Makai-Ichi Budōkai – Chapter 4: Temujin vs Qinglong Xuanhu

The lei tai was simple from above and severe from within: a broad circle of bone-white square stone tiles, smoothed enough to be uncanny, and inlaid with eight equidistant bronze trigrams. Beyond it, nothing but red dirt and a moat of smoking black water in the pit below, then the tiers of demons ascending into the mountain’s throat. Four prayer-pillars stood at the cardinal points, wound with iron sutra chains.

At the north wall, looming over the ring from a niche of red lacquer and soot, stood the Thirty-Six-Armed Sword Kannon, a goddess honored with blackened jade. Its face, pitilessly smooth in workmanship, looked down with half-lowered eyes. Every hand held a scimitar, all red and polished, blossoming into a lotus of death over the pit. A few swords curved close enough that a careless ring-out might become an offering.

Qinglong Xuanwu studied Temujin.

“You are young,” he said. His voice came soft and correct. “You are also human.”

Temujin rubbed under his nose. “Guilty. You gonna execute me for that crime?”

Qinglong’s little ice dragon lifted its head from his shoulders. Its whiskers trembled. Frost collected in pale flowers along his collar.

“Humans are what they are. Frail. Frail and dauntlessly foolish,” Qinglong went on. “The skin opens too soon. The bones tell everything. You cling to pain, then plead against it, then resent the mercy offered to you.” He folded one sleeve over the other. “I consider myself a good man. An executioner does not permit himself to make a puppy suffer. For your sake, I will end this quickly.”

“Ohhh,” Mali sang from the edge of the ring, twiddling the microphone to tease her lips. “Sounds like Mr. Ice-Dragon thinks Muji-chan is cute like a puppy!”

“Don’t call me that,” Temujin shouted, without turning.

Floating upside down, Sesame cupped her hands around her mouth from ringside and sang, “Too late, habibi!” And she punched as she said, “Now kick! His! Ass!”

Enekai had both hands curled over the carved barricade, tail wagging with open excitement. “Oh cool, he actually has a dragon! I wish Yuanjia could see it.”

Yulaan leaned one pudgy arm on the stone railing. She scoffed. “Better they’re not in danger here. They’d get themselves eaten by this lot.”

Sesame reached over and pulled both of Yulaan’s cheeks outward. “Awwww. Listen to the Butcher of Gorta pretending she hasn’t made her own little human friends.”

Yulaan’s mouth stretched under Sesame’s fingers. The more her tail circled around Sesame’s neck, the wider that stretch.

“I’ll kill you later.”

The majin let Yulaan’s cheeks pop back into place. “Don’t test me, Yuli-chan.”

Qinglong snapped, “Foolish Majin, my eyes tire of watching this boy draw breath. Begin the match!”

Mali measuredly skipped backward and slowly lifted the red flag. “Fighters ready?! Show us the blood! Ready, set, aa~aand GO!”

Qinglong lowered one hand from his sleeve and opened his palm. His fingers were long and narrow with the nails polished a pale blue. He took no stance that Temujin recognized. 

Temujin set his left foot forward.

His stance was small, loose, ugly to formalists. No crane-wing spread, no tiger-claw display, no elegant salute to the ancestors. Lead hand out, rear hand near the chin, knees alive, weight neither here nor there. 

Qinglong’s lip moved.

“Undisciplined.”

Temujin sprang.

He did not charge in a straight line. He cut left, checked, vanished.

The demons in the first tier leaned forward. Qinglong’s eyes narrowed. 

A frost-dragon coil snapped from his sleeve and struck the afterimage hard enough to freeze the empty air into a boy-shaped statue that shattered before it hit the floor.

Temujin was gone.

“Wow, what speed!” echoed through the sound system. “And the Northeastern gentleman suddenly looks much less smug!”

Qinglong turned once. The dragon on his shoulders hissed. Frost slid out from his slippers in a thin ring.

Yulaan’s head tipped upward.

Qinglong saw the motion. He did not understand it, but pride forced his eyes to follow hers. Many in the audience began to laugh.

Qinglong felt it at last and looked above himself.

Temujin stood on his hat.

Stood!

One foot planted on the square formal crown, arms folded loosely, face bright with that terrible teenage satisfaction of having made an adult look stupid in public.

