hussein of himself, and he realized his actions as dictator of Iraq were probably bad. While undergoing this crisis of self, he steadied himself by looking to those benevolent sect leaders, those that protected the weak and led their sects to great heights. His second awakening was when he understood that the next Realm would be red, like the red hibiscuses in Eugene¡¯s lawn. His breakthrough in Purple Hibiscology was that the next realm would be opposite yet equal to the first, different yet similar. Red was a color commonly seen as being in opposition to blue, but wasn¡¯t its exact opposite (after all, they weren¡¯t complimentary colors). Furthermore, a similarity was that they were both primary colors. If the Blue Realm involved the careful intellectual study of Hibiscan knowledge, then the Red Realm would likely involve the attuning of oneself to Purple Hibiscus through combat. But how would he do that? Who would he fight? The answer was himself. He could pit his own golems of stone against each other, refining their martial techniques and eventually trying them out for himself. It was a crude solution, and one that progressed his cultivation at an agonizingly slow pace. But it did work. After hundreds of years, he made it past the Red Realm and into the Purple Realm, reaching Jaja rank. A few years passed, and a sense of foulness increased. Someone was corrupting the Hibiscan energies of the world. While attuned to the Hibiscan frequencies, he couldn¡¯t make out people¡¯s conversations except for a few words here and there. And one word was repeated over and over again: Eugene. That was the name of the demon cultivator disrupting the Hibiscan harmony. Entombed in his underground prison, Saddam Hussein felt the loss of billions of people ring out in the Hibiscan waves. Eugene had grown in power. And in one moment, it all vanished. Any sign of Eugene was gone from the world. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Saddam Hussein pondered the mystery for a long while, trying to feel out what had happened. He came to the conclusion that Eugene simply vanished, likely passing into the secondary dimension of time. Saddam Hussein had become aware of the second dimension of time only a few years before Eugene vanished. Saddam Hussein could briefly move ¡°up¡± or ¡°down¡± (as he conceptualized it) in time, before being snapped back to his normal space in the time flow. When doing so, he was completely cut off from Hibiscan emanations. It was not a stretch to assume that Eugene might have gone in the timeless realm too, if not traveling to the far future or far past somehow. What else would explain the instantaneous vanishing of his demon essence? Even if he died, some of it would have lingered for a time. Saddam Hussein turned his attention back to cultivation, and decades passed. His ascendance through tiers had slowed, but at an agonizing snail¡¯s pace, he reached Eugene rank. A few decades after that, he felt profound Hibiscan waves. Someone had reached the rank above Eugene! Saddam pushed onwards in his cultivation, spurred on by that great cultivator! Even more decades passed, and Saddam Hussein reached Kambili rank and had his third revelation. For, upon achieving that highest rank, he realized how low it actually was. He understood, deep in his soul, that the lifespan of a Kambili rank cultivator was finite, and that he would almost certainly die before he reached whatever rank was above that. Thus, Saddam Hussein withdrew from the Hibiscan currents of the outside world and focused on the earth that enveloped him. He was very familiar with transmutation of Hibiscan essence, but had never experimented with what would happen if he let himself fully give in to the rock. He turned his Hibiscan energy into all types of rock, stone, earth, clay, sand, and silt. He was the ground and the ground was him. His fourth and final understanding came while he immersed himself in the earth. Transmuting his Hibiscan essence into stone slowed the pulsating of his aura, slowed his breath, and slowed his heartbeat. Cellular processes crawled along at fractions of their previous speed. Saddam Hussein could slow his own aging down to nearly nothing. Finally, he had found a way to temporarily counter the curse of mortality and extend his lifespan. He drifted off to a deep hibernation, honored among the earth. In his deep sleep, his thoughts drifted, formless. He knew on some level that he was coping, only delaying the inevitable. After all, he had carved his hiding place out of the Earth to hide from his problems, hide from the consequences of his actions as dictator of Iraq. Now, he was repeating that, except he was hiding from a more fundamental consequence of life itself: that of inevitable death. There in the stone he lay, until something caused him to shift in his sleep. Evil Hibiscan waves permeated him, but such was his state of sleep that it took a week for his metabolism to slowly speed up to normal as his mind subconsciously registered the disturbance. He was awoken by a tsunami in the Hibiscan ripples that permeated the world. The twisted demon essence was unmistakable. Eugene had returned. Saddam Hussein woke up. He had to warn the world. Bursting out of his prison and seeing the sun for the first time in a thousand years, he flew into the air. Saddum Hussein detached his Hibiscan essence, thrusting it forwards and down towards the ground, forming a pillar of stone. He used it as leverage to fling himself from, before re-absorbing the detached energy back into his main aura. He repeated this move several times in the span of a few seconds, flinging himself thousands of miles. He was traveling towards the largest concentration of Hibiscan energy he could detect, the enormous sect built atop the back of the great Heavenly Beast the Five-Headed Tortoise. He careened towards his destination, and, as he was miles above the center of the sect, formed his Hibiscan essence into a wall of stone that he slammed against, halting his forward momentum. He fell towards a massive central courtyard of the sect atop the Tortoise. He slammed into the ground, creating an enormous crater. Thousands turned to look at him. Everyone could feel his aura. His Hibiscan energy pulsated throughout the entire sect, radiating pure strength. It was obvious that he was a peak tier cultivator of Kambili rank. Everyone fled in terror, while sentries teleported to warn the Sect Elders of the calamity that had descended on them. ¡°Eugene!¡± he shouted. ¡°Eugene has returned!¡± 10. Entourage Eugene walked through the central hub of the Dawn and Dusk Sect, drawing stares from the crowds. He was a renowned cultivator, now said to be among the greatest Hibiscan prodigies of all time. Eugene was very satisfied with his recent accomplishments, but most of all he was pleased with the fat stack of purple stones he was owed after he bet on himself. Eugene lifted up and flew towards the dorms for junior cultivators. The hierarchy of the Dawn and Dusk Sect and of nearly all sects was split into the tiers of Initiate, Junior, Senior, Elder, Council Member, and Leader. Those of Amaka rank were automatically Initiates. Upon rising to a higher rank, one automatically became a Junior. Rising to Senior status required reaching the Red Realm, and one had to be in the Purple Realm to become an Elder. Sects typically had a governing Council which elected the Sect Leader. The Dawn and Dusk Sect was unusual in having three leadership positions, each of which corresponded to one of the three subsects. Eugene sighted Wang and Mieszko walking together, and landed next to them. ¡°Elder Grzegorz!¡± exclaimed both of them. ¡°Oh, please don¡¯t call me that,¡± said Eugene. ¡°I¡¯m still your old classmate.¡± ¡°Oh, I have the stones for you,¡± said Mieszko. ¡°Speaking of those, I¡¯ve decided that we should each split the reward evenly. I wouldn¡¯t be where I am without you too.¡± Even though the fight ended in a draw, Eugene still made a profit because of all the people betting on Kash to win. Thus, the payout ended up being positive. ¡°You are too generous!¡± Wang exclaimed. ¡°I have more news to share. I¡¯ve been charged with leading the imminent diplomatic mission to the LitRPG sect. You¡¯ll both be part of the official retinue.¡± They both spontaneously kowtowed. ¡°Grzegorz, you are far too kind! We refuse.¡± they said simultaneously. ¡°Please, get up.¡± They both did so reluctantly. ¡°I trust both of you, and want you to accompany me.¡± Eugene meant this sincerely. Wang and Miezsko were developing a fanatical loyalty towards him. By bringing them along, he could further cultivate their loyalty. The rest of the diplomatic party he would pick from experienced Sect Elders and Seniors. The most troubling part was the mandatory member. Sect Elder Wronskolenskivichopovichenski Sobiepanskivicholenskovichenskiavich of the Moon subsect would be accompanying him. The Moon subsect¡¯s role within the Dawn and Dusk Sect was manifold. They acted as a secret police of the sect, as an intelligence agency, and as a bureau of secret Hibiscan research. They were few in number, only being about 10% of the total membership of the sect, though they held an outsized influence. Wronskolenskivichopovichenski Sobiepanskivicholenskovichenskiavich¡¯s purpose was to observe Eugene¡¯s handling of the diplomatic mission. Wronskolenskivichopovichenski was likely directly working for the Moon Leader, who it seemed had taken an interest in Eugene. Considering that his retinue would consist of only 25-30 people, Eugene had to think carefully about who he would include. He wanted to pick around a half dozen Elders, with most of the rest being Seniors, and then a couple Juniors. That would be a good ratio. As for which sects he would choose them from, he would take 2-3 from the Moon subsect. Any more might raise suspicions that it was some kind of spying operation, but any less might make it seem like he was going out of his way to make it seem like it wasn¡¯t that, which might end up arousing an even greater quantity of suspicion. As for the rest, he would evenly split them between the Dawn and Dusk subsects. Eugene would mostly choose from people who already had been on at least one diplomatic mission before. Roughly half of his picks would be people who had already been to the LitRPG sect specifically, while the rest would be people who hadn¡¯t. That was enough people that were familiar with it to ensure things ran smoothly, while still giving fresh diplomats a chance to gain new experience. ¡°I must depart,¡± said Eugene. Mieszko rushed over with a bag of purple stones. Eugene took them. ¡°We leave in a week. I¡¯ll be honored to travel with you. Oh, and one more thing. Meet me at the central orb in, say an hour.¡± Eugene left the ground and flew away. The purple stones were nice, but the Bielszowicki clan was very wealthy already, and so Eugene¡¯s profit was nothing more than a mild convenience. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Eugene needed to assemble the list of cultivators that would accompany him. He would read through accounts of every recent diplomatic trip to the LitRPG sect. Once that was complete, he would read the dossiers of hundreds of Dawn and Dusk Sect members to decide who he would pick. He would get the necessary records and then enter the timeless realm. Once finished, he would leave the timeless realm and have a week of free time to scheme until he had to depart. Eugene had some cooking to get to.
Eugene being able to enter the timeless realm by moving through the second dimension of time was something that all Purple Realm cultivators could do if they practiced the skill. By continuously moving through the second dimension, cultivators stopped all motion in the first dimension, meaning that when they left the timeless realm, they were back at exactly the same moment in the timeline. However, the second dimension of time was elastic, and the further you moved in it, the more it resisted. Weaker cultivators would be ¡°snapped back¡± and forcibly thrust out of the timeless realm nearly instantly. Stronger cultivators could last for days or even weeks, but eventually would be forced to leave. Eugene¡¯s personal record before he got Kevin¡¯s License Plate was three weeks. Being able to indefinitely remain in the timeless realm was an ambient property of Kevin¡¯s License Plate, and extremely important. At the present moment, that ability of Kevin¡¯s License Plate was equally as valuable as the combat potential in the remaining 3% of its energy. Expending 1% of its power was enough to kill those of Ade Coker rank and permanently cripple the cultivation of those in Jaja rank. Killing a Jaja would take 2%, which would also cripple a Kambili¡¯s cultivation and prevent them from ascending any higher. However, killing a Kambili would take 4%, which he didn¡¯t quite have. Thus, Kevin¡¯s License Plate would likely only severely injure a Kambili. It was a trump card, but one less powerful that Eugene would have hoped for. And of course, using it in a fight would out him as being Eugene. It was his last resort. Eugene had finished picking his list of people to accompany him. He left the timeless realm and emerged into his study room in his private residences at the Dawn and Dusk Sect. He wrote the list onto a computer document and printed it. Technology was commonly used by Hibiscologists, but only inventions that existed before 1984. On December 31st, 1983, Nigeria¡¯s government was overthrown and Muhammadu Buhari installed himself as dictator of the country. ¡°Big Oga¡± from the Holy Book is based on him. Using post-1983 inventions was frowned upon because it interfered with Hibiscan resonances. Of course, demon cultivators eagerly used this advanced technology. It had little military usage, being countered by Hibiscologist techniques, but it did give them an edge in coordination and logistics. Eugene grabbed the paper, opened a portal, and stepped through. He emerged onto the floating orb that held the central administrative apparatus of the Dawn and Dusk Sect and spotted Wang and Mieszko. For him, it had been days, but they had only spent an hour since last seeing him. He landed. ¡°Grzegorz!¡± they both exclaimed. ¡°I have a piece of paper containing who is to be on the diplomatic mission,¡± said Eugene. ¡°Deliver it to the diplomatic offices. Oh, and here¡¯s something to verify that it''s from me.¡± He put his Hibiscan signature on it. Every soul was unique and resonated with Hibiscan energy differently, and so putting a sliver of your own onto something was a common way of authentication. It was not 100% reliable, of course, as one¡¯s Hibiscan energy could be siphoned in secret. But for his purposes, it was good enough. He handed it to Wang. ¡°I need to leave again,¡± said Eugene. ¡°Ah, your life as a Sect Elder must be occupied with a great many tasks,¡± commented Mieszko. Eugene so far had done essentially nothing besides fight with Kash and write down the list. His schedule was free for the next week until the diplomatic mission began. Well, the Sect Leaders might take issue with one or two of his choices and make him re-select a few members, but that was unlikely. Eugene had made very good choices. However, Eugene did want to occupy his time with useful actions. He could meditate and read perfectly fine in the timeless realm, so he could spend the next week entirely occupied with arena fights and training. Eugene had been reinvigorated by his fight with Kash. He had grown complacent in the era he came from, being so overwhelmingly strong as the only Eugene-rank cultivator. Now, there were at a minimum tens of thousands on par with or stronger than him. Eugene had already scheduled several arena fights with other Eugene-rank cultivators. Many people were eager to see if the ¡°Hibiscan prodigy¡± was really as powerful as many claimed him to be. However, Eugene had only signed up for fights that prohibited Dimension Expulsions. Eugene wanted to practice purely his foundational martial arts skills for the time being. There had been many advancements in every field of cultivation since he had time traveled. However the current Hibiscan era, known as the Simmering Age (reminiscent of Eugene Achike¡¯s boiling water), was increasingly being viewed as a period of stagnation. The three major factions of the world existed in a tense cold war. The large-scale wars of the Era of Strife (which itself was divided into the Dark Age, Demon Age, and Tortoise Age) had caused great innovations in Purple Hibiscology. But after the world settled into the relative peace of the Simmering Age, few advancements occurred. The relevance of this to Eugene was that his current fighting style was very antiquated. Kash had crushed him due to that. Hibiscologists were already commenting that ¡°Grzegorz¡±, while a talented fighter, was very inexperienced, and fought oddly. This might raise further suspicions about himself, which Eugene wanted to avoid. Thus, modernizing his fighting style was paramount. Eugene would spend a month or so in total in the timeless realm during his week before the mission. Any more would get tedious and have diminishing returns. He wanted to study everything he could about the LitRPG Sect and become familiar with the grand tournaments they held. As the leader of the diplomatic entourage, Eugene would be expected to participate. He didn¡¯t want to embarrass himself and his sect. Eugene had many tasks ahead of him, but was confident in his own ability to perform well. It was time to get started. 11. Cracked Shell Council A man wearing the traditional flowing green-and-black robes of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect walked up a spiral staircase. A jade beauty walked beside him, a dagger-shaped scar on the back of her neck. ¡°The Cracked Shell Council is waiting,¡± she said, ¡°and we could just portal up.¡± ¡°I know,¡± the man responded, ¡°but it¡¯s about the tradition of it. And what are they going to do, depose me?¡± ¡°Maybe Eugene will,¡± she joked. The man frowned. ¡°The situation is extremely troublesome. We need to act with the utmost caution when it comes to the ancient demon cultivator.¡± ¡°You¡¯re that afraid of Eugene?¡± She laughed. ¡°The Hibiscan world is seven hundred years more advanced than he is.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t discount the power of forgotten demon cultivator techniques,¡± he replied. ¡°Then answer me. Between you and Eugene, who is stronger?¡± ¡°Being a rank ahead of him in cultivation makes any fight a foregone conclusion. I¡¯d easily win.¡± ¡°And what if Eugene still had his Hibiscan artifact he ripped from the Holy Book? To even the scales, assume neither of you have any dragons.