Sundered Soul: A Wuxia/Xianxia Cultivation Novel

by Rick Scott

  * * *

  Kenji crushed Shinoto in his arms for perhaps the third or fourth time and her body went into spasms, reeling with a coughing fit.

  “Not…so tight,” she gasped.

  “I’m sorry.” He eased away from her, allowing her to breathe, but was still unable to remove the smile from his face. “I honestly thought I’d lost you.”

  “I think you nearly did,” Shinoto said with a wheeze. “I believe I saw the celestial realm for a moment.” She then strained to sit upright. “What happened? I don’t recall anything after engaging the palm technique.”

  “You did it, Shinoto. You saved us. Look.”

  As she glanced over the top of the log, her mouth fell open.

  “By the heavens…” Her eyes widened as she stared at the huge gash of destruction running through the forest. “I did that?”

  Kenji could only nod.

  She then looked down upon herself and gasped as if seeing herself for the first time. “I’m…!”

  “Seventeen again?” Kenji said with a smile.

  Shinoto then blushed and attempted to cover her now mostly bare legs with the hem of her tiny robe.

  “Here,” Kenji said, and painfully removed what was left of his armor. He took off his robe beneath and covered Shinoto with it.

  “Are you all right now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to move for a while. And my doma feels like a puddle that’s been stepped in too often, but yes… I think I’m okay.”

  A sundering boom echoed in the distance, followed by the snapping of tree trunks.

  They both looked to one another in unison. “Olja.”

  “Go now, Kenji…” Shinoto said. “Go help her.”

  “I’ll carry you,” he said and winced as he tried to stand on his wounded leg.

  “No, you’re already injured. I’d only slow you down. I’ll be fine here.”

  Kenji nodded.

  He was about to leave when Shinoto tugged on his arm again. “Wait.”

  She then pulled him by his wrist, bringing his face close to hers.

  “Just in case I don’t get the chance to later,” she said and then kissed him full on the lips.

  His heart thundered within his chest as he kissed her back, warmth filling his soul.

  He wasn’t certain for how long they kissed, but it felt as if it lasted forever.

  When Shinoto finally pulled away, a brilliant smile was on her face, causing her jade eyes to sparkle. “I’ve been waiting years to do that.”

  Kenji chuckled. “Me too. I suppose we should thank the heavens that we didn’t have to wait ten more.”

  She laughed then, crushing him in an embrace. “I love you, Kenji.”

  “And I, you.”

  “Go now,” she said. “For real this time. Save Olja. Defeat Li Wan Fu.”

  He nodded to her, feeling her love fill him with hope and resolve.

  “I’ll come back for you.”

  “Do more than just come back,” she said. “Become who you were meant to be, Kenji. Become the warrior that will save us all.”

  Chapter 47 – Last Chance

  Kenji focused on Shinoto’s parting words like a mantra as he staggered through the half-demolished forest. He channeled his Qi through his wounds, hoping to heal them faster than his body alone could. His doma ached and throbbed as more and more blood filled his mouth.

  He spat it distastefully on the ground as he dragged one foot behind him.

  The pain was near debilitating now, especially the burns on the back of his head and neck. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel the sharp sting of exposed flesh as sweat dripped from his head and onto his neck.

  Heavens see me through this.

  He focused his mind on what he needed to do to distract himself from the pain: first to find Olja and the Duke, and then to find a way to defeat him. If there was still even time. He followed the trail of destruction as it painted a picture of the combat between the two mystic warriors. Trees lay cut sharply by the Duke’s blades or sundered apart by Olja’s fists. The ground was upturned in several areas, where Olja’d perhaps landed after being struck by a particularly forceful blow.

  For her to survive all this she had to be powerful indeed, but that didn’t mean she could survive forever. As he ventured further, the sharp clash of metal rang out along with another sonorous boom of thunder. That was enough to get him moving faster, pushing against the ache of his wounds. As he did so, blood streamed from his stomach and he feared he might faint from blood loss, but amazingly his body kept going, pushing with a life of its own.