For one crystal second, the whole arena held.

Qinglong’s face darkened from pale varnish to bruised jade and reached up.

“Insolent tra—”

Temujin dropped, twisted midair, and drove his fist into Qinglong’s gut before the word finished.

Qinglong folded around the fist; the little dragon flew from his shoulders in a coil of blue panic. The bronze trigram under them flashed once, drinking the force. Qinglong staggered back three steps, and each step left a cracked white footprint in the stone.

The crowd made a delighted ugly noise.

Mali hopped in place and cringed. “Ooooh! Temujin folds the Ice Dragon gentleman right at the waist! That’s one way to teach a prince peasant posture!”

Temujin landed lightly and shook out his wrist. Pain climbed through his knuckles. Qinglong’s stomach had felt less like muscle than a frozen door.

For a moment, it seemed he’d fall to one knee. Willpower kept him standing, his every muscle struggling to unfold, unbend, straighten, stand stiff and proud.

Temujin felt it first in his feet, a twitching tension that wanted to become a step backward. When Qinglong spoke again, the softness had frozen through. “I rescind my mercy.”

“Yeah,” Temujin said with a flick to his mouth. “I had a feeling. At least you’re being honest.” A placard above his father’s workshop came to mind. It read: an honest demon is a blood-soaked demon.

Qinglong thrust both hands forward. The little dragon came apart into vapor, then reformed in front of his palms, much larger now, a translucent beast of horns, beard, claws, and coiling spine. The air over the lei tai glittered with needles of ice. Every breath turned visible. Even the black water below crusted white near the ring’s shadow.

Enekai bounced harder. “Aw there we go! A dragon!” Then the danger registered. “Show him what you’re made of, Temujin.”

Sesame hugged herself. “Cold techniques. I hate cold techniques. Why is there always an ice guy?”

Yulaan’s hidden eyes shifted to the north wall, where the Sword Kannon waited with thirty-six patient answers.

The dragon shot forward.

Temujin moved before it did. He cut right, dropped his shoulder, and let the dragon pass close enough to freeze sweat along his cheek. The creature struck the floor behind him and burst. It did not explode outward as water or smoke. It splashed as cryo-chi: pale blue, crawling, alive. It sheeted across the ring in branching veins, climbing over the bronze trigrams and racing for Temujin’s ankles.

His left foot iced over.

The cold bit through skin, muscle, nerve, and will. Fatigue numbed his muscles until his knee struck stone. He caught himself on one hand. Qinglong had missed him and hit the whole ring.

“Looks like the Ice Dragon gentleman decided to give the ring a makeover!” Mali cried, “And let me be the first to say, gotta admire the arctic look! But I don’t think our human warrior is so appreciative!”

Qinglong walked toward him through his own frost. His slippers left no mark now. His robe’s hem floated clear of the ice.

“You see?” he said. “Fragile.”

Temujin beckoned his legs to move, but the motion threw him onto his side— his palm slid across jagged ice and opened in thin stinging lines. That foot was stuck. The cold had pinned his qi along the meridians of the leg, locking the channels one by one. He could still feel his toes. That was the problem. He felt every little blue tooth.

Qinglong raised one hand. The dragon, smaller again, circled his wrist.

“Beg,” he said. “Kowtow properly. Let the Makai see that humans still understand reverence. I will kill you without damage to the face, and I will keep your heart in winter jade.”

Temujin looked up at him.

At ringside, Sesame’s smile had gone thin.

Enekai’s fingers dug into the railing. “Kowtow? Temujin would rather die than give up. That’s kinda his whole problem. He doesn’t know when to quit.”

Sesame smacked her head and said, “Yours too, Eni-kun.”

Temujin lowered both hands to the stone. He bowed his head.

The arena laughed.

The laugh spread fast and fat, rolling up through the tiers. Oni slapped their knees. Gaki shrieked. A monk in ash-gray robes shook his head in theatrical sadness. Qinglong looked pleased, and that pleasure was less cold than his kindness had been.

Mali pressed a hand to her brow, and she said: “Oh, Muji-chan is actually begging for his life! How embarrassing…”

Temujin’s forehead touched the icy stone.

“Pitiful,” Qinglong spat. He lifted his hand.

His teacher had said a stance was a door. Qinglong mistook the kowtow for a room.

