The CopyCat Immortal

Chapter 17: Old Enemies, New Power

The sun didn't just shine on the Iron-Bell Arena; it baked the limestone into a blinding white glare that made every shadow look like a hole in reality. Thousands of disciples had crowded into the bleachers, their voices a discordant roar of betting tallies and whispered curses. Today wasn't a sparring match. It was a grudge, ancient and bitter, being settled on a grand stage.

"Semi-finals!" the referee screamed, his voice carrying over the crowd through the resonance arrays. "Xiang Wu of the Emerald Pillar versus Ren of the Servant Quarters! Warriors to the center!"

Xiang Wu didn't walk out from his side of the arena. He erupted. A sudden, violent burst of Emerald Qi propelled him toward the center, leaving a cracked crater where he had stood. He landed without a sound, his posture upright and lethal, radiating a level of confidence that verged on divinity. To his left hung the massive Iron-Grit Flail, its chain coiled around his brawny forearm like a waiting serpent.

Across from him, Ren looked like a man who had accidentally walked into a slaughterhouse. His robes were still stained with the silver-red traces of his previous victory, his breathing shallow, his shoulders hunched. To the untrained eye, he was a broken laborer waiting for the inevitable hammer.

"So, here we are, Ren," Xiang Wu said, his voice a low, melodic threat that bypassed the ears and settled directly in the gut. "The junk of the Azure Cloud Sect has somehow survived until the sunset. Tell me, do you honestly believe you're walking out of this circle?"

Ren looked up, his face a masterpiece of exhausted bewilderment. He wiped a streak of dry blood from his nose with the back of a shaking hand. "To be honest, Senior Wu... I was hoping you’d be too tired to make this hurt. I still haven't finished the mountain of laundry Senior Li left for me. If I don't get back, I won't have any dinner."

The bleachers erupted in laughter, though it was uneasy now. They had heard Ren's "humble laborer" excuses too many times, usually right before he somehow managed to humble a genius.

Xiang Wu didn’t laugh. His eyes narrowed, his pupils turning into sharp, black needles. "Stop. Just stop with the clown show. We both know what’s going on here. I saw you move against Liang Bo. You’re a parasite, Ren. A spiritual thief hiding in the trash. But today, the trash gets burned."

"Match... begin!" the referee shouted, scrambling back out of the blast radius.

Xiang Wu didn't lead with his flail. He lunged with his hands, his fingers curling into predatory claws. "Let’s see if you can 'luck' your way out of the Shadow Hands!"

The movement was horrific. Xiang Wu didn't just punch; he manipulated the light around his strikes. For every real hand Ren saw coming toward his throat, four shadowy apparitions manifested in the peripheral, each carrying the same spiritual weight as the original.

Analyze frequency, Ren’s internal system hummed. Light-refraction manipulation mixed with Soul-Taint Qi. Level: High Foundation. Logic: Overloading the visual cortex via kinetic hallucinations.

Ren moved, but he didn't use the Blink-Sever reflex yet. He wanted to feel the source. He allowed his body to lean backward into a frantic, uncoordinated sprawl. He looked like a man falling over a rug, but in reality, he was angling his spirit roots to be as receptive as possible to the shadow’s touch.

CRACK-SWIPE.

One of the shadow hands caught Ren’s shoulder, not crushing it with the force of earth, but chilling it with a numbing, icy void. The necrotic residue of the Shadow Hands seeped into his skin, feeling like thousands of invisible ants burrowing into his nerves.

"Ugh!" Ren grunted, skidding ten feet across the grit.

"What's wrong, scrub? Can't see which one is the real fist?" Xiang Wu laughed, his body blurring into a series of dark afterimages. He followed up with a spinning kick that carried the Earth-Crush resonance, slamming Ren into the dirt.

"Another one for the floor!" a disciple yelled. "Finish the trash, Senior Wu!"

Xiang Wu stepped onto Ren's chest, pinning him to the arena floor. He looked down, his face a mask of sadistic glee. "You’ve got a weird rhythm, kid. Every time I hit you, you don't even try to block. It's like you're trying to kiss the strike. Are you some kind of masochistic freak? Or is that the secret to your little reflux gimmick?"

Ren coughed, the blood staining his teeth. He looked at the Core-Damper ring. It was glowing a bright, warning red—smoking against his skin. He was at 85% capacity. The Shadow Hands was the last puzzle piece for a more versatile offense, but it was incredibly volatile.

"Maybe I just... really like the view from down here, Wu," Ren wheezed, his voice bubbling.

Xiang Wu’s smile vanished. "Rot in the shade."

Wu raised his palm, his entire hand turning a deep, light-swallowing black. This was the killing blow: Shadow’s Execution. He thrust his hand downward, aiming directly for Ren's heart.

In that millisecond, Ren let the facade drop—just for a fraction of a breath. He didn't move his body; he moved his internal Qi. He willed his Azure Static to accelerate his spiritual processing speed to its absolute maximum.

Syncing... 40%... 75%... 98%... Mastery Synchronized: Phantom-Shadow Palm – Shadow Grade – Absorbed.

Ren’s hand shot up.

To the crowd, it looked like a desperate grab for a lifebuoy. To Xiang Wu, it was like his strike hit a wall of freezing liquid darkness. Ren didn't stop the hand; he twisted the shadow’s energy, looping it back through the friction point of their palms.

"Argh!" Xiang Wu recoiled, his hand shaking as the feedback from his own technique surged back through his arm. "What... what did you do?"

