Harvard Flying Aces Stadium

  When Leo stepped out onto the field of the Harvard Flying Aces Stadium, the arena was dark.

  Three hundred thousand people sat in silent anticipation. The stadium lights were dead. The formation arrays along the support beams had been shut off. Harvard Stadium was a bowl of black, the spring sky above sealed by a massive dome formation.

  Then a spotlight found him.

  A single column of white light punched down from the dome and pinned Leo where he stood. He could see nothing beyond its edge. The darkness swallowed the stands, the forts, the field markers. Just Leo, alone in a circle of light on the grass.

  Across the field, a second spotlight ignited.

  Mateo stood in his own circle of white. Even at this distance, Leo could make out his confident demeanor.

  Leo couldn't see the audience. But he could feel them. Three hundred thousand breaths held. Three hundred thousand pairs of eyes watching him. The weight of their expectation pressed against his chest.

  He remembered what Ellie had said before he left the locker room. She'd flicked him on the forehead and grinned.

  "Just go out and show people what you can do."

  The past few days he had been working his dao. Turning over the Heart of Flesh in his mind, feeling for its shape. And with the help of Monarch Scattered Straw and his field of wheat, he had found something he wanted to show the world.

  The two boys walked toward each other.

  Giant projections bloomed across the ceiling dome, filling the dark sky with their faces. Leo's jaw set, eyes forward. Mateo's chin raised, gaze steady. Two boys born after the Treaty of Great Restraint, carrying the expectations of generations that came before them.

  They were both smiling.

  There was no fear in either face. Just the eager, burning anticipation of two cultivators who had waited months for this moment. Who wanted to show each other how much they had grown since they last met.

  The crowd began to stir. A low roar built from the stands, swelling like a wave, but the security guards quickly silenced them and pressed it back down. It was not yet time.

  They stopped thirty paces apart.

  Mateo spoke first.

  "When I decided to join Harvard and play Flying Aces, I thought this would be a quick and easy season." His voice carried through the stadium's amplification formations. "I thought the four months would pass in a flash."

  He paused.

  "They have been the most tumultuous and impactful months of my life."

  He turned his head slightly, gesturing at the darkness beyond the spotlights.

  "All these people who look at me. They see my grandfather's grandson. The blood of the Void Refining. The divine child of the Catacombs."

  His voice softened.

  "But I am happy, Leo. Happy that you arranged this arena for me."

  He turned back to face Leo directly.

  "I will use this arena to show everyone that I am more than the grandson of an Eternal. I am also my father's son. My father immigrated from the Catacombs so that he could pursue freedom. Escape the pressures of his family, the weight of a bloodline that had already chosen his path for him."

  Mateo's eyes were bright under the spotlight.

  "I am an American and I have the same freedom. Freedom to choose my destiny. Freedom to choose my immortal path."

  He straightened.

  "And I have chosen. I have chosen to cultivate the Heart of Flesh. To walk my own path. I will accept the inheritance of my grandfather on my own terms. I will prove the expectations of my father on my own terms."

  Mateo's voice rang through the stadium.

  "Show me your dao, Leo. Your Heart of Flesh. So that I may discuss it and learn from you."

  The stadium erupted.

  Three hundred thousand voices broke the silence. Feet pounded against stone seating. Fists hammered railings. The roar climbed and climbed and showed no sign of cresting.

  It took minutes for the security guards to calm the crowd. Minutes of thunder.

  Then silence again.

  Three hundred thousand people turned and looked at Leo.

  He stood in his spotlight. Seventeen years old. Qi Refining. Holding the gaze of a divine child and the breath of every cultivator watching from every bar and barrack and academy on the planet.

  Leo raised his right fist.

  Across the stadium, the Bulldog army saw the signal. One hundred and fifty thousand cultivators rose to their feet as one body. Tom's voice cracked through the section leaders like a whip, and then every single one of them opened their mouths and roared together with Leo.

  MY DESIRE IS LIFE.

  MY HEART IS FLESH.

