The man was so confident in his inhuman speed and strength, reveling so deeply in his cultivating powers that even now, with so many of his men dead and the entire resistance now against him, he was more interested in torturing them than finishing them off.
And with each deadly slash of his enchanted spear, each bone-breaking kick of his feet earning him more shrieks of pain and sobs for mercy from the already fallen men he still tormented as the slaves struggled futilely against him, he was completing his savage goal with chilling efficiency.
All this Alex understood in just seconds, sensing as well why the slaves weren’t fleeing, and why the women and children were screaming and sobbing in the back of the tightly pressed cluster of slaves.
For despite the trees, Scar had somehow penned them in brilliantly, the handful of remaining slavers had somehow maneuvered behind the armed slaves and now had the women and children at spearpoint, effectively halting the retreat and pinning them in place.
A single glance when Peng’s haunted eyes met Alex’s own, conveying so much in an eyeblink, and Alex knew exactly what he needed to do.
Bullrush! Full body Adderstrike! Bullrush! Bullrush! Adderstrike!
You have critically struck your opponent! Fatality!
In those perilous, terrible moments, Alex embraced his gifts like never before, leaping for tree limbs and somehow able to embrace his Lightness upon a single leaf before he spied one of the slavers below, even now hammering away at a woman desperate to protect her screaming child as other slavers began leading the women away…
Before the man collapsed in a literal explosion of bone and gore, a furiously snarling Alex completely embracing his gift and that hotblooded madness that made time stretch and slow as everything clicked in the most perilous and terrible of ways, pummeling through the air as silent as death just above the snarling guard before abruptly embracing a heel-stomping Adderstrike with the force and fury of his entire crashing body, embracing momentary invulnerability as he exploded into his foe, transferring all the kinetic energy of his forty foot fall into his foe along with the killing Qi strike.
Alex spared only a moment for a furious smile of triumph. It had been a fall far more perilous than the top of the wagon, yet the flash of transcendence he had felt in that moment he had embraced to the fullest, declining a second use of Bullrush that would have protected him from the terrible falling damage, trusting his momentary invulnerability at the instant of impact to see him through. And it had. Utterly and completely.
His blow, using Adderstrike in combination with so much built up kinetic energy, had been beyond overkill.
And all it earned him were the terrified shrieks of the now gore-spattered women and children he had been desperate to save.
And he spared no time for their cries or explaining himself, already blinking through the air as one of the three remaining slavers in the underbrush turned his way, the first gasping in surprise at the gladius that had just sliced open his femoral artery, the second having only a moment to scream before Alex’s Adderstrike ruptured his skull, Alex having traded ji for short thrusting blade and fist between one heartbeat and the next, the thick foliage he blinked through too full of vines for the use of polearms and the only reason why the slavers had been able to flank the fleeing slaves in the first place.
Of course, it meant they could do little more than thrust and intimidate with their dao, which was enough to reclaim the women and children, but Alex was able to weave past the clumsy strike of the third guard and get inside his range before grabbing the man’s sword arm and hip tossing him to the forest floor. He then finished off the stunned guard with a pounding stomp to the solar plexus that made the man’s eyes bulge, particularly when Alex furiously stomped the slaver several more times until he heard the crack of snapping bone and felt his foe’s chest abruptly give under his final killing blow, Alex not daring to waste another Qi point, knowing what he had to do next.
Alex strove to meet the eyes of the shrieking, sobbing women huddling on the narrow forest paths that had been both their salvation and downfall, and Alex could all but sense their terror of the wild-eyed, gore-spattered Ruidian who looked as pale as any vengeful ghost.
“My name is Alex, friend of Peng and the entire revolt! The guards are dead. You have to flee. You have to flee now!” His urgent words, not quite a shout, brought a handful out of their stupor.
“But what about our husbands?” sobbed one.
“Scar, he’s going to kill them all!” cried out another. “We’ll be defenseless against the horrors of the wood!”
“The best thing you can do is retreat further so we have breathing room against that monster!” Alex desperately urged. “I have to go back. Please, just flee while you can!”
And Alex dared waste no more time, quickly racing back to the clearing, finding things far worse than he had feared.
He looked upon a laughing Scar even as his glowing blade plunged through the heart of a shrieking, crippled slave. Alex’s eyes widened as the man began to shrivel and crumple, and only then did the careful pattern of injuries upon the man’s flesh, upon all the rebelling slave’s flesh, make sense.
