242 Colors of War

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Colors of War

The Ascension Games. That was what they called it, a ritual engineered to elevate one fortunate bastard as high as the heavens would allow. It promised a path beyond the False Earth, a ticket to escape this wretched imitation of life and reach freedom. But freedom had never been my goal. If it were, I wouldn’t have returned to this place willingly, much less walked straight back into the hands of the Game Master.

No, what I wanted couldn’t be measured by release or elevation. I wasn’t looking for escape. I was here for something far more reckless and something I’d never be able to explain to these other contestants who were clawing for the heavens like it owed them something. I was here to end the damn game altogether.

The Game Master carried on like a storyteller reciting nursery rules. “While in this space, you are unable to cause direct harm to the other,” he said calmly, and without warning, swung his broom in a half-circle.

Something ‘immaterial’ passed through me.

I blinked, staring down in disbelief. A hollowed mess of flesh had been scraped from my right side, from my arm to my lung. I watched the damage suddenly appear from nowhere. The tissue was missing, and the bone was exposed. But there was neither pain nor suffocation, just an eerie silence where agony should have been.

Then it began to heal. Veins grew like vines, muscles coiled back into place, and skin knit itself together like a reversed wound. My clothes, however, had not survived the demonstration.

Regenerating them was the first thing I did, not out of modesty, but principle. It pissed me off to be used like that, and I wasn’t about to let this jackass of a janitor make me look like a ragged fool. Appearance mattered. Even in a death game, one must look the part.

The Game Master wasn’t done. “This place is called Sealed Island.” He tapped the broom once on the stone. “However, it has another name: the Mirage Island. There are strict rules that must be observed while playing the game.”

A quiet pulse traveled across the arena, and runes embedded beneath the ground flickered briefly, as if syncing with his words.

“Leaving your assigned seat during a match constitutes an automatic forfeit. Provocation between players is allowed… Encouraged, even. Should your 'General' piece fall, your epithet and soul shall be claimed by the victor. Your defeat may be negotiated, but do not misunderstand… Defeat, in its truest form, is the erasure of your existence.”

His voice didn’t rise, but it filled the space like a quiet sentence handed down by a judge. Around me, no one spoke. The atmosphere had turned heavier, like the air had been soaked in oil, ready for a single spark.

“You may assign various ‘pieces’ known as soldiers, as long as you have Quintessence to sustain them. The soldiers must be connected to you from servants, shadows, familiars, or anything within your domain. To move them, you must persuade them. Your words are your will. You cannot drag them like dolls; they must obey out of loyalty, fear, or conviction.”

It wasn’t just a game of moves, but a game of belief.

“Outside of this space, you may use any and all resources at your disposal to achieve victory,” continued the Game Master. “You may cast spells, manipulate remote assets, or engage in battle. But every action will cost Quintessence. Spend wisely. Questions?”

He paused. The silence stretched. I glanced sideways, and none of the others raised a hand. Not the Divine Physician. Not the Dark Witch. Not even Jue Bu, who usually never shuts up.

"No questions," The Game Master nodded as if satisfied. “Then, let it be known.”

The runes beneath our feet pulsed once more, this time locking in place with a resonant hum that pierced my bones.

“The game shall now officially begin. You are free to use your resources as you please.”

I leaned back into my seat, resting my cheek on my knuckles, and let my mind drift. Stretching my Divine Sense through the tether between space, I whispered my intent through the folds of space, channeling Qi Speech down into the False Earth.

“This is me, Da Wei…” I projected carefully, seeking her presence through the threads we shared. “How are you doing?”

A moment passed. Then a familiar spark brushed back.

“Fine, so far…” Gu Jie’s voice filtered through like wind through dry leaves, carrying a calm resilience. “The Night Blades brought Lu Gao and Jia Yun back to the New Willow.”

I closed my eyes and exhaled softly. Good. That meant they were safe. I trusted Gu Jie to handle herself, so it should be fine to leave her to her own devices.

“You know what you have to do,” I told her, not as a command, but as affirmation. She had always worked best when I simply acknowledged her capability.

She responded with a hint of mischief, “Don’t worry, Father… If there’s one thing I’m very good at, it’s running.”

