Chi Su stood amidst the carnage, her chest heaving with exertion as she surveyed the bodies of multiple bloodbeasts scattered around her. The creatures lay in twisted heaps, their crimson corpses staining the forest floor. Behind her, Ran watched in silence, her expression drawn with exhaustion, her eyes hollow from the relentless pace Su had set since their escape.
"Damn it," Su muttered, her voice tight with barely contained fury. "Not only did I fail to cripple that weakling Aoyan, I lost all my points to that damned Li." She kicked a bloodbeast corpse, her frustration finding a temporary outlet. "There was nothing in the information about his strength that indicated he was that powerful. Nothing."
She paced, her mind churning through scenarios of revenge and recovery. "But I'll get them back for this. For now, I need to focus on the first place. That resonance will be mine." Her eyes narrowed with fierce determination. "I am better than Aoyan. They're all wrong about her. All of them."
Ran said nothing. She simply watched her sister, her tired eyes holding secrets she wasn't ready to share.
---
The scene shifted to another part of the forest, where Lin Shu moved with purpose through the dense undergrowth. He had heard the announcement alongside his team, and his mind was already calculating the implications of the new rules. Everyone around him had affixed their tokens to their robes, visible and vulnerable. Everyone except him.
"I don't have to protect the token like everyone else, I can just put it under my armor as long as it's on my clothes then ti doesn't matter" he thought, a cold satisfaction settling in his chest. "This new rule actually benefits me. All I'll have to do is let my armor protect it and I am safe from losing my points."
They ran in formation, Lin Shu at the front, Aoyan and Kai flanking him, Shang bringing up the rear with his wings half-extended for balance. But Shang's eyes kept drifting to Lin Shu, studying him with an intensity that finally broke the silence.
"Hey, Li?"
Lin Shu tilted his head slightly, not breaking stride. "What?"
Shang's brow furrowed. "Wasn't your skin tone softer than this before? I'm pretty sure your eyes and hair color weren't what they are now either."
Lin Shu's mind stuttered for a fraction of a second. He had forgotten. In the rush of the hunt, in the chaos of battles and healing, he had neglected to reactivate his chameleon technique. His natural features were exposed.
"Damn it."
But his face betrayed nothing. He formed an explanation smoothly, his voice calm and unconcerned. "It's a side effect of my technique. Since I'm always using it, the colors tend to shift for some reason. It doesn't do anything beyond that."
Kai nodded acceptingly—many techniques had strange, unexplainable quirks. Aoyan, too, seemed to file the information away without question. Shang shrugged after a moment, his curiosity satisfied, and dropped the matter entirely.
Lin Shu allowed himself a silent breath of relief. "The radius has been halved, which means running into individuals is much more likely now. I should have a good chance of finding Han Yi. I need to kill her—just to be certain she didn't recognize me."
He activated his Owl's Gaze, the world sharpening into stark contrasts of life force and terrain. Shang, who shared the same art, did the same. It was Shang who noticed the change first.
"Over there." Shang pointed ahead, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper. "I'm pretty sure that's a group of people."
Lin Shu didn't wait for confirmation. He surged forward, leaving the others behind in a burst of speed.
"No you don't!" Shang called after him, launching himself into the air with a powerful beat of his wings. "You're not taking all the points for yourself, Li!"
---
Ahead, a small group of cultivators moved cautiously through the trees, their voices low with tension.
"Hey, we're going to have to get out of here soon," one of them said, his eyes darting nervously at the treeline. "Otherwise we'll be in the red zone and get disqualified."
"Yeah, but let's check around a little more," another replied, scanning the area. "Maybe we'll find some—"
He never finished the sentence.
A thin, incandescent line of white fire lanced through the air and pierced his skull with a sickening crack. He dropped instantly, his token clattering to the ground beside his twitching body.
The other cultivator spun, his hand reaching for his weapon, but he was too slow. An ivory gauntlet closed around his face, claws digging into his skin as he was lifted bodily from the ground. White flames burst from the gauntlet in a concentrated explosion.
