Chapter 62: Promoted to Rank-Eight Grandmaster

Chapter 62: Promoted to Rank-Eight Grandmaster

I looked at Liu Tanzhuang sharply.

This man knew far too much. That wasn’t information some minor errand boy ought to have. Something was off. And why had he seemed to seek me out on purpose from the start?

I stared at him, startled. “Do we know each other?”

“Do we?” Liu Tanzhuang said. “Who are you, in the real world?”

“My name is Du Xiaoran,” I said. “You know it, don’t you?”

He smiled suddenly. “You really are something. How did you figure me out?”

“When you said the Ziyun Sect’s energy comes from Treading the Wind, Seeking the Dao, I guessed it had to be you,” I said. “You know too much. Only someone who’s actually been in the Mundane World would know about that game. And only someone who loves doing business knows a little of everything and masters none of it. A researcher, an intellectual—who’d care where the data comes from? Besides, you started approaching me the moment I arrived. What I can’t figure out is how you knew I’d come in at all, let alone whose body I’d end up parasitizing.”

“You really do have a guarded personality,” Liu Tanzhuang said. “Have to dig to the bottom of everything, don’t you. Fine, I’ll be straight with you. I was entrusted by someone. You don’t understand a thing here and you go charging around regardless—of course something was bound to happen. I told you before, follow me, and you’ll have meat to eat. That wasn’t just talk. The virtual world is my territory too. From now on, anything you don’t understand, come ask me.”

“Who hired you, then?” I said. “And why would they bother helping me?”

“Now you’re the one not understanding how things work,” Liu Tanzhuang said. “I take people’s money, I handle their troubles. You think I can just hand over a client’s information? Especially to the person involved? Do that once and I’m finished doing business.”

“You think I actually believe that?” I said. “You’ve got some way of tracking me, clearly, because you’re hoping to squeeze more out of me. You made out well last time we worked together, didn’t you? Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Just don’t screw me over, and we’re still partners. Otherwise, I’m not so easy to trifle with either.”

“Now that,” Liu Tanzhuang said, “I can respect. Direct. Let’s lay it all out, then. I followed you here because I want to work with you again in the virtual world. I noticed something—as a smuggled-in person, your abilities are a cut above. That tells me you’ve got serious backing, maybe you’re the descendant of someone important. And you’ve got the resistance behind you besides. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dare cross you—not worth the risk. But I might use you as a shield. The reason Pu Liuqian caught you last time is that your aura is strong enough to draw the Shadow Pavilion’s eye all on its own. Keep you near me, and I stay safe. So when I say I like following you, it’s the same as saying I like following money. Wherever you go, there’s business to be had.”

“Then I’d better keep my distance,” I said. “You’re clearly already on the Shadow Pavilion’s books. Being near you feels dangerous.”

“Not entirely wrong,” Liu Tanzhuang said, “but I’m a speculator, and the Shadow Pavilion’s known that for ages. They won’t come down hard on me. Catch me, and it’s a fine at worst. You’re different. You’re a new member of the resistance—the Shadow Pavilion’s greatest enemy.”

“Then why do you still dare follow me?” I said. “Aren’t you afraid of being dragged down with the resistance?”

“I’d never work with the resistance itself,” Liu Tanzhuang said. “I’ve a family to feed. But you’re not the resistance—you just have a resistance background. At heart, you’re a smuggled-in person who’s never lived in the Elite World. The Shadow Pavilion has no file on you. So following me actually makes you safer, because they’ll take you for nothing more than a smuggled-in speculator.”

“Fine, let’s not wander too far off,” I said. “Why did you lower yourself to play a servant boy?”

“This servant is just one of my avatars,” Liu Tanzhuang said. “You could do the same—keep Song Chenfeng as your avatar in the virtual world. But you’ll need to register online first. Otherwise, every time you enter, you’ll be dropped into a random body, and your achievement record won’t have any continuity. Still, you could quietly build a parasitic structure inside Song Chenfeng’s brain. That way, even after you leave and come back, you’ll have priority to return to his body. Look at the Sect Master and the Great Grandmaster—they never change people, because those are their legally registered avatars. High-ranking people in the virtual world rarely swap souls at all. It’s only the ones at the bottom who’re willing, because there’s nothing at the bottom worth holding onto. The old Song Chenfeng was one of those.”

“Then why bother being a servant boy at all?” I asked. “It hardly pays.”

“I’m not doing this for the money,” Liu Tanzhuang said. “It’s for the information. For a businessman, information matters more than anything. I’m someone close to the Sect Master—anything he knows, I know too, more or less. And besides, this isn’t my only avatar.”

“Oh?” I said. “You can hold several avatars at once in the virtual world?”

“Of course. Having multiple shells is perfectly normal. Though too many gets exhausting—you’ve got to manage all of them. And sure, they can earn money. They can also spend it.”

I nodded.

By then, the rank-eight and rank-nine matches had already concluded. The Ziyun Sect still stood at one win, one loss.

Shi Youcheng had lost, as it turned out—which explained the strange look he’d given me before his match. He must have sensed my skill was no lesser than his own. While chatting with Du Xiaoran, I’d watched his fight and hadn’t found him especially strong. If the two of us faced off, he might well not beat me.

The Great Grandmaster-against-Great Grandmaster and Sect Master-against-Sect Master matches were both held in the air.

Their rules differed from the ordinary contestants’ matches entirely—these were contests of fortune.

