Chapter 102: Chapter: Registration

The registration hall was larger than he had expected. That was becoming a reliable property of Lianshan.

Long counters along both walls, staffed by officials who had been answering the same questions since early morning and had reached the point in the day where the questions had stopped being interesting. The line moved steadily. Most of what happened at the counters was brief: name, sect affiliation, event category, documentation verified, next.

He reached the counter at the second hour.

The official was a man in his fifties with ink-stained fingers and the practiced efficiency of someone who had run registration at every Dragon Phoenix for sixteen years.

"Name," he said.

"Itsuki Amagi."

"Sect affiliation."

"None."

The official wrote this without looking up. "Independent practitioner. Primary energy system."

"Dual system," he said.

The official's pen paused.

He looked up for the first time.

"Dual system," he said.

"Yes."

"Primary and secondary."

"Both primary," he said.

The official set the pen down.

"Both primary," the official said.

"Yes."

"A practitioner has one primary energy system," the official said.

"Typically," he said.

"The registration form has one field for primary energy system," the official said.

"I understand."

"The form does not have a second field for a second primary energy system."

"I can see that."

The official looked at his form. He looked at it for a long time.

"What is the first system," he said.

"Mana heart. Silver grade. All-element affinity."

The official wrote this.

"What is the second," he said.

"Qi core. Irregular grade."

"Irregular," the official said.

"The classification notation applied by the formation assessment I underwent listed it as irregular," he said. "I can provide the documentation."

"That would be helpful," the official said, without much conviction that it would be.

He produced the document Rui had prepared.

The official read it.

He read it again.

He set it on the counter and looked at it.

"One moment," he said.

He went to a colleague two stations down and said something quietly. The colleague looked at the document. The colleague looked at him standing at the counter. The colleague came over.

"You are registering a dual primary system," the colleague said.

"Yes," he said.

"Both active simultaneously."

"Yes."

The two officials looked at each other.

"The form," the first official said.

"The form does not cover this," the second official said.

"No," the first official said.

"There is a secondary field for supplementary techniques."

"A Qi core is not a supplementary technique."

"No."

They both looked at the document.

"I will need to consult the classification handbook," the first official said.

He consulted the handbook. The handbook was comprehensive. It did not cover dual primary energy systems.

"I will need to consult the senior registrar," he said.

The senior registrar was a woman who had arrived at the Dragon Phoenix Tournament for the first time when the officials currently working for her had been children. She looked at the document for approximately eight seconds.

"Novel element," she said. "Register it separately and note the interaction."

"What category," the official said.

"Novel Element," she said again. "Create the category."

"The form does not..."

"Then make a new field," she said, and went back to her office.

The official looked at the form for a long moment. He drew a new line at the bottom.

He wrote: Novel Element, Blue.

He looked at the line he had written.

"Does that cover it," he said.

"It is the cleanest classification I have received," Itsuki said.

The official stamped the form.

"Events," he said, already trying not to think about the previous five minutes.

"Individual event. And the paired event. I am registering with Amagi Yua."

"Same family name," the official said.

"Different family," he said.

The official made a note and did not pursue this.

The training areas adjacent to the tournament grounds were available to registered competitors for the two days before the event opened.

He used them in the morning on the second day. The Qi core and the mana heart had both been running at partial output since the travel and needed calibration, the kind that required space and time rather than the compressed mountain forms he had been running since Lianshan.

The practice field had eight other practitioners. He found a section away from the main group and began.

The first form was calibration: slower than competition pace, the dual perception running at full output, checking the integration points between systems. After six months the integration had developed its own rhythm. He ran through it the way Rui had watched him run through the mountain training: systematically, without rushing, with the attention it required.

A practitioner from two sections over had stopped and was watching.

He continued.

A second had stopped. Then a third.

The blue appeared briefly at the midpoint of the third form, a side effect of the mana heart and Qi core running at simultaneous full output. The interaction between the two systems showed itself as visible flame before he redistributed the load. He let it run for three seconds and released it.

One of the watching practitioners said something to another in a voice not intended to carry.

It carried.

"I saw that last night," the second said. "At the inn."

"What is it," the first said.

"I don't know," the second said. "I've never seen that color before."

He moved into the fourth form.

More practitioners had gathered at the edge of the section. They didn't interrupt, didn't speak to him. They only watched, people who had traveled a long way to see something exceptional, now recalibrating what exceptional meant.

When he finished the calibration sequence, one of them took a step forward: a competitor in the individual event, judging by the crest on his training clothes.

"Is that Hell's Fire," the competitor said. Genuinely asking, not challenging.

"No," he said.

"I thought Hell's Fire burned black," the competitor said.

