Redeeming the Broken Stars.

CHAPTER 13: THE MORTAL COIL.

Old Moth's walking stick paused for half a second, then resumed. 

"Yes. He did. Most people in the Mortal Coil deserve better.”

“That is rather the point of everything you're about to do." 

She turned down a side street. "Now. The tournament."

Kaelen straightened slightly despite himself. "Tell me everything."

"The Tournament of Shadows," Old Moth began, her voice taking on a cadence that suggested she'd explained this before, to other students, in other times.

"It is held in the City of Ten Thousand Sins, which is approximately three days' travel from here by conventional means, two days if you push, and one day if you're extraordinarily motivated and don't particularly value what remains of this body's structural integrity."

"When does it begin?"

"In eleven days. Which means you have eight days of preparation before you need to travel."

She immediately paused to let a cart rumble past, then continued.

"The tournament is organized by Feng Crimson-Hand, formerly Elder Feng of the Blazing Palm Sect before he was exiled for conducting experiments the other Elders found distasteful.”

“He runs the City of Ten Thousand Sins now, and the tournament is his primary source of revenue."

"A former Elder running a criminal city," Kaelen said.

"The Celestial Order would normally eliminate someone like that."

"They've tried twice. He's still alive and they've lost eleven cultivators in the attempts.”

“They've come to an unofficial arrangement." Old Moth's voice carried something that might have been dry amusement. 

"Feng is tolerated. The City of Ten Thousand Sins is tolerated. Because it serves a useful function: it absorbs the people the orthodox sects reject, the criminal, the exiled, the demon-blooded, the failed, the forbidden. Better to contain them in one place where they can be monitored."

"Than to have them scattered across the Nine Heavens causing unpredictable trouble," Kaelen finished. 

He understood the logic. It was the same logic the Elders applied to everything, containment, control, concentration of undesirables into manageable problems.

"Just so." Old Moth turned again, and Kaelen realized she was leading him in a specific direction, not wandering. 

She had a destination. "The tournament prize this season is a Meridian Restoration Pill. A single pill, capable of partially restoring damaged cultivation pathways."

"Partially," Kaelen noted.

"Partially," Old Moth confirmed. "It will not fix Zain's shattered meridians.”

“The damage is too extensive for a single pill to fully address. But it will create pathways, fragile ones, enough to give your Essence Devouring technique somewhere to channel absorbed power.”

“Without those pathways, the technique still works, but at significantly reduced efficiency and at greater cost to your body." Old Moth immediately said as she stared at Kaelen Ashwright.

Kaelen turned this over in his mind. His nineteen years of cultivation theory were still accessible, still fully intact in his soul even if the power itself had been consumed.

He understood meridians, understood what their absence meant. 

"The absorption works directly into the soul, bypassing the body's cultivation infrastructure. But the soul and body need to integrate for the power to be stable."

"Exactly. Without even partial meridian restoration, every essence you absorb will create instability. Not immediately fatal, but accumulative.”

“Within six months of heavy use, the instability would begin affecting your cognitive function." 

Old Moth's voice was matter-of-fact. "The pill is not optional. You must win it…Kaelen Ashwright.”

"Then I will win it," Kaelen said, with the same flat certainty he'd applied to everything since waking up in Zain's body. 

Not bravado. Just a statement.

Old Moth glanced at him again with those unseeing white eyes.

"You'll want to hear the rules before you commit to that particular certainty."

"Tell me the rules." Kaelen Ashwright immediately asked.

"There are none." Old Moth immediately replied.

Kaelen looked at her. "You said rules.”

"I said you'd want to hear them. The rule is that there are no rules. Feng Crimson-Hand established the tournament on a single principle: last one standing wins.”

“No prohibited techniques. No banned weapons. No restrictions on cultivation realm or method.”

“No intervention by tournament officials except to remove the dead." She paused. 

"And there are always dead…victims.”

The weight of that settled over Kaelen like a second skin. 

He'd trained in cultivation combat his entire life. 

He'd sparred against sect elders, against disciples three realms above his level, against formations designed to push him beyond his limits. 

He'd been trained by Typhon himself in techniques that predated the current Celestial Order.

But he'd never actually killed anyone.

The training had been preparation for ascension, for the eventual battles of the divine realm, for conflicts that had been rendered academic by the fact that he'd died at nineteen before any of it became real.

Now, in a body that could barely walk, with no cultivation base and only a forbidden technique he'd never used in actual combat, he was being told to walk into an arena with no rules and kill everyone until only he remained.

Good, said the part of him that had spent the last four days crystallizing around his hatred. Let them come.

"How many participants?" he asked.

"Varies each tournament. The last three have averaged between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and twenty participants."

"And how many survive?"

"One. Sometimes two, if Feng is feeling generous and the fight between the final participants is entertaining enough that he'd rather keep both alive for future tournaments." Old Moth's tone remained flat and informational. 

"But generally, one."

"Cultivation realms of the participants?"

"Primarily Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment. Occasionally a Core Formation cultivator enters, though they're usually there as hired muscle for a sect that wants to ensure its chosen champion wins." She paused.

"There are also the irregulars. Demon-blooded fighters who cultivate by different methods.”

“Practitioners of forbidden techniques, like yourself. Exiled sect members who have developed unconventional abilities.”

“The tournament attracts the discarded and the desperate.”

“Those are sometimes the most dangerous participants of all.” Old Moth immediately said.

Kaelen Ashwright nodded slowly. In his current condition, Foundation Establishment cultivators would be beyond him in raw power.

He'd need to fight strategically, exploit weaknesses, use knowledge and technique rather than strength.

It was, he recognized darkly, essentially what the entirety of his new life was going to require.

"The fallen," he said suddenly. "You mentioned fallen men. Those who tried to win before."

Old Moth was quiet for a moment. "Ah. You want to know the casualties."

"I want to know what I'm walking into." Kaelen Ashwright immediately said.

"Very well." She navigated around a group of arguing merchants with the ease of smoke. 

"The tournament has run for forty-three years. In that time, it has claimed the lives of approximately four thousand, eight hundred cultivators. Some notable among them."

She began naming them, and as she did, her voice changed slightly, taking on a quality that was almost reverential in its cataloging.

"Deng Ironwall. Core Formation cultivator from the Stoneback Sect, exiled for refusing an Elder's order to massacre a village.”

“He entered the tournament seven years ago intending to win the pill for a student whose meridians had been deliberately destroyed by a jealous senior disciple.”

“He reached the final three before a demon-blooded fighter named Red Claw tore

out his cultivation core." Old Moth paused.

"He died believing he'd failed. He hadn't. The student found another way. But Deng never knew that.”