The Jade Shadows Must Die [Cultivation LitRPG]

Like the dive site, the arena was deep underground, accessed via a spiralling tunnel carved with precision into the earth. It was the sort of work you rarely saw in the Lantern District, mana-wrought work. As the path carried Rix lower, he began to hear something — the hum of great power vibrating through the soil and stone. Eventually, he was spat out into a vast room, bigger even than the yard above.

The spectacle of it caused his jaw to drop.

The space was divided into quadrants, each housing a cascading set of tiered seats. The closest section was further divided in two, with each side housing inmates from one half of the prison. The other three quadrants were slowly filling with people in all manner of uniforms and other finery, though at least two-thirds of the seats were currently empty. The place had to hold several thousand when full. Though Rix knew little of the machinations of the city's elite, even he recognised several of the Martial Corporations present, their insignias clear on their acolytes' robes. Emerald Lotus Medical were the city's most effective healers, assuming you could afford them. Then there was Cloudborne Agriculture, the largest farming corp in Cloudpiercer. It was rumoured their farm arrays fed more than a third of the city's populace all by themselves.

Rix's gaze was drawn to the intricate network of glowing blue runes that crisscrossed the floor, walls and even parts of the seating. As he looked closer, he could see the faint glow of some kind of energy field dividing each quadrant cleanly. A shielding array. With the presence of so many criminals, it made sense. The law-abiding spectators were here to watch the riff-raff bleed, not to engage with them.

And in the centre of the room was where that bleeding would take place. The arena. A raised platform of worn stone and sand about fifty feet square, stained dark in places with the spoils of countless duels. This, too, was surrounded by an array which was anchored to stone pillars that stood at each corner of the ring. The runes on these pillars glowed a different colour, a pale green, like forest light, and they rippled with barely contained power.

The quadrant closest to him was already mostly full of prisoners whooping and shouting and behaving like punters at a soulshot match. He'd intentionally delayed his arrival until the last possible moment. Though there was a small army of guards about — at least two dozen posted mostly around the inmate's section — he still didn't fancy being in close proximity to Yutaro or his friends.

Scaling the seating, Rix snagged a spot towards the back and settled in to take in proceedings. From his vantage, he could see a staging area below the inmate's quadrant of the stands. Two prisoners were already down there in talks with a prison official in white. After a brief conversation, the two summoned their weapons as the man in white stepped into the arena and raised a hand. He had a slim build for a Martial Soul, with narrow angular cheeks and perfectly coiffed hair. His outfit was a step above that of the other prison officials, with long flared sleeves and legs and a variety of gold adornments. Judging by the fact that many of the visiting audience were similarly dressed, Rix assumed that spoke to current fashion trends.

"Esteemed guests, ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to Spiritlock's weekly edition of the Clash Circuit!"

There was some light applause, although in truth it was somewhat underwhelming. Most of it came from the prisoners themselves. Was that really the normal level of enthusiasm? Rix didn't really know what to expect from the experience — he'd never seen proper duels between Martial Souls before — but he was at least a little excited to see what that looked like. Maybe it was tamer than he expected.

"We are mid-way through the current season, and the ladder is heating up! Each division is still wide open!" the announcer continued. "As this week is part of the mid-season break, you won't get to see all our competitors today, but the action will be as frantic as ever."

That maybe explained why there were so few people present. Rix would need to learn how the seasons were actually structured if he wanted to partake.

"As is customary, we begin proceedings with combatants of the Whisper tier. They may be weak, they may be destined to fall between a fadeborn's jaws, but right now they're here to battle for your entertainment! So let's give them a round of applause."

Again, a smattering of claps, but many in the crowd didn't even look away from their conversations. A couple of Whispers barely rated polite acknowledgement, apparently. The announcer did his best to press on.

"In the steel corner," he called, "for his first duel in this arena, I give you…Liu 'The Cleaver' Ox!"

More polite applause.

"And in the spirit corner, a victor of two previous bouts, 'The Lucky Fox', Wei Song." This woman received a slightly louder reception.

The two combatants stepped into the ring. At one end stood a thickly built man with hair down to his mid-back. In his hand, he held a brutal-looking curved axe, which he swung through the air several times with menace. For her part, the other woman looked calm. Small for a Martial Soul, perhaps only Rix's height, her weapon of choice was a thin one-handed jian. She didn't make a show of it, simply locking eyes with her opponent, her expression all steely determination. Rix didn't recognise either of them.

As the announcer continued to drone on, the man next to Rix leaned in close. "Who do you like?" he asked.