¡± ¡°That might make it a little tricky.¡± ¡°But would you lose?¡± ¡°Nah, I¡¯d win.¡± They ceased conversing as they reached the top level of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. The round table in the center of the enormous room was bathed in the light rays coming through a dome. The most powerful Sect Elders were there, along with the leaders of the most important subsidiary sects that had pledged subservience to the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. Saddam Hussein was present too. He had not yet elected to join the sect, wanting to learn more about the contemporary Hibiscan world before committing to anything. He did harbor a strong distrust of the Fourth Jade Alliance, though. He was allowed to sit in on meetings related to countering Eugene as an effort to curry favor. The man in the simple robes, Lubomir Danowski, sat at the largest seat of the table, his companion taking her place at the seat reserved for the head of the Dagger-Shaped Scar Sect. The Red Celestial Dragon rotated around him as he sat in silence. ¡°This meeting of the Cracked Shell Council of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect begins,¡± he spoke. ¡°Our honored guest claims that he felt Eugene¡¯s ripples in the Hibiscan waves. Before losing my foresight, I saw vague premonitions of the emergence of a demon cultivator, but could not identify any details.¡± There was dead silence in the room. ¡°Saddam, elaborate for the rest of the council.¡± Saddam Hussein cleared his throat. ¡°What you call the Dawn and Dusk Sect was the source of the ripples. They were as clear as day, and unmistakably the demon essence of Eugene. I awoke about a week after the waves were created. But, the instant I sensed them, I realized that they had vanished only a few hours after appearing. One moment there, one moment gone. I was merely feeling their subtle afterimage. It made me suspect that Eugene had traveled in time again, like he may have done seven hundred years ago.¡± ¡°Thank you, Saddam,¡± said Lubomir, ¡°and this is backed up by our own Hibiscan ripple detectors. Our state-of-the-art enchanted hibiscuses just barely picked up a signal of demonic cultivation that came from the Dawn and Dusk Sect and that abruptly stopped a few hours after it began.¡± ¡°As for whether it¡¯s Eugene specifically, that we haven¡¯t independently confirmed. But Saddam seems certain of it.¡± ¡°I was in the rock for a thousand years, with nothing to do but feel the Hibiscan waves. I experienced Eugene¡¯s reign of terror, felt the disgusting, corrupted ripples of Hibiscan energy that his actions produced. I would not mistake it for anything else.¡± stated Saddam Hussein. The identity of the former dictator of Iraq had been confirmed. He had caused quite the ruckus by showing up and declaring that Eugene had returned, leading many to at first assume that he was Eugene. During the ensuing standoff, he claimed to be Saddam Hussein. He certainly looked like him, and an inspection of the hole he had emerged from showed that it was definitely one of the places where the American military had suspected he was a millennium ago. Fingerprints and other records of identity had been lost over the centuries, so at the moment, they could not be quite 100% certain that he was actually Saddam Hussein. Regardless, there was enough evidence to be relatively sure it was really him. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. ¡°It¡¯s unclear if Eugene time traveled again, or something similar to that,¡± Lubomir said. ¡°Regardless, we will be on the lookout for him.¡± The leader of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect felt a feeling of great unease wash over him. The red light bathing him faded away, the Red Celestial Dragon that produced it dissipating. Everyone stared at him. Lubomir made eye contact with Wen, his spymaster, who was seated next to him. That was enough for him to know that his task was to find out who had the Red Dragon. He got up, cut a purple portal, and slipped in, the rift closing behind him. His mind raced as to what to do. He had known this was essentially inevitable. There was no way that he would be the wisest and the strongest of Hibiscan cultivators forever. Yet, it was still difficult to believe. During the Tortoise Age, when his sect had reigned over the entire world, it had always been a member of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect that had the Three Celestial Dragons. The sect¡¯s supremacy had been broken in wars with the newly founded Fourth Jade Alliance, and eventually the world settled into a balance between the two powers. There wouldn¡¯t be anyone with the Purple Celestial Dragon in cases where the wisest cultivator was also not the strongest cultivator. Ten years ago that was the case. A cultivator in the Jade Alliance, W?adys?aw Kalkowski, had the Red Dragon, and Lubomir had the Blue Dragon. Lubomir challenged Wladyslaw to a fight and won. He resorted to trickery to get the upper hand against the cultivator that was objectively stronger than him. Lubomir was now the strongest and the wisest in the world, and the Purple Dragon belonged to him. The future sight granted by the Purple Dragon was intoxicating. Often, Lubomir would do nothing but meditate and sift through visions. He carefully steered the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect through time, re-asserting some of its old dominance. Lubomir had come to terms with it being gone, but at least he had had the Red Dragon. Now, with both of them gone, and even worse, both dragons belonging to cultivators of the Fourth Jade Alliance, the situation had turned calamitous. A purple scar opened in reality and Wen popped through. ¡°It¡¯s Kash.¡± ¡°Continue,¡± Lubomir replied. ¡°After Kash¡¯s fight with Grzegorz Bielszowicki at the Dawn and Dusk Sect, he went back to the Boiling Water sect. He then engaged in a series of sparring matches, the concluding one being a 1v472 against every Sect Elder present, which he won. His fighting style was clearly different from before, lik-.¡± ¡°We have Hibiscan analysts on that, right?¡± He glanced at Stefan Konkol, his Chief Hibiscologist. ¡°No, but I¡¯ll-¡± ¡°Get on it. Wen?¡± ¡°Likely because of his fight with Grzegorz, which appears to have induced some sort of revelation in him. My spies tell me that after winning the battle against the Sect Elders, he went to a meditation location.¡± ¡°Where?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know and are investigating the matter.¡± Lubomir pondered the circumstances. This was an atrocious series of events. Eugene had probably returned, but no one had the Purple Dragon to see him. The demon cultivator was known to be somehow connected with the Fourth Jade Alliance, which coincidentally now possessed the Blue and Red Dragons. Not to mention whatever was up with Czeslaw¡¯s son jumping six ranks in a day, an unprecedented event in Hibiscan history. He had pulled off multiple Dimension Expulsions during his fight with Kash and had an apparent mastery of Hibiscan teleportation. The greatest Hibiscan prodigy of all time, they were calling him. Even more talent than Kambili, some scant few heretics said. Lubomir was jolted out of his thoughts by a portal appearing. A man stepped through, a subordinate of Wen. ¡°The Snake is ready to speak,¡± he said. Now? The Snake had been silent for months. The gargantuan Five-Headed Tortoise had a miles-long snake attached to it capable of speech. The Heavenly Beast had existed for thousands of years, but only revealed itself to the world during the Dawn Era of Hibiscan history. It and the Dog were the two Heavenly Beasts aligned with the Four Gods. But during the Dawn Age, the Tortoise tried to sneak into heaven, to usurp the very gods that were its patrons. The gods cast it down, its shell cracking once it hit the earth. The Five-Headed Tortoise, mortally wounded, managed to stave off death by consuming rare Hibiscan herbs to heal itself. Occasionally, cultivators would track it down, and it would offer them Hibiscan wisdom in exchange for something it could eat that would keep it alive. Hundreds of years after it was thrown down, Kambili, the first Hibiscologist to reach Kambili rank in cultivation, found it. He made a deal. The Five-Headed Tortoise would allow a sect to be built atop it, in exchange for that sect serving its requests. Kambili and his followers founded the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect which grew ever stronger from learning the Hibiscan wisdom of the Heavenly Beast. But after winning victory against the last of the demon sects, the sect betrayed the Third Jade Alliance of the Four Holy Hibiscan Sects and conquered or eradicated any sects that dared stand against them. The Five-Headed Tortoise became the undisputed hegemonic power of the world. Of course, the Snake didn¡¯t just ask for Hibiscan herbs. The Tortoise would consume anything it thought would give it power it could use to prevent its perpetually-delayed death. Lubomir turned to the Council. ¡°This meeting is paused for now. When the procession returns, you¡¯ll all be briefed on what the Snake wants.¡± ¡°Wen, Stefan, and Iwan will accompany me.¡± Iwan Mackiewicz was the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect¡¯s chief strategist and military commander. Together, those three plus Lubomir were the most important of the Cracked Shell Council, the inner circle of the inner circle. They were the only people that Lubomir trusted enough to hear the unfiltered words of the Snake. Lubomir opened a large portal and they walked through, emerging beneath the belly of the Tortoise. The dim purple light vanished as he closed the portal. A few hundred feet ahead was the place from which the Snake emerged. It retracted itself from its hole, curling around and around the group of four until they were encased in the Snake¡¯s wall of flesh, no light penetrating it. Its head emerged from the coils and turned to face them. ¡°Speak,¡± Lubomir declared. The Snake opened its yard-wide eyes and flicked its forked tongue. ¡°Bring,¡± it said, ¡°the corpse of Kash Imo.¡± 12. Departure Everything was finalized. The Sect Leaders had authorized Eugene¡¯s list with zero alterations of their own. They were very satisfied with ¡°Grzegorz¡¯s¡± work. Eugene himself had spent the last week in the arenas, sparring with his fellow Eugene-rank cultivators. He had won nine out of the thirteen matches he fought. However, all of those fights were against peak-tier Eugene cultivators, while Eugene himself was only high-tier. He wanted to train himself against opponents that were stronger than him so he would be forced to adapt to their strength. Him only winning a slim majority of his fights surprised many in the Dawn and Dusk Sect, and outside the sect as well. Eugene did put his full effort into each fight, but many times he was surpassed by the other cultivator¡¯s skill. This was strategically good in the long term, for it dispelled the myth of him being invincible and would cause future opponents to underestimate him. In between matches, Eugene would engage in the board and video games commonly played in the Hibiscan world. He wanted to familiarize himself with the most popular ones so that he could play competently when the time came to participate in the games of the LitRPG Sect. Said sect primarily concerned themselves with the analysis of the litRPG genre of fiction. However, they also frequently played board and video games to further attune themselves to litRPGS. LitRPGS were only really popular in the first few decades of the 21st Century. They were a genre of fantasy books in which the magic system was based on role playing game mechanics. They had considerable overlap with isekai, a genre in which the main character from our world dies and is reincarnated in a fantasy world. Their rise in popularity coincided with the publication of the Holy Book. The litRPG genre as a whole has been found to have very high Hibiscan resonance, that is, the works within the genre strongly resemble Purple Hibiscus when deep analysis is applied to them. Thus, it was a very fruitful avenue of study. Understanding litRPGS necessarily required understanding the conditions that produced them, so the members of the LitRPG Sect were also students of very early Hibiscan history. In this regard the LitRPG Sect strongly resembled the Ohio Skibidi Rizz Sect. That sect was dedicated to studying the narrow period of history in between the publishing of the Holy Book and the awakening of Hibiscan cultivation. For, it was only after the ascendance of the Four Gods that the people of the world could begin to cultivate their inner Hibiscan understanding. The period of late 2023 to early 2024 in which online slang terms such as ¡°ohio¡±, ¡°skibidi¡±, ¡°rizz¡±, ¡°gyatt¡±, ¡°sigma¡±, and ¡°fanum tax¡±, among others, became extremely popular, was found to have the highest Hibiscan resonance of all time periods. The ways in which people communicated through the medium of the internet briefly transcended normal reality and began to imitate Purple Hibiscus in all respects. That was the zenith of Hibiscan understanding in the pre-cultivation era, and it was what caused the ascendance of the Four Gods as they attained the Divine Hibiscan Revelation. After the path of cultivation was unlocked for all, many of those who had read Purple Hibiscus experienced an awakening into Amaka rank. And thus the Dawn Era of cultivation began. The Ohio Skibidi Rizz Sect was a member of the Fourth Jade Alliance. Sects when ranked according to power were subdivided into the categories of great, major, and minor. Only one sect was considered to be great, that being the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect, which was at least four or five times stronger than the Dawn and Dusk Sect, the next strongest in the world. Major sects were defined as being beholden to no sects other than a great sect, whereas minor sects were weak and subservient to a major sect. The Fourth Jade Alliance of the Nine Holy Hibiscan Sects was called such because it had nine major sects. But those sects themselves had dozens to hundreds of minor sects beholden to them. There were five major sects beholden to the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect, each of which also had many minor sects. The sect-based political order of the contemporary Hibiscan world was neo-feudal in its structure. Out of the nine major sects in the Fourth Jade Alliance, three were especially stronger than the rest. Those were the Dawn and Dusk Sect, the Boiling Water Sect, and the Kambili Sect. The Ohio Skibidi Rizz Sect was among those six medium to lower strength major sects. The LitRPG Sect, on the other hand, was relatively powerful, being on par with the Boiling Water or Kambili Sects. The reason they abstained from joining the Fourth Jade Alliance was mainly that doing so would require signing a mutual defense clause. The LitRPG Sect was capable of defending itself from demon cultivators and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect all on its own. Thus, joining the Fourth Jade Alliance would provide no defensive benefits while also causing the LitRPG Sect to be dragged into any conflict the Fourth Jade Alliance fought. It was the day of departure and Eugene¡¯s list of people were milling into the teleportation room. The Dawn and Dusk Sect had a dedicated room for the LitRPG Sect to open portals into. They didn¡¯t allow people to travel there normally, instead only opening portals of their own. The entire sect was warded against non-members opening portals into it, but there were select rooms where certain sects were allowed to open portals to. Eugene had selected a variety of people that would each fill the different roles required for a diplomatic mission. Aside from Wang and Mieszko, there were a couple Juniors there to act as servants. The majority were Seniors, with about a third being Sect Elders. An ancient, weary man wearing the red robes of a Senior hobbled in. He was over two hundred and fifty years old but still stuck in the Red Realm. He was Eugene¡¯s most odd pick. The Leaders had signed off on it but were confused as to why exactly he had been picked. The answer was that he had been a mentor figure to Grzegorz a few years ago. He gave free knowledge about cultivation and the Holy Book to Grzegorz in exchange for information about the current class of young students. Grzegorz eventually realized his true motivations and cut off ties with him. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. He was known as a ¡°super Senior¡±, someone who had been stuck in the Red Realm and therefore stuck as a Sect Senior for much longer than they should have been. He was over a hundred years older than the next oldest Senior, and in fact older than most of the Elders. He waved and walked over to Eugene. ¡°Grzegorz! Long time no see.¡± He was being far too casual and informal in his speech. Eugene would have been well within his rights to demand he kowtow at least five times to his superior Elder. ¡°Greetings, Senior Elzpsein.¡± ¡°I appreciate being involved with the mission,¡± he replied. ¡°My younger sect brothers too often leave me by the wayside.¡± That was a reference to when Grzegorz cut ties with Elzpsein after discovering what he truly was. Elzpsein had dispensed with subtly and now was straight-up insulting him. Eugene hadn¡¯t wanted to put him on his retinue, but the more he examined the possibility, the more he realized it was a good idea. Yes, his previous history of working together with Grzegorz had proven he was intelligent and capable. But it was his long experience as a diplomat for the Dawn and Dusk Sect, even stretching back to the Era of Strife, that made him an excellent candidate. His role would be to serve as one of Eugene¡¯s key advisors. ¡°I am honored to work with you on this.¡± Eugene lied. ¡°Oh, and congratulations about your ascent to Sect Elder status.¡± Eugene mentally chuckled at that. By delaying the mention of that so far into the conversation, Elzpsein was deliberately slighting him. At this point, Eugene could demand ten kowtows from Elzpsein as an apology. However, in Dawn and Dusk Sect law, ten kowtows were an equivalent punishment to being hit by a member of higher rank. ¡°You¡¯re courting death,¡± declared Eugene. ¡°What?