The Universal Solvent had found its mark.
Alex glared down at the howling giant, spending a moment he didn’t have carefully lining up the point of his razor sharp fangtian ji against the writhing cultivator’s neck.
And only in that heartbeat did Tang understand the doom before him.
The man froze to stillness, hands still covering the ruins of his eyes, a single drop of blood trickling free of hardened flesh as Alex’s weapon dug into the man’s throat.
“No. Please don’t kill me!” Tang sobbed through his agony. “I can do nothing. I am helpless before you. You have won. You have already…”
Foe’s throat is pinned between fangtian ji and stone!
Adderstrike!
Alex flashed a single bleak smile as his weapon struck true. It didn’t matter how powerful his opponent’s body cultivation technique was. In the moment Adderstrike connected, Alex’s own weapon was indestructible, so it would not warp or give. And with Tang’s throat jammed between hard stone tiles and razor-sharp spear tip, the weapon was going to pierce his opponent’s flesh.
Either that, or Alex’s own internal Qi was going to burst from within.
And after a horrific moment of pressure, where Alex thought, just for a heartbeat, he might be the one to explode, Qi-enhanced flesh finally surrendered before razor-sharp steel.
You have pierced your opponent’s defenses! Left carotid, internal jugular, and trachea have been severed!
But it had been a far closer thing than it should have been, the stone floor cracking under the sudden buildup of Qi the instant before Alex’s ji had finally burst through Tang’s neck, making it clear that Bones of the Mountain was a technique to be feared.
But not as much as Alex’s own.
Bloody fangtian ji still in hand, Alex leaped away from the giant now writhing and spraying blood from his savaged throat as Alex sensed death closing in on him once more.
The ground exploded behind him, razor sharp shrapnel shredding his feet as he darted through the air.
You have engaged in Power Healing! Lacerated feet healed! Eye socket repaired! Sliced shoulder healed!
Two Bullrushes chained! Target in sight!
Blitzing forward as fast as he could blink, Alex was at last in sight of the perfectly preserved obsidian temple, and not a moment too soon.
“There he is!” roared the two remaining body cultivators in tandem, the powerfully-built tanks of the group now charging for him with their weapons raised, trying to ambush him from adjoining alleys as Alex raced past ruined buildings and across the clearing for salvation, the pristine ebony pyramid crackling with strange energies perhaps only he could see.
And then Alex felt death at his back. He could all but taste his enemy’s cold grin as Earth and Metal Qi began to swirl together in a deadly storm of Qi.
Heart hammering, he knew he had only one chance of survival, but hated having to sacrifice yet another of his pieces.
Easing back his pace just enough to inspire the two shieldmen with their near perfect Bronze foundations to sprint forward, quickly closing the gap between them. Before he nearly tripped over, losing his fangtian ji as he turned his lurch into a desperate sprint of his own.
“I have him, master! He’s exhausted! Look at him stumble! We can collar this bastard and force all his secrets!” roared the closest body cultivator, now just feet away.
The hideous storm of death paused before exploding. “Do it.”
Alex flashed a fierce smile, feeling the snapping wolves just behind.
Knowing he had to time things absolutely perfectly.
Quickness check made! You have dodged Decapitating Blow!
“Capture him, fool! We can’t collar a headless corpse!” Xian roared.
Bullrush!
You are Qi depleted!
Alex cried out, crumpling to the ground in sudden cramping agony, his peripheral Qi reserves utterly drained, regeneration grinding to a near halt.
Desperation alleviated by twin glimmering fires of hope.
There was a reason why he had deliberately left the warding field down, his trembling hand now submerged in the Dark Qi saturated blood groove he had chiseled between and around two equidistant ward stones, each filled with blood the color of midnight.
And for all that his skin now burned with exposure to numerous caustic elements, the slow regeneration of his nose and numerous wounds and lacerations grinding to an instant halt, he had not crashed down to a 9 Strength.
His sole Bronze cord was flaring brightly, warming his entire depleted body with a spiritual glow.
