Chapter 70: I Have to Fight Him

Chapter 70: I Have to Fight Him

By that man’s own account, if the other party was willing to hand over their insight into force of consciousness, same-frequency sensing alone would let me claim it.

If that was true, then this place was nothing short of a bottomless vault of force of consciousness—and one that refilled itself endlessly. Pill chambers, achievement points, none of it held a candle to this.

Come to think of it—Feng Du, King Qinguang, or the Shadow Pavilion behind them—could this whole city have been designed from the start just to funnel more prisoners down here?

People with obsessive, extreme temperaments tended to speak their minds too freely. Sooner or later, they’d cross a line, commit some crime or another. Luring them all here, catching them in one great net—it would make for the perfect hunting ground.

The thought alone was enough to stop me from going further down that road. It was too unsettling to sit with.

Even setting aside whether that was the true design, the simple fact that insight into force of consciousness could be harvested from another person at all told me plenty about how deep the city lord Feng Du and King Qinguang’s cunning ran. They’d deliberately kept it from me.

They’d fed me that line about force of consciousness coming only from one’s own hard-earned insight into suffering. As if anyone’s own insight could ever match the speed, the sheer satisfaction, of simply taking someone else’s. That King Qinguang, first among the Yama Kings, had probably plundered his fair share of prisoners’ insight to climb all the way to rank ten.

To find out whether my suspicion held true, it seemed I had no choice but to fight this man.

Still—know yourself and know your enemy, and you need not fear a hundred battles.

So I turned the Judge’s Brush on him for a deeper probe. The result: his force-of-consciousness strength was formidable, at least no weaker than King Qinguang’s. No wonder King Qinguang kept coming back to torment him—the man himself was a walking treasure trove.

Prisoners with force of consciousness at rank two or three wouldn’t be worth harvesting at all, not to me. Like swallowing a gold-patterned pill and feeling nothing from it. If I was going to eat, I might as well eat the richest meal on offer.

Still, rank ten was no easy mark. King Qinguang himself probably hadn’t managed to beat him—otherwise, he’d have harvested him long ago. Which meant I shouldn’t hold out much hope for the other prisoners either. Anyone harvestable had likely already been picked clean by the city lord and the Ten Yama Kings. What chance would be left over for me?

By King Qinguang’s own assessment, my current strength didn’t even reach rank five—nowhere near this man’s rank ten. But my intensity was rank ten, and that alone meant I wasn’t guaranteed to lose. Besides, I could turn the very same tactic I’d used against King Qinguang on him. The trouble was, that fight had only ended in a draw—not a victory. On that alone, I doubted I could make this man submit.

And yet, looking at the sheer richness of what this man carried, I couldn’t help myself. It was too rich a prize to walk away from.

Torturing him into submission, though—that was beneath me. That would not make him submit.

So I used the Judge’s Brush to lift the steamer torment from him first, then said, “Fine. I’ll fight you. Recover from your injuries—I’ll have you brought out shortly. Your force of consciousness is roughly rank ten; mine’s under rank five. If you still lose to me under those terms, you’ll honor your word without complaint. And if I lose, I’ll stamp the order myself and see you out the door. We’ll meet in the training room.”

Just then, a jailer approached and pulled me aside, speaking low. “Sir, that man’s force of consciousness is vicious. King Qinguang has fought him more than once, trying to harvest it. But his attacks are too aggressive—King Qinguang never gained an inch of ground, which is why he resorted to torment…