Temujin went through it.

He drew back his palm. The dragon opened its mouth over his wrist, frost gathering in its throat.

Temujin’s chi detonated through all four limbs.

The ice broke under his toes, under his nails, under the little humiliating point where his forehead had kissed stone. Qinglong fired over empty air. Temujin was already beneath the sleeve. 

Qinglong’s dragon struck the far barricade, freezing a line of carved lotus petals into white glass. Temujin passed under Qinglong’s arm, rose behind him, and brought both fists clasped together down on the back of his head.

The axe-handle cracked Qinglong’s formal hat in half.

Qinglong’s chin snapped down. Temujin’s foot followed, heel whipping up under the jaw with all the stored insult of the false kowtow. The kick took Qinglong clean off the ring. His body sailed backward, robe spread wide, frost streaming from his sleeves, mouth open in the first honest sound he had made all match.

The Thirty-Six-Armed Sword Kannon received him.

One of its blades went through his back.

The arena went silent enough to hear the little ice dragon shatter on the stone.

Qinglong hung there, skewered and staring. The construct’s half-lowered eyes glimmered. Something blue and cold came out of him, looking offended that it had to leave, and vanished into the goddess-statue’s dark jade arm. His body dried in a breath. Robe, hat, sash, slippers, dragon-badge, gentlemanly arrogance… all of it grayed, thinned, and fell as soft ash at the goddess’s feet.

Two medical attendants jaunted out from a side gate: a pudgy boar demon and a long-legged green demoness, both in identical nurse uniforms, white caps and all. The boar carried a broom. The green one carried a dustpan. Neither hurried.

Sesame pointed at the statue with both hands. “Uh, Miss Mali? Is that allowed?”

Mali blinked, looked toward the Daimaō, looked toward the ash, then spun back with a smile so bright it might have been painted on at knifepoint. “Ring-out by sacred architectural consequence! Totally legal!”

Yulaan folded her arms. “Whatever the Daimaō said was allowed is allowed.”

“That wasn’t in the rules.”

“He said death.”

Sesame opened her mouth, shut it, then nodded with reluctance. “Horrible point. Correct, but horrible.”

“The hell you trying to get me to lose for, ya imp?!” seethed Temujin while he shook his fist.

Sesame did that puffy cheek thing she knew he liked when she said, “‘Cuz I don’t want either of you to lose on a technicality and blow our chances, ass-cheese.”

Mali hopped to the center of the ring, seized Temujin’s wrist, and lifted his arm high. “Winner! Temujin of Earth!”

A third of the arena cheered. Another third booed. The remaining third discussed, with professional interest, how quickly they might eat him if given a chance. 

Under the pavilion, the contestants did not cheer. Their faces hardened in little increments: the human boy had not merely survived a demon gentleman; he had tricked him, mocked him, and fed him to temple furniture. 

Temujin lowered his arm and looked toward ringside.

Enekai waved both arms. Yulaan grinned and threw him a thumbs up and tail wave. 

All three ran onto the ring, and Yulaan took him around the neck and pulled him into a severe and rough side-hug. “Fuckin’ brutal, man!”

Sesame shoved the bolloi off and celebrated with, “Awesome! You’re through the first gate! Now you just need to keep surviving until you can meet up with Enekai in the finals, and then—”

And then he felt the cold again. 

Not Qinglong’s. That bastard was dead.

Hers.

Sesame kept talking and the blood pulsing in his ears made it all pale noise.

Ryūei stood under one of the far arches, infant ghost hovering near her shoulder. Her hair hid most of her face. One visible eye rested on him. He could not look fully at her. At first he forced his attention towards the swirling Moon Marble under her neck, looked away, then back at it mesmerized with heavier and sadder eyes. The infant ghost crossed the sight-line and he immediately forgot the little orb, and his gaze slid away of its own cowardly intelligence and admired a particularly exquisite blade of dry grass outside the ring.

Then he yelled and stumbled, and caught himself on the dirt after he stepped straight off the edge of the fighting ring. 

The demons laughed and howled, and Sesame gave him a boyfriend’s worst nightmare of a facepalm.

Mali however, leaned close with hearts in her eyes, and whispered into the microphone without meaning to lower the volume. “Ooooh, somebody has an admirer.”

Temujin picked himself up and walked back harder than before.