As to what his stats actually were at that moment, he didn’t dare flip even an iota of his attention to his interface, keeping his gaze solely upon the three tainted killers rapidly closing in on him. The leftmost body cultivator’s glare promised a hard death, still holding his shield in a careful guard, right hand squeezing his dao in a white-knuckled grip. The other held a collar, the very sight of which sent chills of remembered horror racing down Alex’s spine. His vicious grin promised Alex no end of torments.
Xiao Shen was just behind the pair, looking every inch the imperious headmaster with his inky black hair billowing in a dark halo about his head, irises nothing but pools of blackness, flashing a deadly smile Alex’s way.
Before taking a half-step back, and fading into the shadows and gloom.
“It’s over, Ruidian. Your pathetic struggles end here, in eternal darkness, where all your kind will one day be banished to!” the dao-wielding shieldman promised.
Alex didn’t have to feign helpless exhaustion from his huddled position, scurrying back a few furtive feet until his back was resting against the obsidian monolith.
The pair of body cultivators smirked, paces slowing to a mocking saunter, the lead twirling his awful implement of torture and subjugation as he spoke. “The chase ends here, worm. Now put on your collar and get ready to scream.”
Alex forced himself to smile despite the desperate racing of his heart, knowing his very survival was on the line if everything didn’t go exactly as planned.
But his light, mocking voice giving nothing away. “Sorry, Wu, right? You’re not really selling it. You’re going to have to try harder than that, I’m afraid.”
“Surrender or not, you’re dead either way, maggot. You killed two of our men!” roared the cultivator covered in a front-line legionnaire’s armor just behind Wu, each lamellar plate made not of bronze, but of finest steel.
And he, unlike his companion, had dropped neither sword nor shield, regardless of the deadly Silver providing the equivalent of unbeatable artillery support just behind them.
Obviously a well-trained legionnaire, through and through.
Alex shivered at the promised death he saw in the man’s gaze.
Surrender, clearly, was not an option.
And for all that Alex’s attention was seemingly focused on the tanks before him, his Qi Perception was focused intently on the man he could only barely see, and half the time he was covered in shadows and mist. His other senses couldn’t pick him up at all. But the sudden pressure of Earth and Metal spiritual energy? That, at least, Alex had learned to sense, and he knew exactly what he would have to do then.
“You see, when you say shit like that, Xien, I know you just don’t have my best interests at heart, no matter what your master’s orders are,” Alex said with a chuckle. “I’m afraid I’d have to instantly fail you if you were my student, mostly because you want to kill me. And with that expression? You couldn’t even give cultivation pills away to someone desperate to break through!” Alex smirked, slumping against the obsidian obelisk like the exhausted man he was, left hand bent awkwardly behind him. All in all, he was sure he looked a helpless, pathetic sight.
“No more games, mongrel!” snapped Xiao Shen, powerful voice resonating with a headmaster’s authority, body suddenly lighting up like a beacon of Qi. Alex could only wonder about whatever horrid ritual now bound them, that allowed the man to f
ade to near invisibility or glare blindingly bright to Alex’s inner eye. “You will surrender now and confess all your secrets! You will tell us all of Panheu’s plans, and you will surrender your ring!”
Xiao Shen snarled, holding up his fist. Alex’s gut clenched at the sudden surge of deadly spiritual energy as the wujen summoned forth not one, but a dozen deadly five-foot steel spikes now hovering in midair.
Each and every one of them aimed for Alex’s heart.
“Should you fail to surrender this instant, you will drown in the River of Souls with my steel claws rending your flesh for eternity!”
His hard, killing gaze then shifted into a twisted approximation of the bemused smile he had once worn when pretending to be the good-natured gatekeeper of a school fallen on hard times.
It was all Alex could do not to vomit at the sight.
“But I will give credit where it is due, Alex. For a Ruidian, you have proven quite resourceful. Three of my men down, and you without any resources to speak of, without anything more than the animal skin draped across your shoulders. Most... remarkable. Perhaps, if you were to reveal all you know, this ancient pit need not be your final resting place.”