  It was his Qi, he realized.

  As much as his torn doma was poisoning him slowly, it was now giving him the gift of added strength as well. He praised the fates for guiding him this far—for all that had happened, both good and bad. If not for everything that had transpired until now, he would not have even had the ability to survive.

  But now he would have to do more than merely survive.

  He would need to win.

  He exited the forest onto a rocky outcropping and found the two mystic warriors still locked in combat, battling one another on the edge of a gorge. Olja was slumped on one knee, desperately fending off the Duke as he utilized some technique that had him moving faster than Kenji’s eye could see. He appeared as if by magic, multiple images of him striking Olja seemingly at once.

  The Xjian woman cried out with every hit, her Iron Body ability seeming to finally have failed as the massive uchigatana blade cut deep into her flesh each time. Kenji’s stomach lurched as he saw two of the Duke’s flying swords already embedded in her torso, the others still trailing behind the Duke in a mayhem of flashing steel.

  Olja…

  Blood streamed from her mouth; she looked even worse than when the demon had attacked her. He had to get to her. She needed his help right now. Hissing from his own wounds, Kenji knelt and opened his pack again. He had only two ropes left. The gold and what was left of the black. He could barely see the Duke, much less hit him. But when he did, he would have to make it count.

  And there was only one way to be sure of that.

  Kenji took the gold rope and prepared it the same way he had the yellow rope for Shinoto. He’d been regressed by a thousand-year rope, and the same would need to be used to reverse the effect. 1000 years for 1000 years—or however old he truly was. Kenji scribed the glyphs quickly, but as he tried to determine the correct sum of months to convert to seconds for his 80th-Dan doma, his mind reeled. The power he could possibly unleash was immeasurable and with an already-compromised doma, he had no idea if he would even survive or not.

  But he had to try.

  He settled on a week of compressed time, unleashed in a single second.

  He knew no palm techniques like Shinoto, or any martial maneuver, for that matter.

  Only how to throw a punch—and a sloppy one at that, according to Olja.

  But a single punch with this much power behind it, would be more than enough.

  Or so he hoped.

  Kenji imbued the glyphs as the Duke’s onslaught continued—Olja barely managing to block two of the three strikes at a time. But the third would always find its way through, cutting her life away stroke by stroke.

  Hang in there, Olja…I’m coming.

  He needed to hurry. Kenji tied the rope about his waist. His attack was ready, but now came perhaps the harder part—actually managing to hit the Duke. Even within the general’s relatively low-Dan body, he was using techniques that Kenji had never seen before and by Olja’s present condition, the effects were devastating.

  In order to hit him, he would have to tempt the heavens one last time.

  He removed what was left of the black rope, still tied together in a knot in the middle but singed on either end by fire. He took a blank glyph and quickly re-braided the burnt ends together around it, making the rope whole again.

  A massive yell came from Olja, and Kenji looked up from the gl
yph just in time to see her raising her fist to the sky. With a surge of Qi, she punched the ground and sent a wave of lightning radiating outwards. The multiple images of the duke vanished, leaving only one that now blocked the lightning with his blade, the huge sword absorbing the attack with Dark Qi.

  He was pushed back by the attack but it didn’t seem to harm him much more than that.

  “You look tired, little one,” he said as Olja fell to both knees before him. The woman looked completely spent, her gauntlets falling to her sides as her chest heaved. “It’s time to end this now.”

  “Your ambition will fail you, Li Wan Fu,” Olja wheezed through short, sharp breaths. “You may kill me, but the Holy Seer has already replaced you. You’ll go no further than this.”

  The Duke grimaced at her for a moment, before choking up on the handle of his uchigatana. “I’ll make your death painless,” he said, drawing the blade behind his head. “We have no blood feud between us, after all. Farewell, Olja, Second Princess of the divine Holy Seer.”