For the Great Grandmaster match, each combatant sat upright on a cloud, and without ever touching one another, each tried to force the other off. In the end, the Ziyun Sect’s Great Grandmaster lost to his counterpart, narrowly, in the final second. Back at the sect, he kept insisting Xie Zhangping had betrayed him—that Xie Zhangping must have leaked his methods to the Jianghai Gang. Whether he said this to save face or because it had truly happened, I couldn’t say. Either way, Xie Zhangping was his man, which meant at the very least he’d misjudged whom to trust.

The Sect Masters’ contest was a duel of rainbows drawn through the air with a wave of the hand. The Ziyun Sect’s Sect Master needed only a single exchange—one wave, and his rainbow shattered the Jianghai Gang Sect Master’s, knocking him clean off the clouds. A fitting revenge for the Great Grandmaster’s loss.

The overall result still stood at one win, one loss.

Tallying the disciple matches into the total, the Ziyun Sect had clearly come out well ahead—and the deciding factor in all of it had been my five victories.

Having lost the qualification to reoccupy the Heavenly Palace in front of every gang and sect present, the Jianghai Gang lost face along with it, and made no secret of their bitterness. Their rank-eight fighter in particular went around asking after me, vowing he’d challenge me privately before long. I later learned that the old man whose ribs I’d broken was his father.

Whether he came looking for me or not made no difference to me. If he showed up, I’d beat him too. The truth was, I hadn’t yet fought at full strength. My same-frequency sensing and force of consciousness were plainly stronger than most people’s—I could fight and interfere with my consciousness at the same time, and precious few martial artists were strong in both at once.

The day after the tournament, the Great Grandmaster convened a full assembly of Grandmasters and, before everyone, promoted me to rank-eight Grandmaster. He granted me fifteen gold-patterned pills, one red-patterned pill, five cyan-patterned pills, and, from my opponents, a hundred and fifty achievement points in prize payouts.

Under the match rules, the rank-three bout paid ten points, rank-four twenty, rank-five thirty, rank-six forty, and rank-seven fifty—a hundred and fifty points altogether. Counting the immortal pills as well, my true haul from that day came to seventeen hundred and thirty points. It exceeded anything I’d expected, and left every Grandmaster in the sect more than a little envious.

According to Yuan Lingliang, the Sect Master was supposed to have doubled my reward for the first match, which should have come to thirty points rather than ten. Perhaps, having already granted me the gold-patterned pills, he’d simply let the earlier promise of doubling quietly slide. Otherwise I’d have been owed another twenty points, bringing the total to seventeen hundred and fifty.

Never mind. I couldn’t be bothered chasing it down—it would only make me look small. Being promoted to rank-eight Grandmaster alone meant a salary of one gold-patterned pill, a full hundred points. Already generous enough. Disciples themselves drew no salary, though most held some post that came with its own pay. Song Chenfeng, for instance, had once served as a guard and drawn a guard’s wage.

Everyone below rank eight was simply a disciple. Only rank eight and above earned the title of Grandmaster—and Grandmasters bore the duty of teaching martial skills.

After the assembly, Eldest Senior Brother Shi Youcheng came to find me and moved me out of the guard quarters and into the Grandmaster Courtyard, a cluster of small residences. As a rank-eight Grandmaster, I now qualified for a courtyard of my own, and ended up next door to him, since he too held rank eight.

I’d taken a liking to Shi Youcheng’s character, and treated him accordingly with courtesy.

I took the chance to ask him what a Grandmaster’s duties usually involved, since I’d never held the rank before.

“As martial-skill mentors of the sect,” Shi Youcheng said, “Grandmasters are mainly responsible for teaching the disciples—military strategy, body arts, diplomacy arts, divine-weapon arts, and so on. Some of us also handle management, like me. Originally, responsibilities were divided among military planning, combat, diplomacy, and other affairs. The Great Grandmaster promoted you partly because your skills are strong enough for the rank, and partly because he wants you teaching those skills—especially your invisibility technique. From what I’ve seen so far, no one else uses it quite the way you do. How did you come to master it?”

“I know a good many martial skills,” I said, “all passed down through my family, and those I can teach freely. But the invisibility technique is nearly impossible to pass on, because it’s tied to a piece of research of mine—a biological change, not a technique. It’s not that I’m unwilling to teach it. I simply can’t. Does Eldest Senior Brother follow what I mean?”

“I follow,” Shi Youcheng said. “I’ll explain it to the Great Grandmaster myself. Also, the sect’s entering a period of rest just now. The Great Grandmaster says you’re free to move about as you like. From what I’ve seen, you’re not very familiar with the virtual world yet—you might as well use the time to learn more of it.”

I cupped my hands to him and repeated, almost word for word, what I’d once told the servant boy when we first met: “My thanks, Eldest Senior Brother. To be honest with you, the family of my true body are marginal people, and poor besides. The adults in my family never even had enough achievement points for themselves, let alone the money to send me in here to experience this world. It’s only recently that they finally saved enough to let me come in. I never expected to stumble into the Ziyun Sect’s great tournament. Call it luck, or call it the chance you and the sect gave me—either way, I’ve come away with a great deal more than I imagined.”

“All of it earned,” Shi Youcheng said. “You did the Ziyun Sect a great service and helped preserve the Heavenly Palace. That’s no small accomplishment. What you’ve been given isn’t excessive at all. Others would envy it, and rightly so, but they’d have no grounds to begrudge it.”

With that, the two of us took our leave of one another.

As for me, I meant to go find Du Xiaoran first. That man knew this place well, and had no shortage of ideas. Charging around blindly was a good way to invite trouble. Better, I decided, to hear him out first.