Chapter 61: Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal
The competition area of the Cloud Front Division was called the Gathering Stone Platform.
It was not, despite the name, a single stone. It was an entire courtyard of them — flat slabs of pale granite arranged in concentric rings around a central stage, wide enough to hold several hundred people standing comfortably, and high enough on the mountainside that the wind came through constantly, carrying the smell of pine and cold altitude.
Jiang Man arrived early.
This was deliberate. He had learned, in the years before he came to Lucky Cloud City, that arriving early to any competition meant time to observe — who was nervous, who was confident, who was hiding something, who had already decided they were going to lose.
He stood near the outer ring of stones with his hands in his sleeves and watched people arrive.
Azure Cloud Pavilion came in a group, which was expected. Jade Water Pavilion arrived shortly after, their disciples in pale blue that caught the morning light. Night Bright Pavilion was last, their robes a dark gray that made them look, Jiang Man thought, like they were attending a funeral rather than a competition.
Old Yellow Ox, who had taken up residence in Jiang Man's shadow for the morning, said quietly: You're the youngest one here.
"I'm aware."
You're also the most poorly dressed.
"Also aware."
And the only one who borrowed money to attend.
"If you have nothing useful to say," Jiang Man said under his breath, "then say nothing."
Old Yellow Ox subsided.
Jiang Man's eyes tracked across the assembled disciples until he found what he was looking for — the announcement board near the central stage, where the available techniques and cultivation methods had been listed for today's competition.
He read it once. Then again.
Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal — Supreme Offensive Technique, Cloud Front Division. Nine seals in three stages. Entry-level, intermediate, and complete mastery. Current holder: none.
Below it, listed with considerably less fanfare: mid-grade Blood Energy Method, mid-grade Visualization Method, several minor cultivation supplements that no one with serious ambitions would waste time on.
The Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal had no current holder because no one in the Cloud Front Division had managed to acquire it in the last two competition cycles. The technique was structured as a cumulative inheritance — each stage had to be won separately, and all three stages had to be held by the same disciple before any could be used.
It was designed, Jiang Man suspected, to discourage exactly the kind of person he was.
He found this amusing.
Li Yuan found him twenty minutes before the competition began.
Yan Huimin was with him, which Jiang Man had also expected. She had the expression of someone who had been assigned a task she found mildly distasteful but was going to complete professionally.
"Jiang Man," Li Yuan said. His tone was that particular variety of polite that contained, underneath, the assumption that the conversation's outcome was already decided. "I wanted to speak with you before things began."
"Speak then."
Li Yuan glanced at Yan Huimin.
Yan Huimin took this as her cue. "The Visualization Method," she said, cutting directly to it in a way that suggested she had decided the diplomatic approach would take too long. "You should compete for it."
Jiang Man looked at her.
"The Blood Energy Method costs Spirit Sources," she continued. "Constantly. Every advancement, every consolidation — you need to supplement with resources. Given your current situation—" she paused, choosing the word carefully — "the Visualization Method is the more economical choice. No supplemental cost. Pure cultivation efficiency."
It was, Jiang Man acknowledged privately, a reasonable argument. It was also precisely the kind of argument that assumed he had already decided, and was simply waiting to be shown the correct answer.
He had not decided that.
"And if I compete for the Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal?" he asked.
Li Yuan's expression tightened slightly. "The Seal is a three-stage acquisition. You'd be competing against the top disciples from all three pavilions for each stage independently. Your current ranking in Azure Cloud Pavilion—"
"Is fourteenth," Jiang Man said. "I know."
"Then you understand that the probability—"
"Is low," Jiang Man agreed. "Yes."
Li Yuan seemed to expect more resistance than this. He paused.
"Then you'll consider the Visualization Method?"
"I didn't say that."
The pause stretched longer this time.
Yan Huimin looked at Jiang Man with an expression that had shifted from mild distaste into something closer to genuine assessment. It was, he thought, more interesting than her diplomatic face.
"What exactly," she said slowly, "are you planning to compete for?"
"The Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal," Jiang Man said. "All three stages."
Silence.
A nearby group of Jade Water Pavilion disciples had drifted slightly closer, which Jiang Man noticed and they probably didn't realize he had.
Li Yuan said, carefully, "That isn't possible. The stages are awarded to whoever wins the individual trial for each. You can't guarantee—"
"I'm aware of how the competition works."
"Then you understand that even if you win the first stage, another disciple could win the second, and your first stage acquisition becomes useless."
"I understand."
"And you still intend to—"
"Yes."
Li Yuan looked at him for a long moment.