¡± said Elzpsein, as if he didn¡¯t know why Eugene said that. Eugene thrust his hand forward in a jabbing motion, precisely striking Elzpsein¡¯s central meridian, flowing his Hibiscan energy into the Senior¡¯s body. He coughed blood up and then collapsed. That was done to curb the arrogance of Elzpsein, but its main purpose was to unblock Elzpsein¡¯s meridians and allow him to ascend to the Purple Realm. He was at peak tier of the Ade Coker rank, the absolute pinnacle of the Red Realm. Yet as Eugene could clearly see, his Hibiscan meridians were clogged to prevent him from advancing further in his cultivation. Elzpsein slowly rose from the floor. ¡°My, my, Grzegorz. How you¡¯ve grown. You really are a Hibiscan prodigy. Jumping six ranks in a day, now that¡¯s impressive. I wonder how you did it?¡± His Hibiscan aura pulsated with the energy of a low-tier Jaja-rank cultivator of the Purple Realm. His words were lightly mocking. ¡°Kowtow three times,¡± said Eugene. Elzpsein lowered himself to the floor and kowtowed three times, each with perfect form. Eugene had called his bluff, and it seemed like he was uninterested in further comments. ¡°I respect your talents and chose you to accompany me for a reason. Don¡¯t compromise a chance at redeeming yourself in my eyes.¡± ¡°I understand,¡± said Elzpsein. His meridians had been corrupted for so long, but the method used to do so still left a possible way to undo some of the damage. However, his cultivation was permanently harmed, to the point where any further advancement into the Purple Realm would be substantially slowed. Eugene turned away from Elzpsein to see that almost everyone in the entourage was there. They must have assumed that ¡°Grzegorz¡± had a good reason for publicly humiliating Elzpsein. None of them were fond of the former super Senior, and so didn¡¯t care much. A purple portal opened and a man wearing the Sect Elder robes of the Moon subsect walked through. It was Wronskolenskivichopovichenski Sobiepanskivicholenskovichenskiavich. He was nearly late. He strolled over to where Eugene and Elzpsein were standing. ¡°What have we here?¡± he said. Elzpsein bowed. ¡°Honored Sect Elder Sobiepanskivicholenskovichenskiavich, Sect Elder Bielszowicki struck me as a punishment dished out because of my insulting words to him. However, he accidentally broke the bonds placed on my meridians to prevent my further cultivation.¡± Wronskolenskivichopovichenski frowned. ¡°Understandable. This will be reported to the Council, but neither of you is in trouble. Yet.¡± When looking over Elzpsein¡¯s record, Eugene had noted that he had received a punishment for a crime that broke one of the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s cardinal rules. However, because of his longstanding history of excellently serving the sect, his sentence was made much milder. His punishment was having any cultivation beyond the Red Realm be crippled for a century and a half. That sentence had less than a year to go before his punishment would be lifted. Permanent cripplings prevented a cultivator from ever rising beyond the rank they were currently at. On the other hand, temporary cripplings would lose strength over time, and could be eventually removed, though some permanent damage would remain. When Eugene expended 1% of Kevin¡¯s License Plate, the Jaja-rank cultivators were the only ones to survive. However, they were permanently crippled. The best and brightest of Hibiscan society had been either killed or prevented from advancing further. The remaining Jajas, unable to grow stronger, instead had to kill or cripple all other cultivators to prevent them from usurping them. That state of affairs defined the Dark Age of Hibiscan history. But eventually, that lost generation of Jajas were surpassed, and new Eugene-rank cultivators became the leaders of the sects. Because Elzpsein¡¯s restriction was withered away to nearly nothing, Eugene accidentally breaking it with a particularly strong punch was a plausible excuse. Elzpsein harbored gratitude to ¡°Grzegorz¡± for allowing him to enter the Purple Realm faster. In ordinary circumstances, another temporary crippling would be imposed until Elzpsein¡¯s sentence was up. However, because Elzpsein was right about to embark on the diplomatic trip, there was no time to do that. It probably would be placed back on after Elzpsein returned. However, the inherent nature of the meeting with the LitRPG sect involved participating in their many games. If Elzpsein himself performed very well, the Three Leaders might just decide to not continue his sentence in recognition of his work. Eugene¡¯s ploy meant that now Elzspein would be incentivized to succeed as much as possible. What might have been a thorn in Eugene¡¯s side was now turned into his greatest asset! Hibiscan energy swirled around the enormous room, coalescing into a purple portal large enough so that the entire retinue could walk in at once. Eugene looked at Wronskolenskivichopovichenski. ¡°Shall we get going?¡± Eugene asked. 13. Factory The grand meeting room of the Cracked Shell Council was layered in defensive wards. Unauthorized cultivators were prevented from just teleporting in. Detection wards were set up to find hidden recording devices. Sound wards prevented any noise from escaping. The meeting had continued without Lubomir revealing what the Tortoise had said. That was not unusual. It was a highly confidential piece of information, and the less people that knew about it, the better. The Council took a little over an hour discussing Eugene and everything they knew about him. A comprehensive battle plan was drafted, with orders sent out to begin readying the sect to respond to Eugene. In addition to that, it was decided that the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect would publish their findings about Eugene to the entire Hibiscan world. After concluding the meeting, he discreetly signaled Wen, Stefan, Iwan, and Katarzyna, head of the Dagger-Shaped Scar sect, to stay afterwards. The other Council members departed but they stayed. ¡°Katarzyna, what I¡¯m about to tell you is of the utmost secrecy. We¡¯ll need to enter the cube of silence.¡± Even the level of security granted by the meeting chamber wasn¡¯t enough for Lubomir¡¯s purposes. Some might call it excessive paranoia, but Lubomir wasn¡¯t taking any chances if Eugene was back. ¡°Ok,¡± she said. ¡°Did the Tortoise ask us to kill someone?¡± Lubomir grimaced and pulled out the cube, laying it in the center of his upward-facing palm. The four cultivators around him placed their hands on it. ¡°Activate,¡± said Lubomir. The cube instantly expanded and the five of them were enveloped in it. ¡°So, was it Kash?¡± she asked. ¡°Very perceptive,¡± said Lubomir. The Five-Headed Tortoise, when eating the corpses of powerful cultivators, could absorb their energy and use it to prevent its wound from getting any worse. However, it recognized that it existed in a symbiotic relation with its Sect, and so would only request dead cultivators when killing those cultivators would benefit the Sect in the long term. Right now, killing Kash would return the Red Dragon to Lubomir, simultaneously weakening the Jade Alliance and strengthening the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. Thus, it was an easy assumption for Katarzyna to make. ¡°To put it bluntly, I want to kill him,¡± he continued. ¡°And I think it¡¯s a very plausible thing to accomplish.¡± ¡°We¡¯d have to maintain plausible deniability,¡± commented Wen. Iwan furrowed his brow. ¡°I don¡¯t want to directly include our members in this. It would be too difficult to hide our involvement.¡± Iwan was the commander of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect¡¯s military forces. He was an inspired genius regarding war-related affairs but wasn¡¯t as smooth as navigating internal sect politics as most others. He had risen through the ranks through sheer, undeniable talent. ¡°I agree,¡± said Lubomir. ¡°Which is why I want to contract the Umbra Crimers.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the utmost foolishness,¡± scoffed Katarzyna. ¡°If you consider it thoroughly, there isn¡¯t any other way of going about it,¡± said Wen. ¡°The Umbra Crimers are unparalleled in their skill and efficiency.¡± They were a sect of assassins and thieves, one of the three independent sects that had managed to escape the grasp of large sect organizations. ¡°For killing a Sect Leader who is objectively the most powerful cultivator, the price would be ruinously expensive,¡± stated Stefan. The Umbra Crimers would not refuse any mission if they were paid enough. However, murdering a righteous Sect Leader in cold blood would be a first even for them. Stefan was right, they would demand an outrageous cost. ¡°To be honest, I dislike the idea, but less so than any other option,¡± said Iwan. ¡°Well, I have to vote against it,¡± declared Stefan. ¡°I concur,¡± said Katarzyna. ¡°Three against two,¡± said Lubomir. ¡°Lubomir, why am I even here?¡± asked Katarzyna. ¡°I don¡¯t see why you had to drag me into this.¡± ¡°To put it bluntly, it¡¯s because I trust you, and it¡¯s because of your power.¡± stated Lubomir. Katarzyna was a peak-tier Kambili, of six in the world. ¡°If we¡¯re to meet with the Umbra Crimers, I want to bring our strongest members as a show of force and to demonstrate our dedication.¡± ¡°Bring Saddam then,¡± she scoffed. ¡°You and I both know why that would be a bad idea,¡± said Lubomir. Not only was Saddam Hussein a recent inductee into the Sect, he believed very strongly in honor, respect, and virtue. He likely would not consider paying assassins to kill someone purely to make the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect stronger an honorable thing to do. ¡°Look, I¡¯ll go,¡± she said, ¡°but I won¡¯t actually participate in the negotiations beyond just being there.¡± ¡°That¡¯s all I want,¡± said Lubomir. ¡°And the rest of you?¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°I¡¯d rather not,¡± said Stefan, ¡°but it¡¯s your decision.¡± ¡°I hate to say this, but I would really rather you go. As our Chief Hibiscologist, we need you there to ascertain their strength and abilities if possible.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll go,¡± interjected Wen. ¡°Good.¡± ¡°I retain my support for the idea in general, but I think I would better serve the sect by overseeing the preparation against Eugene,¡± said Iwan. ¡°That¡¯s for the best,¡± said Lubomir. ¡°So, our party has been decided. Any other points to raise while still in the Cube?¡± ¡°We need to craft a plan for the aftermath,¡± said Wen. ¡°Of course. If the Umbra Crimers accept the job and the attempt goes through, we need to be ready to release a statement denying all involvement.¡± ¡°Alright, anything else?¡± They shook their heads. Lubomir let the cube retract the walls and fold them into itself. He stashed it away. ¡°I should go check on my spies, see if they¡¯ve ascertained Kash¡¯s location.¡± ¡°Do it.¡± Wen opened a portal and vanished through it, coming out a minute later. ¡°He¡¯s meditating on the carbon fields.¡± Lubomir smiled. This was their chance! Kash had a noted habit of isolating himself in the carbon plateau when he wanted to engage in extremely intensive meditation sessions. The plains had been created during the final attack on the Demon Pact during the Demon Age. In the last moments of the battle, the assembled forces of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect and the Third Jade Alliance powered up an enormous energy blast. The armies were fighting above the brimstone sea, and when the haze from the explosion cleared, the demon cultivator army was wiped out, and the brimstone had been neutralized, purified to carbon. The attack created an enormous, flat plain of graphite that cultivators sometimes retreated to when they wanted solitude. If Lubomir got ahold of the Umbra Crimers and contracted them to kill Kash, they could eliminate him when he was isolated and had no hope of escape. It was a genius plan. Every prominent Sect Leader had a way to discreetly contact the Umbra Crimers if their services were ever required. The assassin sect had distributed them out decades ago. It was a small disk that, when pressed in the middle, would let the sect know that that particular Sect Leader wanted to employ them. Lubomir had his stashed away in the timeless realm along with his other most important belongings. He entered it, grabbed the disk, exited the timeless realm, and pressed it. ¡°They¡¯ve been called,¡± he said. He glanced at the disk. Glowing letters appeared on it, relaying the coordinates they were to meet up at. ¡°We¡¯re going,¡± Lubomir declared.
They hadn¡¯t just opened a portal to the coordinates and walked through. They sent a Hibiscan energy powered camera among other devices to check if it was safe. Only then did they go through. Eight crimers in dark gray shrouds awaited them and the Crime Factory loomed ahead. ¡°We¡¯ll fly,¡± one of them said. Lubomir, Katarzyna, Wen, and Stefan took off with the eight cloaked cultivators. They soon reached the vicinity of the Factory. It barely resembled a normally constructed sect headquarters, instead being built as a bizarre amalgamation of an industrial building and a pulsating, organic thing. Large, twisted metal pipes ran along the exterior, pumping some white fluid about. At the top, smokestacks spewed out fumes. It was a disgusting blight upon the land, a true factory of crime. Massive doors creaked as they slid open, letting the party inside. The interior was a poorly illuminated cylindrical hall with a nauseating sludge on the floor. At the end was a spherical room with nothing in it but four speakers. A door shut behind them as they entered. The eight crimers crumbled to dust, their robes falling to the floor. ¡°Welcome,¡± boomed a distorted voice from one of the speakers. ¡°What do you have for us?¡± an unnaturally deep voice asked. ¡°Kill Kash and bring us his mostly intact corpse as soon as possible. He¡¯s meditating in the carbon plain as we speak.¡± ¡°The Tortoise grows ambitious,¡± the distorted voice responded. ¡°This is not unfavorable to us,¡± a tinny, barely understandable voice piped in. ¡°And what is your price offer?¡± asked the deep voice. ¡°We have none. Considering the unprecedented nature of this deal, we ask for you to set it yourself.¡± replied Lubomir. ¡°First thing,¡± said the distorted voice, ¡°you will inform us of the Hibiscan wisdom that the Tortoise tells you after it eats the corpse.¡± Lubomir restrained the urge to slightly tense his body, which would give away his true thoughts. It was unfortunate that the crimers had already sussed them out. ¡°And what else?¡± asked the tinny voice. ¡°A few artifacts, certainly.¡± ¡°Handing over more than one or two treasured Hibiscan artifacts is off the table,¡± Lubomir asserted. ¡°The Fractured Shield, then,¡± replied the distorted voice. ¡°Along with a diverse selection of enchanted hibiscuses of great quality and quantity.¡± Lubomir was fine with handing over the Fractured Shield. It was an extraordinarily powerful defensive artifact, but the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect didn¡¯t lack in defense and would lose little in giving it up. ¡°And a large amount of cultivator corpses, of at least Aunty Ifeoma rank,¡± rumbled the deep voice. Now that was unusual. The Five-Headed Tortoise Sect kept a stockpile of cultivator corpses to draw the energy out of if necessary. Said stash officially did not exist, but every sect had one of their own, so no sects would call each other out for it. What purpose would the Umbra Crimers have for it? It was still very much an acceptable demand. The speaker that had been silent the entire time sparked to life. ¡°One final thing,¡± it said in an uncannily high-pitched, glitchy voice. ¡°We want a guarantee that the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect will rise to the protection of the Crime Factory if it is attacked.¡± This was the key to understanding their motivation! The Crime Factory Sect was concerned with their very survival. To want one of the most powerful defensive Hibiscan artifacts was one thing, but to want the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect to defend them from attack was another. What were the Umbra Crimers so concerned with? Eugene¡¯s return? Perchance. That did have the entire Hibiscan world on edge, though the Umbra Crimers seemed especially paranoid. It was likely something else in addition to just that. Lubomir glanced at his fellow cultivators. They nodded in assent. It was a fair deal, even if some of the terms were a little odd. The Five-Headed Tortoise Sect was giving up a lot, but the Umbra Crimers were risking a lot. Kash was the strongest cultivator, and killing him wouldn¡¯t be easy. Furthermore, any retaliation from the Fourth Jade Alliance might end the Crime Factory. ¡°We accept.¡± ¡°Then let us strike a Bondage Vouch,¡± creaked the high-pitched voice. ¡°I swear to uphold those conditions with my authority as leader of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect.¡± ¡°I swear to uphold the deal as hegemon of the Umbra Crimers.¡± The deal was seared into their souls, the Four Gods glancing their way to seal the contract. There must be some person and soul behind that voice, else the Bondage Vouch would not be possible. ¡°We bid you farewell,¡± the four voices spoke simultaneously, each of their respective strange intonations and distortions merging into one uncanny voice. The door behind the cultivators opened and they flew out, speeding through the cylindrical hallway and into the open air, where Wen carved open a purple portal back to their sect. 14. Everybody Loves Large Feasts Eugene led the entourage through the portal. Wang and Mieszko walked behind him on his left side, Elzpsein on his right. Grzegorz¡¯s old friends would serve as his minions, while Elzpsein would be his primary advisor. Wronskolenskivichopovichenski would also act in an advisory capacity, but to a lesser extent. They found themselves in a ¡°guild hall¡± strongly resembling the kind found in litRPGs. Around them, many sect members milled about, either taking new ¡°quests¡± or receiving the rewards for completing such quests. The quests typically involved slaying monsters that emerged from the brimstone sea or finding rare Hibiscan herbs. Thus, the LitRPG Sect contributed more to the safety of the Hibiscan world than most sects did, because it so strongly incentivized its members to cull monster populations. As Eugene and his retinue progressed towards the center of the guild hall, they drew some looks, but most were uninterested. The litRPG cultivators were primarily concerned with their own schizophrenic delusions. Eugene heard many cries of ¡°New skill!¡±, ¡°I leveled up!¡±, and ¡°My STR increased by 1!