I didn’t need to laugh, but I did anyway. Through my Divine Sense, I caught a glimpse of her riding what looked like a cobbled-together floating speedboat, zipping across an endless marsh. I squinted. The shape was familiar. She had repurposed scrap from the Megatron wreck, welded panels and all, strung together with energy lines instead of bolts.

Leave it to Gu Jie to be so resourceful.

The players kept their eyes low, locked in thought or lost in their internal battles. Outside, the illusion of the False Earth remained suspended, unreachable except through effort and essence. I remained where I was, elbow still on the armrest, letting my mind wander.

Then I turned my thoughts to someone else.

“Alice,” I called through Qi Speech, shifting my mental focus. “Hey… how are you doing? Bored?”

A brief silence.

Then she replied, voice sharp but light. “Why do you think I’m bored?”

I paused, then softened my tone. “Look… I know I dragged you here without warning. This wasn’t your fight. You didn’t have time to prepare. You don’t even have pieces on the board, so—”

She cut in smoothly. “And what makes you think I don’t have any ‘pieces’ on the board?”

That was… surprising.

She added. "Some of my familiars remain in False Earth, and I can wield Quintessence just fine..."

By familiars, she meant rats, spiders, crows, bats, and snakes from her spells.

I had spent five years building my pieces. Five years of clawing through madness, cheating death, and leaning on Wen Yuhan’s Destiny Seeking Eyes to guide me toward each thread of potential. I knew my pace was insane by any standards. But here, among ancient monsters who had lived for a hundred thousand years, I had assumed I was still playing catch-up. Yet here Alice was, casually revealing that she, too, had gathered her own hand.

The moment she let me see through her efforts, I felt her presence gently wrap around mine, tugging me inward. She didn’t drag me. She guided like a patient teacher leading a child through a maze. My Divine Sense followed her signal until it unraveled like silk across unfamiliar land. We drifted together until we arrived at a ruin tucked away in the folds of the False Earth.

It was a ghost town.

Cracked stone roads split like broken veins across the landscape. The buildings were leaning, most already half-swallowed by roots or collapsed under their own weight. But it wasn’t the decay that bothered me. Instead, it was the infestation. Rats. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They moved like shadows clinging to the bones of the city, slipping between alleys, nests, and burrows as if they’d claimed dominion here. Occasionally, bats flitted past in crooked flight, nesting in hollow steeples and broken chimneys. The scent of rot lingered beneath the breeze.

Alice didn’t speak right away, letting me absorb the scene in full.

I broke the silence. “You have incredible Qi Sense. To guide my consciousness this delicately… makes me rethink everything I thought I was good at.”

She let out a half-snort. “You’d be surprised what I can do when I’m not being underestimated.”

“I’m not underestimating you. I’m scared,” I admitted. “Just a little.”

Alice sounded pleased. “I’ve integrated my Warlock Legacy with this world’s cultivation methods. I took your Mana Road Cultivation as a foundation. It’s crude, but workable. With it, I’ve managed to replicate most basic Qi techniques… and even improved some by splicing in spell structures from our world.”

That shut me up.

“I’m still sloppy with Quintessence,” she added, almost sheepishly.

I almost choked. “You can handle Quintessence?”

Her tone flattened. “Yes?”

It took me several one-on-one tutoring sessions just to form a thread without my soul exploding. She made it sound like she just picked it up from a manual.

Alice continued as if she hadn’t just insulted my entire cultivation career. “While I could offer little in a direct confrontation, this little rat army could spy on enemy camps. If I get lucky, I might even cause a plague.”

The casual way she said that was unsettling. Still, I had to admit, there was potential in her swarm. Information was the most expensive commodity in this game, and Alice had given herself a discount.

My feelings about the whole affair remained tangled. On paper, this was war. But in truth, it felt like genocide waiting for a good excuse. The False Earth wasn’t even close to Earth in size, but it was no mere battlefield. A fractured world, maybe one-sixth the size of Earth, but with enough terrain and population to turn every square mile into a story of grief.

