Ding Yi was sitting upon a ten-foot gold throne encrusted with the same diamonds and other wide variety of gems as the pillars all around. At its foot was a series of gemstones much larger than any others, each easily a thousand carrots, all polished to a mirror-sheen. His black muscles flexed ominously, the light above and behind him cutting a stark image of his menacing figure. Ding Yi, for his part, was leaning back with one arm propping up his head, his legs stretched out in front of the chair, suspended in mid-air without effort as he leaned back in comfort.

  “What resplendent wealth you have, great master.”

  Ding Yi raised an eyebrow, “You don’t seem impressed.”

  Jiang spread his hands, “Your palace is opulent, great lord, but in my day I have seen others of similarly extreme wealth.”

  Ding Yi laughed mightily and the throne room rumbled.

  Jiang looked around as he did, and finally saw Violet, crumpled in a heap upon the floor. She was rocking back and forth in the fetal position, clearly unable to process such an extreme power before her.

  “You may call me Tyrant.” Ding Yi finally said, his laughter ending in low bellows as an earthquake might.

  Jiang knew that even as Violet claimed to be a lesser tyrant, it was possible she had never encountered a true tyrant in the flesh. Each tier of the cultivation ladder was increasingly more rare, and with a population in the hundreds of billions or perhaps trillions on any given world, it was highly likely the lower-tier cultivators would never encounter someone else two or three tiers above them. For a lesser tyrant even the risk of encountering a tyrant would additionally impose tremendous risk. Every encounter between high-tier cultivators risked a battle breaking out and a soul-oath being imposed on the weaker cultivator by the stronger one.

  “Great Tyrant, what would you have us do?”

  “First, you will tell me how you called on Azafir.”

  Jiang laughed softly, but it echoed throughout the throne room.

  If I tell him, I tip my hand. If I don’t tell him, he may kill us.

  “Great master, I do not wish to reveal my position. Surely you understand.”

  Jiang sought to probe how threatening Ding Yi wished to be.

  “And yet, I understand, you will tell me anyway.”

  The Tyrant spread his hands in a mocking gesture of Guo’s.

  Former Lord Guo sighed.

  Better to tell a truth so grand he would never believe it than lie in ways he’d surely see through.

  “Azafir is mine.”

  Ding Yi’s eyebrows raised, but he said nothing, motioning his hands for Jiang to continue.

  “I fought a battle here over the skies of Ardat I.”

  “Kulva, “burned one,”” Ding Yi interjected.

  “A burned cradle, maybe,” Jiang snapped back.

  “Burned by my hand— burned by my battle over the sky— and now it sits with children playing in the ashes.”

  Ding Yi laughed mightily and the room shook, but he did not interrupt Jiang.

  “Has the planet been cordoned off?”

  “Don’t answer my question with a question!” Ding Yi boomed.

  “...”

  “Azafir is a god of waste— the ashes of fires that burned a million years ago.”

  Ding Yi rubbed his imposing black chin.

  “Amusing indeed.”

  “You will swear your soul to me, Guo, and help me regain the favor of Azafir. If your story is true this will be easy, but for now you will swear your soul to me.”

  Jiang didn’t bother trying to object, there was no way out.

  In this world there are masters and slaves.

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  “I swear my soul to your service, Great Master Yi.”

  And in this world there is only one master.

  “Good!” Ding Yi boomed triumphantly.

  “Now you.” He pointed at Violet.

  “She has already sworn her soul to me, great master.”

  The one master with a trillion trillion slaves.

  Ding Yi pointed his finger at her arm, but didn’t mangle or disintegrate it, instead the finger curled back up and his fist lowered again slowly. Jiang knew his only restraint was the fact Jiang himself was sworn to Ding Yi’s service, meaning Violet was also sworn to it by proxy. Harming Violet was thus harming Jiang and therefore harming himself and his own interests.

  Jiang bowed deeply, his head nearly kissing the floor.

  “Thank you, master, for your mercy.”

  I will rise to be that master again one day. Jiang swore silently.

  Violet did not speak. Violet did not move. She knew she had courted death.

  “You are most welcome. Now get out of my sight.”

  “It is your duty to report to training and make yourself useful to my service.”