¡± among similar remarks. It was unclear to what extent they actually believed in having access to a litRPG ¡°system¡±. Did they just never break character as part of a massive inside joke, or did they actually believe it? Eugene and his retinue were walking towards an enormous set of stairs. When they were about 50 feet away, they stopped. A procession of Sect Elders walked down the steps, wearing not traditional robes as were common of most sects, but instead bizarre clothing and armor meant to mimic the dress of adventurers in litRPG stories. Their clothing was more refined, ornate, and high-quality compared to what most of the litRPG cultivators in the guild hall wore. ¡°Welcome, honored guests of the Dawn and Dusk Sect!¡± declared the Sect Leader, who Eugene recognized from his studies. Yefz Abdulov was an eccentric man, whose ¡°class¡± was ¡°Wizard¡±. His garb at least somewhat resembled typical attire for a Hibiscan sect leader. He wore long, flowing gray robes, a pointy hat, and clutched a wooden wizard¡¯s staff. He committed 100% to the idea that he was a level 93 Wizard, and would not perform any Hibiscan action without making it seem like he was casting a spell. He was a high-tier Kambili. ¡°Revered Sect Leader, it is our privilege to be here,¡± Eugene replied, bowing. Junior-ranked members walked up to each member of Eugene¡¯s entourage, handing out a brochure that contained a map of the LitRPG sect along with other basic information. ¡°Young Grzegorz, I hear much of your progress in the Hibiscan arts. And Wronskolenskivichopovichenski, it is my honor to have you here.¡± He briefly inclined his head. Yefz mentioned specifically Wronskolenskivichopovichenski because he was the highest ranked cultivator in the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s retinue, being a mid-tier Kambili. ¡°Shall we go to the dining hall?¡± Yefz asked. ¡°We have much to discuss.¡± This would be a preliminary meeting, a way for the groups to be introduced to each other. The proper negotiations would not occur until a week later, after the tournament had concluded. Almost every member of Eugene¡¯s diplomatic party was expected to participate against the best and brightest of the LitRPG Sect in a variety of video and board games. However, the agreement was that Council members, of either the LitRPG Sect or the visiting sect, could not participate. Thus, Wronskolenskivichopovichenski would be there purely to watch and report back to the Dawn and Dusk Sect¡¯s Council. The unspoken agreement between the LitRPG Sect and the Fourth Jade Alliance was that whoever ended up winning the tournament would be granted slightly better terms during the negotiations process. When an agreement was reached, Eugene was required to ritualistically request that the LitRPG Sect join the Fourth Jade Alliance. And like always, they would politely reject the offer. ¡°Of course,¡± said Eugene. The LitRPG Sect Elders and Eugene¡¯s retinue walked up the stairs. Large wooden doors opened up, ¡°magical runes¡± glowing on it. They of course had zero actual effect and were merely a visual illusion powered by Hibiscan energy. The dining room was enormous and contained a comically long wooden table with hundreds of chairs at each side. The table and the chairs looked as if they had organically grown that way, being beautifully shaped. Eugene mentally chuckled but kept his face neutral. ¡°Most impressive,¡± he commented. ¡°Thank you,¡± Yefz responded. ¡°It was shaped by a team of high-leveled Druids.¡± It was impossible to take the LitRPG Sect seriously. They stuck so hard to the comedic bit that for a moment you could forget they were joking. In fact, the question of whether or not they were joking was the subject of frequent debate in the Hibiscan world. Most seemed to think that they were, and Eugene found himself in that camp after a thorough examination of the articles written on the subject by Hibiscologists. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Eugene and the others seated as the first course of the feat was brought out.
It was a delicious feast. The food occupied much of Eugene¡¯s attention, but his main focus was on the conversation. Yefz was a quick-witted and intelligent man, and he and Eugene discussed a range of topics from the true nature of Eugene¡¯s poisoning to the connections between Skibidi Toilet and the Holy Book. The people at the table barely occupied a third of the seats. The dining hall was clearly built for much larger parties. When the people finished off the final course and the feast was officially ended, the LitRPG Sect Elders retreated to their chambers, leaving just Yefz and Eugene¡¯s retinue. ¡°Please,¡± he said, ¡°explore our Sect at your leisure. Engage in low-stakes games as practice, but be ready for the beginning of the tournament tomorrow.¡± ¡°We bring much thanks for the delicious feast,¡± said Eugene. ¡°It was a pleasure meeting you,¡± said Yefz. He waved his staff, gathering purple wisps around it. He pointed it at a space ahead of him and a portal coalesced there. Yefz walked through. Eugene turned to his entourage. ¡°It¡¯ll be good to get some practice with their games. When the tournament begins, don¡¯t be caught off guard by anything. Familiarize yourself with much more than just what they play. Know how they play, typical tactics, their general approach to winning. Elzpsein, explain the tournament format.¡± ¡°There are three sub competitions, broken up by Realm. Blue Realm cultivators will be matched up with each other, so on and so forth. Whoever wins the majority of them wins the tournament overall.¡± Eugene had selected his diplomatic party for their ability to play well in a variety of different games. Such a thing was more difficult to find out than their diplomatic experience or something as simple as what their cultivation level was. But Eugene was confident they would perform well. He had stacked his retinue to have even numbers of Juniors, Seniors, and Elders. He wanted to succeed in every category. ¡°You¡¯re all dismissed,¡± announced Eugene. ¡°Use the dozen hours before night falls as time to train.¡±
Eugene himself would certainly not waste this time. He wanted to study one of the most important and prestigious competitive games played by the LitRPG Sect, that being Hibiscan Chess. The LitRPG Sect housed an enormous domed building dedicated purely to the study and practice of Hibiscan Chess. Eugene made his way over there alone, eager to face a strong opponent. He entered through one of the building¡¯s many doors. Quickly locating someone who was a high-tier Eugene rank, the same as himself, Eugene interrupted his conversation with another cultivator. ¡°I challenge you to a game of Giga Hibiscus Chess,¡± he declared. The man was clearly identifiable as one of the Sorcerer class based on his fiery red flowing robes. He turned to speak to Eugene. ¡°You dare interrupt my conversation? You¡¯re courting death!¡± He clearly must have noticed he was speaking to ¡°Grzegorz¡±, but didn¡¯t care. He was unintimidated by Eugene¡¯s well-recognized status as a Hibiscan prodigy. ¡°Do you accept the challenge?¡± asked Eugene. ¡°Of course I do,¡± he said. ¡°It insults my honor that you would imply I would back down.¡± ¡°A table is open over there.¡± They walked over and sat down. A cold fury raged in the other man¡¯s eyes. The pieces of the board were miniscule, each much less than a tenth of a millimeter in length. One had to move the pieces by using fine tendrils of Hibiscan energy. ¡°I¡¯ll play Black,¡± declared Eugene. Ordinarily, who played Black and who played White was decided randomly. But here, he was willingly giving up the minor advantage of moving first, implying that he thought he was the better player. But the other man only smirked. He had something planned. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we wager something?¡± ¡°Is bragging rights not enough?¡± asked Eugene. ¡°Why not add to that? Let¡¯s say the loser owes the winner a favor.¡± he replied. ¡°A pitiful idea. What stakes are those!¡± ¡°Fool!¡± he yelled. ¡°Kowtow!¡± ¡°Make me,¡± said Eugene. He went very still. ¡°Let¡¯s make a Bondage Vouch. The man that loses will do literally anything the other commands.¡± If he won, the seething man would probably tell Eugene to kill himself, that¡¯s how angry he was. ¡°Something interesting, finally. I accept.¡± The Four Gods glanced at them, certifying the vow. ¡°But not right now,¡± he continued. Rafael stared at him, his hair actively falling out from how angry he was. ¡°What!?¡± ¡°I want to play our game tomorrow, in a tournament setting.¡± He paused for a long moment. ¡°That is acceptable. Once our game concludes, you will regret having been born.¡± Eugene could only chuckle at how stupid and edgy that was. ¡°Later,¡± he said. He portalled back to his luxurious suite. Not only had Yefz given him such a nice and spacious room, he had also told the warders to give Eugene portalling rights to and from the LitRPG Sect. He was truly a gracious and honorable host. Eugene would not play Hibiscan chess today. Instead, he would read up on modern theory and scholarship, and familiarize himself with the state of the game as it was played in the contemporary Hibiscan world. He would spend weeks in the timeless realm, and then head to bed early for a nice sleep. 15. Man Kash Imo meditated in the carbon plain, legs crossed as he sat on the ground. It was the dead of night during a new moon. The flat field of graphite was nearly completely dark, save for the illumination coming from the Red Dragon rotating around Kash. ¡°Finally, solitude,¡± he said. ¡°I am alone.¡± ¡°No you¡¯re not,¡± said Knife Guy. Kash jumped up, near-instantaneously converting a chunk of Hibiscan energy into lightning and flinging it at the source of the voice. Knife Guy vanished into the air. The bolt was much less powerful than usual because it wasn¡¯t powered by his boiling water technique. Kash¡¯s heart was racing. He began the process of transmuting his Hibiscan essence into water, heating it up into a boiling frenzy. He slowly and carefully transmuted select smidgens of it into a variety of miniscule, invisible impurities that normal water usually contained. Cuts appeared all across his right arm and his torso. Where had that come from? Kash whipped his head around, catching a glimpse of Knife Guy slashing the air with his knife. The transmutation was complete, and Kash arced lightning through the water with an audible crackling. Knife Guy appeared in front of him. ¡°So,-¡± Kash zapped him with lightning, imbuing his strike with the power of the Red Dragon. When attacking someone, a wielder of the Red Dragon could amplify the attack with one of two effects. The first was doubling its strength, and the second was doubling its speed. Kash had just used the latter. The lightning struck, but didn¡¯t hit Knife Guy. Rather, it made contact with a disgusting worm-like creature that hissed and writhed when struck. It was invisible until being hit with the lightning, then suddenly flashed into being. It molted off a layer of squirming, muscly flesh, which lay visible on the carbon. But its body underneath was invisible. Knife Guy again vanished. ¡°Ah, so you¡¯ve discovered the secret of the meat worm,¡± he said. Kash realized that when Knife Guy disappeared, he was merely re-wrapping himself in the meat worm. It was long enough for that to be a viable strategy, as Kash saw by glancing at the molted skin he had scorched. Judging from that, the meat worm had a diameter of eight or so inches at its widest point, and looked to be at least a hundred feet long. Kash expelled a huge burst of lightning in a twenty foot radius, barely catching the meat worm. It once again hissed and molted off a layer of skin. This time, Knife Guy stood still and let himself be visible. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ¡°I just want to talk,¡± he said. Kash threw dozens of bolts of lightning in rapid succession, each traveling absurdly fast. Knife Guy dodged a few of them but got hit by most. He flung his knife up and down, deep cuts appearing on Kash¡¯s face before he used his lightning to arc himself up and away. It seemed that Knife Guy¡¯s knife projected its slashes forwards, cutting anything within a ¡°line of sight¡± of the knife. His wounds closed as Kash healed them with Hibiscan energy. ¡°I just want to talk,¡± he repeated. ¡°If you don¡¯t attack me, I won¡¯t attack you.¡± Kash snorted. How absurd. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to humor him for a moment. Kash wanted to learn more about his motivations before killing him. ¡°Fine.¡± ¡°Thank you, finally.¡± ¡°What do you want?¡± ¡°To test if you really deserve having the Red Dragon.¡± ¡°Of course I do.¡± ¡°Well, we¡¯ll see.¡± Not wasting a moment, Kash arced over to Knife Guy and hit him with a discharge of lightning just as Knife Guy wrapped the meat worm around himself. The creature shrieked, shedding another layer of meaty skin. Kash charged up a ball of lightning with his left hand and swung at Knife Guy with his right. Knife Guy darted out of the way of his fist, but Kash turned his arm and grabbed Knife Guy by the throat, slamming the ball lightning into him. Knife Guy was catapulted into the air, creating a sonic boom from how fast he flew backwards. He tumbled several times against the graphite, cutting himself against it, until coming to a stop. ¡°Finally some distance between me and the bastard. I¡¯ll be alone until-¡± ¡°No you¡¯re not,¡± said Knife Guy, appearing a few feet behind Kash. He slashed his knife, its effect cutting deeply into Kash¡¯s right wrist. Blood spurted out from the wound as his hand swung from side to side, nearly severed. What the fuck? How had Knife Guy teleported all the way there? Kash jumped forward, grabbing the bastard, pinning his hand that he held the knife with. He began to charge up a ball of lightning. Knife Guy tried to wriggle away, but couldn¡¯t overpower Kash. The God of Lightning grinned as the ball grew to its full size. This time, he used the Red Dragon to charge his attack with double strength. All his previous attacks had had their speed doubled, in order to catch the wiley Knife Guy. But with him crushed under the weight of Kash, there was no escape. Knife Guy shoved the ball of lightning at Knife Guy, and he rocketed away, going at least Mach 4. He tumbled to a stop several miles away. It was time to test Kash¡¯s theory. ¡°I¡¯m alone,¡± he said. ¡°No you¡¯re not,¡± said Knife Guy, slowly standing up. The entire front of his body was scorched and nearly unrecognizable. He spat out blood. ¡°Weakling,¡± said Kash. He slashed his knife, bisecting Kash. Kash¡¯s face was frozen in shock, his torso falling backwards and hitting the ground. Blood seeped out of his mouth. His legs still stood, his lower half not fallen yet. ¡°That¡¯s all?¡± said Knife Guy. ¡°How pitiful.¡± ¡°You were a pathetic opponent,¡± he declared. ¡°I will probably forget about you quickly.¡± He sheathed his knife. 16. Adventures In Giga Hibiscus Chess Eugene woke up. It was a very restful sleep. He was mentally tired from the days in the timeless realm he spent learning about the dominant variant of Hibiscus Chess played today. And he couldn¡¯t just sleep in the timeless realm, because going to sleep would cause him to lose concentration and slip out. Even with Kevin¡¯s License Plate, Eugene still had to actively dedicate a mote of his consciousness to avoiding being pushed out of the timeless realm. He rose from his large, luxurious bed and walked out of the suite. The tournament would begin in an hour. The Elder bracket of the tournament, reserved exclusively for those in the Purple Realm, involved three contests. The first was for board games, the precursor to all LitRPGS, which would be represented by Hibiscus Chess. The second and third would involve video games and litRPGs themselves, respectively. Every win over an opponent in each tournament would be converted to a particular point value, which would all be added up at the end to determine the winner. The same players would appear in each of the three Elder tournaments. Chess was a popular game played amongst cultivators. The game was very Hibiscanly resonant, and the variety of openings played in the game strongly resembled the different paths that the plot of Purple Hibiscus could have gone down. The events that canonically happened in the Holy Book most closely resembled the opening known as the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Gambit. In the Holy Scripture, Ade Coker was Eugene¡¯s queen (not literally, but in the sense of being his most valuable asset) and Big Oga¡¯s queen was the letter bomb. In standard chess, the ICBM gambit involved sacrificing a pawn, bishop, and knight to allow your queen to take the other player''s queen unopposed. This mirrored the events of the Holy Book in how Big Oga killed Ade Coker, but suffered severe losses in the process. Such losses were not of people but rather involved increasing instability and civil unrest within Nigeria that eventually led to him being overthrown. However, Hibiscus Chess enthusiasts soon were unable to play the game. That is because once people ascended to the Red Realm, their own knowledge and intelligence was able to perfectly understand the Hibiscan resonances of the game. And thus, all players could play it perfectly, and all games ended in draws. This problem was solved with the invention of Mega Hibiscus Chess. It increased the complexity of the game by multiple orders of magnitude, such that no one would be able to solve it. Large teams of cultivators painstakingly created many new variants of chess, and eventually the one that was determined to most resemble the Holy Book was officially deemed to be Mega Hibiscus Chess But then Jajas began appearing. For those in the Purple Realm, they could play Mega Hibiscus Chess perfectly. And so the problem reappeared again. The greatest Hibiscan minds set to work crafting Giga Hibiscus Chess. It took hundreds of years and thousands of competing variants before one was determined to be the most similar to the Holy Book. Two hundred years ago, it was fully finalized, which was six hundred years after the first variants appeared. The game was complex and sophisticated enough so that even a peak-tier Kambili could only begin to understand its secrets. Giga Hibiscus Chess was played on a 65536 by 65536 board, totalling 4294967296 squares. There were 8192 unique pieces, and 1048576 in total. There were 27 kings on each side. It was a monstrous, disgusting, enormous beast of a game. Eugene had already arranged a game with the Eugene-rank cultivator he had enraged. His future opponent was apparently the clear favorite to win. Eugene had confidence that they would find themselves playing against each other in the final game of the tournament. The Dawn and Dusk Sect Elders would participate too, but Eugene anticipated that they would be largely crushed. He had some hopes pinned on Elzpsein, who apparently was a skilled Giga Hibiscus Chess player, but Eugene wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the former Super Senior did poorly. Eugene walked into the enormous room dedicated purely to Hibiscus Chess. The tournament master sat in an elevated, throne-like chair, wearing elaborate robes. He was of the Warlock class. A few cultivators had already assembled, Elzpsein among them. ¡°Greetings, Sect Elder,¡± he said, waving. Eugene walked over to him. ¡°It¡¯s good to see you arrived here so early.