"It does," he said.

The competitor looked at him for a moment.

"What does blue burn," he said.

"I am still working that out," he said, and picked up his water vessel.

The competitor's partner pulled him back before he could ask another question.

He finished the water and went to find Rui and Yua.

At the fourth hour, the official bracket posting went up at the main hall entrance.

Both events. Six columns. Four hundred and twelve individual entries. One hundred and six pairs.

He stood at the edge of the crowd.

The Xinshan pair was in the paired bracket's third tier. Yanwu Peak was in the same tier. Both of them in the upper half. He found Rui's and Yua's names in the lower half, seeded fourth based on their regional results.

He found his own name in the individual bracket's second tier.

Then he found where Yua was in the individual bracket.

She was seeded seventh. Her first-round opponent was seeded second.

He found Rui at the edge of the crowd.

"I saw," she said.

"First round," he said.

"Yes," she said.

She looked at the bracket.

"The second seed has competed at the Dragon Phoenix four times," she said. "She has reached the semifinal in two of them."

"Her technique specialty," he said.

"Disruption," Rui said. "Pattern techniques. She reads opponents and introduces instability into their approach."

He thought about pattern three. The fourteen-year problem. One afternoon.

"Yua knows about this," he said.

"Yua has been watching her competitors for two days," Rui said.

Yua appeared behind them.

She had been reading the bracket herself before finding them. She held a small notebook, not Rui's, her own, one he had not seen before.

"Second seed," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"First round."

"Yes." She opened the notebook. She had written three lines. He could not read the script but the format was recognizable: notes on a competitor, written in her own shorthand.

"You have been watching her train," he said.

"This morning," she said. "She is good."

"And," he said.

"She expects opponents to respond to disruption," Yua said. "She has not seen an opponent who could see disruption coming three counts before it arrived."

He said nothing.

"I will need the cultivator's sense relay from you during warmup," she said. "I need to understand what pattern four looks like at tournament pace."

"Tomorrow morning," he said.

She closed the notebook.

"Your bracket," she said.

"Seeded fourteenth," he said.

"Out of four hundred and twelve," she said.

"The registration was nonstandard," he said. "I believe the seeding reflects some uncertainty about the classification."

She looked at him.

"You are seeded fourteenth at the Dragon Phoenix Tournament," she said. "As an unaffiliated independent practitioner who registered with a classification the officials invented at the counter."

"Yes," he said.

She went back to her notebook.

"First round should be manageable," she said.

He was crossing the hall when someone fell into step beside him.

The examiner from the training area registration. The older one, who had watched his entire calibration sequence that morning.

"Chen Wuming," the man said. He did not slow his pace. "Official examiner, Dragon Phoenix Tournament. Third cycle in this role."

"Itsuki Amagi," he said.

"Independent," Chen Wuming said.

"Yes."

"I watched your calibration this morning."

"I know," he said.

"I have served as official examiner for three Dragon Phoenix cycles," Chen Wuming said. "Before that, twelve regional circuits across the eastern and northern territories." He paused. "In that time I have seen Hell's Fire twice."

He said nothing.

"It burns black," Chen Wuming said.

"Yes," he said.

"I do not know what blue burns," Chen Wuming said. "I have looked in the records. There is no technical document for what I watched this morning."

He waited.

"The interaction you are running between your two primary systems," Chen Wuming said. "Is the blue a byproduct or an intended output."

"Byproduct at this stage," he said. "The integration produces it under simultaneous full-load output. I am still learning to modulate it."

Chen Wuming walked beside him for several steps without speaking.

"The examiners will flag you in the individual bracket," he said finally. "After your first match. Whatever technique you use, they will want a technical assessment."

"I understand," he said.

"I am the assessor for the second tier," Chen Wuming said. "I will be the one writing the report."

"Also useful to know," he said.

Chen Wuming looked at him sideways.

"You are not nervous," he said.

"About the assessment?"

"About any of it," Chen Wuming said.

He thought about the mountain. Six months of two training sessions a day, shoulder repair work, pattern analysis, cultivator's sense development, Qi core integration, fourteen-year problems solved in one afternoon.

"I have been preparing," he said.

Chen Wuming nodded once.

"The bracket opening is tomorrow at the second bell," he said. "First-tier individual matches begin at the fourth bell."

He separated at the hall's eastern exit without further comment.

Chen Wuming stood and watched him go.

Then he took out his own small notebook and began writing. The notation was technical: the terminology of a man who had spent three decades assessing cultivation techniques and still didn't have a framework for what he was writing down.

He wrote for a while.

Then he wrote one more line.

Watch the second-tier matches. All of them.

He closed the notebook and went to find the bracket committee.