The Samsara Jade

Chapter 31

A slow, heavy footstep echoed through the thick fog. 

The sound was not loud, but it was incredibly heavy. It sounded like a giant statue walking on stone feet. Every time the foot hit the ground, the solid grey blocks of the arena seemed to vibrate. 

Wang stopped reaching for Xiao Ming’s spirit stone. He frowned and looked into the thick white mist. 

"Who is making that noise?" Wang shouted. He hated being interrupted. "Show yourself! This is the registration line, you idiot!"

No one answered. The fog only grew thicker. 

The footsteps were getting closer. They were coming from the path that led to the dark, dangerous forest behind the sect. The path that led to the Beast Chasm. 

The hundreds of disciples held their breath. They stared into the white mist. The heavy pressure in the air made their hearts beat fast. The weak disciples felt like they could not breathe. It was the feeling a rabbit gets when a hungry wolf walks into the grass. 

Slowly, a tall, dark shadow appeared in the fog. 

The shadow stepped forward, breaking through the white mist, and walked into the clear morning light of the arena. 

The crowd gasped. Several disciples took a quick step backward. 

The person standing before them was terrifying. 

He was a young man, very tall, with incredibly broad, powerful shoulders. He was wearing a long, black leather coat that fell past his knees. The coat was open, revealing a tight black silk shirt underneath. He wore heavy black boots that hit the ground with massive force. 

His skin was not normal. It had a dull, greyish color, shining slightly in the morning light like cold, hard iron. His black hair was wild, blowing in the wind across his sharp, cold face. 

But his eyes were the most frightening part. They were pitch black. They were empty of all human emotion. They did not look like the eyes of a disciple. They looked like the eyes of a demon who had crawled out of hell to collect souls. 

For a long moment, nobody recognized him. He looked like an Enforcer from the highest peaks of the mountain, or a wandering assassin. 

He walked slowly, passing by the long line of disciples. 

As he walked, the crowd parted perfectly. People pushed against each other, desperately trying to get out of his way. No one wanted to stand near him. The cold, heavy aura coming from his body was too scary. 

He walked straight toward the registration table. 

As he got closer, the sunlight hit his face perfectly. 

A girl in the front of the line dropped her wooden token. It clattered loudly on the stone floor. She pointed a shaking finger at the tall man in the black coat. 

"L-Li... Li Chen?" she whispered. Her voice was filled with absolute shock and horror. 

The name rippled through the crowd like a wave of electricity. 

"Li Chen?"

"The Broken Root?"

"The woodchopper?"

"It cannot be! Zhao Feng crushed his chest a month ago!"

"Deacon Lin took his body to the Beast Chasm! He is dead! He must be a ghost!"

The whispers grew louder and louder. Hundreds of eyes stared in pure disbelief. 

It was Li Chen. The facial features were the same. But everything else was completely, entirely different. 

The old Li Chen was a hunched, skinny, crying victim who scrubbed floors and wore rags. 

The person walking toward the table was a giant. He looked like a god of war carved out of grey stone. He did not look down at the ground. He looked straight ahead, completely ignoring the hundreds of people staring at him. He did not care about their shock. They were nothing to him. 

Wang and Sun stood frozen in front of the table. Their jaws hung wide open. Their eyes bulged out of their heads. 

They remembered the rainy night perfectly. They remembered Zhao Feng kicking Li Chen so hard that his chest caved in. They remembered hearing Li Chen’s bones break. They knew for a fact that Li Chen was left in the mud to bleed to death. 

"You..." Wang stuttered. His face turned pale white. His knees began to shake. "How... how are you alive?"

Li Chen did not even look at Wang. 

He treated Wang like a piece of dirt on the bottom of a shoe. He walked right past him. 

Li Chen stopped in front of the terrified Xiao Ming, who was still sitting on the ground holding his single spirit stone. 

Li Chen looked down at the small boy. The black void in Li Chen's eyes made Xiao Ming freeze in total fear. But Li Chen did not hit him. 

Instead, Li Chen reached into his heavy black leather coat. He pulled out a small, grey cloth pouch. It was the storage pouch he had taken from the dead Deacon Lin. 

Li Chen opened the pouch. He reached inside and pulled out a beautiful, glowing blue spirit stone. 

But this was not a normal, cheap, low-grade stone like the one Xiao Ming had. This was a high-grade spirit stone. It glowed with a bright, pure blue light. It was perfectly smooth. It was the kind of stone only Inner Sect Elders used. Li Chen had taken it from the glowing silver box the Shadow Viper had used as an illusion, discovering later that the box was real, hidden in the mud. 

Li Chen stepped over Xiao Ming. He walked directly up to the wooden registration desk. 

Behind the desk, Elder Lu was shaking. He had spilled hot green tea all over his fat lap, but he did not even notice the pain. He stared at the giant, grey-skinned boy in the black Enforcer coat. 

Li Chen raised his right hand. 

SMACK! 

Li Chen slammed the high-grade spirit stone down onto the wooden table. 

The sound was incredibly loud. It echoed across the entire stone arena like a gunshot. The force of the slam was so heavy that the thick wooden table cracked right down the middle. 

"Li Chen," he said. His voice was deep, rough, and completely cold. It did not shake. It did not ask for permission. It was an absolute command. "Register me."

Elder Lu stared at the glowing blue stone, then looked up at Li Chen’s terrifying, empty eyes. 

"Y-yes. Right away," Elder Lu squeaked. His fat hands shook wildly as he grabbed his brush. He dipped it in ink and quickly wrote the name 'Li Chen' on the tournament list.