Xiao Shen’s cold grin widened, though his steel spikes didn’t waver for a moment.
“As you’ve no doubt gathered, we are in short supply of adventurers to clear out the caverns above. And for all that some Ruidians consider waking up with a collar around their necks a bit of a dampener on their enthusiasm, those who learn to accept their fate soon grow to enjoy the hunt, and the right to feast upon all the spirit flesh they like. Save for beast cores, which do your kind no good anyway, their lives are no different than what they otherwise would be.”
Xiao then nodded at the pair of men even now crossing the inert sigil stone. “You need but let my men collar you, answer a few questions, and this terrifying ordeal will be over for you at last.”
Alex coughed and spat blood before flashing a broken smile. “Or I could just kill you all.”
Wu roared with laughter at the empty threat as he crossed the barrier.
The cultivator just behind him spat his hate. “For that alone, I’m going to cut off your balls, collar or no!” Xien declared, just before his body burst into lightning and flame, a final shriek as much spiritual as physical cutting through the ether as the crackling field flared to life once more, the former soldier’s masterwork armor warping and blackening under the terrible heat as his body was fried to ash.
24
It was all Alex could do to choke back a scream as a dozen hours of agonizing restoration blazed through his peripherals in a single heartbeat.
Bronze cultivator has expired. Experience earned! Peripheral channels have been partially rejuvenated. Qi Pool has been partially restored!
A surprised Wu spun around, eyes widening with horror. “Xien!”
And that’s when Alex struck.
Before being knocked off his feet by a skilled fighter’s sweep kick, sent crashing to the ground, freshly-healed bones a hairsbreadth from cracking, and how close he came to expiring right then and there.
Quickness check made!
Just barely rolling away from a powerful foot stomp aimed right for his throat before stumbling back to his feet.
“Kill him!” Xiao Shen roared, false bonhomie disappearing the instant Alex’s deception claimed the former soldier’s life, nothing but a pile of carbonized slag and the stench of ozone where a powerful cultivator had stood just seconds before.
Wu glared furious hate at a momentarily dazed Alex. His sudden flash of insight, grasped and embraced as he had so many times before, had ended in unexpected failure. He hadn’t slammed into any too-quickly ascended first rank Bronze, but a veritable mountain, sensing in that bitter moment of contact the net benefit of so many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of hours of cultivation.
The powerful cultivator benefited from a constant Earth ward that would neutralize almost any mortal blow, as well as bones hard as iron, and flesh as tough as granite. And when Alex had attempted to force him back just a couple of feet... it had been Alex that had been sent flying back, for all that a heartbeat’s breathless surprise had at least brought him enough time to scurry desperately out of the way before his foe’s powerful foot stomp could crush his throat or shatter his skull.
Finesse check made! You are on your feet!
You have parried Spinning Backfist! Left forearm has suffered 1 Light Wound!
Alex’s eyes widened as the powerful Bronze flashed a killer’s smile. “Surprised, little maggot? You have no hope against a Disciple of the Mountain! To strike us is to strike stone! Our blows will hit you like an avalanche, and you can never force us back! We are the transcendent branch, the most enlightened of all sects, and it is fear of our secrets alone that has led to our exile!”
Wu exuded a deadly confidence, as if his victory was a foregone conclusion, and Alex couldn’t blame him. The man had a foundation as strong as granite, and all his scouting from a distance had revealed no weakness. So too, even the pair Alex had taken down had proven to be far tougher, far more durable, than he had first thought.
The powerful Tang had had a steely resilience to his core that would have been the envy of any tank. Yet he had struck so rapidly, so hard, that Alex’s nose had been smashed and he had nearly been crippled by a shattered eye socket, just as he had crippled multiple foes in the arena, before a mouthful of amoeba-based solvent had sent the man stumbling back, awful goop so viscous it was only because the man had been just inches away that Alex had been in range to spit that horrid brew at all. And for all that Tang had been the DPS and not the tank of the crew, his Bones of the Mountain cultivation technique had been so resilient that even thrusting a spear into the prone man’s throat with the power of Adderstrike had almost failed to break through, and it had nearly been Alex that had been crippled by the backlash of Qi.
