240 RTS?

“After this, I will kill you,” said Ru Qiu through clenched teeth as he pushed himself up, smoothing his robes. “And I am going to enjoy it.”

I gave a nod as if he’d just promised me tea. “Okay, let’s win this thing first.”

His jaw twitched. “There’s a woman I want to kill more than anything else. Fail to bring me satisfaction, Da Wei, and I will kill everyone you’ve ever loved.”

I let out a breath, tired already. Was this his idea of bonding? The man really needed a hug and a therapist. I would’ve liked to stop by New Willow, check on my people, see my sister, and confirm whether or not the worst scenario had come to reality, but we didn’t have time.

I glanced at Gu Jie. Her arms hung stiffly at her sides, her eyes strained, not out of fear but the awareness of what came next. She knew the weight of it, the path she’d walk, but not how far it would carry her or whether she’d return. I could see it in the way her lips pressed into a line too firm for someone her age.

“I know I am asking for too much, but I want to rely on you, Jie’er…”

At the edge of my mind, the vision I saw through her soul clawed its way into clarity, only to blur again. The degradation of the memory was slow. The details slipped like sand between fingers. It was this world’s restriction working overtime. The False Earth did not want me remembering that vision. It was dismembering the truth piece by piece, trying to redact the moment as though it never belonged.

Gu Jie finally spoke. “It’s time.”

I hesitated. For a heartbeat, I let myself long for things I couldn’t have right now. Da Ji. My parents. The city of New Willow, with its half-mended walls and stubborn people. Even Hei Mao, Ren Jingyi, or the Grand Ascension Empire. I remembered LLO, that smug old man talking about buying time, my failures and successes, and even Nongmin’s vision of the lives he lived. In this world, I’d come to understand how brittle foreknowledge could be. How little even fate could account for chaos.

“Gu Jie. Lu Gao. Jia Yun…” I paused, meeting each of their eyes. “I want you to go to New Willow.”

Jia Yun’s voice cracked before she could rein it in. “This wasn’t the deal.”

“I know.” I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Please. You’re a good kid, Jia. A decent heart in a world that’s forgotten how to value one. I know I’m asking too much. But save my little sister.”

Confusion passed across her face like clouds parting. She wanted to say something, maybe protest or confess, but she swallowed it. Whatever it was, she kept it buried for another day.

I turned to Gu Jie. “I leave the rest to you.”

Without another word, I cast Divine Possession, sending one of the last three souls I had left into her body. It left me colder and lighter, like I’d carved a rib out of myself and entrusted it to her.

Gu Jie met my gaze, unwavering. “I will do my utter best, Father.”

I nodded. That was all I needed to hear.

Turning toward the throne, I called over my shoulder, “Alice. Ru Qiu. With me.”

Ru Qiu frowned. “What are you doing?”

Instead of answering, I raised my palm and unleashed Judgment Severance. A golden rift tore open in front of us, shaped like a tilted cross. The air howled as it sucked in the energy from every corner of the hall, from qi, quintessence, residual spirit, and even intent. The throne cracked in protest, and the very fabric of space around us fractured like a mirror under strain. Splinters of reality bent inward.

“We’re leaving,” I said simply.

And then I stepped through.

The air on the other side was unnaturally thin. Clouds floated rather low, lazily drifting between ethereal symbols and broken formations in the sky. We stood on an enormous black island, a stretch of land where color had long since died. A ruined castle loomed in the distance, shattered gray arches and broken towers sprawled like the bones of a slain titan. The ground beneath our feet was not quite earth. It had no smell, no texture, and not even the resistance of dirt. I crouched down and scooped a handful. When I squeezed, I felt absolutely nothing… There was no grit, no weight, and no warmth. Just absence.

Behind me, I heard the steps. Alice emerged, followed closely by Ru Qiu. Then, without ceremony, the rift behind us slammed shut.

“So, this is Sealed Island?” Alice muttered. “This place feels… wrong…”

Ru Qiu’s face was twisted in shock. “How?” he growled. “Only I am supposed to know about this path…”

I shot him a glance, deciding whether I should tell him or not… Nah. I’d rather not tell him. The fact was, I had Gu Jie. And she had peered ahead. Or back. Or... sideways. The vision she shared wasn’t flawless, but it was enough to reveal this secret route hidden beneath his throne. A fail-safe Ru Qiu never got to use, until now.

As we moved farther, a pulse of arcane energy rippled through the island, and a magical gate slammed open in the distance. It burned violet in the air before it crashed shut and disintegrated into ash, revealing three figures.

Jue Bu stood at the front, using my original body like it was just a coat he borrowed. He waved at me as if we were old friends crossing paths at a teahouse.

“Da Wei,” he called, “you’re back already? That was fast. How did the Greater Universe treat you?”

“Fuck you!” I shouted. “You look dumb in purple!”

Jue Bu snapped back, “It’s your body, so fuck you twice!”

Ru Qiu’s temper spiked beside me. “How dare you betray me, wench?!” he screamed at the woman beside Jue Bu. “Dark Witch, I will rend you apart until you are nothing but a grain of sand!”

The Dark Witch, unbothered, placed a hand on her hip. “Oh my… Who betrayed whom? Your lack of wit betrayed you; that's what happened.” And though her words were playful, her gaze held mine with barbs hidden beneath the velvet. She whispered something into the ear of the third figure, a man I didn’t recognize at first. Greying hair, a hunched frame inside bloodied armor, and spiritual pressure that clocked somewhere around Soul Recognition. But his face…

My breath hitched. “Jin Chenglei? Commander Jin Chenglei? Is that really you?”

By now, he should’ve been in his mid-twenties. What stood before me was a wrecked man who looked twice that. No… thrice! His skin sagged under the weight of time and torment, and his eyes burned with feverish obsession.

