Moon Cultivation [Sci-fi Xianxia]

The other Sullivan reignited my interest in tournaments.

Clearly it had been too long since anyone had punched me in the gut.

I could have saved time by just asking Dubois or Cinar to stab me a few times.

Or I could have gone for a few duels like Denis and Bao were doing, but that wasn't nearly as fun.

I'd got the hang of Heavenly Fist and wanted to drop it on someone. And besides, I was tired of constantly looking over my shoulder for Thyzreth. I needed a few small victories to settle my nerves. So I began training seriously, and my lads, including Marlon, mostly Marlon, since he had given up hope of passing the culling, helped me with it.

Denis and Bao gave me less attention because of their duels. After topping up their balances by collecting scrap, they started behaving more recklessly, taking duels against roughly equal opponents with stakes of 100–200 points.

Each of them won two such fights, then got cocky, overreached, and lost the third. Not on purpose, though both swore up and down that it had been planned in order to drop their rating.

Marlon and I just smiled at that, but Zola outright called it bullshit. Denis didn't seriously argue, especially since Bao barked back for both of them.

Still, it made them slow down and take their next fights more seriously.

Denis's next opponent was Hu Long. An incredibly arrogant cadet. Our first meeting with him had been quite the show. We were sitting in the cafeteria, having dinner, when he came up.

"Denis Rain?" he asked challengingly, arms folded across his chest. On the backs of his hands, which he was deliberately showing off, were the dragon heads.

Denis raised a brow. "Who's asking?"

"I am Hu Long! Do you dare accept my challenge to a duel?"

We exchanged looks, as if doubting we'd heard him right.

"Do I dare?" Denis repeated.

"Yes!"

"Send the request, you'll find out. Two hundred points, set that in the application."

The arrogant sod hesitated, but did as told.

"Well?" he asked.

"Mate, I'm eating," Denis said. "I'll look at your request later."

"Just as I thought!" Hu Long snorted.

"Mate, go fuck yourself," Bao advised him. "And tone down the theatrics."

"The mistake of Bao family, do you want a challenge as well?"

"Yeah, send it," Bao agreed spitefully.

Denis shot him a warning look not to do anything stupid, but Bao didn't. Like Denis, he simply said he'd review the challenge later.

Hu Long kept yammering at us, so it was my turn to flash my assistant supervisor card. I told him he could withdraw his requests if he wished, but if he kept disturbing us I'd be forced to fine him.

He muttered something about cowards, but didn't bother us any further.

Who was this Hu Long? Just a newcomer to duelling. He'd only had three matches. Three duels — three wins, which had hugely inflated his ego.

In the tournament rankings he didn't shine. He hadn't taken part at all, but he fancied himself a descendant of dragons, or a dragon among men.

The lad had a fixation on dragons. First of all, Asian-style dragons were tattooed down his arms, with their heads inked onto the backs of his hands.

As if every strike was a dragon's bite!

There was even a rumour that all his techniques had the word 'Dragon' in their names: Dragon's Teleporting Fist, Dragon's Steps, Dragon's Breath, and so on.

Denis accepted his challenge. Bao wasn't in a rush.

Denis and Hu Long agreed to meet the next day.

Hu Long strode onto the arena wearing a self-satisfied grin. Usually fighters entered with their visors closed, so no one could see what was going on underneath, but this one wanted people to see his face. His visor mimicked a dragon's head, his gauntlets and boots were painted with claws, and his otherwise black armour had silver scales engraved across it.

The referee ordered him to close his visor and immediately waved his hand, signalling the start.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Denis wasted no time and charged straight in, leading with his elbow. Hu Long, caught up in his theatrics, barely reacted in time, leaping aside and leaving a cloud of dust behind.

It looked a lot like Monkey, specifically the Mad Monkey of East, but it was hard to judge from a single move.

Denis's dim golden projection, elbow thrust forward, shot past. Denis himself hung in that posture for a moment, as always happens after using a dash technique, and Hu Long countered with a series of fast projections.

Not as fast as Chain Punches, but the trio still reached Denis before he'd recovered. That's when I learned Denis had acquired a defensive formation. The shoulder, Hu's fists were flying at, bristled with long golden energy spikes.

Hu's projections detonated without touching the armour. Denis swayed, then recovered. He turned and rushed in again.

The opponents struck at each other in high-speed mode, slowly drifting to the right. Silver fists met golden palms and detonated. The fighters began circling, and very quickly a cloud of silver-gold qi hung between them, mixing, dissolving, and settling on the arena floor.

From time to time something stronger tore through the cloud, or past it, but the formations on both sides kept their users safe.

Hu Long quickly grew bored and took a step into the air. It really was a step, not a jump. Two, three, four, five! He kept climbing as though walking up invisible stairs.

That definitely wasn't Monkey.

Hu Long moved more slowly, but more steadily. He looked as if he were taking a casual stroll through the sky, sneering as he observed from above. An arrogant technique for an arrogant cadet.

I still couldn't figure out what he was trying to achieve.

