Those invited to the stage did not waste their chance on speeches or flattery. They spoke about the traps that hid in plain ink.
Expiration dates buried in fine print. Terms that rewrote themselves the mont a signature dried.
Partial termination rights triggered by mundane faults. Notice windows so short that looked logical on the surface.
In the stands and on the arena benches, people listened like their lives depended on it.
So gaped at the absurdity. So scribbled until their fingers cramped.
So went red with rembered anger, seeing the exact words that had once been used to take their coin, their labor, their ti.
Yet no one turned that anger on Eldric. If anything, the crowd’s heat shifted sideways, toward the world that had taught them to trust paper.
Goldman, the last presenter, stepped up and showed an exploit so clean it felt like a sin.
A man could be nudged into selling himself, and then his family, without a single line that ever admitted it outright.
The arena went quiet after that. Not bored. Stunned.
Everything they heard so far was too much to swallow in one sitting.
Still, one thing settled into everyone’s bones all the sa.
From this day on, nobody would sign anything without fear.
The educational endeavor dragged on for a day and a half.
Even the most stubborn mortal speakers had to answer their bodies in the end.
Ghost attendants drifted through the transparent platform and lifted them with quiet efficiency, carrying them down to food stalls and to the privies, then returning them to their respective places.
Cultivators could sit like statues. Common folk could not.
When the crowd finally resettled, Eldric raised his hand and the murmurs died.
He let his gaze sweep the invited educators, the tournant fighters, and the common folk packed shoulder to shoulder.
"Now, do you see these gentlen behind ?" he said, sleeves whispering as he turned his palm toward the moguls standing in their neat row.
"If they were truly insatiable in their greed, not one of you would be standing here."
A ripple went through the crowd, uneasy agreent.
"The reason they have fairness and justice is simple. It is balance."
He paused just long enough for the word to sink in.
"Consider Emperor Tiberius. He is a cultist, everyone knows him for a demonic cultivator."
"Yet does that alone an he is capable of nothing but evil?"
No one answered. They did not need to.
"Let these words ring in your mind," Eldric went on. "In the end, it is the choice of the individual, whether he will show you rcy, or none at all."
Heads nodded, slow and thoughtful. People understood then what they had always half known and never wanted to say out loud.
The sa smile could take your purse and fund a charity. The sa hand could bless you today and bleed you tomorrow.
Eldric lifted his voice again.
"Now, beneath your seats are small wooden sticks with numbers. Five thousand in the audience will be given the common mortal contract."
Excitent stirred at once. People leaned and reached.
No one disdained free things, not when the word contract had just been turned into a weapon in their minds.
Eldric let them squirm a mont, then lifted his hand again.
"Everyone. I need your attention on the array boards and the linen screen."
Eyes moved across the lines. Then faces changed. Shock spread through the stands like a wind.
[Levels of Life Bane Contract:]
[Yellow Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Mortal Man]
[Orange Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Breath Tempering]
[Red Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Cornerstone Setting]
[Blue Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Gilded Core]
[Purple Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Nascent Embryo]
[Gray Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Spirit Transfiguration]
[Brown Bordered Contract - Can Bind Absolute Prohibition to Ethereal Integration]
[Black Bordered Contract - Can Bind Prohibition to Mortal Apotheosis]
"Sadly, this old man can only half cripple another god," Eldric said, and he even gave it a little chuckle, like he had told a tavern joke.
"At this level of cultivation, one can command the dao to recover."
"It makes you almost unkillable unless soone shows their hand and lands an extrely decisive strike. I hope you understand."
People did not laugh. They gulped. A shiver ran through the stands like a draft.
Half-crippling a god was not a punchline to anyone listening.
If Eldric could truly do that, then he sat above the heads of sect leaders who were spoken of like storms.
That was the trap of it. They saw the stage. They believed the man.
The truth was quieter, and far stranger. Eldric was Radeon wearing a borrowed na, and what he wielded was not his own strength in the way the crowd imagined.
He had taken an inheritance tied to the Ghost Realm. A realm fragnt.
When he raised his hand and made darkness bloom, when light answered him, when the air itself seed to kneel, he was borrowing the powers of ghosts and wraiths.
To the crowd, it looked like godhood.
To Radeon, it was craft. Knowledge earned across eons, back when he had climbed high enough to be called a Celestial Emperor of Heaven, long before he beca the Highest in the Neumann Universe, and when he had pried secrets from the Samsara Realm.
That was why he could speak so casually about crippling gods. Not because he was one right now. Because he knew exactly how they bled.
"Ah, I had near forgotten," Eldric said, scratching at his head. "These good folk must still be paid."
He pointed his index finger at the moguls he had dragged onto the stage and turned into business educators for a day.
Attendants drifted in, each carrying a large box hugged tight to the chest, moving with the careful grace of things that did not breathe.
"Please receive your daily salary. Co. Co," Eldric called, and a rocking chair appeared beneath him as if the world had been saving it for the punch line.
He settled in and puffed his pipe like a mine foreman at sundown.
The mood loosened. Everyone knew the shape of this ritual. Work done. Pay given. Pride swallowed. Hands out.
The boxes were set down along the side of the arena. One attendant misjudged the drop and a box thudded too loudly against the boards.
Eldric’s head turned. A wooden staff snapped out and tapped the attendant on the crown with a clean, comic thunk.
"Scoundrel. These are expensive. I will dock your month’s salary if sothing is broken."
Laughter burst from the crowd, sharp and relieved. To cultivators and mortals alike, a man who could speak of crippling gods and still act this comical felt fresh, almost unreal.
Even the ones who had carried stone for a living laughed like they were laughing at themselves.
Eldric waved the first man forward.
"Na?" he asked.
"Grand Senior Eldric. This humble one is Junior Gregorius."
"Ah. The one with that Irongrit lad who could cultivate."
"Well, that boy..." City Lord Gregorius fell silent, sha hiding beneath his calm.
"My mistake. My mistake." Eldric waved it away and shook his head as if scolding his own mouth.
"Hand five of each from yellow to blue, and two purple. That is your pay for today," he told the ghost attendant, choosing not to pinch at the family matter like it was a fresh wound.
An attendant opened a box and the colored contract papers ca out in neat stacks.
"There will always be ti to talk," Eldric went on, voice calr now.
"Do not be in a haste about it. Bliss and anger both cloud the mind. Be wary of yourself first," Eldric advised sincerely.
Gregorius was a half step into Spirit Transfiguration, old enough to have watched kingdoms rot, young enough in the face to still pass for thirty.
He did not scoff. He bowed deep, hands folded.
"I shall take your words to heart and bring them ho to ponder further."
Eldric beckoned the next one forward, and the line moved.
While the moguls received their pay, the audience kept one eye on the linen screen where numbers rolled across the lottery draw, refusing to let their attention go soft.
In the participants’ stands, the ghosts handed out numbers to the tournant fighters as well, though they could not resist turning it into a show.
Each attendant moved with Nascent Embryo strength, ghastly steps that made their bodies blur and reappear like a trick of fog.
They slipped small wooden sticks into waiting hands without breaking stride, and more than one fighter flinched on instinct before forcing himself still.
Soon the arena began to empty. People filed out in waves, talking in low voices, satisfied in a strange way.
It had been a mind opening discussion, the sort that left you uneasy and grateful at the sa ti.
Reviews
All reviews (0)