As if she could sense it, she quickly pulled herself upright, wiping tear-stained eyes, flashing Alex a brilliant, grateful smile.
“My name is Ying Tai. My daughter’s name is Mie Tai. Thank you for our lives, hero. We are beyond grateful.”
She gazed with haunted eyes at her once beautiful home.
A home she had shared with her entire tribe, their homes and way of life destroyed forever.
“Those monsters! They...”
“Are as good as dead.” Alex swore, clenching his fist. “My cultivator’s oath upon it.”
Her eyes widened. She swallowed, on the verge of saying something, before abruptly performing dogeza before him.
“This unworthy one thanks you for her life, hero. Please... if there is any way you can save any of my tribe...”
Alex didn’t bother responding, hawk-like gaze having already spotted his prey, his face twisting in a furious snarl he didn’t want the beautiful girl behind him to ever have to see.
The roaring wujen’s shield of fire had gone from red to white hot, and Alex felt the woods themselves rustling their horror at the abomination unfolding.
Soul Sight skill check made!
And as the mage howled with furious glee, whips of flame caressing and frying multiple shrieking women and children to ash as the monstrous cultivator’s corona of fire pulsed from white to black to white-hot once more, Alex already understood what was happening.
The vile monster of a Fire cultivator was having a breakthrough.
He was actually breaking through to Silver, feeding upon the sheer destruction of an entire community, doing all he could to maximize his transcendent moment by consuming to ash victims he was originally going to sell as slaves.
Consuming them in hideous torment.
One at a time.
Alex knew what he was about to do was absolute madness.
Diving into the same pool that had so terrified him as a child. Only this time, it wasn’t ten feet of water and his own terror that he had to master, but the deadly rivers of the underworld, eager to consume his soul. And he could all too easily imagine the monster below mocking his cowardice even now.
But he had been forged in fire.
And whether or not it killed him, he would see the bastards below him burn.
Bullrush successfully chained four times!
You have elected to embrace freefall!
You are using Storm Flight to boost freefall!
Storm Flight and Adderstrike have successfully fused to Phoenix Strike!
Alex felt the air shrieking across his face as he tore through the air, hate-filled eyes glaring at the searing corona of twisted infernal flame swirling around the monstrous cultivator about to reforge himself into the blackest of incarnations.
An instant before impact, with the wind shrieking in Alex’s ears, he still heard the hateful roar howling in the ether as the cultivator turned eyes of living flame just in time to meet Alex’s fist.
You have gained temporary immunity at the moment of impact!
You have suffered Severe Burns due to instantaneous exposure to White Flame Ward! Fire affinity boosted Qi Absorption reduces damage to Moderate Burns.
You have suffered secondary impact damage!
In that terrible instant, Alex understood.
This wasn’t the first time he had pulled such a mad stunt, and immunity at the instant of impact didn’t carry over completely in terms of additional damage suffered when Alex and his target both slammed into the ground.
Just as he had suffered significant damage back when he had first come to Jidihu’s rescue, much as he was now.
Perhaps the injuries really had been catastrophic.
Perhaps not.
Either way, he sensed himself crashing back into the River of Souls, and he knew just how easy it would be to let go and slip under those deadly waters for all time.
He laughed at the very thought as fierce, killing fury had him wade through the shallows of that terrible endless river, the skies suddenly turning gray with the moans and cries of countless souls in torment while others slid through the waters in gentle repose, all of them awaiting their next lives.
Alex’s movements were surprisingly free of pain as Power Healing absorbed a flood of his foe’s endless potential, near instantly healing shattered bones and ruptured organs as he glared down into the desperate eyes of the panicked soul trying so desperately to break free of his grip.
Adept Soul Sight perception check made!
“I can see your past lives so clearly, all of them painted black with bitterness and hate, and not once were you anything but a monster,” Alex declared, the shriveling spirit howling at Alex’s judgment. “A monster with a black heart, for all that you held a pearl of Gold.”
