The CopyCat Immortal

Chapter 16: The Trial Tournament Continues

The Iron-Bell Arena was no longer a place of laughter. It had become a pressure cooker of stifled anticipation and growing resentment. The sun hammered down on the white limestone floor, but the chill radiating from the disciples in the stands was sharper than the heat.

Ren stood at the center of the ring, his tattered hemp robes fluttering in a breeze he was secretly generating to stay cool. Across from him stood Liang Bo, a youth with eyes like polished flint and a sheath of seven serrated daggers strapped to his thigh. Liang wasn’t just an Inner Disciple; he was a specialist of the "Glistening Edge" style.

"They say you’re the Luckiest Man in the Azure Cloud Sect," Liang Bo said, his voice as thin and sharp as a razor blade. He drew two daggers with a flourish so fast it left twin silver trails in the humid air. "But luck doesn't have a heartbeat. And steel doesn't care about flukes."

Ren adjusted his grip on his newest weapon—a heavy, wooden staff salvaged from a discarded laundry rack. He made sure to keep his shoulders hunched, letting his breath come in short, frantic gasps. "Senior Bo, can we just make this quick? I haven't finished my evening quotas, and the Quartermaster is already docking my spirit stones."

Liang Bo’s lip curled in disgust. "You’re an insult to the sword. I’m going to carve that fake smile right off your face."

Up in the High Balcony, the air was cold. Xiang Wu’s grip on the jade railing was so tight that hairline cracks were spreading through the precious stone. He didn't look away from Ren. Beside him, Elder Zhou was quietly peeling a mandarin orange, his mercury-colored eyes reflecting the silver glint of Liang Bo's daggers.

"Liang Bo won’t trip like Sun Tao did," Xiang Wu muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "His Flowing-Sever technique is based on hypersonic oscillation. Even a genius would struggle to track it."

"High expectations for a man who loses his temper so easily," Zhou remarked, popping a slice of orange into his mouth. "Watch the boy's feet, Xiang Wu. The truth isn't in his face. It’s in the dirt."

Below, the referee’s hand dropped. "Begin!"

Liang Bo vanished.

To the audience, it was as if he had simply been erased by a smudge of ink. To Ren, however, the world had slowed down into a chaotic map of vibrations. Through his stolen Wind-Blade and Azure Static signatures, he felt the displaced air shifting ten yards to his left. He saw the 'ghost' of Liang Bo’s intent—a surgical strike aimed at his hamstrings.

Analyze trajectory. Velocity: Mach 0.8. Spiritual frequency: Metal-Type, Tier 2. Logic: Extreme Reflex-Oscillation.

Ren didn't dodge perfectly. He didn't want the Elders to see a master. He wanted them to see a frantic laborer who somehow managed to "wiggle" out of the way.

Ren "clumsily" threw himself forward, as if tripping over an uneven stone. Liang Bo’s dagger whispered past the small of Ren’s back, shredding his robes and leaving a hot, stinging line across his ribs.

"First bite," Liang Bo’s voice hissed from behind.

He struck again. Then again. Five daggers, launched in a rhythmic cycle of three seconds, carved the air around Ren into a lattice of silver. Ren tumbled, rolled, and flailed. He took "grazing" hits on his arms and legs—cuts that bled freely but bypassed his major arteries.

Ren groaned in pain, his face buried in the sand, but inside, the Grafting was working at a fever pitch.

Syncing... 20%... 45%... 70%...

Absorbing High-Speed Reflexive Patterns. Adjusting neural conduction. Calibrating 'Glistening Edge' muscle-memory.

The Core-Damper ring on Ren's finger hissed, steaming against his cold sweat. He was reaching the saturation point. Integrating Knife Speed while holding the Fire, Earth, and Water elements was like trying to fit a mountain inside a silk purse.

"Stop moving, you slippery rat!" Liang Bo roared. He was frustrated. He had struck the trash a dozen times, but each time his daggers hit, they seemed to slide off "unlucky" angles, drawing only shallow blood instead of deep meat.

Liang Bo gathered his Qi. His daggers began to glow with a brilliant, blinding white light. He crossed the blades before his chest, the air screaming around them. This was his final move: the Whirlwind Decapitation.

"Die!" Liang Bo screamed, becoming a silver tornado of blades that raced across the arena floor.

Ren looked at the approaching storm. He didn't use the staff. He used the data.

At the moment of impact, Ren closed his eyes. He didn't just feel the blades; he understood the rhythm of the speed. The specific nanosecond where Liang Bo pivoted his wrist to switch blades was the 'void' in the technique.

100% Sync. Mastery Acquired: Blink-Sever Reflex – Mastered.

Ren didn't run. He leaned into the blades.

To the crowd, it looked like suicide. Liang Bo’s silver tornado swallowed Ren’s figure. Sparks flew, and a high-pitched metallic shriek erupted that made the disciples in the front rows cover their ears.