The Dark Witch said something else to him, too quiet to catch, but her eyes never left mine. I felt the sting of her silent curses crawling along my skin like ants, cast from her glance alone. Hexes and charms, all laced through her stare.

“Bitch,” I spat, “fuck off!”

Ru Qiu stepped forward, hands burning with flames. “She’s mine to punish, Da Wei! Hands off!”

The Witch’s lips curled. “I like myself a good punishment.”

I ignored the both of them and focused on Jin Chenglei. There was something deeper in his expression… something broken.

“It’s been some time, young Da Wei,” he croaked, madness rising in his tone. “I’ve come to this wonderful place to claim what is rightfully mine…”

“And what exactly is that?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

He raised his hands to the blackened sky. “The divine throne! I am going to be a god!”

Delusion. Hollow and bitter, like old wine spoiled in the barrel. He wasn’t a threat to me, but I couldn’t say that for sure.

I let silence hang for a moment, then shot a glare at the Witch.

“You’re disgusting,” I said, stepping forward. “You twist the minds of the weak and turn them into your playthings. What did you do to him, whore?”

Jue Bu raised a brow. “Da Wei—”

“And you,” I cut him off. “You think this is normal? Associating with her? Did being in my body make you forget all sense?”

He didn’t reply. Just stood there, watching.

But I wasn’t done. I pointed to the Dark Witch. “You know, it’s one thing to fall into madness. But to fall into her arms?” I spat, literally. “Jue Bu, what the hell were you thinking? Associating with that discount succubus? I thought you were dumb, but this is a new low.”

The Dark Witch pouted theatrically. “Oh no, the boy’s feelings are hurt.”

Jue Bu chuckled and threw an arm around the Dark Witch like they were old lovers on a beach stroll. “He’s just jealous I got a baddie beside me.”

I didn’t hesitate to point at Alice. “I got one too!” I declared, with more pride than I should’ve.

Alice huffed in response. Her arms crossed. Her lips puckered. She didn’t appreciate being treated like some trophy in a contest between meatheads.

The Dark Witch sniffed the air like a snob catching a whiff of boiled cabbage. “She smells old.”

Alice’s head snapped in her direction. “Excuse me?”

Now, Alice was old. Thousands of years old. But so was the Dark Witch, maybe even millennia older, or so if you accounted for all the soul extensions and forbidden alchemy she’d probably undergone. They were both relics. Pot, meet kettle.

The Witch sneered. “Deaf too?”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “Sorry, I can’t hear you… Can you speak louder? You have the presence of a bacterium.”

Oh shi-.

She went straight to bacteria. Skipped over parasite. Ignored amoeba. Xianxia vocabulary had evolved in strange ways.

The Dark Witch looked stunned. “Huh?” A genuine lapse of comprehension. “You little piece of…”

“...Shit,” she finished, trying to act composed but clearly unraveling.

Alice blinked at her like she’d said nothing of consequence. That deadpan expression was lethal. It had enough contempt packed in to flatten cities. I turned away before I burst out laughing. I couldn’t do this anymore. Even the heavens couldn’t withstand this level of pettiness.

The Witch swung her glare at me. Her gaze was lined with hexes and fury. I felt the curses crawl along my skin a second time, binding, rotting, and eroding my luck and pride. Most fizzled off harmlessly, burned away by my innate resistance and spiritual immunities. The few that stuck, I purged with a single invocation.

“Cleanse.”

A soft glow rippled through me, washing away the lingering spiritual grime like ash off armor.

Then came a sudden gust of clean air. A new presence entered the island, barefoot and light-footed. A bald child in a monk’s robes appeared with a single broom slung over his shoulder. The world quieted around him, like even time slowed to see what he’d do.

He was the so-called “old man” I’d once known back in LLO. Except now… he looked like a literal kid. Round cheeks. Gleaming scalp. No more than ten years old. I had no clue how that regression happened or if he ever was old to begin with.

With the exuberance of a fed-up little brother, he groaned, “Can we just move on with the Ascension Games and stop the bickering?”

“Finally, the Enlightened Scholar shows himself,” complained Ru Qiu, “Scholar! I am tired of your games!”

The Dark Witch laughed, folding her arms. “Enlightened Scholar? Oh Heavenly Demon… Your ignorance truly astonishes me.” She gestured to the boy, like unveiling a grand twist. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you? That’s not the Scholar you knew.”

She turned to the kid. “Isn’t that right, Game Master? I wonder why you insisted on the title of ‘Game Master’ lately, but it seemed that had been your true epithet all along…”

The boy didn’t deny it.

Jue Bu’s smirk vanished. His playful gaze hardened, voice colder than ice. “I’m going to kill you.”

A bone-crafted staff materialized in his hand, crowned with a withered skull. A beam of necrotic light surged forth, shrieking like the wails of the condemned.

The boy raised a single hand.

With two fingers, he caught the beam mid-air. He held a green orb between his index finger and thumb, allowing the rest of us to see just how much in control he was. The boy then pressed them together like extinguishing a candle.

The spell vanished.

Not disrupted, but erased!

The boy tapped his broom once on the earth with the bottom of its shaft. “Let’s not waste energy on brutal contests of strength,” he said, voice as gentle as a librarian’s. “We will play a game. You will participate.”

He glanced at each of us, no longer a child, but something else entirely. Older than any of us. Stranger than any realm. His tone turned colder. “Fail to comply… and I will reduce you.”

He could’ve ended this already. With his power alone, he could scatter all of us across the cosmos like broken marionettes and just be done with it. But no, it wasn’t about domination. The ‘game’ mattered to him for a reason unknown to us. I’d go so far as to say the game was everything.

So I asked, cautiously, “What’s the game about?”

He smiled.

“Ever heard of Real-Time Strategy games?”