Realm Walker

Up in the stands, the Fire Sages were shouting.

”Why the hell did they vote for Yuanshi Tianzun to be the suspect? Are these people brain-dead? You should take out Zhao Chenghuang in a spot like this, obviously. Then the strongest guy dies first. Every slick little speech is just misdirection. Morons, the lot of them!”

”World Ablaze is a stain on the Crimson Fire Gang. A stain on every Fire Sage. He doesn’t act like one of us at all!”

The way things had turned in the meeting room blindsided the crowd outside. Never mind the one-track Fire Sages, even the other classes couldn’t believe it.

Yes, Yuanshi Tianzun was a monster at clearing dungeons. But clearing a dungeon depended on a Walker’s condition and the kind of challenge the dungeon presented. However strong Yuanshi Tianzun was, he wasn’t good at everything, and the second he hit a scenario outside his wheelhouse, the odds he would be wiped shot way up.

However, the opposite was true for Zhao Chenghuang. His combat power was a fixed variable. He would always be as strong as he was, dungeon difficulty be damned. Cutting him first would have been the safe bet.

”Honestly, World Ablaze didn’t play it wrongly. He wants a shot at being the champion, and an S-rank instance is his opening. But with Yuanshi Tianzun in the room, he knows he can’t out-clear him. Voting him out first was the smart play, unless World Ablaze doesn’t actually want to win.”

”World Ablaze’s got a good head on those shoulders, sure, unlike the other Fire Sages. But that Tone Deaf, now there’s a real Fire Sage for you. Think about it. If the five Five Elements Alliance players ally together, that’s five on three. Let the voting result in a tie, everyone eats the same point penalty, and once they’re inside, the five of them gang up and clean out the Taiyi Sect players. The top three rankings will be fought for among our own people, and the Houtu Boots don’t walk off on some Taiyi Sect’s feet.”

That last one spitting curses at Tone Deaf was a middle-aged man, feeling wretched about the whole thing. His Spirit Realm ID was ”Cephalosporin and Liquor, the More You Drink the More You Have.”

The lot with no real team loyalty, the spectators from the various noble Spirit Realm families, were having the time of their lives. They talked over each other, faces lit up, as though watching an opera that had just reached its best act.

”Now this is good. Isn’t Yuanshi Tianzun supposed to be an S-rank specialist? This is exactly the kind of opening that shows what he can do. Put any other player in that situation and it’s a snooze.”

”So how’s he going to clear his name? He’s one against seven. Can he actually pull that off? I’ve got a feeling this stage will end up the flashiest thing we’ve seen in the arena in years, the kind nobody tops. Assuming he isn’t all reputation and no game, of course.”

”That beast watching two people club each other on a platform, doesn’t it?”

In a corner, a woman with a delicate oval face turned to the daughter beside her, her fine brows drawing together. ”Baby, this isn’t looking good for your Big Brother Yuanshi.”

Xie Lingxi didn’t so much as blink. ”He won’t go down that easily. You didn’t see the corner he was backed into at Jinshui Amusement Park. This is nothing next to that.”

Mama Xie’s eyes lit up, and she tugged on her daughter’s shoulder. ”Ooh, tell Mama everything. Then I can show off to the other ladies.”

Prove his innocence... Annie’s sea-blue eyes stayed on the hazy picture hanging in the air. ”A Nocturnal Specter isn’t a Scout. Cracking a case should be Yuanshi Tianzun’s weak point.”

Beside her, Mr. Bill lifted a finger. ”Not ’weak point.’ The correct term is: Achilles’ heel!”

Which meant he agreed with her, of course.

”Rongrong, then he’s out in round one!” exclaimed the oily-faced young man beside another beautiful woman.

He was practically bouncing, but then he caught the look on Zhu Rong’s face and froze mid-gloat. Her brows were pulled together tightly, her face was clouded over, and her expression had gone cold.

He swallowed the rest of his boast, and something ugly and jealous crossed his pretty, soft-featured face. He was close enough to her to have noticed it for a while now: how her interest in Yuanshi Tianzun kept thickening, how the handsome boys she kept around had stopped getting so much as a glance.