And the remembered image of the corrupted Fire cultivator howled and struggled, even choking up some last vestige of flame as Alex plunged his fist down the spirit’s throat, glaring into the spectre’s eyes before at last tearing free his enemy’s eternal Soul Stone, shimmering a rich golden hue.
Nowhere near as large and brilliant as Bingwen’s had been, but the potential was there.
And now that potential would be Alex’s, forevermore.
“No, please! Please give it back!” sobbed the spirit, panicked hands clawing at Alex’s Qi-covered fist as the River of Souls pulled the desperate soul free to begin an eternity of lives no more powerful than the flood of humble mortals it had enjoyed tormenting across so many lifetimes.
“I will give you this mercy alone. You may forget this life, and every life you have ever lived before. You will never know the sweet taste of power’s corruption again. Whether you actually redeem your karma? That’s on you.”
Alex then turned around, refusing to hear the spirit’s desperate cries as he stepped free of that terrible river, crashing back into reality as he swallowed the Golden pearl.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, fearing sudden vulnerability, for all that his body now trembled with power.
What he saw surprised him.
Twenty slavers gazing his way, trembling fingers barely able to hold bows steady or swords in hand, staring at him with the same degree of terror as the sobbing slaves pleading for their lives.
Of all the slavers, Alex only detected a cultivator’s strength from one other, a powerfully built giant of a man wearing leather gauntlets, boots, and a chest plate of steel.
Alex could all but taste the taint to the man’s cultivation base as infernal brews scorched his channels, damaging his foundation and limiting his long-term potential. But it had given him explosive power far faster than he might otherwise have earned, very much like the deadly cultivation potions the fallen alchemist Lai Leng had once dosed certain students with, once upon a time.
Tainted foundation or not, the man was powerful, looking much like the infernal cultivator who had tried to kill Alex with his ball and chain, what now seemed a lifetime ago.
Yet the look in his beady brown eyes was filled with nothing but fear.
“No. Our master had just transcended. He had embraced true flame! You killed him like he was nothing. Nothing!” The giant stumbled back as his lackeys cried out with Alex’s first step forward, his gaze pinning the man where he stood.
“What are you? Who are you? Do you serve our dark master?”
Ice cold eyes glared into the Bronze Ogre’s.
“What I am is your death.”
And before the giant could do more than blink, Alex had roared and charged, fists and shins pounding into the stumbling infernalist at a frenzied pace, each strike more than enough to rupture any lesser spirit beast, Dark Qi gauntlets instantly piercing any elemental ward, such that body cultivation alone protected the giant of a man who’s panicked strikes Alex weaved and dodged past so easily, catching one desperately flailing fist before abruptly twisting it and forcing the arm to hyper extend before smashing it with a palm strike conveying all the force and fury of the roaring sea.
The monster shrieked as his elbow shattered in an explosion of blood and gore.
A shriek abruptly cut off when Alex’s Qi-enhanced fist blasted through the man’s throat and snapped his spine.
The crowd of howling slavers, weapons raised but unable to get in a shot while the two cultivators fought in furious close quarters, gazed on in stupefied disbelief when their giant bellicose leader collapsed in a lifeless heap.
And it said something about the terror they must have felt that not one dared step forward when Alex seemed to shimmer and fade before abruptly slamming his fist down their former leader’s throat, flashing a fierce, predatory smile as he tore out a tiny Silver pearl as the giant shriveled and crumpled into a withered old man before their eyes.
Near preternatural quickness allowed Alex to easily dodge the one poorly shot arrow a single slaver dared to shoot his way, moving so slowly to Alex’s eyes, he was surprised the arrow stayed airborne at all.
He met their panicked gazes and smiled coldly, no one even blinking in the time it took him to swallow down his most recently claimed prize.
“And now it’s your turn.”
Alex exploded into action as frozen time sped up once more. And all the panicked screams and desperately flailing sword blows in too close and confused quarters did nothing to spare the now-terrified slavers from brutal, violent deaths, wild swings effortlessly dodged or blocked by forearms covered in pristine Dark Qi as countless shrieking slavers collapsed before Alex’s fists in explosions of crimson gore.
