Hart stepped forward and threw his punch.
The black skeleton didn't move. Its jaw clacked in disappointment.
"Didn't you eat breakfast? That's pathetic. I'm giving this an F!"
The lowest possible grade. Hart backed away, shoulders slumped.
Tetsuro pushed through the crowd, eyes locked on the skeleton's sternum. He planted his feet, twisted every muscle in his torso like a coiled spring, and unleashed everything he had in the span of a few inches. His fist hammered into the skeleton's ribcage with enough force to crack stone.
The skeleton nodded, satisfied. Gray light pulsed in its eye sockets as it quietly siphoned aura from Tetsuro's body.
"Now that's martial arts! Deep foundation! I'll give this a B+!"
No A? Tetsuro scowled and stepped back, muttering under his breath.
The rest of the fighters watched, cracking their knuckles and getting hyped. The whole atmosphere had shifted. Nobody seemed to remember they'd been fighting this thing thirty seconds ago.
They were all clearly under some kind of influence. Something had convinced them the skeleton's claims were legitimate.
Wing started to move forward. Liam caught his arm.
"Let me try." Liam walked toward the skeleton, clenching his right fist.
Wing called after him. "The test is about technique, not just reinforcing your strength with aura..."
Tetsuro, Hart, and the others all turned to watch Liam's fist.
The aura wrapping his body rapidly converged on his right hand. The rest of him dropped into something close to Zetsu state, defense falling to zero everywhere except that single point. His fist became wrapped in a mass of concentrated light so bright that anyone with Gyo active couldn't see the actual hand inside it anymore.
Ko.
The most basic ultimate technique of the Enhancement category, stripped down to pure brutality. Concentrate everything. Release everything. Destroy everything.
Only true Enhancers could use it at one hundred percent efficiency.
But that didn't mean other types couldn't use the technique at all.
Abandoning defense everywhere else to focus on one point of attack carried natural risk. That awareness of potential failure naturally created restriction, which boosted power.
Of course, Liam knew subconsciously that his Star Mark would heal him even if his undefended body got torn apart. His understanding of the risk wasn't as deep as it should be.
But nobody else knew that.
When they saw him prepare to throw a Ko punch, several fighters actually gasped.
Not everyone here could use Ko. The technique required combining all five basic principles: Ten, Zetsu, Ren, Hatsu, and Gyo. It was difficult enough that Enhancement types used it as their finishing move.
The black skeleton opened its mouth. "I..."
Liam punched straight through its sternum. Black bone fragments exploded out the skeleton's back like shrapnel.
"You little brat!" The skeleton looked down at the hole in its chest. Gray light flickered in its eye sockets. "Can't you understand when someone's talking?!"
"How do you look anything like someone who talks?" Liam said. The aura concentrated in his fist flowed back along his arm like water, spreading across his entire body in seconds.
He pulled back and took several steps away. A thick layer of aura already covered him in full-body Ken, though not nearly as dense as his usual fighting state.
"Liam! What are you doing?!"
The other fighters turned on him, suddenly hostile.
"Sky Master is hosting a competition for us! Why are you attacking him?!"
Even Wing, Hart, and Tetsuro looked confused and disapproving. They clearly didn't agree with him breaking the rules.
The black bone fragments rolled across the ground like jumping beans, flying back to the skeleton and sealing the breaks.
"Arrogant brat!" The skeleton's teeth clacked together furiously. Black aura started pouring off its bones. "Let me teach you a lesson! I'll show you what it means to be swift as the sky and violent as lightning! Take this palm strike!"
It kicked at him with a skeletal foot.
"That's your palm strike?"
Liam's thoughts shifted. The Star Mark on the back of his neck activated instantly.
Flowing Star Strike.
Light like polished sapphire danced in his eyes. Liam moved in a state between waking and sleeping. Instinct and conscious control reached perfect harmony. His body responded to every move the skeleton made with optimal technique.
The exchange of moves was so fluid that even Sky Master, watching from the sidelines, couldn't help but applaud.
"Stop clapping!" The black skeleton's aura surged darker and thicker, quickly overwhelming Liam's defense.