“I think my foot is dead.”

“It’s not dead.” Sesame dropped to the ground, caught him by the wrist, and pulled him to the side. “Don’t despair, Muji-chan. Sesame’s got a-majin eye for ya.”

She stretched her hand over his ankle, wiggled her fingers once, and her palm opened into a tiny red eye.

“I can—”

“Sit, habibi, or I turn your good foot into flan.”

He sat and blushed.

With a puffy-cheeked self-confident grin and a fistful of magic, Sesame knelt and pressed her warm pink fingers to his frozen ankle. Her palms softened slightly, majin flesh becoming glossy and elastic, and a little gold-flashing heat seeped through his skin. He enjoyed the sensation, the awful tingling ecstasy of a sleeping leg pulled by fizzy muscles. 

Enekai leaned over them, hands behind her back. “That was clever.”

“Thanks.”

“I would not have kowtowed.”

“You wouldn’t have needed to in the first place, Eni-kun.”

“Not only that, but I knew he expected me to.”

Yulaan said, “The only thing you lost out on was giving us a good classic ‘Junior, you dare?’ I bet ya he was going to say it too.”

“He looked the sort.”

“But you’re lucky he was. Clever work using that to your advantage.”

Temujin hissed as Sesame thawed the nerves in his foot. “What?”

With a wry grin like she’d practiced saying something cool, Yulaan explained, “That guy was one of those classic arrogant shit-sack types is all. When you sit on your ass constantly getting reminded how superior you are instead of getting scars, you get brittle in all the wrong ways. Like that tree you always hear about, that doesn’t bend in the wind.”

Sesame glanced up. “Look at you, Professor Murder. Gonna write a book now? How much you wanna bet on that table over there you would’a done the same thing?”

Yulaan ignored her and looked over the next names igniting across the jade board.

The brackets narrowed.

The board did not list the tournament as humans would have listed it, in clean brackets, tidy arrows, and a promise that fairness had ever been consulted. Names burned inside eight black-jade panels arranged around a turning dharma wheel, each with a little chibi-fied picture attached— somehow Mukhahīna didn’t look any less deadly with a bobble-head. When one name vanished, its ash was drawn inward toward the hub, where future pairings flickered in malicious teases. 

Temujin saw his own face and name drift one notch closer to the center. Ryūei came before him and watched him progress. Bakuga skipped along a line towards the coolest badass possible. Well, ‘cool’, Temujin assumed, by corporate market research trying to distill 11-year-old machismo into a tournament fighter: ninja guy with scowls and scars and broodable bangs and X-crossed wakizashis and, and, was that a plague doctor mask, like from the far northeast? Temujin scratched his chin to the Yumekunian name ‘Kurohane.’ He thought of his mother, the wonderfully blue-eyed Mizuki who sailed in from the west. Kurohane was a western name like hers. Now that he thought of it, Ryūei was also a western name, and both of them had similar hair, and his head tingled like his leg wondering if they were related. No, how silly. The less he considered Ryūei, the better. 

Enekai’s face worked as a little cartoon icon better than he hoped. He could already see her in the final central wheel-bracket. He felt so much less sure that his face would be next to hers. 

But, he wanted to prove he could at least dare to reach that high. And he had three souls to save, and wasn’t backing down for anyone.

He looked towards the Kannon and saw the last glittering ash-bits flitter, and the heaviest sleeting into the black water. The Makai never paused long over the dead unless the dead owed money.

Iwagashira Dokkan, the Stone-Head Oni of Mount Abura, faced a spider monk with prayer beads made of knucklebones. The spider monk crawled on four jointed limbs and chanted through mandibles. Dokkan waited through three verses, yawned, then headbutted him so hard the prayer beads burst and bounced like hail across the ring. It had been so loud, so powerful in fact that a Wilson cloud blew out in all directions, and Temujin felt the skin on his face ripple in the wake. There no longer was a spider monk.

“Alright, Eni-kun, I think we’ve just found the second strongest fighter at the tournament.”

Temujin blew out his cheeks and said, “Don’t count me out that easily. Strength isn’t everything, you know!”

“Of course, Muji-chan.”

Temujin scowled.

And then the senshi felt a surge of good feelings from behind them, walking forward, towards a bloody stage with much too bright of a smile.