¡± ¡°I expect a good showing from this tournament,¡± he commented. ¡°I hear there¡¯s a prodigy among their ranks. They call him the next Kambili.¡± Kambili, the cultivator of Hibiscan legend, emerged a few hundred years after Eugene vanished. Not only was he the founder of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect, he was unmatched at Hibiscus Chess during the era in which different Giga Hibiscus Chess variants competed for supremacy. He won thousands of games and lost zero. The only thing preventing him from continuing his winning streak was his death. ¡°They call me the next Kambili,¡± Eugene responded. ¡°Arrogance felled many a cultivator,¡± said Elzpsein. ¡°There exist forests which are one tree.¡± Eugene said cryptically. Elzpsein chuckled. ¡°Tell me. If a tree falls in a forest, but no one hears it, does it make a sound?¡± ¡°Ah, the classic question from the pre-Hibiscan era,¡± replied Eugene. ¡°Let me counter with this: Two hands make a clapping noise. What sound does one hand clapping make?¡± ¡°Reaching into the pool of ancient wisdom,¡± said Elzpsein. ¡°Is water wet?¡± ¡°It both is and isn¡¯t at the same time.¡± ¡°A paradox. Let me respond with one of my own. Is autological autological?¡± ¡°Heh, a clever question for once. Refer to my previous answer.¡± ¡°What defines words?¡± asked Elzspein. ¡°Their usage.¡± ¡°Ah, you¡¯ve contradicted yourself.¡± ¡°How so?¡± Eugene could not parse Elzpsein¡¯s line of reasoning. One of them had just blundered, but Eugene couldn¡¯t figure out who. Maybe Eugene¡¯s lack of understanding was because Elzpsein¡¯s argument was too sophisticated for him, or maybe Elzpsein was just stupid. ¡°Is an axe defined by its usage? When a man and his axe lay idle, are they undefined? But if the forest that is a tree stands unattacked by the man and his axe, is it not also lying unused?¡± Elzpsein was talking circles around him now. Eugene was groping at a defense, but it remained at the tip of his tongue, just out of reach. Eugene¡¯s continued silence prompted Elzpsein to continue. ¡°The heart of all stories is conflict. The story ceases as the conflict ceases. If the forest that is a tree is entirely unfelled, it does not exist.¡± Eugene was enlightened. Elzpsein was only partially correct, grasping at the truth but not quite taking hold of it. ¡°It is both a contradiction and not a contradiction,¡± replied Eugene. ¡°Stand or not stand, the forest remains.¡± ¡°But the forest cannot remain, for that is contradiction without non-contradiction. The coexistence of contradiction and anti-contradiction hides within the heart of logic. But if the forest that is a tree has a contradiction but no non-contradiction, it has an antithesis but lacks a thesis. It is backwards. The synthesis does not cohere, the Purple Hibiscus does not bloom.¡± ¡°No,¡± stated Eugene. ¡°The forest is two dimensional but non-Euclidean. Its growth is restricted to only one dimension. Latitude is locked off.¡± ¡°Then where is Mount Tai?¡± asked Elzspein, a gleam in his eye. ¡°At the eastern sunrise, just beyond all reach.¡± Elzpsein was enlightened. ¡°I only used to understand the latter half of that ancient declaration. But now, I understand the first. Longitude is the path of Achilles chasing the Tortoise.¡± ¡°The Purple Hibiscus blooms,¡± declared Eugene. ¡°The shades converge,¡± agreed Elzpsein. Both of their Hibiscan energy rippled, morphing into something greater. Bliss fell upon both of them as they ascended. Elzpsein ascended two tiers at once, now at high-tier Jaja. Eugene climbed to peak-tier of Eugene rank. They drew stares from the ever-growing crowd. The other cultivators had listened to their conversation with rapt attention, one of them even writing down everything he heard. Those in the room were shocked into silence by what they had just witnessed. Eugene and Elzpsein only further contemplated the truth that they had together unveiled. At the eastern sunrise, just beyond all reach. That was Kambili¡¯s answer to a question posed by his second-in-command when he asked where Kambili was going. It was his last recorded words. A man walked in, nearly late to the tournament. He scanned the room and stood in befuddlement at why everyone was staring at Grzegorz and some random Dawn and Dusk Sect Elder. Eugene recognized him as the man he had started a feud with. A screen powered by Hibiscan energy flickered to life, projected across the room by a ¡°magical artifact¡± with runes carved into it. The tournament master spoke up. ¡°Who will be playing who and in which order is displayed.¡± Settle in your chairs, for the tournament begins in a minute. Eugene looked at it and saw who he would be playing for the first round. This would be tedious, though he would get some practice in. It was a round-robin tournament, meaning every player played every player. The way it worked was that after the games were finished, the Dawn and Dusk Sect cultivator with the highest point total would play the LitRPG Sect cultivator with the highest point total as the final match to determine which sect won overall. This meant Eugene would certainly play with the seething man twice. Eugene effortlessly won his first three games. But on the fourth, he looked at the screen and saw he would be facing him. Eugene and the man sat down. ¡°My name is Rafael,¡± he said, and the game began by him moving out his Jaja, the most powerful piece. A tricky move, that was, and very confrontational. But Eugene knew the perfect defense to it. They played back and forth, each responded to the other¡¯s cleverly laid attacks with defenses that were even more sophisticated. They both castled, and the game looked like it was heading towards a draw. They had each traded over a hundred thousand pieces by this point, and their positions were of equal strength. ¡°I don¡¯t want our Bondage Vouch to apply to this game.¡± ¡°Oh, really?¡± responded Rafael sarcastically. ¡°We are certain to play each other at the end of the tournament, our strength is unmatched by anyone save ourselves. That game is much more interesting.¡± ¡°I would not expect a worm like you to provide such excellent reasoning. I am forced to accept your proposal.¡± The game continued on, neither player being able to win over an advantage. They were both locked in, playing the best game of their lives so far, exhilarated by such a strong opponent, but there were simply no gains there to be made. Rafael opened his mouth to speak for the first time in hours. ¡°Your rapid advances in cultivation continue to astonish the Hibiscan world. The astute observer might draw a connection between that and Eugene¡¯s ancient feat of going from Aunty Ifeoma rank to Jaja rank in merely a week by sacrificing millions.¡± Eugene carefully hid any reaction to that. Rafael was merely trash-talking, he did not actually know that Grzegorz was Eugene. The game ended up in a position with only four pieces remaining. Eugene had one king and a rook, while Rafael had a king and a Beatrice. Both of them knew how to play this position perfectly, and if they did so it was guaranteed to end in a draw. However, Rafael refused Eugene¡¯s draw offer. He played out the next thousand moves very quickly, hoping that Eugene would slip up and blunder the game. But he didn¡¯t, and they finally traded the Beatrice for the rook. Draw by insufficient material. Rafael left the board seething. The other games were a blur for Eugene. He destroyed several other opponents, barely even having to use his brain. He could only think of his upcoming match with Rafael. Eugene concluded his penultimate game with a brilliant mate with a knight that his opponent couldn¡¯t defend against, his king trapped within a web of Beatrices. The scoreboard displayed Eugene and Rafael as being even in points. Third place was occupied by Elzpsein. Eugene was pleasantly surprised, he hadn¡¯t realized the extent of the former Super Senior¡¯s skill. He had only lost two games, to Eugene and to Rafael. Everyone waited in anticipation of the final game. Eugene and Rafael sat in front of the board. Rafael again was randomly selected to play White. He moved the pawn above his central king two squares forward. The most common opening move, and the consensus pick for best opening. Eugene mirrored Rafael¡¯s move. Rafael Bongclouded. Eugene, in shock, reflexively threw himself into the timeless realm. He needed time to think about what this meant. While using the timeless realm to extend the amount of time you have to think may appear to be cheating, it was not considered to be so under the rules. It was treated as merely another tool you have. Playing a game of Giga Hibiscus Chess was, after all, a battle of cultivation. And the better a cultivator you were, the longer you could last in the timeless realm before being forcibly ejected. Thus, staying in the timeless realm by using Kevin¡¯s License Plate to anchor him there would be cheating. Which is why Eugene did not do that. Instead, he entered it purely on his own strength. Already, he could feel it tugging at him, wanting to force him back into the normal timestream. The Bongcloud was the worst opening. Only a fool or a troll would play it. Rafael was so arrogant, so overconfident, he trusted himself to win a game at such a severe disadvantage. Or, well, maybe that wasn¡¯t his thought process. Maybe he could tell that Eugene was the type of person who, when facing the Bongcloud, always Bongclouded back. For Eugene had two options to choose from. To Bongcloud, or not to Bongcloud? The latter was not even worth considering for a moment. It near-guaranteed a win for yourself, but it would be a cheap, hollow victory. Eugene would not defile the honor of his opponent. Eugene¡¯s mind began to cook up a devious plan to weaponize the Bongcloud to his advantage. He constructed a devious five-phase plan that would be certain to dismantle Rafael. In fact, he spent months cooking the plan. Eugene hadn¡¯t been this invested in anything, ever. The game he was playing was far more exhilarating than his fight with Kash. His earlier game with Rafael paled in comparison. He left the timeless realm and responded in tandem, Bongclouding as well. Eugene contemplated his motivations for playing the game. He had just made a Bondage Vouch that would likely cause his death if he lost this game. And instead of trying to win, he was fucking Bongclouding. But Eugene was fully at peace with his decision. He traveled seven hundred years in the future first and foremost because he was bored by the state of the world back then. But now, he was exhilarated! He lived life only because it interested him, so why would Eugene back down from a fascinating competition he was engaged in? If Eugene wasn¡¯t willing to risk his life, why bother doing anything? Because the act of cultivation was fundamentally the act of challenging the heavens. It was declaring that your pitiful understanding of the Holy Book Purple Hibiscus might one day rival the understanding that the Four Gods had of it. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. He was jolted out of his thoughts by Rafael chuckling to himself. He leapt forward his Aunty Ifeoma to its max distance. It was a piece that moved like a knight, but could choose to travel the equivalent of up to 10000 traditional knight moves in a single move in a single direction. Eugene moved out his queen 17029 squares diagonally. They continued playing the game in a completely normal fashion, acting like nothing had happened. Normal piece development occurred on both sides, except for Rafael Bongclouding each and every one of his 27 kings, and Eugene mirroring him. Eugene concluded Phase One of his plan when he moved his final king. So far, they were playing what was called the Traditional Bongcloud, in which the kings were not moved at all after they were each Bongclouded. Other variants included the Arrogant Bongcloud, in which the kings were moved out further, and the Shameful Bongcloud, in which the kings were moved back. Giga Hibiscus Chess did not exist in its modern form in Eugene¡¯s time, and so only some of the lessons he had learned playing it were relevant to the game he was in right now. However, Eugene was particularly well-versed in opening theory regarding the Bongcloud. Bongcloud games of the traditional variety centered around both players spreading their pieces thin as they covered for the substantial weaknesses of each of their kings. Each player would launch probing attacks to test the defenses of the opponent, and it would typically escalate into a brutal procession of piece trades. Check didn¡¯t exist in Giga Hibiscus Chess. Instead, a player could simply ignore it and let their king be captured. This made king trades and even king sacrifices relatively common, and kings could even take each other. A player would only lose when their last king was taken. When all the kings had finished their Bongcloud development, Eugene spotted a critical weakness in Rafael¡¯s position. He decided to transition the game into an arrogant Bongcloud by again moving forward his central king. Eugene was uninterested in continuing to play the traditional Bongcloud. Rafael merely moved his Jaja out 10000 squares. There was only one Jaja per player. It moved like a rook, except it could leap over any squares it wanted to. Games would often begin with the players trading their Jajas with each other. It was a supremely dangerous piece. Eugene moved his central king again out by one square, and Rafael paused. All his previous moves had been made in less than five seconds. But for this one, he had to think. Rafael suddenly shifted in his seat and blinked a few times, moving his Jaja so that it forked every single one of Eugene¡¯s kings except the one he had just moved. A sign that he had been in the timeless realm! Eugene now knew Rafael¡¯s tell. Eugene making such an unfathomably shitty move by not bothering to counter the threat of the Jaja baffled Rafael so much that he had to retreat to the timeless realm to determine if it was genius or stupid. Eugene could not move his own Jaja to defend his kings. This was because, if he did that, the piece would be undefended, and Rafael would simply take it. He was losing a king no matter what. But Eugene simply did not care, and moved out his Ade Coker. When the Ade Coker took a piece, it exploded not only itself, but also all the pieces around it in a 5x5 square centered on itself. It moved like a bishop, except it also had the option to move one square up or down at a time, like a king, thus allowing it to move on both light and dark squares. Rafael took one of Eugene¡¯s kings. By moving the Ade Coker, his Jaja was now protected from being captured, so he moved it out. Rafael traded Jajas, and Eugene took it with the Ade Coker, detonating another one of his kings in the process. Rafael was baffled. Eugene just lost two kings and one of four Ade Cokers just to get a Jaja trade! He sat and thought for a minute straight, then moved his Beatrice fully out. It was a piece that moved like a bishop, but only a maximum of 1024 squares out. It could leap over pieces, and it once it moved, on the next move, it could choose one piece within a 7x7 square of itself to die of rat poison. The rest of the game proceeded with Rafael further bringing his pieces out, solidifying his position, while Eugene kept pushing his kings. After several hours of play, Eugene had gathered his 25 remaining kings in a 5x5 square formation. This would be extremely vulnerable to an Ade Coker attack, if not for Eugene having steadily outplayed Rafael by taking all the other player¡¯s Ade Cokers without suffering substantial losses himself. Once the kings were in the square formation, Eugene concluded Phase Two. Eugene had determined by this point that Rafael was a one in a billion talent, a master of Giga Hibiscus Chess. His play so far was astonishingly good, every move having layers and layers of complexity to it, simultaneously defending his own position while readying devastating attacks on Eugene¡¯s. But Eugene was a one in eight billion peerless genius, and thus was steadily outplaying Rafael. The difference between them was like the difference between heaven and earth. By offering up two of his kings and one Ade Coker, Eugene perfectly executed the Traditional Bongcloud Jaja Gambit, Ade Coker variation. It was a gambit he had invented himself just now, and it exposed multiple weaknesses in Rafael¡¯s position.The other player recognized some of them, and had acted to partially cover said weaknesses. But he left his position critically vulnerable to a devastating 25-fold kingwalk attack, the central purpose of Phase Three of Eugene¡¯s plan. At this point, Eugene was threatening king promotion. Normal pawn promotion was a thing in Giga Hibiscus Chess, and they could be promoted to any piece save a Jaja. Yes, this meant that pawns could turn into kings. However, king promotion had been added, which allowed kings to turn into any piece in the game, except for Jajas. However, there was another option. Kings could be promoted to sniper kings, a piece only attainable via king promotion. They shot out bullets that would kill any piece they had line of sight on within a 27x27 square centered on them. This would be a very weak ability, considering that sniper kings could still only move one square in any direction. However, sniper kings could shoot other sniper kings. Instead of being destroyed, those sniper kings absorbed that bullet, and if they shot it, it would be able to travel double the distance. A player could keep doing this for every sniper king they had. However, a particular bullet shot by a sniper king could not return to the same king, because that would be too overpowered. So, the total distance of how far a bullet could travel was dependent on how many sniper kings a player managed to promote. The key fact in all this was that all of this took only one turn. If a sniper king shot another piece, that took up a turn. But shooting each other and transferring the bullet took zero in-game time. Rafael was keenly aware of the strategy associated with sniper kings. A sniper king array was