Outworld Liberators-Chapter 184: Nailing Relations From the Top Echelons to the Bottom Rungs
A full day of venting left the arena visitors, now victim’s relatives, wrung out.
By dusk the crowd moved like men after harvest. Arms heavy. Throats raw. Rage spent down to a dull ache.
They drifted home with bloodied bruised knuckles and the strange calm that came when you finally struck the thing you had been forbidden to strike.
The attendants looked worse. White robed and straight backed, they still carried themselves like court men.
The reason for their fatigue is that their mouths have yapped again and again, telling the onlookers that they were dishing out damage.
"The soul suffers the damage. Each pain you inflict becomes a hundred times more."
Mortals did not quite believe it. Cultivators did not quite believe it either.
Not because they thought the attendants lied. Because the shackled would not let the prisoners bleed or bruise.
That left them unsure whether they had beaten a soul half-dead or only raised a swollen cheek, though their aim had been the former.
When the last shouts died, the bound were brought away.
A cave mouth yawned open near the Arena’s flank, dark as a night.
Curious onlookers tried to follow, necks craning, hands itching to see what came next.
Ghost attendants blocked them without raising a voice. Cold hands. Cold stares. No passage.
The prisoners were dragged down the long slope into a realm that did not belong to the surface.
The ghost realm fragment was the kind that kept expanding as more ghosts were born every day.
In turn, it cultivated and absorbed death and ghost energy, making it an infinitesimal loop that went on and on as long as the cycle was not broken.
Inside, beds of stone waited the prisoners.
They looked almost merciful at first glance, pale frames laid in rows, steels prepared.
One would be reminded of Ashlime Crag, except this place was lighter.
It did not tear souls loose. It did not shred what could not be repaired.
It extracted blood. It circulated meridians. It fed qi when the body dipped too low.
It also did something else.
The arrays reached in and harvested nips of meridians, small bites taken from the energy pathways the way a careful man took cuttings from a plant.
Meridians were muscle and vein in spirit form. They could be injured. They could heal.
As long as the damage was not crippling, a cultivator could regrow what was cut.
A farm, built out of pain and patience.
Radeon stood over the first test subject with his disciples behind him.
Fay. Thaddeus. Oswin. Lifara. Their faces had not settled into one emotion.
They looked conflicted, caught between what they had been taught and what they believed was ethical.
Radeon saw it. He chose not to soothe it.
He unfolded a thin list of records and began to read the man’s sin.
"He ran through a hundred women. Then he killed them."
He turned a page.
"He blew people up a dozen times. All because someone looked at him a little funny."
Fay flinched. Oswin’s jaw tightened. Thaddeus looked away, then forced himself to look back. Lifara’s hands curled as if she wanted to strike something that was not there.
Radeon closed the list and looked at the four of them.
"If I wanted, I could be him to you," he said. "But I don’t. That’s the difference."
Silence answered him. Not agreement. Not rebellion.
The silence of young people realizing how close the world always sat to that cliff edge.
They understood, a little.
These prisoners had lived like that for years, and no one had stopped them because stopping them had been inconvenient.
Radeon’s gaze settled on Fay.
"Say I lied to you back at the Everwritten Archivists Court," he said. "What do you feel?"
"Now times that by a hundred. Can you hold that in your chest?"
Fay swallowed. Her eyes stayed wet and hard at once.
The pain was unfathomable. That was the point. People used that word like a shield.
If it was unfathomable. Radeon made them try to fathom it anyway.
Then he began. He opened the man on the bed with the same calm he would have used preparing fish for drying.
Straps held. Arrays hummed. Blood ran in measured lines into waiting vessels.
It was ugly. It was controlled. It was not done in anger.
As the work continued, Radeon adjusted the array with a small brush and copper ink, changing the flow, the pressure, how the meridians were cut and how they were coaxed back.
The prisoner had earth affinity. That mattered.
Radeon rebuilt the method around that fact, a custom cultivation that pushed growth where it was needed.
Not mercy. Efficiency. Grow the pathways so they could be harvested again.
On the side, Ewan and Maeron watched and took notes.
Their bodies had stalled for thousands of years, but the part of them that loved arrays still burned bright.
This was knowledge they might never stumble upon even if they begged the heavens for ten lifetimes.
Radeon spoke without looking up.
"Don’t faint," he told his disciples. "Don’t run." He looked them over.
