The CopyCat Immortal

Chapter 6 Accidental Confession

The abrasive scratch of Ren’s hemp brush against the scorched stone tiles of the West Pagoda was the only sound in the courtyard that didn't vibrate with lethal intent. Ren didn't look up. He didn't need to. He could smell the iron and ozone drifting from the training pits twenty yards away—the scent of "geniuses" bleeding for prestige.

His knuckles were raw, the skin split and weeping from the heavy manual labor, but he didn't care. Inside, the Azure Static from the Stormcrest Wolf was humming a rhythmic harmony with the Earth Shield in his marrow. He was a human capacitor, holding a dangerous cocktail of stolen spiritual signatures, yet here he was, scrubbing away a puddle of someone else’s bile. 

"Step aside, peasant. You’re blocking the view," a voice drawled.

Ren shifted his weight, pulling his bucket back with a rhythmic efficiency. A group of Inner Sect disciples strutted past, their silken robes rustling like a thousand whispered insults. They didn't see a human; they saw a piece of the architecture.

In the center of the pit stood Xiang Wu. 

He was a masterpiece of arrogance. Built like a temple pillar and radiating a suffocating pressure of Foundation Level 4, Xiang Wu was currently wielding a training weapon that made most disciples shudder—a Iron-Grit Flail, its head as large as a man's torso.

"Keep it steady, boy," Xiang Wu grunted to his training partner, a terrified initiate named Kai who was struggling to maintain an energy-shielded barrier. "If you can’t handle a warm-up, how are you going to survive the Tournament? Focus!"

Xiang Wu swung the flail. It wasn't just physical strength; it was the Vortex Crash technique—an advanced Earth-Wind hybrid. The air around the flail groaned, spiraling into a mini-cyclone that pulled the loose gravel of the yard into its orbit. 

Ren kept his head down, scrubbing a stubborn bloodstain. His omniscient senses, however, were wide open. He could feel the specific frequency of the wind’s howl and the grounding weight of the flail’s energy. It was a beautiful manual, splayed open in the air before him. He committed the curve of the strike to his memory, filing it away for a "death" he hoped he wouldn't need yet.

"Wait, Senior Wu! The barrier is cracking!" Kai shouted, his face turning the color of ash.

"Shut up and hold!" Xiang Wu roared, the adrenaline of the crowd's attention fueling his recklessness.

Xiang Wu twisted his torso, pivoting with an explosive release of Qi. The flail struck Kai’s barrier with the force of a battering ram. The resulting shockwave was messy—a catastrophic failure of spiritual harmonics. The green barrier shattered like glass under a hammer.

Instead of a clean impact, the flail deflected. It clipped Kai’s shoulder, spinning him like a top, but the real disaster was the change in momentum. The three-hundred-pound iron ball ripped from its chain, propelled by a surplus of Gale-type Qi and raw gravitational force. 

It wasn't flying toward the training walls. It was shrieking through the air toward the spectator’s alcove—specifically, toward a ten-year-old Junior Disciple who was holding a tray of refreshment charms, frozen in terror. 

The kid stood no chance. The iron ball was a blurred meteor of jagged metal and lingering spiritual residue.

"Watch out!" someone screamed, but it was useless. 

Ren acted before his pragmatic mind could give him a reason to stay still. 

He didn't think about his cover. He didn't think about Elder Zhou’s watching eyes or Zhao’s suspicious glares. All he saw was the kinetic path of a flying executioner. 

Earth Shield. Max output. Wind Burst. Initial thrust.

Ren’s movement wasn't a run; it was a shift in reality. To the untrained eye, he vanished from his kneeling position. To those with high cultivation, he appeared to slide across the stone as if the friction of the world had simply forgotten he existed.

He intercepted the flail five feet before it could pulp the boy. 

Ren didn't catch it. That would be suicide. He met it.

He stepped into the iron ball’s path, his forearm already glowing with a subtle, basaltic grey. He channeled the Azure Static to act as a lubricant, ionising the air around his limb to create a momentary slip-plane.

CRACK-BOOM.

The sound was like a thunderclap trapped in a small room. Ren’s feet skidded backward, his worn sandals carving deep grooves into the century-old stone tiles of the yard. Smoke curled from his sleeve as his Earth Shield took the brunt of the kinetic impact, his muscles groaning as they mimicked the density of the very stone he’d been scrubbing. 

With a low, guttural grunt, Ren twisted his hips and used the stolen Wind Blade rotation to redirect the flail. Instead of crushing the boy, the iron ball veered upward, sailing harmlessly over the boy's head and slamming into a reinforced obsidian pillar behind the alcove. The pillar groaned, cracks snaking through its core.

The courtyard went deathly quiet. 

Ren didn't strike a pose. He didn't check for applause. He immediately slumped his shoulders, let the grey tint fade from his skin, and reached for his bucket.

"Oh, damn," Ren muttered, his voice shaking with a manufactured tremor. "My bucket. I nearly knocked it over."

He scrambled back to his cleaning spot, keeping his face buried in his shadow, scrubbing a tile that was already spotless. 

The Junior Disciple dropped his tray, the charms scattering like bright confetti. He stared at Ren with wide, watering eyes. "You... you just..."

"Whoops, kid, look at the mess," Ren cut him off, his tone sounding like a grumpy, tired laborer. "Almost got clipped by a stray, didn't ya? Sect's getting dangerous these days. You gotta pay attention to the Seniors."

Across the yard, the Inner Disciples were still in shock. They hadn't seen the specific techniques—it was too fast—but they had seen a "laborer" stop a projectile that should have torn through him.