Chương 201: A Farce of a Game

Ravensblood disappeared into the sky. McCaffrey hung in the air where Grendel had caught him, arms still extended upward. His fingers curled around a hilt that wasn't there. His qi reached for a lifebond that was already gone. Beneath the 49ers, the stadium was silent. What in the world just happened? In the broadcast booth, Jim opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say. Dave stared out the window, trying to see where the sword had vanished. A whistle cut through the silence.

The head referee's platform rose into the air, golden qi flaring along its edges as he ascended above the field. He amplified his voice with spiritual qi so the entire stadium could hear.

"Number twelve, McCaffrey. The player's flying sword has been disabled and he is unable to continue play. McCaffrey is eliminated. One point, New York." White light flashed. McCaffrey vanished, teleported to the sideline. The scoreboard updated. Giants: 1. 49ers: 8. The sudden elimination reminded everyone they were still at a Flying Aces game. In the Giants' fort, the gunners exchanged glances. Then they opened fire.

Black bursts of flak exploded across the sky, forming overlapping cones of shrapnel that forced the remaining 49ers into evasive patterns. The second quarter continued. The 49ers attacked the Giants' fort. Without air cover, the Giants' defenders fell with ease. Seven eliminations for one loss. The quarter ended 15-2, 49ers. It was the Giants' worst first-half performance since 2027. In any normal game, the fans would have already begun leaving the stadium. The 49ers held an insurmountable lead.

How could the Giants make up a thirteen-point deficit against the top-ranked team in the NFC West? But this was not a normal game. The moment the 49ers finished their touchdown, the remaining flyers didn't return to the sidelines. Instead of heading back to rest and recover, they rocketed straight up, chasing after McCaffrey's runaway sword. Within seconds they had passed the decks full of confused fans, punched through the now-disabled boundary formations, and vanished into the open sky.

Then the Nascent Soul Lords followed. Every premium suite had a docking bay along its outer wall, where the Lords who came to watch the game parked their flying cars. Lamborghinis. Maseratis. Cultivation vehicles that cost more than most cultivators earned in a lifetime. Now those cars streaked upward one after another as Nascent Soul Lords abandoned the game to see whatever was happening above the clouds. The stands buzzed with confusion. Fans squinted at the sky.

They checked their phones hoping to find some kind of explanation as to what happened. They asked each other questions no one could answer. Something unusual and unexpected had happened. And it clearly had to do with whatever Leo had done to McCaffrey's flying sword. During the quarter, the announcers had simply mentioned that Leo had temporarily disabled McCaffrey's sword and eliminated him. They'd done their best to frame it as a clever tactical move. The fans had rolled their eyes. Sure, McCaffrey was out.

But was that really worth letting the 49ers score twelve points? Now those same fans who had questioned Leo's strategy were staring at the sky, starting to wonder if they'd missed something. Why would the Giants throw away a quarter just to disable McCaffrey's sword? And hold on. This was a lifebound flying sword. Since when could you disable one with a minute of brushwork? And did that sword really look disabled?

If anything, it looked more powerful than ever, strong enough to overcome every 49er flyer trying to drag it back to earth. Where were the 49ers and the Nascent Soul Lords who had chased after Ravensblood? It had been quite a while now. Why hadn't anyone returned? Rumors spread through the stands, each more outrageous than the last. But amid the speculation, every flying sword owner in the stadium quietly resolved the same thing. Never let Leo Chen get a hold of your flying sword.

Leo was frustrated. No one was listening to him. He sat on the bench in the Giants' locker room. A bunch of exasperated adults surrounded him. The head referee. Two assistant referees. And pacing nervously behind them, Coach Shana, head coach of the 49ers.

"Leo." Shana stopped pacing and tried to look friendly.

"All we're asking is that you tell us where Ravensblood is. McCaffrey can't play a Flying Aces game without his flying sword."

"I told you," Leo said.