Rix glanced over at him. He was an older prisoner, maybe Tolson's age, but far more haggard. With lank, thinning hair and pale skin, he could almost be taken for a mortal. Despite his condition, his smile was wide. Rix shrugged. "I don't know. It's my first time."

The inmate's eyes widened fractionally. "Ah, well, you're in for a treat," he replied. "There's not much to look forward to around here, but arena day? You can almost forget where you are." He smiled. "And for the record, my coin would be on The Lucky Fox. That jian of hers moves like a serpent."

Rix studied him for a beat, then the clash of weapons drew his attention back down to the pit. The ringmaster had stepped back to the staging area, and the two inmates were now locked in a frantic melee.

Rix's jaw dropped open. While there was impressive artistry to the way they fought, it was the brutality that really shocked him. The man with the axe swung once, twice — heavy strikes aimed straight at the woman's neck. Had she not danced out of the way, she'd have been decapitated then and there. The skills Rix had seen from higher-level Martial Souls in the training area were far superior, but they were missing something compared to this. This was primal and decisive. Two people trying their absolute hardest to kill one another. The woman's counter was similarly fierce, lashing out with the tip of a blade, aiming to run the man clean through his chest. Though he managed to surge to the left, his mantle still flared as she scored a wicked cut across his bicep. Blood immediately began leaking onto the arena floor.

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"They're trying to kill each other," Rix gasped. "How is that allowed?"

His fellow inmate grinned and nodded to the closest of the four pillars that surrounded the arena. "That array. It's made by the Eternal Circle. Any death that happens inside won't stick."

Rix rocked back in his chair. He'd heard stories of Martial Souls with life-saving talismans, but the idea that they could create a space where death had no meaning was mind-boggling. Why not simply carry something like that with you at all times?

The man next to him seemed to read his expression, his smile widening. "The array is huge," he said. "It apparently extends a hundred feet underground. Took them months to get it right, and it needs a bleeding stupid amount of mana, especially if higher tier Martial Souls are fighting. It also apparently produces a ton of waste that they have to deal with. Not something anyone can just build for themselves."

The Eternal Circle was another corp Rix recognised. They built some of the most elaborate and powerful arrays in the city.

"How is that possible?" Rix asked.

The other man gestured to the red box that sat above the southern stand. "You arrived late and missed the customary introduction, but the arena here has two rotating sponsor corporations. Each week, one of their First Masters comes to provide their mana to power it. Up there right now is the First Master of The Eternal Circle himself, Tao Jin. He's an Omen."

The blood drained from Rix's face. An Omen — the rumoured pinnacle of power in Cloudpiercer Citadel. Though their exact number wasn't common knowledge, it was said they numbered less than fifty. That placed him just a rung on the Martial Path below the Ascendants themselves. "I don't think I've ever been so close to one before," Rix said. The man would be a true force of nature.

The other inmate nodded. "Nobody below Omen could run the array. Not with how much mana it costs to knit a Spark back together. Personally, I'm grateful. The people must have their sport."

As if to punctuate that statement, the battle below them came to a crescendo. The man unleashed another vicious series of axe slashes. The blade seemed to whistle through the air as it plunged towards his opponent's chest, and it was wreathed in some kind of dark energy that crackled crimson and black. But the Lucky Fox seemed to anticipate the move. Activating some kind of technique, she was temporarily engulfed in hazy blue light, accelerating backwards like a lightning bolt with no warning, causing the man's attack to find only open air. The sudden shift was enough to send him stumbling off balance, and that was all the swordswoman needed. Summoning a technique of her own, her sword suddenly burst into flame as it skewered him through the eye with a single thrust, shattering his mantle in the process.

Rix swallowed hard. It was the first time he'd witnessed a mantle take the full brunt of a technique. The Quartermaster had said it wasn't a pure shield so much as an extra impediment, but it didn't seem to do a lot for the axe-wielder. Had he not assigned any extra mana? Or was the woman's attack simply too strong? He'd need to test it more thoroughly because the exact way it worked would dictate a lot about the best way to use his mantle in proper martial combat.

As the loser's body dropped to the floor, there was a smattering of applause, including from the man next to Rix.

"Good fight. Good fight," he said, then to Rix, "I told you she had him."

Rix nodded absentmindedly, but his attention was still focused on the pit. He watched with morbid fascination as, after a few seconds, the man's body began to twitch. His wounded eye began to reconstitute itself and he seized violently there on the sand, letting out an anguished cry before sucking in a great breath. The woman had sustained a minor cut to the arm, and that, too, closed up. They truly were completely restored.