"Ren!" a voice cried out—Li Ming, standing in the lower bleachers, his face pale with horror.

But inside the tornado, Ren was moving. Using the Blink-Sever reflex he’d just stolen, he manipulated his own kinetic momentum to match Liang Bo’s exactly. It was as if two gears had suddenly clicked into place. Ren reached out—a movement that looked like a blind, panicked grab—and caught the hinge-chain connecting Liang Bo's belt-harness.

He didn't pull. He locked his Earth Shield density into his thumb and forefinger for a fraction of a second.

Liang Bo’s own momentum became his executioner. Because the chain was suddenly fixed, and the blades were moving at hypersonic speeds, the centrifugal force ripped Liang Bo’s center of gravity apart.

Snap.

Liang Bo spun out of his own whirlwind, thrown through the air like a discarded toy. He crashed headfirst into the limestone boundary, his daggers clattering uselessly to the sand.

Ren was thrown the opposite way, sliding twenty feet across the ring on his stomach, leaving a trail of blood and torn hemp. He groaned, coughing up a dark glob of fluid. His arm was shredded, his face bruised, but he was the only one still breathing in the center of the ring.

The silence that followed was suffocating. Not a single breath was heard from the ten thousand spectators.

Ren struggled to his feet, using the broken wooden staff as a crutch. He looked like he’d been run over by a wagon full of razors. He blinked his watery, panicked eyes at the referee.

"Is... is he sleeping?" Ren croaked, his voice cracking with a perfect blend of exhaustion and bewilderment. "He was spinning so fast... I thought he was gonna turn into a bird."

The referee walked over to Liang Bo. The Inner Disciple was unconscious, his neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle, his spiritual aura shattered.

"Winner... Ren of the Servant Quarters!" the referee announced, though his own voice sounded like it belonged to a man witnessing the end of the world.

The stadium didn't erupt. It boiled.

"Bullshit!" a senior screamed, throwing a porcelain cup into the arena. "Another accident?! He literally just sat in the blades and the other guy flew away?!"

"He’s a ghost! A demonic luck-carrier!"

Xiang Wu stood up so violently his chair exploded into a million shards of splintered wood. His face was no longer red with rage; it was white with a terrifying, calculated hatred. "Nobody has that much luck. He stole Liang's reflex. I saw the way he shifted his weight—it was exactly the Blink-Sever angle."

"Observation without evidence is just jealousy, Xiang Wu," Elder Zhou said, though his own hand was trembling slightly as he held the orange peel. "But I agree. The boy is... efficient. A very efficient collector."

Zhou looked down at Ren. The laborer was currently being mobbed by a few medical initiates, but he wasn't looking at them. For one heart-pounding microsecond, Ren’s eyes shifted toward the balcony.

Ren’s irises flickered silver—the exact same flint-like silver as Liang Bo’s.

He's laughing at us, Zhou realized. The boy is eating our techniques in broad daylight, and we’re all too proud to admit we’re being robbed.

Ren was helped off the field, a bandage wrapped around his head, the "Luckiest Man" title now evolving into something much more dangerous: The Untouchable Junk.

As soon as he entered the seclusion of the medical tent, the pain in Ren’s shredded arm settled into a dull, thrumming hum. The Blink-Sever energy was now circulating in his system, speeding up his perception until the drips of water falling from the tent roof looked like suspended glass beads.

"That... was almost too close," Ren whispered, his obsidian gaze returning to his hand. "Six elements. I can feel my spirit roots vibrating."

The Core-Damper ring was nearly black, a faint wisp of smoke rising from the bronze. He was at 80% saturation. One or two more techniques, and he wouldn't just be an anomaly; he would be a living explosion.

"Who’s next?" Ren asked the shadows.

He didn't care about the pain or the notoriety. He was a thief who had found the master key. And as the tournament moved toward the semifinals, he knew the biggest treasures were still to come.

The Azure Cloud Sect was looking for a hero to represent them at the Grand Alliance. Instead, they were slowly refining the world’s most dangerous predator, fed on their own pride and armed with their own steel.

"Come on, Xiang Wu," Ren muttered, a slow, cold grin cutting through his blood-masked face. "Don't leave me waiting. I still have room for your little flail tricks."

Outside, the name "Ren" was being hissed by ten thousand voices. Some in terror, some in hate, and some—for the very first time—in awe. The servant who refused to die had just become the ghost of the arena. And ghosts, as Ren knew, were very hard to hit.

The trial continued, but the rules had changed. It wasn't about who was strongest anymore. It was about how much more "trash" could consume before the mountain itself collapsed under the weight of his stolen glory.

Ren closed his eyes, let the Water-Qi heal the lacerations on his chest, and waited. He had more to take. And he was getting very, very good at the trade.