"I don't know where Ravensblood is."

"You drew a formation on it."

"Yes."

"And then it flew away."

"Also yes."

"So where did it fly to?" Leo spread his hands.

"Up?" The head referee pinched the bridge of his nose. Shana sat down on the bench across from Leo and smiled. Trying to look harmless.

"Look, kid. I get it. You pulled off something incredible out there. Everyone saw it. But McCaffrey's sword is a thirty-million-dollar asset. If there's a recall formation, if there's any way to reverse what you did, we need to know. Right now."

"I was eliminated," Leo said slowly, for the third time today.

"I was teleported back to the sideline before the sword even left the stadium. The last five people touching that sword were all wearing 49ers jerseys. Maybe ask them where it went." One of the referees muttered, "Decided to seek the..." BANG. BANG. BANG. Everyone turned toward the locker room door.

"Leo! Open this door! I know you did something to my sword and you're going to tell me how to get it back!" The banging continued. Shana closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he tried a different approach.

"Alright, let's cut through this. If there's something you want in exchange for bringing it back, tell me what it is. Money? A trade? The Summit Convergence Elixir? Name your price."

"You think I hid his sword?" Leo gave Coach Shana a funny look.

"McCaffrey lost his lifebond with his sword, and you know what happens when a lifebond breaks. The sword loses all its spirituality and turns into a dead hunk of metal. What would I do with a worthless lump of metal?" Shana opened his mouth. Closed it. The kid had a point. But wait. Ravensblood hadn't looked ruined. Ravensblood had looked like it was in the best shape of its life. Shana looked at Leo more carefully.

"What exactly did your formation do?" Leo sighed. He had already been asked this question many times. But no one listened to his carefully prepared explanation. He even had Shen Tianyi help him practice it. After all, it was difficult to explain with a straight face what exactly had happened. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"All things under heaven reach for the sky." Leo tried again.

"Mortals cultivate to become immortals. Why should a sword be any different? I simply showed Ravensblood the path its spirit had always yearned to walk." For the first time, Shana actually listened. He realized that Leo honestly believed the words he was saying.

"You made Ravensblood... want to ascend?" BANG. BANG. BANG. The door shook in its frame.

"Leo Chen, you ruined my sword!" McCaffrey shouted.

"Thirty-two years, Leo! Thirty-two years with that blade! I'm going to have every lawyer in California on your phone by morning. You're done in this league!" Coach Shana winced.

"I'm going to sue you! I'm going to sue the Giants! I'm going to sue everyone who ever taught you formations! You're done, Chen! DONE!" Leo briefly considered giving McCaffrey Professor Morimoto's contact details. After all, Morimoto owed him money. Unfortunately, Leo had no idea how to reach him. A different door opened. Coach Harbach stepped out of the back office. He waved goodbye to someone inside, closed the door, and walked over to Leo. Shana stared at Harbach.

"You knew."

"Of course I knew. Why do you think we let you build up a thirteen-point lead?" Harbach settled onto the bench, completely relaxed.

"Look, we can sit here all afternoon, but asking Leo questions isn't going to make the sword come back. Let's talk about how to move forward." Shana gaped at him.

"Move forward? What do you expect me to do, just accept that McCaffrey can't fly for the rest of the season?" His voice climbed.

"Even if he started lifebonding with a new sword today, it would take months. By the time he's flight-ready, the Super Bowl will be over and..." He stopped. His mouth hung open.

"You son of a gun."

"This was your plan all along!" Shana stood up and jabbed his finger at Harbach.

"The whole first quarter. Letting us score. Letting Leo fail over and over so we'd get comfortable. You threw away thirteen points just to take McCaffrey out for the entire season." Harbach examined his fingernails, declining to say anything self-incriminating. Outside, McCaffrey's pounding had stopped. His voice came through the door again, quieter now.