  Kenji’s heart stopped. Olja wasn’t even trying to defend herself anymore, her arms like dead weights at her sides. Dear gods…he was too late! He looked down at the still-blank glyph. He quickly began to write the symbol for three seconds again, but stopped. He was still a fair distance away from the Duke and he looked poised to strike Olja at any moment.

  He wrote 100 instead.

  One hundred seconds to take place within the span of one.

  “You fought well.” The Bloody Duke’s body exuded dark Qi. “Give my regards to your mother.”

  Kenji tied the rope around his waist the same time the Duke launched forward with a strike.

  No time!

  He channeled his Qi into the black rope and the world stopped with a sharp crack of thunder.

  All was silent.

  All went still.

  The Duke was frozen in place just paces from Olja, his blade poised to strike her exposed neck.

  More thunder rumbled as the sky abruptly turned blood red.

  Kenji glanced up. What was this…?

  Huge fissures crisscrossed the sky, like cracks in a decaying wall. A piercing wail filled the air as ghost-like figures began to break through the cracks. Huge creatures like that Bakunawa or those towering demons that roamed across that black shore. He couldn’t see them exactly, their ghostly forms barely visible against the crimson sky, but his heart filled with an incomprehensible terror as he stared up at them—powerful gods or demons that were from some other dark realm.

  A woman’s voice suddenly entered his mind.

  The haunting voice pulled him out of his terror and he rose to his feet. He charged with all his might towards Olja and Li Wan Fu, pain rifling through him with each step. He felt as if running through water, the air itself now seeming to give him just as much resistance. He was pouring both sweat and blood by the time he reached the Duke. The black rope burned and hissed, dwindling as the world remained at a standstill, save for the demonic beings still attempting to break through the crimson sky.

  Kenji drew back his arm and invoked his Qi, channeling it into the second rope upon his waist. The glyphs glowed and he felt a soul-crushing pain inside his doma.

  Dear gods…

  His vision tunneled as his knees grew weak.

  Stay up…!

  He cried out in agony as he forced his mind to focus, straining against the power surging within him, threatening to tear his body apart. The power of an 80th Dan in a single punch—he had to release it quickly.

  He let his fist fly, channeling the unfathomable pressure within his doma through his arm and into the knuckles of his fist. His hand seemed to move more slowly through time as the rope began to dissolve and break apart.

  No, not yet!

  The Duke’s eyes suddenly shifted to him and a grin drew across his face. With a flash of Qi, his hand moved with a speed unimaginable and caught Kenji’s fist mid-strike.

  What…?

  The Duke was moving as fast as he was now, faster even, their speeds matched within the rapid flow of time. Kenji screamed as something broke inside his doma, riddling his soul with lightning-sharp pain.

  “Nice try.” The Duke leered at him. “You almost caught me that ti…”

  But then the Duke’s eyes widened as Kenji’s fist continued to drive straight through his open palm.

  “What?” the Duke said, staring at his hand incomprehensibly. “I-Impossible!”

  Bone and skin collapsed inward with the force of the hit and then exploded outward in a mist of red blood. The Duke’s eyes rolled back into his head as Kenji’s fist pushed through his palm and into his chest, the events unfolding in slow motion.

  The Duke’s eyes then refocused again, but it wasn’t the Duke anymore.

  Terror filled Amikazu’s gaze as he returned to himself, a split-second of morbid realization before his final end. The general balked, but seeing him filled Kenji only with hate. The vile fiend. Here was the man truly responsible for it all—the death of his father and friends, the destruction of his entire village and so much more.

  “To the nine hells with you, Amikazu!” Kenji gritted his teeth as he pushed harder, willing every ounce of Qi into his punch. “May the heavens judge you gravely for your sins!”

  “W-Wait…!” he cried. “It wasn’t me…it wasn’t me!!!”

  The world returned to full speed with a massive pulse of Qi.

  Lightning flashed between himself and Amikazu as his punch drove home. A thunderous explosion blasted Kenji’s hair back as the general went flying over the edge of the cliff with the force of a cannon. He sped through the air, hurtling towards the opposite cliff face some distance away.

