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On a base level, Jin was not a particularly violent man.
The sensibilities of the way he'd grown up simply hadn't left him yet, despite the fact that he'd now spent more than a year in a world where life was often cheaper than dirt.
But there was one thing that would make him prone to violence, and that was betrayal.
Xiao and Biri, both of those fuckheads, had almost gotten him killed.
If he hadn't been as good at fighting.
If Hashimi hadn't run back to save him
If, if, if.
There was just something about putting your life in the hands of other people, fighting for them, and then being let down in the end.
Jin wished that he could have fought both Biri and Xiao.
Unfortunately, Biri was already out, which left only the other rat.
The crowd booed as Scumbag Jin hopped off the large stone chain and landed in the arena.
The bald monk on the other side received lukewarm applause at his entrance.
Jin had spent a bit of the evening yesterday working on Skyrim, but the rest of his time had been spent perfecting a certain technique.
It might come in handy.
Without preamble, the Blazing Fire Sect elder serving as a referee started the fight and disappeared off the platform.
"You know, Xiao, I really didn't expect that betrayal from a Mad Monks disciple. If any sect must have had more ethics, I thought it would be that one," Jin started while Xiao warily held up his staff in a defensive position.
Jin's eyes searched the stands where the Elders of the sects were seated and found the orange-robed woman representing the Mad Monks Sect. He didn't recognise her, but the look she was throwing at him was empty of any judgment or condemnation.
Elder Flower, meanwhile, was sinking lower into her seat and covering her face.
"Those who spit in the face of morality eventually find their just desserts, that is the will of the heavens," Xiao replied with an angry voice.
Jin couldn't help but laugh. "I'm sorry. Have I ever done anything immoral?" He spread out his arms, lance held aloft.
"The mortals you traumatised back at th-," Xiao started before Jin interrupted him.
"I saved them!" Jin screamed, but remained careful to not spill any secrets that weren't his to share. "What's a little scare in comparison to death? If you want to enter the world of cultivation, you need resolve. All I did was test them, and they were all lacking!"
Xiao's face remained set in stone. "You're nothing but a monster," he spat. "You'll always find a justification to fulfil your sadistic desires. Does finding opportunities where you can excuse torturing others by saying it was for their own good make you feel better about yourself?"
"Heavens," Jin cursed, realising the depth of his opponent's cognitive dissonance. "I see I screwed up. You might have resolve, but that's primarily because your mind is twisted."
"This talk isn't going anywhere," Xiao said impatiently. "Let's just fight already."
"I don't like fighting," Jin replied. "We had chemistry in that mission, but I see you're just an irredeemable shithead. Today I'll show you why monsters go to jail but traitors get the rope."
"You're a sadist," Xiao replied simply, and there was no thought behind those black eyes of his. Just hatred.
Jin shook his head.
Fundamentally.
In a world that lacked even the lowest common standard of education, most people you'd meet would be irredeemably mentally deficient, lacking even the basic wisdom to examine their own thinking.
Jin suddenly spun, dodging the staff that had suddenly extended towards his head.
He saw out of the corner of his eye as Xiao violently spun his body, causing the extended staff to violently change direction and follow Jin.
The Illusion Room disciple ducked before jumping further back.
"I've trained with your sect leader," Jin said with a scoff once he'd retreated out of Xiao's reach. "Do you really think you have anything to show me? The further away I am, the more qi it takes to extend that thing. If I simply stay out of your range, you'll fall like a tired dog before even touching my robes."
Xiao distracted the staff and stared at Jin. Then he stamped the butt of the staff on the ground, where he let it go so that it could stand on its own. He put his hands together in a praying motion and started chanting.
Jin liked to follow the battle decision-making process of: if your enemy was trying to do something, don't let them.
That's why the moment he saw Xiao putting his hands together, he was already flying at him with a burst of qi from his back.
Unfortunately, he was too late, and the tip of the lance that he'd thrust forward at the end of his burst was blocked by the sudden appearance of a large tree in the place where the staff had stood.
Jin quickly retracted his lance by spinning before it could get stuck in the wood and noted how the large tree suddenly sprouted roots which spread out to cover the entirety of the arena in a geometric pattern.
Some sort of mandala.
"Fucking cosplayer," Jin scoffed as he jumped back to observe the situation. The tree, now rooted firmly in the middle of the arena, was large.
About as tall as a house, with a crown just as wide. The roots were strong and pulsing with life force.
In essence.
There was no way an outer disciple had cast such a spell.
