Chapter 10

The young pair soon reached the house's entranceway and put on their outdoor shoes. Opening the door, Riku exited the residence with Chiaki in tow.

In the grassy front yard was his grandmother, floating a few meters in the air. She was smugly laughing, gloating over the ripped shreds of his hard-drawn pornographic imagery.

Riku frowned when he saw the remnants of his very own masterpieces. He took a step out and said with a disapproving tone, "C'mon, why'd you have to rip apart my beautiful posters? Don't you feel a bit ashamed to use your Severing Mortality-level (forty-one to fifty fart) cultivation against a mere Foundation Establishment (eleven to twenty fart) practitioner?"

Kikue kept on laughing. "Oh? Shame? I haven't felt that since the day I turned seventy-three! Now, besides yip-yapping meaningless words, what can you do about it?"

Her grandson replied with a laugh of his own, "I can do a lot of things. I'll have you know, my fighting technique has improved since the last time we have dueled. I have binged a total of 853 episodes of Two Piece! I have mastered the art of the Gum Gum Pistol in only three months! Fear my talent and despair!"

"Oh my, how scary," she replied with a deadpan expression.

Riku, ignoring her obvious sarcasm, pooled his spiritual energy and slowly ascended to the skies.

"I hope you're ready," he called out.

He placed his right hand fist on top of his open left palm, a variation of a common martial arts greeting. The natural energies of Heaven and Earth gathered around him, forming a terrifying whirlpool of unleashed power.

Kikue smiled and returned the greeting. "Likewise." She too began to gather the abundant qi in the surroundings. An aura no weaker than Riku's amassed around her.

In unison, the two separated their hands and then slammed their fists against their palms. Spiritual energy waves rippled across the surroundings, forming a gale that swept the grass in the area flat.

"Rock!" They called out, starting their battle incantations.

And again. The two slammed their fist against their palms. An even greater wind whirled from the two pinnacle cultivators as the epicenter. A few plants were uprooted, and an oak tree nearby groaned in agony.

"Paper!"

A third time. A massive whirlwind swept by, but the gales were concentrated against their respective opponent, ricketing the massive sea of spiritual energy surrounding them both.

"Scissors!"

The next moment, Riku formed a sideways "V" with his hand. He smiled confidently. "I incorporated the Gum Gum fruit's techniques into the Art of the Thrice Concealed Hand! I can switch from rock to scissors within half a millisecond! You thought I was going to pick rock, didn't you!"

Kikue merely laughed. In her hand was a fully-closed fist: rock. "Rock beats scissors. I win."

Disgruntled, he furrowed his eyebrows and gritted his teeth. "How could you see through my technique!?"

"Did you forget who taught you the Art of the Thrice Concealed Hand? Haha, and you think you could best me."

Tsking, he said, "Best two out of three!"

Another earth-shattering round of rock-paper-scissors started. Riku summoned a boulder from a few meters underground, heaving it at Kikue. She caught it and tossed it back at twice its original speed.

"Rock!" they called out.

Blades of grass were uprooted and took the sky, controlled by Riku's near-immortal divine sense. Sharpened by the boundless qi he controlled, they sliced apart the boulder into mere dirt. Not losing a single ounce of momentum, the deadly blades of grass sped towards his grandmother.

"Paper!" and a single word resounded in unison.

Kikue clapped her hands, and an invisible energy cut apart the infinitely sharp grass blades into nothingness.

"Scissors!"

And exactly the moment the last word was uttered, the game was set. In Kikue's hand was the sign for scissors. In Riku's was the sign for paper.

He grimaced. "Best three out of five!"

She obliged, and the third round started.

Fuck. Her technique is too good. I can't even see when she forms her hand signs! If only she were a millisecond slower… Riku was deep in thought. The only way for me to win this is to try and predict what she's going to do next. To start off with, there's no way that she's going to go for scissors again. That'd be too predictable. She's already gone with rock and scissors, so that means that paper is going to be more likely. I'll go scissors then. No, wait. She knows that the only sign she hasn't used was paper, so that means that she's baiting me into using scissors, meaning she'll go rock! I have to go paper! No, wait again. She knows that I know that paper is going to be bait, so she's going to go for scissors! Hold on, there's no way that she can't predict this chain of thought. She knows that I can see through her double bait, which means that she'll go paper to counter my rock! That means I have to use scissors to win!

He smiled the smile of a man assured of victory, full of self-confidence and without an ounce of self-doubt. Riku had fully integrated various techniques from anime into his Art of the Thrice Concealed Hand. While he couldn't read his grandmother's hand motions, he knew that his grandmother couldn't read his either. His previous losses were just a coincidence.

"Rock! Paper! Scissors!"

Once again, the qi in the atmosphere roiled and thundered from the aftershock of the intense battle between the two cultivators.

Riku's gaze was fixated on his grandmother's hand, and exactly on the start of the third beat (any later would be penalized with a loss), he once again shaped his index and middle fingers into the shape of a "V."

And he was greeted with the same hand sign his grandmother used the first time: rock.

"How is this possible!? My technique should have no openings!" Tsking, he continued, "Best four out of seven!" Riku angrily gritted his teeth and prepared for another grueling round.

Kikue was about to reply, but Chiaki spoke first, "What do you mean, technique? It's a fucking game of random chance. You're just unlucky." The young lady sighed. "Let me play for you. I still don't really get why we're playing rock-paper-scissors now, but I've always been pretty lucky at the game."

Riku was taken aback, more than slightly offended. "What do you mean, game of random chance? How is this a game of random chance? It's the ultimate contest of one's perception, physical capabilities, technique mastery, and perhaps the most important, wits! It's much more than a game of random chance!"