"Leo. Listen to me. I can help you in this league. Introductions. Endorsement deals. Things that take decades to build. Just tell me how to bring Ravensblood back." Leo had felt bad at first. After he finished drawing the formation and watched the sword ascend to the heavens, he wondered if it was really okay to take away another man's flying sword. Then McCaffrey had spent twenty minutes screaming threats and insults through the door. Leo's sympathy had worn thin. He got up from the bench and walked to the door.

"McCaffrey. You know where Ravensblood is. You watched it fly away. You chased it yourself." He paused.

"It's pursuing its dreams. Seeking the heavens. You should be happy for it." Silence. Then sobbing. Through the door, Leo heard Grendel's voice.

"Come on, Christian. Let's go. We'll figure this out. The organization will take care of it." Leo heard shuffling. Grendel was pulling McCaffrey away from the door. The crying faded down the corridor until the locker room fell quiet. Shana stared at the door for a long moment. Then he started pacing again.

"What am I supposed to tell the owner? What am I supposed to tell the fans?" He ran both hands through his hair.

"What am I supposed to tell McCaffrey?" The head referee cleared his throat.

"Coach Shana, if it helps, this isn't entirely without precedent." Everyone turned to look at him.

"Back in the eighties and nineties, play was more physical. Flyers regularly tried to damage each other's swords. Blade-breaking attacks. Spiritual corrosion arrays." The referee shrugged.

"The league banned most of those techniques, but it was handled on a case-by-case basis."

"Great," Shana said.

"So ban this."

"Of course." The referee nodded.

"Your owner can submit a proposal at the NFL Annual League Meeting in March." Shana glared at him. The referee checked his watch.

"Gentlemen, halftime ended twelve minutes ago. The fans are waiting. The game must go on."

Ultimately, the organizers tried to sweep everything under the rug. The 49ers issued an official statement. They announced that Christian McCaffrey had been hospitalized for "mental health concerns." The statement wished McCaffrey a speedy recovery and asked fans to respect his privacy during this difficult time. Whatever Leo had done was strange. But the game had to go on. Both teams launched into their pre-kickoff orbits, circling their respective end zones as if nothing had happened.

The first person to realize there was going to be a serious problem was Grendel. Coach Shana had given him a simple game plan. Play conservatively. The 49ers held a thirteen-point lead, and all they needed to do was run out the clock. Stay near the fort. Let the defenders do the work. Only engage the Giants when the offsides timer forced them to. Simple enough in theory. Grendel opened his spiritual coordination nexus and started assigning man-to-man coverage. The first wing refused to cover Leo.

The second wing also refused. The striker refused. The linebacker refused. Just don't let him touch your sword, Grendel sent through his spiritual coordination nexus. You first, the striker sent back. Grendel considered his options. He could not cover Leo himself. What was he supposed to do, block Leo's chainhook with his spiritual coordination nexus? The last thing he was going to do was point his flying sword anywhere near Leo Chen. Thank you very much.

Coach Shana tried to reassure the team that the organization would fully reimburse any lost flying swords. None of the players wanted to be the first to... well, second to test this policy. So the 49ers dug through their playbook and found an older scheme they hadn't run since 2028. Zone coverage. Each flyer defended a section of airspace rather than a specific opponent. No one had to commit to covering Leo personally. They just had to hold their assigned territory. The players accepted this compromise.

The arrangement lasted about forty seconds into the third quarter. The zones collapsed the moment Leo approached them. All Leo had to do was swing his chainhook in the general direction of a flyer, and the 49er would accelerate toward the opposite end of the stadium. Grendel screamed through the nexus that Leo's brush could not possibly have unlimited range. His players declined to test this theory. It would have been an embarrassing performance for the 49ers, a professional team fleeing from a rookie.

But the 49ers were not the only ones keeping their distance. The rest of the Giants gave Leo a wide berth too. Leo tried to coordinate a pincer attack with Damari, which Damari aborted at the last second. Leo tried to link up with Nikki, who immediately shooed him away. Leo glanced at Kowalski, who hid his sword behind his tower shield. Leo tried to reassure his teammates that he could tell friend from foe. That they were in no danger whatsoever.