  MY CAUSE IS NOBLE.

  MY POWER IS PURE.

  The stadium lights exploded on.

  Three hundred thousand people, revealed all at once. A sea of faces stretching to the upper rim of the dome, half draped in Yale blue, half in Harvard crimson, every single one of them on their feet.

  Mateo drew his greatspear from his dantian. The weapon materialized in his grip with a pulse of divine pressure that Leo felt in his teeth. The spear was enormous, its blade etched with formations that glowed with Mateo's signature grey spiritual qi.

  Leo drew both flying swords.

  The moment Moonrider and the Eclipse emerged from his dantian, Leo felt it. From far below, from deep beneath the stadium foundations, a steady current of spiritual qi flowed upward through the transmission machine and into his channels. Matt and Vivian had succeeded. The link was live.

  Mateo grinned and grasped with his hand, activating his Grey Out innate ability.

  Leo's Moonrider died. The formations along the blade flickered once, then went dark. Every engraved array smothered by the same divine ability that had haunted him since their first match. They had thought that Grey Out only suppressed active divine sense control. However it suppressed the passive counter formation they thought would slip through.

  However Leo had prepared a backup.

  The La Ferrari Eclipse hummed in his left grip. Its formation arrays activated in sequence. Counter formation. Defensive suite. The spiritual qi transmission receiver locked onto the feed from below and pulled. Vivian and Matt's machine fed warm, steady qi through the sword.

  Across from him, Mateo spun his greatspear once and planted it against the grass.

  The starting gun fired.

  Leo entered omnidirectional perception.

  Last time he faced Mateo, he'd had five minutes of raw awareness before burnout. Months of training had changed that. His divine sense was stronger, and he could hold perspective while still executing technique.

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  The world opened up. Every direction. Every angle. Mateo stood across from him in perfect clarity. Leo warmed up his Scholar's Finger, reading the shape of Mateo's divine sense and practicing the forgeries.

  Mateo transformed.

  The divine serpent erupted from the ground in a torrent of grey scales and billowing qi. It towered over the field. Coils thick as tree trunks slammed against the grass and carved furrows through the turf. The triangular head rose above the stadium lights and bared its giant fangs, each one dripping with condensed divine power.

  This was bigger than before. Bigger than when they last met at the high school playoff finals.

  The serpent opened its jaws.

  Grey fire gathered between the fangs. A sphere of divine energy began to form, pulling ambient qi from the stadium itself. The ball grew; dense and bright. The air warped around it. Stadium lights streaked into curved lines that spiraled toward the sphere's surface.

  Leo felt the divine power unseal.

  Mateo's divine pressure flooded into his skull. His heartbeat stuttered, then locked into a new rhythm, slow and heavy. Each beat synchronized with the massive heart pumping inside the serpent's coiled body.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  His pulse was the serpent's pulse. His breath was the serpent's breath. The boundary between his spirit and Mateo's divine domain blurred.

  Then the domain amplified.

  Formations hidden within the Harvard fort fed external power into the divine pressure, supplementing the real thing with false divine energy. The weight grew dramtically. Leo's omnidirectional perception wavered. The sphere of awareness buckled inward, collapsing toward a single point of focus.

  Mateo.

  For one heartbeat, his concentration cracked. The omnidirectional bubble shrank to a narrow cone, his awareness funneling toward the serpent's grey eyes. He was unable to concentrate on anything else.

  The counter formations activated.

  The Eclipse on his waist pulsed. Arrays engraved along the blade engaged. The spiritual qi transmission from beneath the stadium surged through the receiver, engaging the formation and scrubbing the false divine power from Leo's channels.

  The fog lifted.

  Leo clawed his way back. His heartbeat separated from the serpent's rhythm. His awareness re-expanded, snapping outward in all directions, the full sphere restoring itself one vector at a time.

  He raised his right fist.

  The Yale section understood.

  One hundred fifty thousand cultivators surged to their feet. The chant erupted from their throats.