BOOM.
When the light faded, the man's head and shoulders were simply gone.
Two others who had been standing slightly apart took one look at the carnage and ran. They sprinted side by side, terror lending speed to their feet. Between them, a head suddenly appeared—floating, grinning, entirely out of place.
"What's the hurry?" Shang asked cheerfully.
A burst of wind blasted from his hands, staggering one of the runners. Shang twisted his body, his two wings extending and spinning like blades. The first cultivator tried to defend with his sword, but the force of the wing-slash sent him stumbling back. The second wasn't so lucky—Shang's other wing caught him clean across the neck.
The headless body took two more steps before collapsing.
Shang moved to pursue the last survivor, but a familiar white beam shot past him, punching through the fleeing man's skull with surgical precision. The body crumpled mid-stride.
Lin Shu stood over his kills, two tokens already in his hand. He transferred their points and crushed them with a satisfying crack. Shang cursed under his breath as he retrieved the token from his own kill.
"Hey! Save some for the rest of us!"
Lin Shu ignored him, taking the token from his latest victim and adding its points to his growing total.
Kai and Aoyan arrived moments later, out of breath and clearly annoyed. Aoyan surveyed the corpses with a grimace before nudging Lin Shu's shoulder playfully.
"Can you two not take everything?" she said, attempting lightness despite the grisly scene. "Me and Kai want at least a single point at this rate."
Shang laughed, but there was an edge to it. "Sorry to disappoint you, but we're both trying to climb the rankings. We can't waste a single point."
Kai opened his mouth to speak, but Lin Shu cut him off. "He's right. We're both here to get points, Aoyan. There's no slowing down, no sharing. Not with rewards like those on the line."
Shang nodded emphatically. "Exactly. I've never had a hundred Aether Shards handed to me just like that in my entire life. Hell, I've never even reached a hundred total. The most I've ever had at once was maybe twenty. I've had to do a lot of things— dangerous things—just to get a single shard." His eyes flicked to Aoyan with pointed meaning. "Not all of us are like you."
Aoyan's eyebrows shot up. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Shang shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "Come on, do I have to explain it? Me, Li, and Kai don't exactly have a clan elder as a master. You do. And not just any cultivator—he's one of the strongest Rank 2 cultivators in the entire region."
Aoyan's face tightened, but she couldn't refute it. Her priorities weren't the same as theirs. She wasn't here for the material rewards; she was here for the heir spot. They were here for survival, for the chance at a life beyond scraping by.
"I was just joking," she said, her voice cooler now. "You don't have to be a jerk about it."
Shang took a step toward her, his grin returning but sharper. "Come on, I didn't hurt your little feelings, did I?"
Aoyan's frown deepened, and the air around her began to warm, cyan light flickering at her fingertips.
Shang stopped mid-step as he felt the temperature rise. His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed with amusement.
"What do you think you're doing, Shang?" Lin Shu's voice cut through the tension like a blade. He stepped between them, his posture calm but his presence immovable. "Knock it off."
Shang raised an eyebrow. "Relax. I'm not doing anything. Just talking to her."
"Don't." Lin Shu's gaze was piercing. "You're both wasting my time, and I don't have enough to begin with."
Shang held his gaze for a moment, then shrugged, the tension draining from his shoulders. "Fine, fine. Let's move."
They resumed their pace, the brief confrontation fading into the background. Kai followed silently, his expression carefully neutral. Aoyan ran beside Lin Shu, her thoughts churning.
"What he said doesn't matter," she told herself firmly. "Like Li said, no one's opinion about me matters except..." A small smile crept onto her face, unbidden. "Except Mother and Master. And maybe..."
She glanced at Lin Shu's profile, at the way his eyes constantly scanned their surroundings, at the resolute look on his face, at the armor that had protected her more times than she could count.
"...maybe his as well."