Liam backed up, calling out, "What about martial arts?!"
"You broke the rules first!" the skeleton shouted back.
"You're right!" Liam clapped his hands together. "So I forfeit! Is that acceptable?"
The skeleton snorted and stood with its hands behind its back, apparently too annoyed to bother with him anymore.
"Wing, Hart, you should forfeit too." Liam turned to face them.
"Why should we quit?" Hart looked genuinely confused.
Wing didn't agree either. He started to speak.
Liam raised his voice. "If you won't quit, fine! I'm going back to the hotel to call your master! Shizuku, we're leaving."
Shizuku had already forfeited at the beginning. She followed Liam out of the practice ground without a word, completely unbothered by the supernatural chaos happening around her.
Wing couldn't ignore the threat about contacting Bisky.
After hesitating for several seconds, he grabbed Hart and hurried after Liam, catching up on the path back to the hotel.
"Liam, you'd better not..." Wing started.
Liam turned around and fixed Wing with a sharp stare. "Remember what just happened."
"What happened?" Hart asked, still lost.
Wing thought about it carefully. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead within seconds.
Why had they all just accepted that the black skeleton was Sky Master? Why had they been so submissive?
"Is this because of the mark on our heads?" he said quietly.
Hart's eyes went wide. He shuddered.
Both of them had been unknowingly controlled by that skeletal thing. How could they have thought it was Sky Master?
"Things keep getting weirder." Liam said. "I don't think either that skeleton or the white-haired guy from the beginning is the real Sky Master. But they're probably all connected to him somehow."
Wing's expression turned serious. "We need to remove these marks immediately."
Liam shook his head. "I can't help with that. I'm not an Exorcist."
"Then we're stuck being controlled by something?" Hart sounded miserable. "We don't want this!"
Shizuku spoke up. "Maybe the mark will disappear on its own when the conference ends in seven days?"
Hart grabbed Wing's arm, looking even more worried. "Senior brother, please ask your master to help us!"
Get her to come here!
Liam said flatly, "If you need help from someone, why look far away? Find your beloved president, Netero! He's already on the mountain."
The sky was starting to lighten. Most of the villas around the mountain summit still had their lights off, occupants sleeping.
Liam and the other three returned to the back mountain hotel. A waiter emerged from around a corner in the lobby, smiling as he approached.
"How many guests..."
Before he could finish, Liam's hand shot out like a viper and grabbed the man's wrist.
"Who are you?" Liam activated Gyo and studied the figure carefully. "This whole place is getting more cursed by the hour..."
The waiter's entire head transformed into a gray-scaled snake head. Dark yellow reptilian eyes stared at Liam.
Hart yelped and went pale. Wing immediately dropped into a combat stance. The waiter's body scattered into dozens of tiny gray snakes that crawled across the floor in all directions before vanishing into thin air.
Liam kept Gyo active the whole time. He caught a brief glimpse before all the gray snakes dissolved into pure aura and disappeared.
Shizuku looked at him.
Liam nodded. These gray snakes were obviously the same ones they'd seen in the dream earlier.
He'd initially thought those snakes appeared because the dream reflected Gel, the Snake Zodiac.
That theory was clearly wrong.
The gray snakes, the peach tree in the dream, the old beggar sitting on the tree, and the black skeleton that absorbed aura were all connected to that strange dream world.
And maybe the white-haired, young-faced figure everyone had initially accepted as Sky Master was part of it too.
They rushed into the hotel. Along the way, they encountered more waiters. Without exception, every single one disintegrated into gray snakes as soon as they made eye contact, then quickly dispersed.
"What is this?!" Hart sounded close to tears. "What kind of place is this? Senior brother, are we trapped in a horror movie?"
Wing had no answer. When he'd attended the conference years ago, there had been strange old beggars, bizarre dreams, peach petal marks, and black skeletons draining participants' aura. But he'd been completely unaware the entire time. He'd thought he was just participating in a martial arts competition.
Looking back now, he couldn't even remember specific details. Everything was blurred, like looking at flowers through fog.
Probably the result of the peach petal mark manipulating his memory.