As the man dragged himself back to his feet, the announcer pushed back into the ring. "An excellent fight, the both of you!" he called. "But the Lucky Fox claims another scalp!" Despite having died just moments before, the inmate in the ring simply seemed annoyed that he'd lost. Picking up his axe, he shot the victor a vicious stare before stomping out of the ring.

The next few fights followed a similar pattern, with minor crowd interest, a little polite applause, but no significant buy-in from the spectators.

"Why does nobody seem to care?" Rix asked the man next to him at one point.

The man shrugged. "Most of them are here for the good stuff," he replied. "Whispers don't really cut it in their view, with one notable exception. Personally, I'm about it all. A good fight's a good fight."

Rix had to agree. With the shock of seeing people granted temporary immortality beginning to wear off, he found himself getting more and more invested in the spectacle. There was a scintillating brutality to it. The lack of true consequence added the kind of manic edge you just couldn't find anywhere else.

Each fight was so different as well — fresh combatants, new weapons, contrasting styles. Every bout offered something unpredictable. There were the two men wielding identical Shanic sabres who clashed in a flurry of savage offence and wild attacks. They were each bleeding from more than a dozen wounds by the time the fight reached its climax, one opening the other's throat with a clean slash that spilled his life out before him.

Then there was the woman with the spear and shield, a giant who used her range and defence to keep her opponent at bay. The other combatant, a slight woman who couldn't have been a year older than Rix, fought with chain knives. This was a battle of cat and mouse, a desperate jostling, a hunt for a mistake.

It was the woman with the spear who blinked first. Though her buckler offered her the perfect counter to the other woman's attacks, Rix could see her growing impatient. Chain Knives was slow and methodical, taking advantage of the tiniest of gaps. Eventually, with a hiss of frustration, the spear-wielder unleashed a full-body thrust designed to end the fight there and then, which it did, as the other woman's blades flashed with blinding white heat and took her clean through the chest.

Rix's blood surged with every fight, and he found himself cheering alongside the man next to him. "You like, I think?" the man said with a grin, as the spear woman pulled herself up off the arena stone.

Rix found himself smiling back. He'd been wrong to think of arena day as a waste. There was something liberating about the notion of being able to fight unfettered. The Fractured Realm offered that sort of life-and-death existence, but it carried real threat too. One mistake would be your end. Here in the arena, a Martial Soul could test themselves and take their full measure with no fear of consequence. Diving the realm would build his strength, but fighting here would hone his skills.

That facet of his development had been cast in a harsh light after today. Seeing even the Whispers fight had quickly disabused him of the idea that anything he'd taught himself on the street was worth a damn. The way they moved, the economy and power of their attacks, it was clear that a proper System style was a step above anything a person could develop on their own.

Rix already knew he'd be taking part; he just needed to set his bleeding style.

"Do these fighters get anything out of this? Besides the thrill?" Rix asked the man next to him.

His temporary friend grinned. "Thinking of trying your hand, hey?"

"Maybe."

The man nodded. "There are no innate rewards, but most people do it for a shot at sponsorship. They're not available to Whispers, but for most of the Spark fighters, that's what they're pushing for."

"And that gets them what? Techniques?"

The other man nodded. "Sure, techniques, pills and elixirs, sometimes even artefact weapons. You have to perform, but not much is off the table if the corporations are willing to pony up. It's not a free ride, of course. Most contracts will involve some kind of employment clause if the prisoner ever serves out their sentence. A big part of why this all exists, beyond making the prison rich, is so the corps can find promising Martial Souls who might have slipped through the cracks."

That was all good to know, though in truth, Rix wasn't really thinking beyond Whisper at the moment. Reaching Spark was something that he would eventually do after completing his mission here, but what that looked like exactly, he wasn't sure. The reality was that his plan didn't extend beyond killing Xu Han. You could only plan so many moves ahead. And once he'd done that, he'd just be another Whisper in prison with years left on his sentence.

But he'd worry about that once the job was done.

At some point, Rix realised there had been a change in the crowd. The room had filled out now, and there was a sense of anticipation building. As the current fight concluded with one man caving in the other's chest, the applause rose like thunder around him.

Rix shot his new temporary friend a questioning look.

"It's time for the final Whisper match," the man replied. "Remember that exception I mentioned? Well, he's about to take centre stage. If you think those last fights were impressive, wait until you see Xu Han."