Ren rolled to his feet. He didn't stagger this time. He stood perfectly upright, his feet anchoring themselves to the arena using the Titanic Mantle so effectively the earth beneath his heels actually fused into basalt. He looked at his own hand—the skin was tinged violet, shadows dancing between his knuckles.

"You really should have learned more than one way to fight, Senior," Ren said. His voice was no longer that of a cowering servant. It was deep, resonant, and utterly pragmatic. "Your shadows are noisy. Too much flare, not enough substance."

The crowd went into a frenzied hush. Xiang Wu looked around at his peers, the humiliation beginning to boil in his chest. "You're dead. I'm through playing with you."

Wu uncoiled the flail. He swung it in a vertical loop, triggering the Vortex Crash and the Earth-Crush simultaneously. The arena was whipped into a literal dust-storm, gravity becoming a chaotic, twisting monster that pulled Ren toward the center.

"Eat the mountain!" Wu screamed, bringing the three-hundred-pound iron head down with the force of a falling star.

Ren looked at the meteor and chose his answer.

He didn't use one technique. He used the symphony.

Wind-Blade for the rotation. Titanic Mantle for the weight. Azure Static for the speed. And now... Phantom Shadows to hide the punch.

Ren blurred. He didn't dodge the flail; he flowed through the "eye" of its cyclone. He appeared directly in front of Xiang Wu, his proximity so sudden that the senior disciple's eyes dilated in pure, primitive fear.

Ren didn't use a fist. He touched Xiang Wu’s chest with three fingers.

"Blink-Sever," Ren whispered.

The air behind Xiang Wu exploded.

Because Ren had combined the high-speed oscillation of the daggers with the shadow-cloning technique, the result wasn't one strike. It was fifteen phantom strikes delivered in the span of a single micro-second, each carrying the weight of the Heavy Strike resonance.

THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!

The sounds merged into one horrific, singular crunch. Xiang Wu was launched into the air like he had been fired from a siege engine. He flew thirty yards across the arena, his iron flail clattering into the sand as he crashed into the far wall, leaving a massive, spider-webbed crater in the enchanted limestone.

Xiang Wu slid to the floor, his jade storage ring shattered, his fine silken robes reduced to rags. He groaned once, a single trail of blood escaping his lips before his eyes rolled back, and he lost consciousness.

Ren stood in the middle of the settling dust, his body smoking, his hand still tingling with the aftershocks of the shadow-mix. He felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his spirit roots—92% capacity. He was so close to the brink he could almost hear the roots shattering like glass.

He immediately hunched his shoulders back over. He let his legs tremble. He allowed his eyes to regain that glazed, terrified look.

"Senior Wu?" Ren called out, his voice cracking perfectly. "Are you... are you taking a nap? Did I push you too hard?"

The silence of the arena was heavy enough to kill.

The referee walked over to the unconscious Xiang Wu, checking his pulse and his aura. "He's... his meridians have been temporarily sealed. Internal trauma is... severe."

The ref looked back at Ren with a gaze that said, 'Who the hell are you?'

"Winner... Ren!"

The roar that finally came from the stands was no longer laughter. It was a cacophony of confusion, terror, and a growing, desperate belief that the world had truly gone mad. The laborers and the servants in the back were screaming themselves hoarse, throwing their mops and rags into the air.

High in the balcony, Elder Zhou was standing, his mandarin orange completely forgotten on the floor. He stared at the violet veins tracing their way up Ren's neck—the mark of the Shadow Hands that hadn't quite faded yet.

"He used it," Zhou whispered. "The boy didn't just survive it; he used the shadow as the primer for the lightning. This... this isn't Reflux anymore. It's evolution."

Hua Ran, standing at the edge of the pavilion, her sapphire eyes narrowed, watched as the medical team rushed into the ring to collect Xiang Wu. She then looked at Ren, who was being 'consoled' by a tearful Li Ming.

"Old enemy," Hua Ran muttered to herself. "And a new power that I can’t even put a name to."

Ren allowed himself to be escorted away, his gait leaning heavily on his staff. His heart was thundering in his ears. He had his sixth signature. The shadow was the catalyst he needed for the darker missions to come.

But as he entered the medic’s tent, he looked at his bronze ring. It had a visible crack in the metal.

"Too close," Ren sighed, the shadow energy coiling around his heart like a protective, cold viper. "If I have to fight Hua Ran next, I’m going to need to clear some space in my soul."

He sat on the bed, ignoring the terrified looks of the healers. He had defeated the man who had been his tormentor for years, not by becoming a better cultivator, but by being the best thief in the mountain.

"Xiang Wu is done," Ren told the shadows. "Now, it's just the 'Geniuses' left. And they have such beautiful techniques... waiting to be borrowed."

The Iron-Bell Arena was buzzing with the echoes of his "fluke" victory, but Ren knew better. The fluke was over. The rise of the Copycat had reached its inevitable climax.

He lay back, his breath finally stabilizing as the Oceanic Jet water cooled his burning nerves. He had survived another death. And the prize, as always, was a power that would eventually kill him if he didn't master the world first.

"One more final," Ren whispered. "And then the mountain will realize what they’ve actually bred."

The sun began to dip behind the peak, throwing a long, jagged shadow across the arena—the same shadow that Ren now called his own.

The hunt wasn't over. It had just moved to a higher bracket. And Ren of the servant quarters was the only one who knew the ending of the play. He was ready for the spotlight. He was ready for the crown.

But first, he really needed some tea.