novelraw Chapter 71: The Tournament, Final Part
Chapter 71: The Tournament, Final Part
The ghost market never slept. Even in the deepest hours of night, lanterns bobbed like fireflies and voices rose in a constant murmur. After days of chaos, the first round of the tournament finally ended.
Some cultivators refused to leave; they camped in nearby teahouses and wine shops, waiting for the second round. Blackriver Market had never been so many spirit stones change hands in so short a time. Prices tripled overnight, yet purses opened willingly—especially the female cultivators who rarely left their mountains. They spent like queens on hairpins, spirit silks, and roasted spirit-beast skewers, turning every stall into a festival.
Everyone knew this golden days were numbered. Once the arena lots were claimed, the heart of the market would belong to strangers. This was the last revelry.
Second floor of the Chu-Qin inn, a quiet room.
Gu Ji lay unconscious beneath clean blankets, face swathed in salve-smeared bandages. Everyone except He Yu—who was still secluded himself—had come down from Blackriver Peak. They ringed the bed in silence, each lost in private thoughts.
A young mortal waiter knocked softly. “Honored immortals, supper is ready…”
Qi Xiu waved him away without turning.
He drifted to the window. From here he could see the central square perfectly. Bai Xiaosheng remained chained to his pillar, head lolling against stone, more wretched than any beggar in the mortal world. Yet when Qi Xiu’s gaze lingered, the prisoner’s dull eyes lifted and met his—empty, lightless, devoid of anything human.
A pang struck Qi Xiu’s chest.
Once upon a time he would never have meddled. But today Gu Ji had chosen to burn rather than bow, and the boy’s blackened body now lay behind him as both warning and inspiration.
Retreat, and the world rides your neck forever.
Fight, and you may end up like that child—scarred, broken, perhaps dead.
But when he pictured Mountain Gate Sect slinking away in shame, a fierce joy surged through him all the same.
Qi Xiu drew a deep breath that tasted of night wind and distant incense.
“Zhan Yuan—fetch one of our new spare robes.”
Zhan Yuan blinked. “Sect Leader?”
Qi Xiu was already moving. Something bright and hard had kindled behind his eyes; his whole bearing seemed taller, straighter, as though an invisible wind pressed at his back.
“To do a small thing that should have been done long ago.”
He leapt from the window, landing light as a crane, and walked straight toward Bai Xiaosheng.
Zhan Yuan realized a heartbeat too late. “Sect Leader—wait!”
Too late.
Qi Xiu stopped before the chained man. “Your crimes earned you death, not this endless humiliation.”
Several Cleansing Talismans flared in his palm. Filth and crusted waste sloughed away like old bark. Qi Xiu slipped the fresh scarlet robe over the prisoner’s shoulders and tied the sash with careful fingers.
Bai Xiaosheng did not resist. Only when Qi Xiu turned to leave did a cracked whisper follow him.
“Kindness… wasted. You invite calamity for nothing. The wise do not act so.”
Qi Xiu paused, back straight. “A man must stand for something,” he said without turning. “Or he is not a man.”
A ring of onlookers had already formed. One of Chu Youguang’s lackeys burst from the shadows and seized Qi Xiu’s arm. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is South Chu’s criminal—”
Zhang Shishi shoved the man aside hard enough to send him sprawling.
Chu Youguang stormed out of the former auction house, face thunderous. “Qi Xiu! Whose orders are you following? Speak!”
Qi Xiu cupped his fists, perfectly composed. “No one’s. I simply saw a man suffering beneath the dignity of a cultivator and acted. I also advise Brother Chu—torture and public shame are the tools of devils and mortal tyrants, not righteous sects.”
“Shut your mouth!” Chu Youguang snarled. “You dare defy a Nascent Soul decree? You want to die?”
“What is all this noise?” A voice cracked like a whip from the sky.
The South Chu golden-core ancestor overseeing the tournament descended, expression stormy. Half the golden-cores in Blackriver had not yet left; every word spoken here was heard by all of them.
Chu’s reputation in the Qi Cloud Region would suffer if they crushed a Qi Refining sect leader for showing mercy.
The elder waved a sleeve. “A trifling matter. From today on, leave the prisoner chained but unharmed. Dismissed.”
He vanished as swiftly as he’d come.
Chu Youguang’s rage deflated like a punctured bladder. He shot Qi Xiu one venomous glare, then stalked back inside, robes flapping.
The Chu-Qin disciples swarmed their sect leader, eyes shining.
“Sect Leader, that was incredible!” Zhang Shishi looked ready to kneel.
Loose cultivators in the square clapped—some even cupped fists in genuine respect.
Qi Xiu flushed and herded everyone back into the inn before things grew too loud.
Behind him, almost too soft to hear:
“…Thank you.”
Qi Xiu’s steps slowed for the space of a heartbeat, then continued without looking back.
When the second round began days later, Gu Ji still lay unconscious and He Yu remained in seclusion. Chu-Qin fielded only Yu Denuo.
Yu Denuo had already spent one of his two precious second-tier date-pit spikes in the first round. He lasted six exchanges before a casual palm strike sent him tumbling off the stage.
No one was left to do.
The sect packed up that very night. Shen Chang stayed behind to mind the shop and relay news; everyone else returned to Blackriver Peak.
The mountain gate closed behind them with a soft, familiar thud.
Quiet days returned, as though the clamor of the tournament had been nothing more than a dream.
Only the faint smell of medicine lingering in the corridors, and the new scarlet robe hanging in the disciple dormitory, reminded them it had been real.