"Artefact," Jin concluded simply as Xiao emerged from behind the trunk, unarmed.
"The heavens conspired against you by giving me this opportunity," the boy informed him. "This proves your wickedness."
"What are you," Jin scoffed, "a fortune cookie? It's time to return those books on determinism to the library. It's been half a year and you've clearly only read the first page."
Xiao didn't answer and simply jumped forward with his hands extended outwards as if he were holding a staff.
Jin went to meet him, channelling qi into his brain to sharpen his senses and increase his rate of perception.
Everything slowed.
As Jin swept at Xiao with his lance, the boy held up his empty hands in a block. Then, the moment the lance was going to pass through the empty space the boy was creating with his hands, a staff suddenly materialised there as if it had always been there.
Or rather.
The staff was, in fact, a root that had shot up from beneath where the two of them were fighting.
Xiao let go of the root and swung his empty hands at Jin, another root flowing upwards as quickly as a raging river and filling his hands with the boy's weapon of choice.
Jin parried with his lance, but he'd only parried a staff that Xiao had already let go off. The boy was already coming at him with another.
The fight continued like that for a few moments, irreparably altered by the unlimited arsenal of weapons available to Xiao.
It was fundamentally different to fight someone who could let go of a weapon, swing, and then immediately have a new one in hand.
Jin had enough mental space to wonder why Xiao wasn't simply attacking him with all the roots, but then concluded that the boy likely just wasn't advanced enough and could only control the artefact that he had received in conjunction with the martial arts that he had learned.
Regardless of anything, however, due to the effect of the artefact coming from itself, the one who was being outlasted here was actually Jin.
After all, to keep up with Xiao's unlimited staff work, Jin had to accelerate his brain and body while strengthening the whole structure.
Jin did note one thing, however. Every root that had sprung up to serve as a staff remained frozen in the position in which Xiao had let go of it.
That meant… if Jin made Xiao use all of the roots spread across the arena, the artefact's effect might run its course.
They fought, lance clashed against staff, and an enforced shin was used to deflect an enforced elbow.
As they continued exchanging blows in a ruthless match of stamina and perseverance, the arena was turning more and more into a prison realm of jutting roots formed in the shape of staves.
At the same time as Xiao was trying to deplete Jin's qi, Jin was trying to deplete Xiao's artefact.
As more and more roots surged upwards, the two combatants were forced closer and closer together.
Space became a luxury, and the previously somewhat straightforward exchange of blows gained elements of a professional game of catch, with all the obstacles involved.
Jin thought he'd have the advantage as the space disappeared due to his ability to contort his body in an unnatural way due to his puppeteering technique, but Xiao made up for his part by seemingly having a sort of supernatural awareness of where the roots were at any given time, even if they were literally in his blind spot. He weaved and ducked through the prison bars with jerky movements that displayed an unnatural perception, while Jin flowed through the bars like a snake, always angling his lance to somehow come through with him despite the fact that it was the most unwieldy weapon he could wield in this scenario.
Both of them were short of breath when the final root finally shot upward, and Xiao retreated backwards to hide behind several others in the direction of the tree.
"That's all the roots gone, stiffy," Jin said through gritted teeth. "What now?"
Xiao glared at him angrily with empty hands.
The entire arena resembled a modern art installation at this point.
Then the crown of the tree started glowing.
Or rather, its leaves started glowing a bright, shiny brown.
Then they exploded. Not literally, in this case, but rather, they all shot up to cover the sky with shining brown leaves. Hundreds of thousands of them.
Jin hopped up to land on one of the roots while Xiao did the same.
Xiao was once again holding up his hands as if he were holding a staff.
Jin suddenly got the suspicion that the leaves would turn into staves.
They did. Xiao rushed him, a small leaf suddenly turning into a staff in his hands.
Jin parried, Xiao let go of the staff, which promptly fell and fused with one of the roots to further enlarge the prison bar structure they'd been creating for the last few minutes.
Scowling Jin spun his staff in the air as he retreated, creating a strong wind effect that granted him a moment of respite as it blew away the leaves around the two combatants.
However, the moment the leaves touched one of the roots, they enlarged and continued growing the structure.
The battle turned three-dimensional as the ground became out of reach.
The wooden stave forest grew to a height of three meters. Then four. Then five.
By the time Jin was finally subdued in a prison of wooden staves blocking off every part of his body and locking him in, the forest had grown to twelve meters in height.
"What a ridiculous artefact," Jin scoffed as he strained to break free from his bondage, but couldn't.