Then he said, in a tone that had abandoned politeness entirely and arrived at something more honest: "Why?"
It was, Jiang Man thought, actually a good question. Li Yuan was smarter than he sometimes appeared, underneath the assumption of authority.
Jiang Man considered how much to say.
"Because everyone in this competition has already decided what's possible," he said finally. "They've looked at the rankings and the odds and concluded that the Seal can't be won cleanly. So no one is going to try for all three stages." He looked at the announcement board. "Which means the only real competition for the Seal is from people treating each stage as a separate goal. They'll divide their effort."
"And you won't," Yan Huimin said. She was watching him differently now.
"I won't."
"Your cultivation level—" Li Yuan began.
"Eighth Level of Qi Refinement," Jiang Man said.
Another silence. This one had a different quality.
Li Yuan stared at him. "That's — when did you—"
"Two days ago."
Li Yuan's jaw moved without producing sound for a moment. He was doing the math, Jiang Man could see it — fourteenth ranking in Azure Cloud Pavilion at Eighth Level of Qi Refinement meant Jiang Man had either been suppressing his cultivation level at assessment, which was a violation, or had advanced so rapidly in the rest period that the ranking no longer reflected his actual strength.
Neither option was comfortable.
"You advanced two full levels," Yan Huimin said quietly, "during the rest period."
"One and a half," Jiang Man said, which was technically more accurate and somehow more alarming.
Yan Huimin looked at Li Yuan.
Li Yuan looked at Jiang Man.
Jiang Man looked at the announcement board.
"The trial for the first stage begins in ten minutes," he said. "If you'll excuse me, I'd like to find a good position."
He left them standing among the granite stones with the wind moving through the courtyard and the sound of three pavilions worth of disciples arranging themselves around the central stage.
Behind him, he heard Yan Huimin say something to Li Yuan in a low voice. He didn't catch the words.
He didn't need to.
The trial for the first stage of the Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal was a combat assessment.
The mechanics were simple: all competing disciples entered a formation array simultaneously, and the formation generated opponent phantoms calibrated to each competitor's own cultivation level. The disciple who neutralized their phantom fastest while using the least spiritual energy won the stage.
Efficiency over brute force. The technique was testing whether you were ready to wield it — not whether you could overpower everyone else in the room.
Jiang Man had thought about this carefully over the past two days.
He had also, during those two days, done something that might have looked like resting to a casual observer but was not resting at all.
When the formation activated and the phantom appeared before him — his own height, his own bearing, his own level of spiritual pressure — Jiang Man was already moving.
Not fast. Deliberately not fast.
The phantom matched him, as it was designed to. It read his movements and responded in kind. Several other competitors nearby were already pushing their output high, their spiritual energy spiking with the effort of an early aggressive assault.
Jiang Man did the opposite.
He pulled his output down to its lowest functional threshold and held it there, making the phantom do the same — two figures moving through the motions of combat at a pace that looked almost leisurely from the outside.
Then he changed the angle.
Not the attack — the angle of his spiritual energy. A lateral shift, barely perceptible, that the phantom's calibration wasn't designed to track instantly. The phantom's response lagged by a fraction of a second.
That was enough.
One strike, precisely placed, minimum energy, maximum result.
The phantom dissolved.
Around him, other competitors were still fighting.
Jiang Man stepped back to the edge of the formation and waited.
Old Yellow Ox, from somewhere near his left shoulder, said: Show-off.
"Efficient," Jiang Man corrected quietly.
Same thing, in your case.
The last phantom dissolved eleven seconds after Jiang Man's. The formation released.
The announcement came from the stage adjudicator — a mid-level elder from the Cloud Front Division administration whose expression suggested he had not expected the morning to be interesting.
"First stage. Nine Clouds Suppress Dragon Seal. Awarded to — Jiang Man. Azure Cloud Pavilion."
Somewhere in the crowd, he heard a sharp intake of breath that he was fairly certain belonged to Li Yuan.
Jiang Man accepted the first seal token from the adjudicator with both hands, bowed correctly, and stepped back.
He looked at the announcement board.
Second stage trial: afternoon.
Third stage trial: following day.
He had time.
He tucked the token inside his robe and went to find somewhere to sit and conserve his spiritual energy.
The wind was still cold on the Gathering Stone Platform, but it was the clean cold of high altitude — the kind that kept the mind sharp.
Jiang Man sat down on a flat stone at the edge of the courtyard, closed his eyes, and began to rest.
He had two more stages to win, and he intended to win them both.
In Lucky Cloud City, rest was a resource like any other.
He had learned not to waste resources.