He activated a shield and switched to stronger projections. Fewer generated, but they flew faster — straight shots. Still, it changed nothing. Denis kept up with his movements easily. Palm Qi had reinforced his body, so he managed to dodge the vast majority of shots, while Hu Long had to rely solely on his formation. In the air he was an easy target, so Denis also began pelting him with stronger techniques.

I'd already made up my mind about this fool, but he forced me to change it.

He suddenly dashed in mid-air and, keeping his altitude, shifted behind Denis's back, struck, shifted again, struck, shifted again.

Denis was thrown off for a moment, turning several times after his opponent while staying in place. A few detonations clipped him, even though the fists blew up against his spikes rather than the armour itself.

My friend staggered but held his balance, and instead of playing by Hu's rules and spinning on the spot, he leapt right, then left. Now Hu wasn't landing anything.

That technique was clearly draining him, so he dropped back to the ground, dismissed his shield, and sent a lone lazy projection at Denis. Denis dodged easily.

A second, a third… he sped up so much that the fifth projection clipped Denis's shoulder and nearly floored him.

Too much power for that kind of speed…

That was an ult!

Hu Long unleashed a true barrage: dozens of silver fists in fractions of a second — an endless silver stream under the howl of the wind.

Denis's formation couldn't keep up; it wasn't regenerating fast enough! Another moment, and the hail would sweep him away. But Denis did not retreat.

Instead, he lunged forward, taking half the barrage on his left shoulder. He aimed a little to Hu's right but didn't make it, the hail still brought him down and Denis rolled across the ground.

Yet he rolled close enough to, in the decisive moment, catch his opponent's left leg like a pair of pincers and, using the momentum, spin once more to slam him onto his back.

The opponent's ultimate raked the sky like a machine-gun burst and then cut off.

Denis was the first back on his feet and leapt away. While Hu followed, Denis had already spread his arms. The air trembled. To Denis's left and right appeared two enormous golden palms. They reached their sharpest clarity just as Hu Long was rising to his feet.

Then Denis brought his arms together.

The golden palms clapped shut around Hu Long without losing cohesion. A dull thump echoed across the arena. His formations weren't enough to stop that!

Hu Long staggered and dropped to one knee, still caught in the grip of the phantom golden hands. The more he struggled, the more Palm Qi seeped into his body. So he froze.

Denis could no longer hold the ult, but Hu Long had no strength left to resist. Denis dashed again. And this time, Hu Long, proud son of the Dragon, failed to dodge his elbow, taking it straight on his dragon-visor and sprawling across the floor.

The referee declared victory, and Bao opened his interface to accept the duel request that had been hanging there since that dinner.

"I think I'll deal with him faster than Denis did," he said to me.

Hu Long dragged out the next fight for a week. Three days he spent in the pod, and four building his courage, but against Bao he came out with his visor firmly closed. His look was proud, but his movements betrayed caution.

Bao, on the other hand, lifted his visor and grinned wide, attacking his opponent mentally.

"Well then, 'son of the dragon', care to surrender? I won't be playing with you like Denis did."

To back up his words, Bao twirled his mace, unwound the head and let it slam onto the arena's plastic floor. The head landed with a crash as though it weighed a ton, and the plastic beneath it cracked.

At the second stage Bao had added Mace Qi to his techniques, and he'd become a much deadlier opponent.

The referee wasn't impressed with the mind games. Clearly eager to finish the job, he gave the signal without waiting for Bao's readiness.

This time the roles reversed somewhat, and it was Bao forced to dodge Hu Long's charge.

His fist flared silver, but the projection struck only empty air. Bao leapt, the macehead, pinned to the floor by Mace Qi, spun him aside, and a vine thrust him further away. He'd clearly even reduced his own weight to make the manoeuvre easier.

Hu Long froze with his fist extended, and Bao lashed out with the whip his mace had become, heavy-headed. The whip's head cracked against Hu Long's right shoulder, his defensive formation flared, but failed to hold, and the armour at the point of impact buckled.

Hu Long dropped to one knee.

The whip's head grew heavy again, and this time Bao coiled it into a knot, hauling himself towards his opponent.

Before Hu could mount any sort of response, or even get back up, Bao, sliding across the plastic floor feet-first, smashed into his more stable leg.

Hu tumbled over his opponent, and Bao sprang to his feet. A short, heavy swing of the twisted mace slammed into Hu's back as he tried to rise again. His armour's formation lit with dozens of protective shields, but they crumpled under the pressure. The armour dented, and Hu Long himself was driven into the floor.

Bao slowly raised the mace again, pouring more qi into the blow.

Smash! Smash! Smash!

Each time Hu Long's back flared with golden light, but each time Bao smeared his defence aside and dented the armour further.

Hu panicked, unable to break free of the trap.

"I surrender!" cried the son of the dragon.

Bao let the mace fall on him once more, then jumped aside and looked at the referee.

Later Denis claimed that Bao had only won so easily because he, Denis, had already broken Hu Long's spirit.