The Sacred Grove rested in the southwest. That was mine… lush, mineral-rich, and deeply rooted in the old ways. Visually, it appeared green, and in some places dark green, depending on the intensity of my influence. Beyond that lay what remained of the Demonic Cult’s territory, represented with the color red. I assumed Ru Qiu still held sway over that area, judging by the few bits of green around the Demonic Cult territory. Ru Qiu seemed to have fewer pieces than I expected.

From the very obvious context, it seemed the Dark Witch had betrayed him. That would explain his fury toward her. Their territory was now split, her faction seizing a good chunk of what the Heavenly Demon was once his, transforming the Demonic Cult to a camp that the Dark Witch now ruled exclusively as its head honcho.

I turned my focus eastward, toward the Heavenly Alliance’s domain. The land was bathed in blues of varying intensity. I couldn’t see past its borders, but something flickered within. My Guardians had made it.

When Jue Bu expelled me from Wen Yuhan’s body, Ding Shan and the others had already reorganized themselves to mobilize. I left them a detailed command structure, strict contingencies, and fallback orders. I trusted them. I hoped they trusted ‘Wen Yuhan’ enough to push through.

“Huh? What is happening?”

My Divine Sense flared, subtle at first, like the sound of wind shifting through trees. Then came the spike. Something was wrong.

I focused.

Within the Sacred Grove, tremors rippled through my awareness. One by one, city-states began to flicker in color. The green bled out. Some turned blue, absorbed into the Heavenly Alliance. Others shifted to deep crimson, claimed by the Demonic Cult.

What the hell was happening?

The color-coding was, I had to admit, a brilliant design choice. Every region, territory, or influence was marked in vibrant hues: Sacred Groves in green, Heavenly Alliance in blue, and Demonic Cult in red. With a mere thought, I could zoom in and out of the False Earth like it was a massive floating interface, something between a spiritual map and a divine tablet. It was intuitive. Beautiful, even.

But I couldn’t appreciate any of it.

Because I was watching green city-states vanish, one after another, swallowed by waves of red and blue.

This wasn’t just a map. It was a real-time strategy game with real consequences, and I had just been singled out early in the match. Out of the fifty-two city-states that once aligned with the Sacred Groves, nearly half turned coat. The vibrant greens flickered and dissolved, replaced by the encroaching blues of the Heavenly Alliance or the blood-rich reds of the Demonic Cult.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance.

There was no time to pout. I spread my Divine Sense as wide as it could reach and cast my Qi Speech like a net, flinging it across the fractured lands. I began speaking to farmers hiding in cellars, to children clutching prayer beads, to mothers wrapping their babies in cloth embroidered with my sigil. I whispered to them as their homes burned, as temple bells were torn down and melted into chains.

Each message drained me, not just of Quintessence, but of something far more fragile. I saw a girl, no older than ten, clutching a makeshift effigy of my statue as her village was dragged into the flames. In another city, I found a preacher gagged and nailed to the temple doors, his robes soaked in oil. He smiled when he heard my voice and told the people to keep running.

I told them to find the rivers. Hide in caves. Head toward the western forests, where the Grove’s roots still held ground. I promised them it wasn’t the end, that I would come for them. That their belief wasn’t in vain.

Even if I wasn’t sure anymore.

I watched the faith I built unravel, city after city, my statues toppled, my name branded heresy. I could still hear them chanting my titles in secret, voices trembling behind closed doors. They didn’t care if I was dead or alive. And now, I was the god they were crucifying in my own name.

Then came the laughter.

The Dark Witch crossed one leg over the other, that usual smug curve on her lips. “What’s the problem?” she purred. “You look… distraught.”

I didn’t answer her. But I wanted to smash that smile into the floor.

The Game Master, calm as always, rested both hands atop his broom. “It was impressive how you fended off our spies in the early stages,” he mused aloud. “That’s why I’ve been extremely careful in setting up this strategy… but even I’m surprised. It seems the Demonic Cult also employed the same tactic… only more effectively.”

A third of the traitor city-states now glowed red. I hadn’t even realized the Demonic Cult had that kind of reach.

“Oh, you flatter me, Game Master,” the Dark Witch replied with a mocking bow. “It just so happens that I can be very persuasive.”