And in just a handful of minutes, it was done.
Alex’s heart was pounding, breathing like a bellows as his hawk-like gaze peered carefully around for enemy survivors.
Qi Perception check made!
There were none.
Only the shattered bodies of countless infernalists, necks twisted into unnatural angles as bulging eyes and too wide mouths made it clear just how horrific their final moments had been. Others gazed out in glassy-eyed wonder at whatever mysteries lay beyond death, clawing hands reaching for the massive caved-in craters their chests had become. And many saw nothing at all, their skulls ruptured like pomegranates, spraying the ground with brain and blood.
You have successfully slain one Silver-ranked cultivator, one Bronze-ranked cultivator, and twenty mortal slavers. Experience earned!
You have claimed Rank 1 Golden Soul Stone. You have claimed Rank 1 Silver Soul Stone. Do you wish to claim Soul Stones now?
You have chosen no.
Congratulations! Adderstrike is now Rank 7!
Congratulations! Water Walking is now Rank 3!
Congratulations! Storm Flight is now Rank 4! You suffer significantly less meridian strain when using Storm Flight away from Ley Lines or Storms!
Adderstrike and Storm Flight may now be combined into Phoenix Strike at will for catastrophic damage. Phoenix Strike is now Rank 1! Transcendent state no longer needed to access this skill. Note: you must save versus death each time you use this ability!
Elder Grove requests rights to slain slavers. Do you wish to assign rights to slaver potency and remains? You may keep the Soul Stones. You have chosen yes! You have achieved Strong Karmic Accord with Elder Grove.
Golden cords have been severed! All Karmic ties have been neutralized by Cleaved Fate card.
Elder Grove is displeased by the games of gods and men.
Elder Grove has designated you as Ally of the Grove, regardless of Fate’s designs.
The Netherworld is eager to claim he who would dare crash into its waters and pluck free the prizes within.
Elder Grove intervenes.
Alex shuddered, surprised to find himself sinking to his knees after the madness of battle had passed, intellectually knowing it was post-battle shakes, for all that he found himself locking gazes with so many dozens of captives whose sobbing words washed over him without meaning, some looking at him with the same wide-eyed horror they had been gazing at their captors in, such a short time ago.
A part of him couldn’t believe that the figure cloaked in Qi and judgment, pronouncing the doom of souls and the death of men, had been him. The same guy trembling before a bunch of strangers like he was on the verge of a breakdown.
But the game-like messages conveyed to him by his interface were an unavoidable truth.
The reality of desperate training and accelerated growth, tapping into power the likes of which no one from Earth had ever experienced before, save in games or dreams. Power which had just manifested itself in the brutal calculus of battle to overwhelming effect.
He, now wearing nothing more than the clothes he had been reborn in and the crimson patina of countless men, had just taken out near two dozen trained soldiers, including a Bronze Ogre body cultivator, and a Silver Naga who had just broken through.
Yet despite his surprising intervention, it wasn’t he who managed to untie the bound and terrified slaves as he crouched on the ground, head between his legs, doing his best to ignore the stench of blood, cooked flesh, and death. Rather, it was the girl he had first saved, her little one in her arms, somehow unwinding rope with a single touch of her hand, as Alex, promising himself that he wasn’t worthless, wasn’t a butcher, was, in fact, keeping a sharp eye out for trouble at all angles, just sat there and shook.
“It’s okay. They’re free now. It’s over.”
Alex blinked, a tiny corner of his mind affronted that it was the girl comforting him. He was the hero of his own tale; he had saved the girl! So why was he so close to sobbing like a fool when her arms gently drew him in?
Alex swallowed the strange lump in his throat, allowing himself to take comfort in the warmth of another’s touch.
What the hell was wrong with him? Hadn’t he fought to hell and back? Not stopping even once, a fierce, powerful badass who kept getting right back up, no matter how many times his enemies smashed him down.