Over in the elders’ seats, Elder Hongying turned to Elder Teddy, one seat down, smiling. ”Old Dog, those two S-rank dungeons the kid cleared before, what type were they? Give me a read. Does he clear this one?”

Elder Sun, whose chin was pointing up to the sky, folded his arms and snorted. ”I say no.”

Elder Teddy didn’t even look at him. He thought about it for a moment.

”He should be fine,” he finally said.

Elder Hongying’s brows ticked upward. She was clearly interested now.

”Then I’ll watch and see.”

***

Inside the tournament dungeon, the world in front of Zhang Yuanqing’s eyes sharpened into focus.

He was in a cramped little room that seemed completely sealed, with nothing on the walls. Three things sat on the floor: a briefcase, a small black lacquered box, and a ceramic bowl. The bowl held a fat lump of wet soil. There was nothing else in the room.

But there, in the wall ahead, was a hole about the size of a fist, and through it, a slice of the room next door.

So this is the cell they’re keeping ”me” in. What’s next, the other players come and haul me out for questioning? Zhang Yuanqing looked at himself and realized his pajamas were gone. He was in a casual pale blue suit, slacks, and leather shoes now, and there were several smears of blood on the hem of his jacket and the backs of his pats.

His heart jumped. This isn’t my body?

He grabbed at his own face, then pinched an earlobe. Okay. Breathe.

It was still his own body. Only his clothes had changed.

He shrugged off the jacket to take a closer look. The whole back of it was blotched dark with blood, and the backs of his trouser legs as well.

The victim’s, probably.

He put the suit back on and turned to the three items. He picked up the black box first, and a dialog box appeared in front of his eyes.

【Item: Vengeful Spirit’s Ashes

【Note: Touch the ashes to become a spirit body.

【Note: while unused, the ashes cannot be moved to the room next door.】

【Item: Holy Ceramic Vessel

【Note: The vessel produces soil endlessly. The soil cancels the spirit-body state.】

His brow furrowed. Two items that cancel each other out? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

He set the box down and picked up the briefcase. Inside was a pair of cracked glasses, a phone, and a manuscript of a novel.

【Item: Glasses

【Note: Your glasses. You’re badly nearsighted. You broke these last night visiting Professor Li.】

【Item: Phone

【Note: You secretly filmed last night’s conversation, to hold over Professor Li.】

【Item: Novel Manuscript

【Note: You’re Professor Li’s ghostwriter. Your work has been slipping and you’re about to be dropped, so you brought the manuscript to the capital to talk him into keeping you on.】

The manuscript hands me a possible motive, but the video walks it back. These are what I need to use to clear my name.

He was still turning over his next move when a notification chime went off in his ear.

【Ding. The detective squad is coming to execute you. Escape the sealed room within eight minutes and reach the crime scene: Faculty Housing, Building 3, Room 404.】

【Hint 1: The key is in the room next door.

【Hint 2: Your abilities are sealed. Nothing in this room can be destroyed.

【Hint 3: You may use one item of your own in this stage.】

Fuck. His eyes narrowed, and for a couple of seconds, he just stared at nothing. Clearing my name isn’t even the whole thing. I gotta break out first. Break out, break out...

He swept the room, then went to the window and threw a punch at it. Some unseen force slapped his fist back.

The hints did not lie,he mused to himself. Nothing here can break. So using the Bloodthirsty Blade, Thug’s Gauntlets, or just smashing my way out are all off the table. I’ll have to play by the rules. Get the key. The key’s next door.

He crossed to the western wall and put his eye to the hole. There was another sealed room beyond. Four walls. No door, no window, nothing on the floor but a single brass key under a dim, swaying ceiling lamp.

Something clicked, and his eyes went to the black box. Now he got what it was for.

He opened it. There was a ghastly white powder inside. He brushed the ashes with a fingertip and his body went half-transparent, a spirit.

He drifted straight to the door and hit an invisible wall. A box popped up.

【This door can only be opened with the key!】

Right, there’s no cheesing it. I have to actually go get the key. No time to dither. He turned, floated into the wall, and went through.

He emerged into the next room and made for the key. But when he reached down, his hand slid clean through the brass.

This is a spirit body. I can’t touch anything solid. Can’t grab it. He hung there a beat, then his eyes lit up and he phased back through the wall into the first room.