That he promised not to draw the forbidden Struggle formation on their swords. No one took any chances. Who knew if whatever Leo had was contagious. The third and fourth quarters of the game were a complete farce. Leo and the Giants, who followed at a cautious distance behind him, would approach the 49ers' fort. The 49ers' flyers would scatter. The Giants would descend on the undefended Soldiers and Gunners. After a token resistance, they would eliminate all the defenders, which triggered an automatic touchdown.

Twelve points for the Giants. During the fourth quarter, one Soldier tried to mount a heroic defense, using his spear to hold off the Giants. But as soon as Leo wrapped his chainhook around the Soldier's lifebound weapon and reached for his formation brush, the Soldier dropped to his knees and begged for mercy.

"Please! I just got this spear last month! I'm still making payments!" Leo released the chainhook. The Soldier scrambled backward and shoved his greatspear back into his dantian. The Giants won 26 to 15. Many fans were unhappy with how things turned out. They had bought tickets to a Flying Aces game. They had bought tickets to see the wonderkid Leo Chen work his magic. They had paid for aerial combat, for T4 exchanges, for the kind of high-octane fighting that analysts would spend the rest of the week pouring over.

Instead they got three minutes of actual fighting and two quarters of watching grown men run away from a teenager waving a formation brush. The tickets had been expensive. The traffic had been miserable. No one had explained what was going on. No one had given any answers.

"First Leo game?" A woman in a Flyer Seven jersey grinned at the couple next to her, who were loudly complaining about being scammed out of half a game. The Bulldog Army had been following Leo since his Yale days. They'd bought Giants season tickets the moment he was drafted, and they'd seen stranger things than this. While newer fans fumed and checked their phones to see if they could get a refund, the Bulldogs leaned back in their seats and swapped stories with anyone willing to listen.

"Remember Mateo? The Harvard kid tried to cheat and Leo still took him apart..."

"Do you remember when he just hovered there and glared at Columbia until a few of their flyers refused to come back for the next quarter?"

"... this is nothing, you should have seen what he did to Texas A&M..." Intimidating friend and foe alike was just another chapter in the story of Flyer Seven. The Bulldog fans told the confused Giants fans to enjoy it while it lasted. In a few months, the league would pass another rule specifically designed to stop whatever Leo had just done. They always did. And next year Leo would find something else. Word spread through the crowd in waves. Leo Chen would be giving a post-game interview in thirty minutes.

The stadium began to empty, but nobody was going home until they understood what had happened in the second quarter. A sword had flown to the heavens. A thirty-two-year veteran had lost his lifebond. And the rookie responsible was about to explain himself on live television. Boats lowered their ramps for a second round of tailgating. Hosts waved in strangers wearing the wrong colors. Grills that had gone cold during the second half flared back to life.

Cultivators on flying swords made quick Costco runs and brought back cases of beer. Someone hauled out a projector and aimed the post game coverage at the side of a forty-foot yacht. On Ray Wheeler's boat, Tom stood at the railing, watching more people climb the gangplank.

"Uncle Ray. We're running low on brisket."

"Cold storage, port side. Grab the backups." Ray didn't look up from his smoker.

"They're frozen, but that's fine. I'll show you a trick." Tom came back with two vacuum-sealed slabs. Ray took them, unwrapped the first, and held his palm an inch above the meat. Pale blue light gathered around his fingers. Spiritual fire. Tom winced.

"Uncle Ray, do you know how much T2 qi costs..."

"Some things are more important than money, Tommy." Ray's fingers spread wider, the pale blue light intensifying.

"Now watch. I'm going to show you something you can't do with fire and wood alone." A roar went up across the parking lot. On the projector across the lot, Leo Chen had stepped into frame, waving to the cameras.