  MY DESIRE IS LIFE.

  Leo felt it. Their conviction washed through him, removing the last traces of divine influence from his body.

  MY HEART IS FLESH.

  The serpent screamed. Grey qi rippled outward from its jaws in visible waves. The sphere of divine fire between its fangs pulsed brighter, angrier. Its hold on Leo had shattered.

  The serpent lunged.

  Twenty meters of grey scale and divine fury closed the distance in a single heartbeat. Its jaws gaped wide, the ball of grey fire leading the charge. A familiar attack. The same diving slam that had cratered the field at Exeter.

  But this time it carried divine might.

  The sphere of grey fire and divine power hit the grass.

  The explosion tore the field apart. A column of grey fire shot upward through the point of impact, vaporizing turf and soil and the stone substrate beneath. The shockwave blasted outward in a ring.

  Then the divine power detonated.

  A second shockwave rode the first. A wall of raw divine pressure expanding outward from the crater. It tore through Leo's position. It tore past the fort pylons. It hit the barrier wards surrounding the field and punched through them like wet paper.

  It reached the stands.

  Three hundred thousand cultivators felt the divine pressure press down on their shoulders.

  In the lower sections, unprepared spectators buckled. Knees hit stone. Hands slapped against railings for support. Foundation Establishment students gasped as their spiritual seas flattened under the divine domain. Their first brush with power from beyond the mortal realms.

  A large section of the Harvard stands moved in unison.

  Cloaks fell away. Thousands of cultivators revealed grey robes beneath, embroidered with serpentine patterns that pulsed with residual divine qi. They dropped to their knees in worship. Hands pressed together, heads bowed, voices rising in a harmonic chant tuned to amplify the divine domain.

  The conspiracy behind the Thousand Talents program revealed itself. Cultists from the catacombs were seeded throughout the Harvard section, brought to help normalize the worship of divine blood. Ready to show the audience that kneeling before the divine was natural. Inevitable.

  Around them, regular Harvard fans stared. A sophomore in a crimson hoodie looked down at the grey-robed figure kneeling beside her, then looked at the one on her other side. A group of juniors near the forty-yard line exchanged glances and stayed on their feet. They hadn't signed up for this. They'd come to watch a game.

  The Yale section refused.

  Every single Bulldog stood tall. The divine shockwave had hit them too. They had felt the pressure. Felt their knees threaten to buckle. Felt the urge to submit to something vast and powerful beyond comprehension.

  They stood anyway. Tom's voice rang out. The section leaders picked it up. The chant built, louder than before, powered by the victorious cultivators who had weathered a divine shockwave and managed stay on their feet.

  Then they turned on the grey-robed worshipers across the stadium and laughed. One hundred fifty thousand humans pointed fingers and mocked the kneeling figures who had chosen submission.

  On the field, the grey fire dissipated.

  Mateo materialized from the fading mist. Half divine. His armored uniform traced with grey veins that pulsed in time with the heartbeat Leo had shaken off. His greatspear rested in his left hand. From his back, a serpent of grey scales coiled outward, twisting around his torso, over his shoulder, its eyeless head swaying beside his cracked visor.

  Two faces, human and divine, both fixed on Leo.

  Leo stared back.

  But he was doing more than staring.

  His omnidirectional perception wrapped around Mateo like a glove. Every scale on the phantom serpent. Every pulse of grey qi through the divine veins. Leo's divine sense read it all, cataloging the patterns.

  The Scholar's Finger required a portrait before it could paint.

  Mateo felt something was amiss.

  His grey eyes narrowed. The phantom serpent's head stopped swaying. Both faces locked onto Leo with sudden focus.

  Mateo attacked.

  He jumped forward and twisted midair, his body corkscrewing around the axis of his greatspear. The weapon lanced toward Leo's chest in a spiraling thrust, grey fire screaming along the shaft, the tip arriving with a crack of displaced air.

  From the spectators' perspective, Mateo simply vanished and reappeared across the field. A blur of grey. The audience gasped. The speed was close to what NFL Flyers produced in professional matches.