devastatingly powerful once set up, but could be easily sabotaged. However, if Rafael threw all his pieces at Eugene¡¯s 25 kings, he would give time for Eugene to launch his own crippling counterattack on Rafael¡¯s vulnerable, Bongclouded kings. So Rafael chose to gamble. He ignored the sniper kings for the most part. He took the occasional move to take a few of them, sacrificing most of his Aunty Ifeoma¡¯s in the process. Instead, Rafael concerned himself with destroying Eugene¡¯s most valuable pieces, most of which hadn¡¯t even been developed yet. When Eugene finished promoting his kings, he had 12 of them left. Surveying the board, he noted that his attacking power was nearly destroyed. Except, that mattered not at all. For 12 sniper kings was enough to reach nearly the entire board. This was the idea of Phase Four! Eliminate Rafael¡¯s army piece by piece using the constructed sniper array. Eugene set to work sniping Rafael¡¯s pieces. The interesting thing was, despite having less than a quarter the number of pieces Rafael did, he was actually up a few quadrillion points in material. The way for calculating the value of sniper kings depended on how many there were. A single one was worth 49 points. If there were two, they were each worth 49^2 points. And so on and so forth. The value of 12 sniper kings was (49^12)*12, which was equal to 2.2989748 ¡Á 10^21 points. The game so far had only taken 17 hours and 4 minutes. But the ensuing slog that was the battle between Rafael¡¯s overwhelming advantage in piece quantity and Eugene¡¯s destructive sniper cannon looked like it would take days to conclude. Rafael had too many exposed pieces that were within the sight line of the circle of sniper kings. He had to move his valuable pieces behind his pawns and other irrelevant pieces. And tearing into Eugene¡¯s sniper circle was impossible to do without incurring heavy losses, because most pieces he had would have to expose themself to the snipers before being able to take them. For Rafael to attack the sniper circle, he first needed to build up enormous walls of pieces faster than Eugene could snipe them. Then, he would put his pieces that could simultaneously jump over other pieces and travel long distances behind the wall. After four days of relentless play from both sides, Rafael had sacrificed over six hundred thousand pieces to take out three of Eugene¡¯s kings. This substantially weakened Eugene¡¯s sniper array, making it functionally useless. Now, the only purpose it served was to lock off a small section of the board, making it so that Rafael could never really enter that square that was the sniper circle¡¯s territory. But most of the board was unthreatened by the sniper array. But now, Eugene executed Phase Five of his plan. He moved out his few remaining dangerous pieces that existed, including all 61 of his queens (only three of which he had sacrificed), his Beatrices, and his Big Ogas. The Big Ogas were extremely powerful, but could only act in a local area. Within a 2047x2047 square centered on itself, a Big Oga could move to literally any square within that. It was weak offensively, only being able to move 2047 squares at a time, but defensively was among the strongest pieces in the game. Eugene now was executing a large-scale pawnwalk. His 61 queens and 32 Big Ogas would be arranged in a linear fashion in between the starting location of his pawns and the sniper king circle. Once the pawns reached the sniper king circle at the end of the board, they were fully safe from attack and could turn into kings. But pawn-kings, as kings that used to be pawns were called, could be the subject of king promotion. But they had to walk all the way back to their own starting side to promote again. Once they were sniper kings, Eugene would then repeat the arduous process, and walk them to being within range of the sniper king circle. After doing this three times, he would be back to 12 sniper kings, and would win the game. However, the problem was that this would take ages and ages to accomplish, giving Rafael much more time to assemble an attack that could penetrate Eugene¡¯s pawn defense. Eugene¡¯s previous gambit of saccing untold hundreds of thousands of pieces to assemble a sniper king circle had paid off. This was because Eugene took months in the timeless realm to calculate it all. But eventually the timeless realm¡¯s pushing became so strong that he was thrust out before he had time to figure out what to do once the sniper king circle was compromised. The schizo pawn walk plan was something he had improvised yesterday. Eugene had no idea if it would actually work. He couldn¡¯t just re-enter the timeless realm again to figure it all out. After spending an amount of time in the timeless realm, you couldn¡¯t re-enter until roughly half that time had passed in the real world. Not unless you had Kevin¡¯s License Plate, that is, but that would be cheating. The consequences of this were tremendous. Eugene was gambling the entire game away. Rafael had outplayed him. The saccing of 600,000+ pieces was actually genius, because Rafael not only destroyed Eugene¡¯s sniper king array but also set himself up to counter Eugene¡¯s pawnwalk. He had truly cooked. Rafael was layering attack after attack against Eugene as he pushed his pieces towards the assembling pawn corridor. Truly, Rafael¡¯s play style was unparalleled in its efficiency first and foremost. Every move served multiple purposes and laid many clever plans. Eugene started his feud with Rafael by insulting the man repeatedly. His attempt at psychological warfare only caused Rafael to be further energized. But now, Eugene would try a different approach. He moved his Ball out. The Ball was a piece that moved like a queen and a knight, except it could do a large number of knight moves in a row. The thing that nerfed it was that it could only travel one square on its first move, whereas the normal queen, and even the standard rook and bishop, had no range limit. However, with every move it made, its range doubled. It took 17 moves to be able to traverse the entire board. ¡°Let¡¯s raise the stakes,¡± he spat out, voice parched and cracked. Purple Realm cultivators could go without water for months until dying, but they would still suffer some adverse effects. One of those was difficulty speaking after several days. It took Rafael much effort to open his mouth and speak. ¡°H-how?¡± he asked. ¡°I want the loser to owe the winner two favors.¡± ¡°Why? That¡¯s excessive.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll do a Ball sac in exchange for you agreeing to it.¡± ¡°That would give me an unfair advan, advanta-tage,¡± he croaked out. ¡°N-no.¡± ¡°Raising the stakes would heighten our level of play,¡± Eugene said. ¡°We would both be improved.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± Rafael creaked out, more to end the conversation than anything else. He spat out blood from the exertion. ¡°Still no Ball sac from you,¡± he barely got out. ¡°Of course.¡± Eugene kept moving his ball for the next 16 moves, giving Rafael plenty of time to create a spear with which to destroy the pawn corridor. But Eugene didn¡¯t care, as the Ball when fully engaged was simply too powerful. Some argued it was even more powerful than the Jaja, though Eugene personally considered those people to be fools. Eugene completed the 17th move of the Ball and Rafael responded with a Nut sac. The Nut was powerful, but heavily restricted in its movement. It could only move to squares whose x and y coordinates were twin primes. Twin primes were primes whose distance is 2. So, NT11,13 (Algebraic chess notation had to be modified for the purposes of Giga Hibiscus Chess) was a viable move, but NT13,17 was not. Of course, primes become increasingly rare the larger numbers get, and twin primes even more so. Rafael ascended to peak-tier of the Eugene rank. They were now even again. He moved NTx32027,32029, taking one of Eugene¡¯s queens. He wasn¡¯t bothering to hide the fact that he had retreated to the timeless realm, for at least a few weeks. Eugene paused. The Nut was certainly a more valuable piece than the queen. He painstakingly looked for the purpose of that sac over the next few thousand moves, but saw nothing. Eugene chose to simply shore up his own defenses. He was slightly more vulnerable without one of his queens, but Rafael losing his only Nut was absolutely not worth it. The three pawns were kings now. They began marching backwards. Rafael¡¯s pieces were closer than ever to breaking the corridor. It didn¡¯t come to Eugene for any particular reason. Rafael didn¡¯t make any move that exposed his true intentions. It was just that Eugene was a Hibiscan calculator, and after going through every major permutation of what Rafael could do, it dawned on him that Eugene taking the Nut was an abysmally terrible move. Rafael had forced mate in 21348 moves. Did Rafael see that exact line, or did he do the Nut sac because he saw that it improved his position in general by critically weakening the pawn corridor tens of thousands of moves down the line? Eugene couldn¡¯t know. The best strategy for him was simply to continue what he was already doing and fully reassemble the sniper king array. From that point onwards, there were a number of ways for Rafael to instantly lose and blunder forced mate in a few thousand moves if he didn¡¯t play perfectly. Eugene was now playing hope chess. It was hope that Rafael messed up. Eugene felt his confidence waver as Rafael deftly avoided Eugene¡¯s every attempt at mating him. He was now certain that Rafael knew what he was doing and knew how to execute the forced mate. Eugene¡¯s point advantage approached a googolplex, but his position was increasingly terrible. Nonetheless, he pressed on, laying many different traps with each move, giving Rafael opportunity after opportunity to blunder. But Rafael fell for none of it. The brilliance of the mate was that it didn¡¯t involve taking any of the sniper kings until the very last hundred or so moves. Tackling that threat early on would paradoxically make it so that Rafael couldn¡¯t checkmate Eugene. However, that was where the danger lied. The necessity of keeping the sniper king array intact was the very same thing that made the mate so dangerous. If Rafael slipped up and mistook an inferior line to be better than another, he would instantly be in a losing position. Eugene moved out his Nut. Rafael had a tenth the piece count of Eugene and now only had less than a thousand left. Rafael paused and considered his next move. He could move his last Beatrice to fork Eugene¡¯s Ball and Nut, both of which had survived to the endgame. It would cripple Eugene¡¯s defense. Or, maybe that move would end the game for him because it would leave his kings vulnerable to being sniped. He only had one king left, the others he had allowed Eugene to snipe. That remaining king was tucked in a corner, as far away from the sniper array as possible, though the snipers could still reach it. He should move his Beatrice back to the king to better defend it. Then, he had a thought. Why choose between two bad options when he had a great move available? He had a Big Oga which was up near the sniper king array, protected by over a hundred pawns. He could just use it to trade for one of Eugene¡¯s snipers. Yes, there was the ever-present threat of him crippling his own carefully-laid defense by moving the Big Oga. Eugene had many pieces ready to attack his last king, with almost all of them being the kind of weak, pitifully slow moving pieces that were perfectly countered by a Big Oga. By saving his king from the threat of Eugene¡¯s sniper array, he would render it vulnerable to an attack from Eugene¡¯s weaker pieces. After the snipers were forced to kill the Big Oga, he could then go ahead with the fork and go on to win the game. He had foreseen this line days ago and assumed that forking the Ball and the Nut would lead to victory. He was right, but he was mistaken in which order the move should be. He took a sniper king with the Big Oga, and would do the fork on the next move. Eugene only smiled. ¡°The pawn is wasted on Aunty Ifeoma.¡± Rafael saw it. Eugene had forced mate in just under 2000 moves. By moving the Aunty Ifeoma, he could fork Rafael¡¯s king and his Big Oga. Rafael saw this but didn¡¯t consider it to be a threat, because he could simply move his king, and Eugene¡¯s position would actually be slightly worsened. Even though Rafael would lose his Big Oga and not gain any pieces, the Aunty Ifeoma would block the line of sight of the sniper king array, meaning its usefulness would be diminished until Eugene moved the Aunty Ifeoma elsewhere. That sequence of moves would actually slightly favor Rafael. The issue was how the Aunty Ifeoma could work in tandem with either the Ball or Nut, depending on which one Eugene chose to save. The Big Oga was the perfect counter to those three pieces, and it was Rafael¡¯s last one. The Beatrice wouldn¡¯t be able to defend adequately without Big Oga support. This in fact was no issue at all, because Rafael had a pawn one step away from promotion that could be turned into a Big Oga. However, that pawn was defended by a hundred other pawns, but themselves were not defended by anything from the sniper array threat. Thus, Rafael could only promote the one pawn. But doing so would waste that pawn, which otherwise could have been used on a more valuable piece, on just a Big Oga. Eugene would be able to escape the mate threat and would use his piece advantage to surround and mate Rafael¡¯s king. It was over. Rafael spat out blood. ¡°I resign.¡± He would not foolishly play this game out hoping that Eugene would blunder. There was a 0% chance of that happening, his path to victory was too clear. Rafael would not play the two thousand moves out just to spite Eugene and waste his time. He had developed too much respect for him as an opponent. When Rafael ascended a tier in cultivation, his heart was calmed and his mind cleared. He had no more time for petty hatred. ¡°You are the finest opponent I have ever played,¡± declared Eugene. ¡°I have nothing but the highest compliments to laud you with,¡± replied Rafael. ¡°Let us fulfill the Bondage Vouch. What are your demands?¡± The Four Gods fixed their gaze on the conversation. Rafael made peace with his fate. He would accept whatever Eugene had in store. ¡°First,¡± said Eugene, ¡°you must always speak in tercets with a ABA rhyming scheme, and each line needs to be five syllables long exactly.¡± ¡°I hate the wager, regret my actions, acting the favor,¡± said Rafael. ¡°For the last favor, I am undecided. I shall wait for what I want to make you do.¡± The Four Gods looked away, satisfied. ¡°As I try to parse, what can only be, a stupendous farce,¡± Rafael finished. Everyone in the room was dumbfounded. Such a high-stakes game, and Eugene wasted his Bondage Vouch-assured request with an annoying joke. Eugene simply turned and walked out. 17. Duplicators The bisected corpse of Kash sizzled with remaining lightning energy, the Red Dragon having already dissipated. The body started vibrating at a quicker and quicker rate until it dissipated into pure electricity, seeping through the ground ¡°Clever,¡± said Knife Guy. Electricity coursed through the graphite ground, electrocuting Knife Guy, who nearly dropped his namesake weapon. A form made from pure electricity phased through the carbon plain, bursting through into the air. It coalesced into a human appearance. ¡°You didn¡¯t think I would go down that easily, did you?¡± asked Kash. ¡°Actually, I did,¡± remarked Knife Guy. ¡°You¡¯re not very strong.¡± He once again bisected Kash with a single stroke of the knife. This time, Kash didn¡¯t bother disguising what he was about to do. The body instantly dissipated into electricity and went back into the ground. Kash had transmuted his entire being into pure lightning. Not only were his speed and strength heightened, his mind, which ran off of electricity, was much faster. His gambit with the lightning clones had paid off, proving two useful pieces of information. One, that every time Knife Guy teleported to someone¡¯s location following that person¡¯s declaration that they were alone, he grew stronger. And two, Knife Guy¡¯s slashes were enhanced even if he was attacking a different lightning clone than the one that had declared his solitude. After Kash¡¯s second declaration of him being alone, he realized what the trigger for Knife Guy¡¯s teleportation was. On impulse, he divested 2% of his Hibiscan energy into keeping a lightning clone on the surface, while the rest of his body transformed into a pure lightning state and hid in the layers of graphite. However, he only had a 50% retrieval rate of Hibiscan energy from dead lightning clones. Thus, making two of them cost 4% and he only got back 2%. Kash was down to 98% of his normal Hibiscan energy. It was well worth it, in his opinion, because he learned Knife Guy¡¯s tricks at almost no cost to himself. He burst from the graphite, the dual light from his pure lightning form and the Red Dragon suddenly illuminating the carbon plain. Each of the lightning clones was just a different body that was each controlled by him, so he could choose to send the Red Dragon to any one of them. As he left the ground, he split into six copies. He fired a Red Dragon enhanced extra-speed lightning bolt at Knife Guy, then transferred the Red Dragon to every single one of the other clones in succession and had them fire their own bolts. Knife Guy chose to block the discharges by wrapping the meat worm around him, each strike hitting within a second of the others. It shrieked in agony and molted six layers onto the floor. It was barely smaller than before, just enough to be noticeable. It looked like wearing it down would be a viable plan. ¡°That¡¯s enough,¡± declared Knife Guy, and cast off the meat worm. ¡°Meat worm, grow!¡± Kash couldn¡¯t see anything, instead only hearing a grotesque sound that could only be the ripping and tearing of flesh. He merged back into one form and threw a bolt of lightning at the meat worm to get a sense of how large it had become. The bolt missed. Frustrated, he lobbed dozens of bolts charged with the Red Dragon¡¯s speed in every direction. The meat worm whipped its head against Kash, sending him flying. When had it snuck up behind him? Kash quickly got a hold of his momentum, slowing down. He started charging up ball lightning. He wouldn¡¯t create a defensive lightning sphere, instead waiting for the meat worm to come for him. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. It whistled through the air and smacked him, but Kash was ready this time, and hit it with a partially-charged ball lightning strengthened by the Red Dragon. The meat worm was catapulted away, shedding layers as it went. ¡°Let¡¯s finish this,¡± said Kash. ¡°Dimension Expulsion: Shifting Interlocking Hyper-sphere of Lightning.¡± Kash and Knife Guy were encased in a churning bubble of lightning. Kash immediately hit Knife Guy with a barrage of thousands of bolts, each one charged with the Red Dragon¡¯s strength. Knife Guy tried in vain to dodge, but the effect of Kash¡¯s Dimension Expulsion was that all lightning attacks would hit instantly. Seeing it wasn¡¯t working, Knife Guy swung the knife out and rotated in place, cutting the entire domain in half. The remnants of the coursing lightning didn¡¯t just fizzle out, though. Instead, Kash directed it at Knife Guy, who, surrounded by it on all sides, could only dodge a scant few of the bolts. Astonishing! Knife Guy could completely neutralize Kash¡¯s Dimension Expulsion merely by cutting it. How was that knife so powerful? ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m stronger than you thought,¡± mocked Knife Guy. ¡°Your Dimension Expulsion was a failure.¡± In Kash¡¯s opinion, it was a success. Kash had done a ton of damage to Knife Guy, as evidenced by his entire body being completely charred and scorched by the lightning. Knife Guy was barely standing, even nearly falling to the floor a few times now. ¡°You are hopelessly outmatched, and you don¡¯t even know why,¡± he continued. Kash, not bothering to respond, threw several more bolts of lightning, but Knife Guy didn¡¯t bother dodging and merely tanked the hits while swinging the knife. Kash also chose not to move out of the way, instead fortifying his lightning transmuted Hibiscan energy. The knife could sever the entire body of a 2% Hibiscan energy duplicate, but did almost nothing to a 98% Hibiscan energy Kash. Knife Guy wavered, almost collapsing. He barely even had the strength to lift his knife now. ¡°How pitiful,¡± he muttered. The most feared assassin of the Umbra Crimers. The killer so deadly they still told tales of when he killed the entire leadership of the Kambili Sect a hundred years ago for reasons yet unknown. Few people dared to call him by his real name out of superstition that he might appear. Amusingly, Kash now knew that that rumor was somewhat based in truth. And look at how weak he was. A smoldering near-corpse whose strongest strikes barely even cut Kash. He was filled with rage that this opponent thought he was good enough to fight him. ¡°Your life is nothing!¡± Kash declared, lightning striking the ground behind him. ¡°You serve ZERO purpose!¡± ¡°You should kill yourself NOW!¡± he finished. Knife Guy¡¯s body tumbled down, the knife falling to the ground. Portal after portal opened up, identical copies of Knife Guy stepping through. In total, there must have been at least three or four dozen. The knife spun up off the graphite sheets and floated in the air. For the first time, Kash saw that it had a mouth. ¡°You see, Kash, I¡¯m not a guy with a knife. I¡¯m not even a knife with a guy. I¡¯m a knife with many guys.¡± Kash, reflexively, tried to open a portal of his own. It sputtered out and died. The Umbra Crimers must have set up anti-portal wards before the fight. Kash kept a calm expression while counting the Knife Guys. Or, should he say, the Knife Clones. The knife itself was the real Knife Guy. There were 53 of them, and from what Hibiscan emanations he could sense, their power was either Jaja or Eugene rank. He forced himself to look at them, truly look at them. Whenever he looked at the first Knife Clone, his gaze slid off and he didn¡¯t notice anything, mentally registering it as being a normal looking guy who happened to have a knife. It must have been some sort of effect placed upon them. Kash stared at the 53 horrors in front of him, and then glanced back down at the first Knife Clone. They all had bodies composed of serrated metal, hundreds of knives sticking out at odd angles. Their facial features were merely lines carved into the metal, fake eyes, noses, and mouths. Kash had no easy solution to this problem. If he stayed in one body, he would get overwhelmed by the tide of duplicate Knife Clones. On the other hand, if he split into many clones, they would each be weak enough to the point where Knife Guy could slash them from afar and do real damage. Kash was torn with indecision. Every Knife Clone grinned in unison. ¡°Don¡¯t be cowardly. Let¡¯s fight.¡± said Knife Guy. 18. Displacement The carbon plains had an austere beauty to them, especially at night. They were a place of solitude, the aftermath of that last great battle between the demonic cultivators and alliance of righteous cultivators. The layered sheets of graphite were unofficially considered to be a neutral ground where no combat would take place. At least, until now. Kash stood surrounded on all sides by Knife Clones closing in on him. In the distance, Knife Guy was dead silent as he watched the action. Kash experimentally blasted the Knife Clone nearest to him, enhancing the bolt with the Red Dragon¡¯s speed. The clone couldn¡¯t dodge in time and was noticeably burned. It took more damage than the original clone did when subjected to similar attacks. It appeared that some Knife Clones were weaker than others. Placing them based on just their Hibiscan energy output, the weakest were Aunty Ifeoma rank and the strongest were Eugene rank, with most being Jajas. The first Knife Clone had been a Eugene in terms of power. But the Knife Clones were not true cultivators. Rather, they were each multiple corpses stuffed and molded together into a knife-shaped box. Kash could tell because of the post-death soul emanations. The souls of the corpses had long since departed, but their afterimages remained. There was much energy loss when a cultivator died. The soul flew to the heavens and the Hibiscan energy drained away. Ordinarily, the energy would leak out at a rate of half of it gone every hour until it was noticeable. With the most advanced storage mechanisms, the corpses would lose half of their Hibiscan energy every ten years. However, this corpse fusing method looked like it preserved the Hibiscan energy by balancing the corpse after-souls against each other and keeping them in a metal shell. The Umbra Crimers must have gotten their hands on a massive corpse trove. Because to have 53 Knife Clones required a minimum of hundreds of powerful Hibiscan corpses. At a maximum it could be over ten thousand. Kash shuddered to think how they went about acquiring them with no one noticing. Knife Guy, floating in air, spun up and towards Kash, cackling all the way. A portal opened up for every Knife Clone. Each one pulled a tube from the portal and drank from it, before putting them back in. The portals fizzled out. ¡°You know what that was?¡± asked Knife Guy. A massive portal opened up behind Kash, who whirled around to see it. A thick white substance poured from it, vanishing partway through the air. The meat worm must be drinking it! ¡°You want some?¡± Kash refused to dignify that with a response. ¡°I guess you don¡¯t know that it¡¯s milk from the creature.¡± What creature? The Knife Clones rippled and engorged, growing larger. Their spines extended, metal plates bulged outwards, and their knives fully emerged. Their Hibiscan energy flared with strength. ¡°This, this is the power of the creature!¡± declared Knife Guy. Kash gritted his teeth. This was going to be difficult. But he had a plan. The Knife Clones and the meat worm were nothing but a distraction. The Knife Clones likely would be weakened or completely cease to function if Knife Guy died. All he had to do was destroy the sentient Hibiscan artifact. Easier said than done, though. The meat worm whipped Kash with its tail, and he was sent flying, barely twisting out of the way in time to avoid multiple Knife Clones lunging at him. They were fast, much more so than before. He started charging up ball lightning, and at the same time, split 5% of his Hibiscan energy into a lightning clone. It instantly phased underground, moving towards Knife Guy. His hope was that the electrical emanations from splitting himself off would be disguised by the ambient effects of the ball lightning being formed. Most of the Knife Clones dashed forwards and lunged at Kash, a few staying behind to guard Knife Guy. Kash¡¯s clone had reached him now and was lurking below in the carbon. The main Kash body released a fully charged orb of lightning, blasting away the Knife Clones hundreds of feet and scorching off a layer of skin from the meat worm. They weren¡¯t sent that far away because the ball didn¡¯t directly hit them. Kash subsumed himself into an electrical arc, near-instantaneously arriving next to Knife Guy and firing multiple bolts at him. Knife Guy flipped out of the way, dodging all of them. Just then, the lightning clone burst out of the ground and Kash transferred the Red Dragon to that body. It had been charging ball lighting this entire time, and infused it with strength to blast Knife Guy away. The knife was sent careening off in the distance. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. The Knife Clones looked to be riding on air towards him. They all jumped off from what must have been the meat worm and scrambled towards Kash. Kash blasted them away with dozens of precise lightning strikes, each imbued with speed. The Knife Guys were sent flying back. Kash twirled in the air, firing lightning around him in a circle until a bolt hit the meat worm. It screeched and shedded another layer of meat-skin. Knife Guy himself zipped towards Kash, floating in the air. ¡°That didn¡¯t harm me, you know. My exoskeleton is far too durable.¡± Kash glared at Knife Guy. ¡°This fight has gotten tiresome. The pawns of the Tortoise need to do better if they truly want to be rid of me.¡± ¡°Dimension Displacement: Boundless Revolving Tesseract of Lightning.¡± Sections of ground and sky shifted in and out of reality. Rotating cubes of lightning burst forth from Kash until there were hundreds of them, merging together and splitting apart endlessly. Lightning crackled down from coalescing clouds, bolt after bolt striking the carbon. The roaring cracks of lightning and noxious ozone odor filled Kash with joy. On instinct, Knife Guy swung himself around, desperately trying to cut open the dimension. ¡°There is no barrier to cut,¡± Kash said. ¡°I did separate this space from our reality, but not by means of a sealed boundary.¡± ¡°I have fundamentally altered the dimensional nature of this space and therefore cut it off from physical contact with the rest of the universe. We now exist in four spatial dimensions, with the fourth only being temporary. It is entirely composed of my Hibiscan lightning. This is what allows me to safely ascend to the true lightning form.¡± Knife Guy could only look on in horror. ¡°Manifold Radial Lightning Beast.¡± Kash began to transform. His form of pure electricity changed itself, purifying, becoming more potent. Kash extended the body into the fourth dimension, knitting bands of coursing lightning together to create a heightened state of being for himself. Knife Guy opened a small portal, confirming that it still worked, and reached into it to pull out a tube. While slurping milk from it he turned and looked in horror at Kash. Kash was a rotationally symmetrical monstrosity of a dozen faces, 24 flailing tentacle-arms channeling lightning, 48 scrambling legs of varying length, and wings of sharp lightning sprouting from every corner of the body. He floated up in the sky and assembled a throne of thousands of lightning cubes to recline on. Thousands more rotated around him, electricity arcing between the cubes and himself. Kash was awash in a state of heightened sensory awareness and cognitive power. He could see the every move of Knife Guy, the Knife Clones, and even the meat worm. He looked deeply into Knife Guy. The exterior metal of the knife disguised a fleshy interior. Knife Guy on the inside was a brain within a sac of flesh and skin. An eye and a mouth popped out from the metal through narrow holes. Knife Guy was calling the meat worm to him. It slithered over and extended several tendrils from holes in its forehead. Knife Guy propelled himself into the air and was tightly grasped by them. Every Knife Clone dashed towards the meat worm and wrapped themselves around it, forming an interlocking metal carapace. The meat worm and its newfound exoskeleton morphed itself into the shape of a knife. Knife Guy himself became the barely exposed tip of the new knife. ¡°Ultimate Form: Knife Amalgamation,¡± Knife Guy said, and swung himself at Kash. Kash bolted out of the way the instant Knife Guy started moving, the slash missing him. Knife Guy moved quicker than Kash expected, striking again, and Kash this time blocked with a shield of lightning cubes. Each one was deeply cut into but none broke. ¡°Weak,¡± said Kash in a booming, distorted voice. ¡°Pitifully weak.¡± His vision showed an interesting phenomena in the Knife Amalgamation. The flesh of the meat worm and the metal of the Knife Clones was merging into a cohesive whole. The integration of organic and inorganic materials greatly strengthened it. The internal components of the Knife Amalgamation were suffused with milk from the creature, with it acting as an equivalent of blood. Kash threw a hundred charged lightning cubes at the Knife Amalgamation. It knew it was too slow to properly dodge, instead twisting and molding its shape to let the cubes pass it by. The dozen or so that did hit coursed electricity through the entire thing. But the attack was weakened substantially by the Knife Amalgamation¡¯s defenses. Much of the electricity was prevented from conducting through it by the insulating effect of the flesh, while any that did get through was channeled and harmlessly dispensed by the metal. Kash tore off a large chunk of the cube throne and hurled it towards the Knife Amalgamation, charging every cube with the Red Dragon¡¯s speed. It didn¡¯t have any time to react, instead facing the full offensive brunt of the attack. The Knife Amalgamation convulsed with electricity. The meat worm cried out in agony and several Knife Clones were forcibly split off from the whole. Milk from the creature spilled out. Using his new vision, Kash could see that the interior of the Knife Amalgamation was severely damaged and barely functional. He completely dismantled the cubes that made up the throne and sent them after Knife Guy, each one striking the Knife Amalgamation and sending it speeding off into the distance. The abomination was barely visible, having been thrust miles away. The displaced dimension served as its own plane. When the Knife Amalgamation hit the border, it emerged from the opposite edge. Careening towards Kash, it moved in the air to swing at Kash. He formed a thick shield composed of the remaining lightning cubes. All of the cubes in the slash¡¯s path were severed. Kash was cut in half, lightning spewing from the wound. The dimension itself broke in half. Kash tugged at the cubes to come to him but they were already dissipating, their lightning fading. ¡°It¡¯s over,¡± declared Knife Guy. 19. Leakage Electricity coursed out like a river, spewing from the cut. It didn¡¯t pool on the ground, instead instantly dissipating. Such was the nature of Hibiscan energy. Kash dispelled his fourth dimensional form, letting his extra faces, arms, and legs fold back into his body. It wouldn¡¯t survive in three dimensions. The Knife Amalgamation righted itself and floated up. ¡°Ah, the dimension-severing slash technique. That hasn¡¯t been used since before Kambili¡¯s death.¡± Kash was holding the upper and lower halves of his body together and tried infusing the cut with Hibiscan energy to heal it. ¡°That won¡¯t work,¡± said Knife Guy. Kash split off the halves of his body into lightning clones, each with 50% of his remaining Hibiscan energy. The clones both formed, being cut in half. ¡°Neither will that,¡± said Knife Guy. ¡°H-how?¡± spat out both of Kash¡¯s bodies simultaneously. ¡°You being cut in half is now a fundamental property that you hold,¡± Knife Guy answered. In a rage, Kash threw bolt after bolt at the Knife Amalgamation, charging each with speed. The Knife Amalgamation darted out of the way, only hit by a few. Minimal damage was dealt. ¡°My ascended form is much faster than your lightning. There¡¯s nothing you can do.¡± Kash gritted his teeth. He could still win this. The Knife Amalgamation was spewing out the milk from the creature that sustained it. Eventually, Knife Guy would have to split apart the creation back into its constituent parts, and then he would lose the speed that allowed him to dodge a Red Dragon powered lightning bolt. But Kash was also rapidly being drained of his Hibiscan energy from his wound. Just before his Dimension Displacement, he had 95% Hibiscan energy remaining. The Displacement cost 40% to activate. Knife Guy had already lost 1.5% from each of his current clones. The Knife Amalgamation slashed Kash several times, the cultivator not moving the two clones out of the way in time. The slashes did substantial damage to the clones. With each having only 26% left, they had less energy to reinforce their bodies with. Deep cuts appeared on each. He merged the lightning clones into one body again, which had 52% Hibiscan energy, and healed the cuts. The body-severing cut remained intact. The clones were the same size as Kash¡¯s normal body, they just had halved density. Thus, the energy spilled out faster because there was less keeping it in. In one body, lightning energy spillage was halved. Knife Guy wasn¡¯t even using the dimension-severing slash again. With the Knife Amalgamation actively collapsing, the most logical move would be to use it while he still could. Knife Guy on his own almost certainly couldn¡¯t pull off that attack. Kash¡¯s fourth-dimensional vision was gone, but he could see that the Knife Amalgamation was coming apart. The metal armor split off into individual Knife Clones and Knife Guy spun into the air and out of the dividing Knife Amalgamation. Kash immediately hit him with a speed-enhanced lightning strike, which Knife Guy was unable to dodge. Kash¡¯s lightning energy had dropped to 51%. Dozens of Knife Clones swarmed him. Kash blasted them away and then was attacked by Knife Guy again, dealing surface wounds on his back. Kash heard a rumbling sound below him, and barely jumped out of the way. The meat worm burst from the ground, the Knife Clones jumping on top of it. Portals opened up and spilled out milk from the creature, the Knife Clones and meat worm gulping it all down. He had enough for another Dimension Displacement. Knife Guy probably couldn¡¯t use a dimensional slash now. In a fourth dimensional form, he could easily kill Knife Guy. The Hibiscan artifact was out of tricks. Without access to his ultimate knife form, he would easily lose. Displacing another lightning dimension and transforming into his fourth dimensional body was an insane gamble. But it was the only way to win. Otherwise, he would get ground down in a battle of attrition. The Knife Clones and the meat worm re-energized by milk from the creature would overwhelm him. And Knife Guy all the while would be knife-sniping him from afar. It would be a manageable situation, if not for the fact that he was rapidly leaking lightning. No, a second dimension displacement was the only option. It would be a gamble. Maybe turning into the fourth-dimensional form would cause the wound to get worse, to spew out Hibiscan energy even faster. Or the fourth-dimensional form might transcend the cut and heal him permanently. Regardless of the risks, it was the only way to win. Kash swirled a ball of lightning together. He compressed it so tightly that the electricity fused into a near-singularity. He agonizingly pushed it into the fourth dimension. He let the ball expand to a diameter of two inches, large enough for the fourth-dimensional lightning to begin stabilizing. It was time to properly activate it. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°Dimension Displacement: Boundless Revolving Tesseract of Lightning.¡± He forced fourth-dimensional lightning to expand into the space surrounding all of the combatants. He released his grip on it, corrupting that section of reality and displacing a dimension. Something was off. A crack formed in the dimension, splitting it in half. It collapsed again. ¡°Hah, weren¡¯t you listening!¡± yelled Knife Guy. ¡°Remember when I said that the dimension-severing slash made it so that being cut in half was a fundamental property of your body? The same thing happened to your Dimension Displacement.¡± Kash was down to 11% Hibiscan energy. His last ditch effort had failed. ¡°It¡¯s over,¡± said Knife Guy. There was no winning this fight. Knife Guy, the Knife Clones, the meat worm, and the supplemental milk from the creature were too powerful for him to resist. His Dimension Displacement was unusable and Knife Guy could simply slash open a normal Dimension Expulsion. Kash opened a tiny portal, testing to see if that still was blocked. It fizzled out immediately. The Umbra Crimers must have been keeping up the array of portal-blocking wards. He could simply run away. In his pure lightning form, he was extremely fast, nearly reaching 0.4c. However, he would have to run much slower than that to avoid his torso falling off. Kash hit Knife Guy with one more speed-infused discharge, before bolting in the opposite direction. Cuts kept appearing on him, Knife Guy precisely swinging at him. When Kash was ten miles away in less than a second, he split off half of his energy into a lightning clone who phased into the carbon. They both sped away from Knife Guy, but at slightly different angles. They were each at 5% Hibiscan energy. The underground clone mentally reached out to the Papa Pole. Kash, as a former owner of the Papa Pole, could request that he be given it back. That would appear as a message in Grzegorz¡¯s mind. He could use this to message him in Morse code. Of course, it was merely a request, it would not give him back the Papa Pole unless Grzegorz allowed it, which he wouldn¡¯t. But the volume of requests would be suspicious, and Grzegorz would certainly notice Kash was trying to communicate. He sent out ¡°Knife Guy, carbon plains, meat worm, Knife Clones, milk creature, don¡¯t say I¡¯m alone, Knife Amalgamation, dimension severing slash, probably working for tortoise¡±. On the surface, Kash¡¯s hands slipped on the blood, causing him to tumble to the ground as he lost grip of his torso. His legs sped off for over 4 miles before he stopped them. He ran them back and plopped himself back on them. Kash snuck a glance behind him and saw that Knife Guy had risen miles up into the air. Kash had traveled far enough that Knife Guy was briefly blocked by the circumference of the Earth. Hundreds of portals opened up around him. Kash needed only to zap them with minimal lightning, and they destabilized and broke apart. That was just a distraction, though. Knife Guy opened up several more cuts on Kash. He was at 2% energy. The bisection bled profusely while he was running, and the hundreds of other cuts also contributed. He had nothing left to do besides distract Knife Guy for a little while longer. ¡°I¡¯m alone,¡± said Kash. ¡°No,¡± said Knife Guy. ¡°You¡¯re not.¡± ¡°Who hired you,¡± Kash hacked up blood. ¡°My dying wish is to know.¡± ¡°Nope,¡± said Knife Guy, as he killed that lightning clone in one strike. Kash¡¯s remaining body sped underground, steadily oozing out Hibiscan energy and blood. The carbon layers cracked and broke open above him, Knife Guy continually pummeling them with his strikes. He had been found out. He tried to dodge and move around, but Knife Guy¡¯s slashes exposed the entire area surrounding him. He tried delving deeper into the carbon but was cut in half lengthwise, from the belly button to his jaw. Kash lay there in agony. An expression of pure rage contorted his face. He used Hibiscan energy to force his shattered jaw bones in the right place to speak. ¡°To think that I lost to a knife,¡± he sputtered out, coughing up blood. Leaking lightning stained the carbon beneath him. ¡°I shit talked you a lot. But you were the strongest opponent I¡¯ve faced since the Second Battle of Heaven three hundred years ago.¡± Kash was stunned. ¡°Y-you were involved in that?¡± he coughed out, spitting up blood. ¡°You¡¯re about to die, so I might as well tell you. I fought alongside Kambili as we faced the demonic Heavenly Beasts.¡± The four Heavenly Beasts consisted of the Five-Headed Tortoise, the Feces-Eating Dog, the Spiral Lion, and the Infinite Rabbit. The latter two turned to demonic cultivation and established sects that wreaked havoc in the Hibiscan world. When the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect had conquered the world, only the Spiral Lion Sect and Infinite Rabbit Sect stood opposed to its rule. Kambili declared war on them. As their armies of cultivators battled across the world, the righteous Heavenly Beasts fought the demonic Heavenly Beasts. But the Five-Headed Tortoise could not fight, for its mortal wound meant that any significant movement would cause its instant death. Instead, it detached the Snake. It possessed only a fraction of the strength of the Tortoise, but was still powerful. Thus, Kambili, the Feces-Eating Dog, and the Snake fought the Spiral Lion and the Infinite Rabbit. In the end, the Spiral Lion and Infinite Rabbit were severely and permanently weakened, but at the cost of Kambili sacrificing his life. The Infinite Rabbit was reduced to only a few rabbit bodies and was still at half strength or less in the current year. The Spiral Lion had a spiral-shaped hole drilled into its body, barely surviving the attack. In the war on the ground, the demonic alliance was beaten back, and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect emerged as the undisputed world hegemon. ¡°Kambili forged me. Not just me, but the meat worm and the creature. We were designed as part organic, part inorganic Hibiscan creations. When merged together, we would become the Knife Amalgamation.¡± Kash was on the verge of death. He looked up at Knife Guy, a glazed look in his eye, and coughed up more blood. ¡°The Lion was nearly killed by a dimension-severing slash. After the battle was over, it saved its life with demonic methods. But it could never fully heal that spiral-shaped wound.¡± Kash looked down at his own cut. The way it gouged flesh was distinctly spiraled. And he understood the true nature of the dimension-severing slash. For it spiraled in and out of every dimension, cutting everything in its path. He had never stood a chance of victory against Kambili¡¯s legacy. ¡°You were a worthy opponent, Kash.¡± Knife Guy executed him with a final slash. 20. The Tortoise and the Corpses Knife Guy emerged in the dedicated portal room of the Crime Factory. If sentient knives could feel tired, he would have been. Next to him, a portal opened up and dumped Kash¡¯s corpse, to be given to the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. The Knife Clones were sent through portals as well. Knife Guy commanded one to hold him. He didn¡¯t love floating around in the air, instead preferring to be held by a Knife Clone that he controlled. A man with reddish-brown hair and light stubble awaited Knife Guy. He had a long scar stretching down from his hair and through his left eye. ¡°Congratulations.¡± ¡°Thanks, Gael.¡± ¡°Laertes will be able to meet with us in just a minute. And the fourth member of the Criming Council is... occupied.¡± ¡°I understand.¡± Gael went silent, deeply pondering something. Knife Guy spoke up. ¡°He deserved the title of the strongest. His dimension displacement was unfathomably powerful.¡± Gael started walking, Knife Guy following him. ¡°That¡¯s to be expected from a Dimension Displacement. It¡¯s much more powerful than a Dimension Expulsion, and only a few cultivators can even pull it off. We couldn¡¯t observe the fight when the dimension was displaced. What happened?¡± ¡°I nearly died from two hits. I just barely got in the dimension-severing slash.¡± ¡°Our Hibiscan instruments picked up reverberations from the dimension-severing slash. Everyone else will know too, soon.¡± Knife Guy smiled. ¡°It will damage the reputation of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect. It will be assumed they paid us to kill Kash.¡± ¡°Pushing them closer to us, as planned.¡± They emerged into the grand atrium of the Crime Factory. It was a clashing of architectural styles: corrugated metal and raw concrete were shaped into Corinthian columns that held up the roof. The new moon held itself above the skylight. Milk from the creature coursed through pulsating tubes of flesh that wrapped around the pillars. The creature was less obviously biomechanical than Knife Guy. At first glance, it was entirely organic. But its milk contained nano machines powered by Hibiscan energy. The body of the creature itself was made of those nanobots, and so it and its milk were merely the solid and liquid forms, respectively, of itself. It could disperse itself into milk or coalesce milk into a body. It was Kambili¡¯s final project, left untitled before his death. Gael, to honor Kambili, refused to name the creature, instead merely referring to it as ¡°the creature¡±. Gael was a legendary figure. He was one of a scant few that were in Kambili¡¯s inner circle. But after the Second Battle of Heaven, he disgraced himself by stealing the three sentient Hibiscan artifacts and running away, thus establishing his reputation as a thief. Laertes walked in and sheathed his foil. He glowed with the aura of a peak-tier Kambili, one of now five in the world. He was still dressed in immaculately clean fencing attire. ¡°That took a while,¡± he commented. ¡°You didn¡¯t do any of the actual work,¡± said Knife Guy. ¡°Just busy aura farming here, I guess.¡± ¡°Is the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect here already?¡± he asked, ignoring Knife Guy¡¯s comment. ¡°They¡¯re on their way,¡± said Knife Guy. ¡°Good. Let¡¯s get to the chamber.¡±
The three present Crimers sat on a couch, microphones placed on the table in front of them. On the wall lay a television displaying a grainy video feed of the room the entourage from the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect were once again in. It was a clever construction with Hibiscan energy and bore little technological resemblance to traditional pre-Hibiscan TVs. ¡°They¡¯re even more nervous than last time,¡± Knife Guy commented, pressing a button that muted all of their mics. ¡°With little reason,¡± said Gael. ¡°It can be assumed that Lubomir and Katarzyna can displace a dimension.¡± He glanced at Laertes with a smirk as he said that. ¡°They could take us in a fight,¡± noted Laertes, ignoring the jab. He hadn¡¯t bothered any practice with a dimension expulsion, let alone a dimension displacement. Such things were apparently less honorable than the pure swordfighting he favored. Laertes would only agree to battle an opponent if they made a Bondage Vouch in which they would stick to a strict set of rules that meant they wouldn¡¯t use an expulsion or displacements.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Lubomir had been hashing out the exact terms of the deal. The number of corpses had been decided at 500 Aunty Ifeomas, 300 Ade Cokers, 100 Jajas, 40 Eugenes, and 10 Kambilis. The Red Dragon slowly flew above his head in a circle as he pondered. ¡°I believe that¡¯s everything,¡± Lubomir said. ¡°Satisfactory,¡± Knife Guy said. ¡°Instruct your people to open the portals.¡± The Tortoise Sect delegation didn¡¯t move. ¡°Knife Guy?¡± asked Lubomir. ¡°What,¡± he responded. ¡°The deal is concluded. Transfer the corpses.¡± An awkward silence followed. ¡°We agree to the deal,¡± said Lubomir. ¡°Yeah, I already said that,¡± said Knife Guy. ¡°Just open the portals already.¡± ¡°This silent treatment aura farming bullshit isn¡¯t going to work on us. If you renege on the deal, we¡¯ll kill you. You know that your sect wouldn¡¯t be able to stand against our full might.¡± Knife Guy belatedly realised that their mics were still muted. ¡°Of course we agree,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s a highly mutually beneficial arrangement.¡± ¡°Whatever you say,¡± said Lubomir, who waved his hand as portals opened behind him.
The Cracked Shell Council convened underneath the belly of the Five-Headed Tortoise. Katarzyna had departed to her sect. As the leader of a tributary sect, she was not a full member of the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect and wasn¡¯t privy to the highest tier of information. Such was Lubomir¡¯s belief in the importance of what the Snake would say that he didn¡¯t want Katarzyna there. If it ended up being less important than he thought, then he would tell her. But he wouldn¡¯t take the risk. It was just Lubomir, Wen, Stefan, and Iwan, suffocated by dead silence. The Snake hadn¡¯t deigned to appear yet, despite the warm corpse of Kash oozing blood onto the floor. ¡°That last time it was like this was over a hundred years ago,¡± whispered Iwan. He was the Chief Hibiscologist of the sect, and had served under the previous sect leader. ¡°It can only mean one thing - the five heads of the Tortoise are divided in what they should say. One can only imagine their deba-¡± The Snake erupted from its place of emergence in the belly, darting towards Kash and slurping the cadaver with its tongue before arching its head back to swallow. ¡°Speak,¡± declared Lubomir. It flicked its forked tongue. ¡°Do you know why Kambili made the deal with us?¡± Lubomir¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Of course. He needed information, you needed sustenance.¡± ¡°The body of a cultivator who once held one of the Celestial Dragons is permanently imbued with a trace of its essence, even after the power has completely vanished. Every time we eat one, we gain the leftover Hibiscan knowledge. We get one step closer to solving the problem.¡± With that last sentence, it used its head to gesture in the direction of the gaping wound the Five-Headed Tortoise had received centuries ago. ¡°Everything we eat only delays death. The true goal is to once again have the eternal life of a Heavenly Beast. He would help us get immortality, and in return, we would help him with the same goal.¡± Lubomir gasped in shock. ¡°Did you succeed?¡± ¡°We prevented his death, in a manner of speaking. I suppose you would call it hibernation. Think of what we did to him as a more advanced version of Saddam Hussein¡¯s lifespan extension.¡± ¡°So he can be brought back.¡± ¡°Not easily. But from what we learned from consuming the corpse, we¡¯re nearly there.¡± ¡°How soon? And what would you need?¡± ¡°The corpse of another cultivator that had a Celestial Dragon. But theoretically, an enormous supply of Hibiscan herbs would be sufficient.¡± ¡°I-I see,¡± said Lubomir, his mind reeling with the possibilities. ¡°We are on the precipice of greatness,¡± the Snake hissed, and coiled itself back into the belly of the Tortoise in an eyeblink. The four cultivators stood in silence. Finally, Lubomir opened a purple portal and walked in, the rest following. They emerged into the meeting chamber of the Cracked Shell Council and took their seats. Lubomir spoke up. ¡°Evidently, our options are thus: Kill Czeslaw, or raid their herb stockpiles. One is much more practical than the other.¡± ¡°It would mean war with them either way,¡± Wen commented. . The spymaster looked disturbed. ¡°Considering the current political situation, another global conflict seems imminent. We need to strike as soon as possible while we have the advantage.¡± ¡°The noose tightens around our neck even as we speak,¡± commented Stefan. ¡°Eugene is back and the Jade Alliance is stronger than ever. I agree that we need decisive action.¡± ¡°My spies in the demonic sects tell me they¡¯re already on a war footing. Their search for Eugene continues,¡± said Wen. ¡°So, me, Katarzyna, and Saddam jump Czeslaw and kill him?¡± asked Lubomir. ¡°It¡¯s not the worst plan of all time. I would get the Blue and Purple Dragons again, and the Jade Alliance would lose its only peak-tier Kambili stage cultivator.¡± Stefan shook his head. ¡°Such a brazen act of aggression would unite the entire Hibiscan world against us. The Jade Alliance could easily make an under-the-table agreement with the demonic sects to try to fight us. Considering the current internal dissent among the subsidiary sects of our sect, a few might join their side. Even with a revived Kambili, I¡¯m not sure we could win that war.¡± ¡°Certainly not with Eugene on their side,¡± Iwan commented. ¡°Raiding their herb supplies, while still an act of war, wouldn¡¯t be quite so compelling of a casus belli¡± said Stefan, ¡°and our own credibility wouldn¡¯t suffer as much.¡± ¡°I concur,¡± said Wen. Lubomir sighed. ¡°I¡¯m going to have to overrule you. The advantages of killing Czeslaw are simply too immense.¡± The room was silent. ¡°We¡¯ll jump him in the next few days, whenever he¡¯s most vulnerable. Katarzyna will have to be brought into the loop on this, otherwise she wouldn¡¯t agree to fight him. We might be able to involve Saddam, although likely he¡¯ll be honor-bound not to participate.¡± Lubomir looked at each of them in turn. ¡°This meeting is concluded.¡±