Not this shivering, shaking, shell of a man. Suddenly remembering in all its visceral horror what it felt like to flee for his life when deadly cultivators were hunting him down in the dark, or racing through winding nightmare tunnels, desperate to reach the surface when the gods themselves were trying to drown him for eternity. Being forced to flee an enraged mammoth-sized spirit wolf, or watch the vilest of infernalists butcher his friends before his eyes, and be able to do nothing, absolutely nothing about any of it.
Racing to town on a desperate quest to save a city from a madman determined to burn it all down if he didn’t get his way, like the most petulant of psychopaths. A fiery prodigy Alex had somehow brought down with a trick he didn’t think had a chance in hell of working, only to be forced into a desperate battle for his very soul within his priceless artifact that had been all but destroyed by their struggle.
And somehow, he had survived. Only for the capricious gods above to pull one final malicious trick.
To deny him even the comfort of karma. So that no good deed was left unpunished, the lord whose city he had saved suddenly growing as cold as the assassin he had once been, determined to destroy Alex for the deaths that mad former Headmaster Bingwen had himself inflicted, as if the fault had been Alex’s own. And considering that the cords of golden karma formerly binding Alex and that powerful noble had been cruelly cut, according to the logic of this world, that just might have been the case.
And surviving that deadly former assassin had perhaps been the most perilous and terrifying ordeal of all.
Somehow, Alex had managed to keep his head through all that madness, before losing himself for countless days in the beautiful woodlands that had become his refuge, not having to think about anything at all.
As primal, wild, and free as any animal.
Until a desperate cry for help had brought him back to himself.
Along with all the pain, horror, and turmoil he had thought safely left behind.
So why was he shuddering and crying in this girl’s arms, with so many people eyeing the pair of them so intently?
It was one of those quest
ions he couldn’t quite answer.
Any more than he could figure out how exactly the copse of trees that had been a blazing inferno were now miraculously free of flame, fresh shoots growing before the awed eyes of an entire village as the bodies of so many slavers sunk beneath the ground, scores of questing roots twining about clawed hands and desiccated bodies, dozens of faces locked in frozen screams as tendrils exploded from every orifice before pulling the fallen slavers into the rich deep soil forevermore.
The same roots somehow lifting Alex just above the frigid waters now lapping at his feet, whose source Alex sensed all too well.
And Alex was suddenly inundated by the voices and cries of so many men, when he had thought them all perished. But his ears rang with the roars and shouts of men who were very much alive, so many sobbing with desperate relief for wives and children thought lost.
How exactly that had all come about, he had no idea.
But when he found himself in a cozy little hut and wrapped in a warm blanket, with a smiling, little Mie Tai looking down at him, he found himself sinking into an exhausted stupor that only became true slumber when he sensed the hungry spiritual waters lapping at roots that refused to surrender their champion at last recede. Only then did he dare lose himself completely within sleep’s gentle embrace.
3
“No!”
Alex gasped, lurching awake with a choking cry, panicked eyes darting around in terrified memory of laughing gods and the spiteful hiss of serpentine guardians speaking of Catastrophes and Calamities before stealing his soul forevermore as Alex desperately ran through a flooded labyrinth where the slightest caress of the misty liquid would doom him forevermore.
“Alex! Breathe. You’re safe. The danger has passed.”
Alex gasped again, wide frightened eyes becoming the hot flush of crimson cheeks as he lowered his head in sudden embarrassment before the concerned gaze of the beautiful young woman who had been crying for his help just a short time before.
Now it was he allowing her to collect him in her arms as they lay in a plush bed of furs, little Mie Tai sleeping soundly by her mother’s side as Ying Tai gently brushed Alex’s sweaty brow while whispering soothing words in his ear that made so little sense, save that it had the same gentle lilt his mother’s voice once had, soothing her little boy when the night terrors got to him, a lifetime ago.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Redeemed: A LitRPG/Wuxian Novel - Book 5 Page 4