  Leo sidestepped.

  He saw the thrust begin before Mateo's muscles fully committed. Saw the trajectory, the rotation, the exact point where the spear tip would arrive. His Eclipse moved him with the efficiency of a chess piece sliding across a board.

  The spear punched through the space his ribcage had occupied a quarter second earlier.

  Mid-dodge, Leo reached out with his right hand.

  His fingers brushed Mateo's forearm and he used the Scholar's Finger technique.

  Contact.

  Mateo flinched.

  His grey eyes went wide. His movements stuttered, the spinning thrust losing its clean rotation as his spiritual senses reported contradictory information. His own divine sense signature, reflected back at him from an impossible angle, cluttered his awareness with phantom data.

  For a brief moment the two boys broke apart. Leo grinned. The plan that Zhao came up for him clearly worked.

  The Scholar's Finger was a combat technique where the cultivator reads the unique pattern of an enemy's divine sense, composes a close imitation, and paints it onto the enemy's spiritual sea through physical contact, cluttering their perception with forgeries.

  Leo watched Mateo as he tried and failed to clear up his polluted divine sense.

  All Leo had to do was paint Mateo a few more times. The divine sense would then become so clouded that Mateo would find it impossible to mobilize his cultivation, he would be no longer able to use Spiritual Qi.

  Mateo decided to flip the script and transformed.

  A giant serpent erupted from his body in a blast of grey qi, scales expanding outward, coils slamming against the ground. The massive form put fifteen meters of divine flesh between Mateo's core and Leo's outstretched hand.

  The serpent lunged. Jaws snapping. A reflexive strike, fast and vicious, aimed at swallowing Leo whole.

  Leo drifted back.

  His omnidirectional perception tracked the closing jaws and let the fangs pass within inches of his torso. Close enough for the pressure to thump against his eardrums.

  The jaws snapped shut on nothing.

  A gasp tore through the stands. The dome projection showed the replay in slow motion, the serpent's fangs closing around empty air, Leo's body gliding backward with his arm outstretched, ready to paint again if given the chance.

  The serpent dematerialized.

  Grey qi billowed outward. The massive form dissolved into mist. When the fog cleared, Mateo stood ten paces away. Human again. Greatspear planted against the grass. Breathing hard.

  He stared at Leo. Then he laughed.

  "You've grown," Mateo said. His voice carried through the stadium. "You have a very interesting combat technique. A divine sense attack?"

  He shook his head, still smiling.

  "At the playoff finals you could barely keep up with me. And now you're reaching for me with a forbidden technique while I'm attacking you. Remarkable."

  The Harvard section erupted.

  Accusations of cheating rang from the crimson stands. Fingers pointed at Leo. Voices demanded disqualification, demanded review, demanded that officials intervene.

  Leo looked past Mateo at the Harvard fans. He kept his voice casual, but he spoke into his armor's amplification formations for all to hear.

  "He's out here showing off his divine power, blasting it everywhere with the help of equipment and formations, and you're all upset about my Qi Refining divine sense?"

  He spread his arms.

  "Is being Qi Refining against his Foundation Establishment not enough of a handicap?"

  "What else should I give up to make it easy for you all to win? Shall I tie one hand behind my back? Throw away my Eclipse?"

  The Yale section roared approval. One hundred fifty thousand voices hollered and stamped their feet against the concrete until the stadium vibrated.

  Mateo's expression sharpened. The warmth cooled. The phantom serpent coiled tighter around his shoulders. Grey qi thickened in the air. His right hand tightened on the greatspear's shaft until the wood groaned.

  He threw a quick jab.

  The greatspear lanced forward, igniting with grey fire that extended the blade's reach by two full meters. The tip screamed through the air trailing flame.

  Leo sidestepped. The extended spear screamed past his ribs, grey flame washing heat across his side.

  He was already reading Mateo's pattern again. Refining the portrait. Getting ready to paint