He dipped his fingers into the wet soil in the bowl. A second later, he shed his spirit state, and he was solid again.

He scooped up a handful of the soil, went to the wall with the hole, and dropped it through, clump by clump. That way, he could ditch the spirit state when he was next door and grab the key.

He touched the ashes to regain his spirit form. He went through the wall, then bent down to touch the soil on the floor. As he reached down, he suddenly froze.

No. If I touch it I go solid, and then I’m stuck over here. He yanked his hand back like the soil was live wire. Breaking out of this room isn’t as simple as it looked.

He went through the puzzle again, piece by piece. To get next door, I need the ashes. To grab the key, I need to touch the soil. But the soil makes me solid, and solid means I can’t go through any walls, and the ashes can’t be removed from the room, so the second I turn human over in the room with the key, that’s it, I’ll be trapped there. It’s a dead knot.

The knot pulled tight in his chest. That’s, what, two minutes gone? Six left. Six. Okay. How? How do I crack this?

He ran through his options. Nothing can be broken—walls, window, door, none of it. I can use one item, though. The Yin Yang Spell Robe opens a thirty-meter formation, and I can pop out anywhere inside it. But I only get one chance to use an item. Burn it here on the robe, and I’ve got nothing for the crime scene. No Eye of the Observer, and I just lose. I’ll lose.

The Eye of the Observer sharpened perception and reasoning. When the voting was over and he’d been chosen, it was the one thing he had clung to, the one card left to play that might swing things his way.

He was starting to see just how steep the climb back really was.

An S-rank dungeon? No kidding. Get voted to become the suspect and you’re basically already out. This is rough, it really is.

Minutes went by. No ideas came to him, and the knot closed ever tighter. If he hadn’t been in spirit form, his forehead would be soaked.

Five minutes. Come on. Yuanshi Tianzun, the big name, bounced in the opening round. However hard they fawned after me before, that’s how hard they’ll laugh after.

He forced himself to slow his breathing. The more he thrashed the less he saw.

There’s a trick to thinking. If you can’t crack the problem, then crack the person who built it. If you can’t solve the problem itself, try to solve for whoever set the problem in the first place.

For example, why did the designers build this stage the way they did?

The whole point of this stage is for the suspect to somehow clear his name. Therefore, every obstacle in the way should be a setup for that. There has to be a crack in every wall before the final test. If not, the whole point of the meeting room vote was not to vote for a suspect, but to vote out a corpse.

Dropping an impossible trap here and eliminating a player like that would be a joke. The player wouldn’t stand for it, and the crowd would scream that the whole thing was rigged.

The designers gave me the option to use one item, but how would any of them know a suspect would have an item on him that could be used as a way out? There has to be a solution, and it’s sitting right in here, with what they handed me.

His brain spun hard.

Then, something flared behind his eyes. He had it.

***

In the colosseum, the Walkers who’d watched the whole thing were stuck. Some scratched at their scalps, some sat frowning at nothing, while some turned to poll the people around them.

”He stopped. Thank god he didn’t grab the soil. If he grabs it, he loses.”

”Yeah but how do you get the key? Anybody? Anybody got it?”

”The powder makes you a spirit. Cool, you can walk through walls. But a spirit can’t touch the key. Turn yourself solid and you can pick up the key, but now you can’t get back. There’s no answer here.”

”This is nuts. Are S-rank dungeons this brutal? This is just the first stage, and I’m sitting here like an idiot.”

”The clock’s almost run out. He’s cooked.”

Loud as it was, most of the noise came from the Fire Sages. The bulk of the crowd had gone quiet and put themselves in his shoes. If that were me, right now, what would I do?

Some of them even wanted to race him. See who cracked it first. It wasn’t every day you got a clean test of where you stood.

Mama Xie was going ”aiya, aiya” the whole time. ”Baby, Mama can’t follow a bit of this. Somebody like me dropped into an S-rank dungeon won’t last three seconds. Do you think Yuanshi Tianzun will clear it?”

Xie Lingxi didn’t answer. Her brows were knit together as she worked on the problem herself, too busy to bother with her mother.

Annie and Mr. Bill had both gone silent, each chewing on the problem.