  His body struck the wall of granite with a resounding boom, embedding itself with a spiderweb-like crack that spiraled outwards ten feet or more. A split-second later the full force of Kenji’s strike came following afterwards in a wave of compressed Qi, indenting the stone with an area twice the size of the cracks.

  The rock compressed at least a foot or more before slowly bulging outwards again and falling into the gulch far below. General Amikazu’s body fell with it, tumbling more than a hundred feet before being buried in the tons of rocky debris.

  Kenji’s knees grew weak as the world darkened, his doma feeling as if gushing forth with hot blood.

  It was over.

  Vaguely he heard Olja calling to him, but he barely had the strength to even look for her now. He saw the sky briefly before his back hit the ground, blue and stable once more. Pain coursed through his body, but slowly it was being replaced by numbness and cold.

  Was this it? Had he finally gone too far?

  He remembered seeing Olja hovering over him, shouting at him with no sound coming from her mouth. He thought of Shinoto again, the little girl made a beautiful woman once more…his Shinoto…to see her one last time….

  The thought was the last thing to pass through his mind as the world froze and collapsed into darkness once more.

  Chapter 48 – Off White

  Kenji stirred slowly, the sands of the black beach crunching beneath him as he shifted onto his knees.

  A moment of fear overtook him as he struggled to determine whether he’d simply returned due to his doma, or if he’d finally ventured to the dark shores for his own final trip into the unknown. He sprung to his feet, none of the ailments that had just moments ago plagued him, affecting him anymore.

  He scanned the black beach but could see no one else with him.

  He looked to the dark water next and faced the celestial city far beyond.

  Xanadu...

  Steeling himself, Kenji ventured towards the water and dipped his toe, expecting to feel the sharp sting of acid. But to his relief, he stepped upon the water itself instead, as he had done previous times before.

  Thank the fates…he wasn’t truly dead, after all.
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br />   A slow clap of applause filled the air and he turned to see the Bloody Duke grinning next to him, standing on the pitch-black liquid, the same as he was.

  “Well done, little brother…” He nodded at him like a proud master. “You surprised me with that last attack. You managed to break the defenses of a 23rd-Dan body while not even being a first Dan yourself. Truly impressive.” He then grinned. “But then, perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised…you are me after all.”

  The Duke laughed but Kenji merely scowled. “If you’ve come for a second helping, I can give you another taste.”

  “You know at first, I didn’t know what you were,” the Duke said. “But the more I come to know you, the more I realize that you truly are me.”

  Kenji grimaced. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. “That’s nothing to aspire to in my mind.”

  The Duke laughed again. “You prove my point by the minute, but I would not rest upon your victories just yet, little brother. I have no idea what technique you used, but it would seem it has come at a very heavy price.” He then pointed upwards and when Kenji dared to take his eyes off of the Duke to look, his heart froze as he saw not one, but three Bakunawa now circling in the dark sky.

  Curse the fates…

  “Not all of them are for you, it seems. That young girl with you, is apparently guilty now as well.”

  His heart sped. Shinoto…

  “You really need to stop using those ropes. You’ll be attracting the attention of the high celestial council next, if they haven’t already branded you a practitioner of the forbidden arts.”

  His stomach lurched. Celestial council? Forbidden arts? He looked to the Bakunawa again as the gravity of what he’d done began to set in. Had he just become an enemy of the heavens?

  “Although I am quite looking forward to seeing just how you’ll deal with all this now,” the Duke continued. “I’m nearly tempted to develop that technique further myself.” He then shrugged. “Perhaps I will…when I get my body back.”

  Kenji grimaced while the Duke enjoyed another laugh to himself. “So are you here only to gloat and goad?” He glanced down at the golden rope still tied about his waist. Enemy of the heavens or not, he didn’t have to put up with this. “Or shall we fight right here in the celestial realm to see who truly deserves this body?”