She was probably the one who flipped them… whispers, promises, blackmail. Classic cult tactics. I hated how good she was at it.

If this kept up, my Quintessence would hit rock bottom before the war even officially began. That would mean no casting, no commands, no defense… Just sitting helplessly as my territory bled out.

Jue Bu whistled. “That’s your problem, David. You cherish people too much. Always sacrificing yourself for them. You. Just. Have. To. Save. Everyone.”

I raised my hand and flipped him the bird. “Fuck you. And don’t call me David.”

He grinned like I just validated his entire worldview. “It’s funny how you switch to obscenities the moment you’re at a disadvantage.”

“Oh, you got me wrong, buddy,” I said through gritted teeth. “I use foul language when I’m celebrating, too.”

I had one last card to play, and it wasn’t going to be cheap. I closed my eyes and aimed my Qi Speech directly toward New Willow. It had been my oldest territory, and ironically, the weirdest. A theocratic democracy that somehow still listened to its elders and ‘priesthood’ represented by ‘one’ in equal measure. Gods, what an abomination of structure. What kind of priesthood only has one priest? Er… priestess?

“This is Da Wei,” I sent, pinpointing the Head Council’s seat. “I know it’s been some time, Chief, but I need you to listen closely.”

Through my Divine Sense, I caught sight of Wan Peng just as he lifted his chopsticks. He froze mid-bite, eyes wide, and stood up so fast he knocked over his chair.

“Da Wei…” he whispered. “You were alive all along…”

“It’s a long story,” I said quickly. “And it might be too much to explain now, but I need you to trust me.”

His gaze darted around as his family rose in alarm. One of them, his wife, grabbed his arm, asking what was wrong. The panic was spreading.

Wan Peng’s lips trembled. “Is it like the Yama King incident again?”

Worse.

“It’s the World War scenario I kept warning the Council about,” I told him. “It’s real. It’s happening now.”

Wan Peng paled. “How do you know that? That was Lady Wen’s—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I cut in. “For the past five years, Wen Yuhan has acted on my behalf due to… complications. She preserved my image, turned me into the symbol of the Sacred Groves. I know everything she knew.”

That was a lie lacquered with half-truths and omission, but he didn’t need the whole picture. He just needed to move.

Wan Peng stood frozen, hand over his mouth. Then he began pacing back and forth, as if trying to organize the storm in his head. His children were asking questions now. He waved them away, muttering to himself.

Then, at last, he stopped.

He turned toward the window, fists clenched at his sides, and said with grim clarity, “I know what to do.”

I swept my Divine Sense across the False Earth, honing in on a particular spark. There, alone in the candlelit silence of a familiar shrine, Yuen Fu knelt beneath the statue of… well… me.

It was the Shrine of Da Wei. A crude likeness someone had carved years ago, face worn by time and soot, still holding a prayerful dignity. Yuen Fu’s robes were tattered, and his sword lay across his lap, yet Yuen Fu remained still.

I reached out with Qi Speech. “Yuen Fu, I need help.”

His eyes opened immediately, glowing faintly. “Lord Wei, I understand.”

“Say accept,” I ordered, already shoring up what little quintessence I have.

He didn't hesitate. “I accept.”

I withdrew from the Divine Sense and leaned back, fixing the other players with a grin I hadn’t worn in a while. It was the kind that begged someone to underestimate me. My tone brimmed with mockery as I raised both hands and flipped them the birds.

“Let me tell you something about myself,” I said, voice ringing clear. “I’m very good at coming in clutch.”

Without another word, I cast Divine Possession.

One of my two souls tore through dimensions like a knife through silk and descended into Yuen Fu’s body. His spiritual root accepted me instantly, harmonizing with the resonance of my higher cultivation. His meridians expanded. His dantian bloomed.

In a breath, I elevated him to Soul Recognition.

Yuen Fu staggered from the force of it but found his footing quickly. I gave him no time to adjust.

“There’s a rebellion I want you to suppress,” I said. “Lend me your strength, Yuen Fu!”

Yuen Fu bowed deeply within the Shrine, eyes blazing with new power. “Your will is my command, Lord Wei.”