Xiao stood before him warily, out of weapons.
All the leaves had fallen.
There didn't seem to be a next stage.
It was over.
"What, too scared to come over and finish me off?" Jin asked with a bloody grin. One of the earlier blows had split his lip right before Xiao had rapidly materialised staves all around him to entrap him in his current prison.
"Too proud to surrender?" Xiao asked, between heaving breaths.
The boy hadn't even been spending his own qi for most of that spectacle, and he had the gall to be tired, Jin thought with a sneer. He dutifully ignored the fact that he was an entire cultivation stage higher than his opponent.
Jin raised his head proudly. "I'm no coward," he lied through gritted teeth.
Xiao nodded once, put a hand inside his orange robe and pulled out a small bone dagger from the folds. "Then your reign of terror ends today," he said succinctly before lunging forward and thrusting it towards Jin's heart.
That's when Jin did something that he probably shouldn't have. He should have just surrendered.
Instead, he gambled.
The self-pupeteering technique that prequelled full templating took control of the muscles away from the body, and put it in the hands of the qi. There was a difference.
There were some things the body simply couldn't do.
But if the body stuck to the qi, it could go places it otherwise couldn't.
Jin knew that Xiao was expecting an illusion at this crucial stage of the fight. After all, that was what Jin had done last time.
Instead, Jin compressed every single one of his bones, muscles, cells and arteries into a tight ball.
He shrunk in size with a disgusting squelch of failing flesh and wiggled out of his prison like a worm.
Then, once he was out, he decompressed his body, reattached the broken nerves, fixed the bent bones and in general returned to normal.
Well, not normal. He was in an excruciating amount of pain. But despite that, he stood on the staves underneath and faced Xiao's charge.
Xiao was stunned by what had happened in the span of less than a second, but had already committed to thrusting out the arm with the dagger.
Jin thrust his palm at the dagger and used qi to lock his fingers on Xiao's fist tighter than a vice.
He threw the suddenly off-kilter boy a bloody grin.
His head smashed forward to deliver the headbutt of a lifetime.
Xiao's nose gave a delicious crunch, and the boy flew back.
Jin's grip on the hand holding the dagger prevented Xiao from leaving his range, which meant that a fist promptly smashed into a liver, a knee into a knee and a leg into a pair of balls.
There was no grace, there was no technique.
Jin simply dragged Xiao down onto the mutilated floor and beat the shit out of the boy as they fell through the staves. There was blood. There were broken bones. There was pain.
It was unclear who was winning, who was losing.
They hit the floor after tumbling through hundreds of wooden bars. Then, a black shield suddenly sprang up from the ring on Xiao's left hand. It covered his body, rejected Jin's palm and the dagger and separated the two fighters hidden from the audience by the forest.
Xiao blinked his eyes open, just that they weren't black anymore, but red.
Jin promptly stabbed at his opponent, going right for the neck. But Xiao's dagger was halted in mid-air by the black shield surrounding the boy.
"I surrender!" the boy suddenly shouted with a voice that wasn't his while leering at Jin.
As the flames of the referee incinerated all the wood surrounding them, Xiao, or rather, not-Xiao, gave Jin a farewell smile. "I respect your work, even if my foolish host doesn't. The terror… It was inspiring. Personally, I hope we will have a chance to collaborate in the future. Or rather, very soon. The boy's mental defences were always weak, but his reaction to you? Shattering." He laughed one last time before the flames around them dissipated, leaving behind an untouched arena. Then he closed his eyes and fell limp.
Jin was left standing there with his dagger held at the throat of an unconscious opponent.
The referee was staring down at him disapprovingly. And despite the fact that the man looked ridiculous with his yellow, orange and red hair, Jin gulped.
He quietly retreated the dagger.
"This is totally not what it looks like," Jin tried to explain himself.
The referee rolled his eyes and picked up Xiao.
"Next time, don't get caught," the man whispered to Jin before disappearing with the unconscious Mad Monk disciple.
Jin was left standing there in the middle of the arena. Alone. The crowd started booing.
"My body hurts too," Jin complained quietly. After all, he'd broken and repaired it in several pieces. "Where's my princess carry?"
The crowd booed louder.
Jin struggled and left the arena with a limp.
Despite beating Xiao within an inch of the boy's life, he didn't feel any better. He didn't understand what had happened in the end.
And that worried him.
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AN: That's Xiao beaten, ass handed to him by the goat. Anyway, if you want to read ahead up to 16 chapters? There's Patreon, as a sidenote, it also helps me not be homeless!