Kikue nodded along, and Riku continued, "You're just a Foundation Establishment (eleven to twenty fart) cultivator; what do you know? You won't stand even a millionth of a chance against a Severing Mortality (forty-one to fifty fart) expert! I have fully mastered the Art of Reading a Myriad Palms! I can read what sign an untrained opponent will use three seconds before they know it themselves! And my Art of the Thrice Concealed Hand means that it is impossible for my opponent to read me! What can your puny divine sense understand from my profound hidden techniques? Nothing!"

Chiaki shot him an incredulous look. "I don't get what you're saying. It's just rock-paper-scissors, right? Just luck. Plus, how is it possible for someone to know what move I'm going to do even before I know it? Is your head okay? Do you have Eighth-Grader Syndrome?"

Riku humphed. "A well frog can never comprehend the endless seas. It seems like this is even more the case for snotty kettle frogs. Go take my place and witness the ocean."

She paused for a moment, pursing her lips, before shooting back, "What was that one Japanese four-character idiom again? That's right, you make 'small needle into big pole.' Making something out of nothing. It's just a game of random chance. Just watch and make sure to put a good word about me with Kurei."

"Don't come crying to me when you lose." Riku humphed again.

"Don't worry. My luck is pretty good." She turned to Kikue and said in a louder voice, "I'll be your opponent."

Kikue nodded. Despite being aware of Chiaki's ignorance of the great ocean, she would not refuse a free win. She floated down to the ground to be level with Chiaki. "Ready?" Kikue asked.

The kettle frog affirmed, "Yep," before starting the round at her own pace.

"Rock, paper, scissors."

It was a bit faster than the Shinosaki pair had been doing earlier, but Kikue was a powerful cultivator. Perhaps a strengthless mortal would be tripped up, but she kept with the beat set by Chiaki.

Shortly later, Chiaki chose paper, and Kikue went with rock. Chiaki claimed victory.

"Three to one. Alright, rock, paper, scissors."

The grandmother looked stunned that she lost, but she was given no respite: Chiaki went to the next round almost instantly, and Kikue barely followed along.

The conclusion was similarly quick: rock beats scissors. It was Chiaki's win again.

"Okay, three to two. Rock, paper, scissors." She went to the next round, completely nonplussed in a large contrast to the frowning Kikue.

The rhythm of the "rock, paper, scissors" was again different from the last two times. And that small difference was enough to throw Kikue off once again.

She signed rock, while Chiaki signed paper. It was the third win in a row for the young lady. And Riku, still floating in the air, was completely and utterly dumbfounded. Chiaki, the well frog, had won. What did that make him, then? A sewer frog? A sewer frog that could never comprehend the cleanliness of well water?

His brain, something that Riku rarely used, was whirring into action to find the cause. Usually, between cultivators, the time between each word of "rock, paper, scissors" was exactly one second. But Chiaki completely ignored that. The first round between the two women had a beat of .76 seconds. The second, .93, and the third, .56. His Art of Reading a Myriad Palms was entirely nullified by her changing tempi: he couldn't read her at all. And, as seen from the results of the previous three rounds, neither could his grandmother.

He snorted. She was obviously using barely-legal cheap tricks to confuse his grandmother, and as soon as Kikue got used to varying rhythm, Chiaki would lose.

And it looked like Kikue realized that. Before Chiaki started the next round, she said, "Why don't you follow my lead this time? I'll start the count, okay?"

Chiaki nodded, not realizing that she was throwing out all her chances of victory. "Sure. Go ahead."

Kikue thus receiving her possible granddaughter-in-law's approval, started the countdown on a tempo of one beat a second; the classic and most studied way of cultivator's rock-paper-scissors.

"Rock. Paper. Scissors!"

And this time, Riku was able to read Chiaki's movements the instant after the two players said "rock." She was clearly going for another paper: everything from her facial expression to the muscle movement on her hand, wrist, and arm screamed so.

But If Riku could realize this, so could Kikue. The moment "scissors" was spoken, the grandmother had formed a scissor shape with her fist.

Riku didn't even bother to look back to Chiaki's hand. His reading had a 100% certainty; he had never lost a bout of rock-paper-scissors against a weaker cultivator in his life.

He started to ponder on how to win the subsequent five-out-of-nine, but Chiaki interrupted his thoughts.

"Three to four. We win. What do you say, Grandma? Five out of nine?"

Riku shot a look at Chiaki's hands, and he almost fell out of the air. Her fist had somehow remained closed; she had done rock.

Before his grandmother could even say a word, Riku butt in. "How the fuck did you do that? You made all the signs of going paper, yet you went with rock? Impossible!"

Chiaki shot Riku a questioning look. She looked honestly confused. "What? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how you managed to trick our senses into believing that you were going to go paper!"

"Trick your senses? I don't get it. This is rock-paper-scissors, right? What does it have to do with tricking people's senses? I won because it's a game of luck. I'm just lucky."

"Impossible! You had to have cheated!"

"Cheated? This is a fucking game of chance. How the fuck are you supposed to cheat at this?"

"I don't know, but you must've cheated somehow!"

Faced with Riku's obstinance, Chiaki shook her head and started to walk back in. "Alright, if you say so. I cheated, so all my wins are invalidated. I'm going to sleep, so don't bother me."

"Go to sleep then, you filthy cheater!" Riku blew a raspberry at her, and still jealous that she was simply better at the profound art of rock-paper-scissors than him, he added, "You might win at rock-paper-scissors, but you're still barely even at Foundation Establishment! Take that! Hah!"

Yet, even after adding that comment, Riku was still unable to stomach that Chiaki outclassed him. He might be slightly more talented at cultivation, but that wasn't anything close to being as good as having skill in rock-paper-scissors, and he was well aware of that fact.

A trivial thing like immortality was nothing compared to the premiere game of roshambo.