Even the speedster had been so fast he had almost righted himself from falling prone on his face in less than a heartbeat, and if Alex hadn’t exerted every ounce of force, unleashed his deadliest, most dangerous attacks on the man after setting him up as best he could, Alex would be dead twice over.
“You all are no common group of cutthroats,” Alex dared to acknowledge as he and Wu circled each other, each instinctively trying to gain a sense of his opponent, Alex using those precious seconds to power heal the last of his wounds, recovering his two spent Qi at an expedited pace as well.
“Of course not!” Wu gloated. “We are the deadliest cultivators you will find outside Dragon Academy, exiled here expressly because the headmaster fears us!”
“Say nothing, fool!” Xiao Shen roared. “Our headmaster has returned! The path to redemption is clear. But he sees everything. Knows everything. Mention not his name again, lest it is us cast into the flame!”
“But you’re only Bronze,” Alex said, eager to glean what knowledge he could while the chance was before him. “Why does he fear you so?”
“We were all a half step away from Silver!” Wu roared, too incensed to bother with discretion. “And Bingwen forbade us from ascending, forbade the Master of the Mountain from elevating us until we had proven ourselves with our final trial, this damn pit of a school!”
With those words he roared and charged, pummeling Alex with a furious barrage of fists and elbow strikes, and it was all Alex could do to avoid being overwhelmed, arms quickly going numb with pain. His foe may not have been any quicker or more graceful than Alex, but his core was well hidden, his strength more than a match for Alex’s own, and his Vitality was beyond the pale.
Wu flashed a cold smile as Alex leaped back, his arms battered lumps of flesh, bones cracked, flesh bruised and torn. “Here’s where it ends, fool.”
Alex grinned back at the man, as all his awe and fear at last burned away in the crucible of icy hot resolve, the memory of Panheu’s bemused smile emblazoned upon his mind’s eye.
“You already know what you must do, disc
iple,” Panheu’s voice counseled in the back of his mind.
Alex dipped his head in solemn acknowledgement. He did indeed. He had lost himself for too long engorging his passions, riding insight after insight, manipulating Dark Qi and internal energies. Yet he had lapsed. He had lost sight of the pristine storm of Light Qi that came so easily to him on the surface world, yet seemed so distant, so ephemeral here.
But access it he would, even as his foe roared and charged, hands now set to grapple, a maneuver that would surely result in Alex’s death, if Wu managed to grab hold.
Biochemical Interface accessed! Eternal Fox synergism in effect. You’re using your pores like never before!
Wu gave an exultant roar and snarl as he slammed into Alex, hands locked in a clinch, knee bomb smashing into Alex’s pelvis...
Only to blink in confused surprise when Alex somehow slipped free.
Universal Lubricant successfully generated! You have excreted Universal Lubricant from your pores! Master Liu Jian’s most popular nonlethal mixture can now be excreted upon command! Power Healing momentarily accessed. Nutrient stores replenished!
Wu glared. “What trickery is this?”
But Alex was done with flippant remarks, having eyes only for his opponent, measuring his every shift in balance and posture, refusing to fear any longer the mountain’s echo through all his enemy’s blows.
Save only to tear off his animal hide, mimicking ancient Greco-Roman wrestlers and assuring his enemy no easy purchase upon his frame, Alex did nothing but focus and concentrate upon his opponent’s movements and his own growing sense, however faint, of the storm of Light Qi awaiting him, even here.
Wu glared his contempt. “You think cheap tricks will save you, fool? You are more vulnerable to my strikes than ever!”
And when his opponent tried the expected kick to the groin, it was he who grunted when Alex adroitly caught the blow, right leg snapping out for a shin strike just above his opponent’s right knee.
Widened eyebrows met Alex’s cold smile.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior's Oath: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 4 Page 40