  Jiang quickly walked over to Violet and dragged her upright by the arm, power-walking to one edge of the throne room as quickly as possible. Every second in the presence of a tyrant was courting death, he knew.

  Ding Yi’s voice resounded through the room one last time as they departed, and though it boomed like a thousand elephant’s footsteps shouting at once in unison, Jiang knew it was but a whisper to the black God that had uttered the words,

  “Devote yourselves to me and I will reward you with riches you could scarcely imagine! Become powerful, my children, and accomplish my goals! Become strong and do as I command, or you will surely die in an instant where you stand or while you sleep!”

  Jiang could feel a technique building and silently cursed.

  “There is no escaping my wrath!”

  In the next instant they were transported back to where they had once stood upon the evaluation-grounds. Even still they could hear Ding Yi’s voice.

  “There is no escaping my power.”

  “Remember this, children, and pray unto me in devotion!”

  Jiang could still hear his booming laughter in their ears as his voice finally quieted until it, too, finally went away. Even then, Ding Yi couldn’t help but whisper a few final words.

  “I just might answer.”

  These young masters sure love showing off.

  Jiang wanted to laugh and clap Violet on the back, saying it was nothing, just a show of force by an arrogant young god that hadn’t grown into the full extent of his power, but he knew that wasn’t the truth.

  All the gods are arrogant.

  It wasn’t a good idea to share that Azafir was likely Jiang’s creation, but at least it was likely the master would assume Jiang, too, was merely posturing. He was also unlikely to share that particular secret widely as it gave him potentially tremendous power over a god, and if the other tyrants got word of this they would hunt Jiang down and swear him to their service.

  Changing the allegiance of a soul wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t particularly difficult either. The kinds of soul oaths cultivators were swearing at this stage of development wasn’t actually contingent on their soul. If they broke one it would kill them, but that’s it. At higher stages the cultivators would come to understand soul oaths more deeply, but for now if you had the power to revive the one you wished to swear into your service, you had the power to change their allegiance.

  Jiang knew many things the others didn’t— it wouldn’t be long until he forced them all under heel.

  For now, the arena was a dirt field pock-marked in blood and black craters. The remaining five contestants stared at Jiang and Violet in disbelief as the announcer came back on.

  “Aaaaaah, there you are!” the mid-pitched voice began in crazed excitement, “Don’t think you can skip the evaluation games just because the master showed you some favoritism!”

  “I’ve sworn my soul to him!” Jiang shouted, knowing it was futile.

  “We all have, cupcake, now line up! It’s time for the last game!”

  There’s another game?!

  That meant only one thing: there was a massive elder recruitment pipeline and these games were run regularly enough to saturate the teaching apparatus.

  “In this game, you’ll fight each other to the death, isn’t that exciting? The winners get to move on to the training hall!”

  The announcer paused for a second, but only one, before continuing.

  “But don’t think that means you’ll be safe. You’re never safe! The training hall will be just as gruesome as what you’ve experienced here. If you don’t think you can take it you should just KILL YOURSELF now! We have seven contestants so somebody’s gotta die!”

  Jiang laughed.

  “Everyone else.”

  The five other contestants glared at him, their assortment of robes all stained red, their faces all stained with the same scowl. Three were men and two were women, but they all had short hair that was naturally brown or black but had been dyed red by blood. The only distinction between any of them was that one of them had pink skin and tentacles where her (?) mouth should be. Also her brain was exposed to the air and there wasn’t exactly hair around it, just more tentacles.

  Jiang felt he should have remembered someone so distinct from the group battle, but shrugged. He’d forgotten more memorable faces before.

  Looking closer, it seemed another one of them didn’t have lips or eyebrows. He also really liked smiling and his teeth had been filed down into razors.

  Why did Jiang think they were normal at a glance? He didn’t know. It didn’t really matter. They were all about to be dead anyway.

  “You! Mr. Lover-boy, you get to go first!”

  Jiang thumbed his chest, a gesture of “Me?”

  “Yes you, don’t think you can get away with ZERO qi twice! Our master showed you favoritism but I won’t.”

  “I think that was 「Azafir」, actually”

  The ground rumbled and the announcer yelped, but nothing happened.

  “You absolute bastard! Tentacles, get in the f*cking ring!”

  There was a little BEEP where the “u” in fuck should have been.