Chapter 38

  Betting & Competing (III)

  Kids streamed into various rows and columns, lining up according to their numbers.

  There were honestly so many of them, at least a few hundred, a number distinctly larger than the totality of the last batch. It wasn't all that unsurprising; if Elder Qin somehow managed to 'sneak in' Dai Xiu, there was no doubt other Elders were doing the exact same thing.

  So long as the kid's strength wasn't something too outrageous, who would really care?

  Anyway, the festivities started with a speech--as they all do--and as all speeches like this go... it made me want to jump off the viewing area, plunging headfirst at the ground below.

  It was boring.

  Oh my God, was it ever boring.

  Half-a-freakin' hour rattling on and on about 'sect this' and 'sect that' and 'honor' and 'proper decorum'... I saw so many poor kids stifle a yawn that I want to openly weep for them.

  By the end, Elder Qin had to cough lightly just to remind the other guy (Elder Zhang, I think was his name?) to quit it, finally bringing to an end a speech that would be the most effective lullaby known to man had it been recorded.

  With the old guy finally being cut off, the actual competition could kick off; what little excitement I had toward it, however, was quickly evaporated as I realized by the end of the first few bouts that these wouldn't be like those karate tournaments our school had when I was a kid.

  You know?

  A highly regulated bout between kids that was forcibly ended as soon as a singular drop of blood was spilled.

  Here? Nope.

  Rather, it was kind of the extension of what I saw those kids do to each other in the open Training Hall.

  Take the arena closest to me, for example--two boys, neither aged over fourteen, jutting just barely past five feet, if that, walked up on the stage, bowed toward each other, and then proceeded to brutalize not just one another but also themselves.

  The hunger, the desperation... it was as though there were howling demons siccing them on each other.

  The first to strike was the black-haired boy; he slid just under the punch and delivered a mean uppercut to the jaw. I honestly don't know how that wasn't it--it would have done it for me, certainly--but the other boy endured and proceeded to knee the first straight into the spleen.

  That was about where the 'tactics' of the fight ended--from then on, they just randomly splayed their arms about, headbutted, kicked, jumped, wrestled, grabbed, and pulled anything that they could... you know, how kids usually fight. No rhyme or reason, just primal instinct of violence.

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  By the end, the black-haired boy was standing while the other wasn't, though, to be honest... there were no winners in my eyes. The 'winner', after all, was bleeding from at least seventeen different wounds, his left eye swollen to the size of a mango, and one of his shoulders was clearly dislocated...

  It wasn't a one-off, far from it; rather, it was one of the milder ones, to be honest with you.

  There were no separations, either: no girls-only competition or boys-only one. They truly were randomly drawn and pitted together, sometimes with two to three years of difference.

  I watched an eleven-year-old girl be beaten an inch away from her death until a referee, or whatever the hell these skin-wearers called themselves, finally stepped in and ended it. I mean, I get it; they probably have 'magic pills' that will heal these kids up in a sec, and, in some sadistic, mean, but well-intentioned way, this was them preparing the kids for the world out there.

  But... it was difficult. No, it was impossible for me to reconcile.

  Say what you will of life on Earth (and many things can be said), even if things like this existed (and, well, I'm not so much a hopeless optimist to believe they didn't), at least they were condemned and kept in the dark. They weren't put on a public display with a judging audience, like performers on a stage.

  Haah.

  Am I moralizing? Posturing? Doing what we used to do to the history? Judging it by the context of our times?

  I don't know.

  Maybe there's some rhyme to this madness; maybe, in the course of the tens of thousands of years that this has been happening, they've recognized it was the only way to truly cultivate and to break the norms.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe...

  It was about half an hour into it that Long Tao was called up. To my surprise, it was a 'marquee' matchup, held in an arena closest to us (no doubt a behind-the-scenes pull). His opponent was a sixteen-year-old boy, nearly six feet tall, robust, and mean-looking. I mean, it didn't really matter; they could probably send out an Inner Disciple out there and the outcome would still remain the same, but it pissed me off nonetheless.

  His opponent was clearly just an inch away from breaking through to the second stage of Qi, but it was... unstable. Rather, it was actually kind of like looking in a mirror--he was me, except just shy of three decades younger.

  "Hm? Elder Liang, isn't that the disciple you said was a waste?"

  "Ah, he indeed was, but, miraculously, his body seems rather immune to pill toxins. Unlike other kids his age, he can extract up to 30% of medicinal benefits!"

  "Oh, wow! That is really amazing!"

  "You are so lucky, Elder Liang!"

  Tsk.

  Look at these bastards.

  Playing their game.

  I was already bitter and angry over having to watch dozens of kids reenact 'Feral Children o' Mine,' and now they've decided to pile on? Honestly, if I were a smarter man, I'd keep my lips sewn shut, let my disciple win this thing, and then smugly look down on them. But, hey, very few ever called me smart.

  "Wow," I joined in from the side. "I've heard it all; I didn't know that ruining someone's future for a temporary gain was now considered noble and lucky. Doesn't that make me the noblest of all creation?"

  "... are you implying your future was ruined, Elder Lu?" Someone grunted; honestly, I kind of wanted to run and hide under the impending gazes. They were full of scorn and malice, like a table of adults would look at a kid if the latter interjected unnecessarily.

  "No, of course not," I said. "Just thinking out loud, is all."

  "Maybe you should think less, then," another said. "Lest the words invite scrutiny, Elder Lu. And if they do, we might find your disciples harmed and led astray, would we not?"

  It's suffocating.

  Like there are hands binding my throat and legs pressing into my lungs. Honestly, in a way, I'm reminded of when I was fifteen, maybe sixteen? Anyway, I was a bit of a... troubled kid, you could say. There was not much I wouldn't do to grab attention because, well, distant parents, cold household, you get the gist.

  There was this one time somebody stole a tournament cup or something from school, and everyone immediately assumed it was me. No matter how much I denied, no matter how much I swore... my parents had to pay $500, I had to write a formal apology, and I realized very early on that the world... didn't give a shit.

  I wanted to say something yet stayed my lips; there was no need to. Soon, that old monster will say far more than I ever could.