”Fu Qingyang, you got it yet?” Guan Ya asked aloud.

”Got it.” Fu Qingyang, beside her.

”Got what? How?”

Her eyes snapped over to him. She had to know.

”He’s already shown you the answer,” he said offhandedly.

Her head whipped back to the image in the air.

”What’s he doing? Did he figure it out?” somebody yelled.

The noise cut out all at once as every eye turned back to the projection.

Yuanshi Tianzun was back in the first room. He touched the soil, losing his spirit form, then hoisted the ceramic bowl, marched to the hole, and poured the soil out next to it, straight down, clump on clump.

Higher and higher it piled up. Before long, the pile stood level with the hole.

A pillar of packed mud.

Then they watched him fling the bowl aside, grab the black box, flip the lid open, and set it carefully on top of the pillar.

He touched his fingers to the powder to enable spirit form and phased through the wall into the room next door. He bent down to touch the first clump of soil he’d tossed in earlier, turning solid again. Now he could grab the key.

Key in hand, went back to the hole and pitched the key through it. Then he pushed his fingers through the hole, reaching for the box perched on the pillar, and touched the ashes inside. His body grew translucent again, and he slid through the wall and back into the first room.

Touch the soil to go solid, pick the key up off the floor, walk straight to the door, and slot the key in. The locked door swung open.

There was dead silence all the way around the arena. Then, a few seconds in, the noise came roaring back and blew the roof off.

”That works?! That’s a bug, that’s gotta be a bug.”

”It’s not a bug. He read the item descriptions. The one obstacle was how to get back into the room. The powder can’t leave the room, and there was no table or chair to stand the box on, so once he becomes solid inside the second room, he won’t be able to reach it. So he used the soil, the stuff that never runs out, built a stand for the box right at the hole, and reached through to touch the ashes. Wow, that’s clean. Why didn’t I see it?”

”Give me time, and I’d get there too. Not that fast, though. In a dungeon like this, one step quicker in the head is the difference between alive and dead. This man’s the real deal.”

”Clearing two S-rank dungeons wasn’t luck. That’s just flat out skill. I’m sold. And if he actually clears his name, the other seven will eat a faceful, won’t they?”

”Okay, now I’m fired up. This tournament is awesome.”

Through the racket, Mr. Bill shook his head and let out a long breath. ”He’s sharp. Very sharp. I half-saw it too. Nowhere near as fast as him though.”

Annie loosened her tense shoulders. ”Now I really want to see what he does next.”

Big Brother Yuanshi is the best! Xie Lingxi thought.

She was beaming from ear to ear, right up until her mother said, blank-faced, ”That’s it? I could’ve thought of that. It wasn’t hard at all.”

Idiots always rate the difficulty of the problem by the solution, Xie Lingxi thought with a twist of her mouth.

”Building a nuke is easy too,” she snapped at her mother. ”The hard part was being the first one to create it.”

Fu Qingyang offered a small smile. ”Not bad.”

Guan Ya was about to smile back when she caught herself. It had been years since she’d seen her cousin smile that loosely. Usually he acted all aloof. At most he managed a sneer, or that grin with nothing behind the eyes.

On the other side of the colosseum, Zhu Rong hadn’t once taken her eyes off the young man in the projected image. The little boy toy at her elbow could hear how heavy her breathing had gone.

Elder Hongying nodded, pleased. ”He’s a bright kid, and quick under pressure. Old Sun, you’re slipping.”

Elder Sun shot her a silent, stony glare.

”When it comes to clearing dungeons, Yuanshi’s got a frightening amount of talent,” Elder Teddy said evenly. ”Watch. The other seven have a problem now.”

”Mm,” voiced Elder Hongying. ”It’s been a long time since I saw a youngster this good. The last one was De—”

Whatever it was, it wasn’t a happy memory. The smile slid off her face as she cut herself off.

***

Zhang Yuanqing snatched up the briefcase and burst out of the room. He had to reach the crime scene before the detective squad reached him, and find what could clear his name.

From what he gathered, once he was at the scene, he’d have room to argue his case. Anywhere else, the squad would catch him and jump him, and then he’d be out.

He allowed himself a tight smile. Sit tight. Watch me turn around and gut all four of you traitors.