"If you want to live through what’s coming, keep your heart steady while your hands do what’s required."
Some of the interested wraiths drifted closer, drawn by the array work like moths to a lantern.
Radeon spoke to them too, giving them pieces, letting them taste technique in exchange for their labor.
Above ground, the mortals buzzed with excitement as if the city had won a festival.
Boards of prices thrummed and flashed with new light, new listings, new opportunities.
This time, the price they were looking for did not slip away as the boards kept flashing.
It was an announcement solely for mortals, a chance to ascend to heaven in a single step.
[Martial Arts Tournament For Mortals]
[All participants of less than 30 years of age are welcome.]
[Prizes: Cultivation Techniques, Panaceas, and Spirit Stones.]
[Grand Price: 20 Lucky Participants Selected as Radeon Terraces Disciples.]
People didn’t just sprint out of the Terraces when they read what was written. They ran as if life and death were suddenly uncertain, some of them moving even faster than they had when the Aberrant had risen.
What’s more, thirty was old, there was even a saying that said as much.
You can’t thirst for cultivation when you’re thirty in hesitation.
It was deemed impossible by many. A god was someone who made the impossible possible, and Eldric a god amongst men. That was enough.
The cultivators, however, had already shifted their attention to something else entirely.
[Preta Lurienna Labyrinth]
[Contains ancient treasures, pills, martial arts.]
[No real deaths. Each man’s safety is monitored for 24/7.]
[Price Starts: 10 Spirit Stones]
[Opening Soon...]
Then a note was written beneath it, almost imperceptible, deliberately hidden and meant to be found only by someone keen enough to look twice.
[Disclaimer. All difficulty will be adjusted based on personal strength. There is no guarantee you can complete the maze.]
[If you fail, there is no way, shape, or form you will be refunded. This applies to the initial entry of ten spirit stones and to the Exclusive Secret Realm.]
Tabulae had managed to run from her grandfather, Biscuit. She stood there with her fists clenched tight.
Even she was not dumb enough to miss the shape of it.
Radeon was the man who had helped her. The place where she stood was called Radeon Terraces.
That was not coincidence. Not the kind that mattered.
Her eyes flicked over the sign again, then back to the attendants, then to the peak itself.
As a child with a vivid imagination, her thinking ran straight and true.
It was simple in her head. Radeon owned this place.
The thought made her chest feel hot, half triumph, half fear, as if she had discovered a secret too large to keep behind her teeth.
On another side of the crowd, the bandits Radeon had looted saw the posting too.
At first they had told themselves it was nothing. A name was a name. A terrace was a terrace.
They held that lie for a few days while they searched for Radeon and found only empty trails.
It was not until one of them stepped up, gulped down fear, and asked a ghost attendant.
When the attendant explained, the bandits went still.
Then elation hit them, sudden and greedy. A pie had fallen right into their laps, warm and whole.
They had been hunting Radeon, and now the mountain had raised its hand and said, here.
Here was their answer. The job turned immediate and real when they were invited to attend staff training.
Most of them knew only banditry, the quick hand and the quicker temper.
Radeon’s people had not broken them with mind tricks. No forceful modification. Just work.
Etiquette drilled until it stuck. Anger management taught like any other craft.
Radeon’s reasoning was cold in its own way.
As long as a person stayed conscious and could think for themselves, there was no real brainwashing.
You could reshape behavior without stealing the mind. You could call it reform and sleep at night.
Nearby, Goldman and the other mortal magnates stared at the board with faces gone stern and hungry.
They smelled profit in the air the way dogs smelled meat.
This was a peerless chance. A path opening. A new market being born while everyone watched.
Their optimism even played their mind to a quiet certainty. Twenty slots.
Of course those slots were meant for them due to the Physique Accelerant Bath Solutions.
Twenty of their youth succeeded into integrating it. It felt so perfect it could not be accident.
The most relaxed were the miners who had come with Radeon.
They did not talk about fate or profit. They asked the attendants to teach them martial arts. They were taught without flair or drama.
Basics. Stances that made the knees ache. Breathing that made the ribs hurt. Movements that looked silly until they stopped being silly.
Some of them began to cultivate. Breath Tempering came to a few like the first spark in wet wood.
Those who succeeded only sighed. They had wanted to participate, but now this competition was not for them.
Even so, they did not complain. They looked forward, not only for themselves, but for relatives who had not yet cultivated.