Finally Wing could only offer weak comfort. "Don't worry. When I attended the Sensui Mountain conference before, the Sky Master I met looked just like the one from the beginning. I came out of it fine. The worst case scenario is like you said earlier. We just wait seven or eight days until the conference ends..."
Hart looked ready to cry. "But senior brother, you didn't have this situation! In horror stories, once someone reveals the ghost's true identity, they get targeted for bad luck!"
Wing felt a headache building.
Liam thought to himself: Dreams, Nen beasts, Nen clones, peach petal marks... If the dream world materializes like Bisky suspected, then among these four, no, five weird phenomena, at least one of them has to be Conjuration type. The white-haired Sky Master's techniques are clearly Emission. The black skeleton feels like Enhancement. The gray snakes that combine into different waiters, acting like NPCs in the villa, are probably Transmutation... What about the old beggar? Is he Conjuration type? The one materializing everyone's dreams?
Where was the Manipulator?
Liam thought of the dead tree he'd seen on the cliff edge when they climbed the Long Steps to Immortality.
"But all these things, the black skeleton and old beggar, can be seen with normal vision. They're obviously materialized..." Back in the room, Liam analyzed out loud. "But if the black skeleton is Enhancement type, it can still use the peach petal marks left by that suspected peach tree to secretly control people... Can these things share and borrow abilities from each other?"
Shizuku said, "The black skeleton and the white-haired Sky Master don't seem to get along though."
"There's still Specialization left..." Liam muttered. "A Specialist that hasn't shown up yet. Who's the real Sky Master?"
"Ugh, I'm completely lost!" Hart rolled on the sofa, holding his head. "I just want to go home! Who is Sky Master?!"
"Kekekeke, Sky Master? Of course that's me, old man!"
Both Liam and Shizuku heard the familiar disturbing laughter coming from above. They looked up.
The old beggar from before was hanging upside down from the ceiling light fixture like a bat.
"Young man, do you want to know the meaning of life? Do you want to truly live?"
The beggar spread his arms wide, grinning with that horrible too-wide smile. "Enjoy the real carnival! Kekekeke..."
His entire body suddenly vanished, transforming into a sphere of aura.
A strong wind tore through the room. Papers flew off the coffee table. The carpet lifted from the floor. Tables and chairs shook. The windows rattled. The door trembled. Something in the air itself had fundamentally changed.
There was a loud noise.
A pile of garbage appeared out of thin air in the center of the room. Several children with vicious expressions stood on top of the trash heap, gripping baseball bats embedded with rusty nails. They glared at Liam and the others with feral eyes.
"This is... Shizuku's dream about Meteor City?"
Liam stared in shock. The dream had truly materialized into reality.
Shizuku glanced at the scene, then spoke to Liam through her Moon Mark ring. "Liam, control me."
Liam's voice immediately sounded in her mind. He used the third-person control mode to issue a command. "Protect the Star Mark from being destroyed."
Shizuku showed no obvious reaction to being manipulated. The garbage piles and gang children in the room quickly faded and disappeared.
"Senior brother, you look so weird!" Hart's laughter came from behind them.
Liam and Shizuku turned around.
Wing had somehow transformed into a two-meter-tall burly man with bulging muscles. His clothes had torn to shreds from the expansion. He'd taken off his glasses and stood there looking confident and powerful.
But the "senior brother" Hart was talking to wasn't him.
In front of Hart stood a thin, scrawny version of Wing who was half a head shorter.
Hart laughed and easily subdued the skinny Wing using basic martial arts techniques, clearly having a great time.
The atmosphere in the air felt genuinely cheerful.
That wasn't an exaggeration. There was literally an atmosphere of joy overflowing from nowhere, almost condensed into something tangible.
Shizuku glanced at Wing and Hart, both lost in their materialized dreams, then ignored them. "They were already marked by the peach petals first. You can't do anything."
"Yeah, I know." Liam nodded.
First mover advantage in Manipulation was real. He'd used Star Mark to avoid being controlled. That meant Wing and Hart, already under someone else's control, were off-limits for his Star Mark to interfere with.
"Let's ignore them for now. Daydreaming is scary, but it doesn't seem to be causing actual harm."
Liam took Shizuku out of the room. Along the way through the hotel, they witnessed all kinds of bizarre scenes. About twenty martial artists had returned to the hotel to rest. Now strange imagery was leaking out of every room.
A martial artist who'd transformed into a humanoid mech suit burst through a wall, brandishing a mechanical sword and shouting at a biochemical monster emerging from thin air. "Don't run!"
The biochemical monster panicked and jumped toward Liam and Shizuku.
Shizuku materialized her chainsaw vacuum. The spinning teeth buzzed to life and cut the monster in half. Blood sprayed everywhere, then dissipated into the air.
The entire hotel had become a carnival of chaos.
The waiters had all disappeared.
Liam and Shizuku made their way to the practice ground. The situation there was just as insane. The entire training area had transformed into a massive arena. Tetsuro wore golden battle armor and was slaughtering everyone in sight. Liam looked closer and saw that among the people getting beaten down, there seemed to be copies of Wing and himself...
The black skeleton and white-haired Sky Master were both gone.
There weren't many people staying in the back mountain area. Even with the hotel and training ground in chaos, with about thirty people sleepwalking together, it was relatively contained.
The front mountain was a different story.
Liam and Shizuku stood in the back mountain area and could see a blurry mass of light covering the entire front mountain villa complex. The sky above it reflected constantly shifting images. Sometimes there were several vortexes in an oil painting starry sky. Sometimes a huge clown shadow jumped across the clouds. Sometimes a sunrise suddenly burst into existence... Countless people's dreams interwoven repeatedly. Realistic, surreal, twisted, insane, holy. All of it transformed into substantial form.
"Artists are all crazy," Liam muttered.
Shizuku pointed in another direction. Liam looked.
At the end of the Long Steps to Immortality, the dead tree on the cliff edge had transformed into a peach tree, exactly like the one from the previous dream. Peach blossoms bloomed in full glory across its branches. A gentle breeze made them sway, and petals flew out like a tide, melting into the air and drifting toward both mountains.
"Kekekekeke! Isn't this exciting?!"
The old beggar stood on a branch, clapping and dancing. "Otherwise, what's the point of life?!"
"What's the point of dying?"
A voice came from nowhere.
Two loud crashes followed. The black skeleton and the white-haired Sky Master came flying through the air and smashed through the back mountain villa's front entrance. Half the front hall collapsed in the impact.
Through the rising dust, Netero walked out with his sleeves flowing. He glanced at the peach tree on the cliff edge.
"Netero! Who do you think you are?!"
The old beggar on the peach tree suddenly erupted in fury. As he screamed, the entire tree shook in response.
"Netero! Who do you think you are?!"
"Netero! Who do you think you are?!"
Countless gray snakes emerged from every surface, swarming together and forming identical human shapes. All of them took on Netero's appearance. All of them shouted the same words.
Netero stuck his pinky finger in one ear and cleaned it out. "I haven't been here in so many years, old friend. Why don't you show yourself and greet me properly?"
"I already told you..."
The black skeleton and white-haired Sky Master climbed out of the ruins. Their figures began overlapping and merging. The entire peach tree withered in an instant. The old beggar vanished. The "Netero" duplicates filling the ruined courtyard disintegrated into countless gray snakes that swarmed toward the overlapping figures.
Finally, a tall and imposing middle-aged man emerged from the dust and debris. He pointed a halberd at Netero, his voice cold with rage.
"Netero, who do you think you are?! I am the Emperor of Kakin! What gives you the right to interfere in my business?!"
Netero's expression didn't change. He walked forward calmly.
"I'll say it again. Goya Hui Guo Rou, you died a long time ago."
He pressed his palms together, then struck out with a single palm thrust.
What the hell is even happening?!
Liam and Shizuku watched from a distance, barely able to follow the plot anymore. What kind of development was this? Why had they just heard "Kakin"? How did an ancient Kakin emperor suddenly appear here?
Kurapika's anxious voice suddenly sounded in Liam's mind through the Moon Mark. "Liam, what's going on?!"
Liam sighed. "I'd like to know that myself!"
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