The man hadn’t simply been maiming them for cruelty’s sake. Scar had been slashing dark sigils into their flesh that even now blazed into life as a crimson pentagram, the monster somehow feeding upon the fallen slave that baked and shriveled to ash with his final dying wail.
Scar laughed as the surviving slaves all stumbled back, sneering at the injured men who were spurting blood from dozens of wounds that had dared to defy him. The true reason why they had all been allowed to live until now suddenly horrifyingly clear.
“And that is your reward for daring to defy your master! Daring to defy a Bronze Ogre in his prime! The strong take what they like in this world, fools! Your only burden is to surrender to your betters utterly, completely! And the only reward you will get for your obstinance, your failure to do so, is the most hideous of deaths as I consign each and every one of your weak souls to my dark master!”
Several spearmen stumbled back with desperate cries. “Saints above, he’s a diabolist!”
Scar laughed coldly, a crimson flicker to his dark eyes. He didn’t deny it. “That’s right, fools,” he said, his chillingly deep voice sending shivers through all their bones. “Had you all been properly meek and obedient, you would have only suffered this one life tormented and mastered by your betters. But for daring to defy me, your only reward will be eternal torment! Consumed utterly by the dark lord that gives me ungodly power!”
And in that moment of unspeakable horror, Alex had a sudden epiphany, now fully understanding the nature of the infernal maleficence that infested Scar’s tainted artifact.
And perhaps his weakness as well.
And in that moment, as Scar’s terrible eyes alighted upon him, Alex knew that he had a choice.
He could choose to flee. And he had no doubt, absolutely no doubt, that he would make it. Somehow, he would survive this night’s madness, and even if it took years and who knew how many adventures to free himself of this collar and one day find an academy or teacher that would accept him and become a proper cultivator, he knew he would get there. He knew he would survive this awful night, and even should he perish as he pursued his dreams, his death would end in the River of Souls, the failings of his past life washed clean away.
But should he fall here, now, against this monster, it wasn’t just his body that would be consumed, but his very soul.
His heart pounded with terror before Scar’s vile grin, the slaver’s spear darting around in a deadly barrage that kept all the surviving wounded warriors back. An impenetrable wall of tainted steel that Alex would be an idiot to try to cross.
And forcing himself to ignore Peng’s furious roars, Yong Ming’s desperate cry, Alex made his choice.
For none could flee faster than he.
10
Bullrush! Bullrush!
He found himself reflecting upon f
ar more innocent times as he flitted back into the trees where no one could touch him, recalling with delight those first few months when his interest in martial arts had gone beyond just learning some brutally effective self-defense moves from his father’s bodyguards, which all amounted to breaking free of neck and armlocks, snapping fingers, twisting limbs, stomping on insoles and dashing for his life screaming his head off. Never really about finishing the job, only escaping as brutally and quickly as he could.
But he had always been captivated by martial contests, especially that one summer he got into HEMA, and had been absolutely enamored of the exotic and very beautiful Brazilian martial artist who had bet his instructor a beer that he wouldn’t be able to break the woman’s hold no matter how he tried.
The man had grinned and quickly accepted, powerfully built as he was, their only rule being no body slams in addition to the usual rules about gouges and small joint manipulations.
And fast as the man was, the girl was faster, quickly twisting under his attempts to throw her, pivoting around him, and sticking fast to him like a monkey. Like glue.
At first the man had laughed. He had been too much of a gentleman to throw punches and kicks those first few seconds and maybe she had or hadn’t counted on that, but either way, he now had the young, highly dexterous woman firmly locked to his back, and in such a way that she wasn’t trying to twist back his arms, legs, or neck. She opposed no joints, so she couldn’t be easily forced off by strength alone, and her hands moving far too quickly for him to grab them and free himself, her legs locked around his hips like a vice.
At first, he had laughed it off before his grin turned to a frown as the clock ran down. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pry her off. She was like an octopus or jellyfish, flowing around him, firmly latched to his back, and save for him slamming against the mats back first, the one maneuver the smiling referee said would count as a body slam, he couldn’t budge her.
Though he tried, tried so hard he gave up all semblance of keeping his cool, and all he got from that was a takedown that had the whole class grinning when the woman flipped around, clamping her legs around his neck in a move Alex had never seen before or since, quickly bringing him to the mat as the man’s face turned beet red with his struggles before he finally tapped out. “Alright, you’ve earned your beer!” he said.
And far from rubbing his face in it, the two became fast friends.
All of this raced through Alex’s mind in a flash.
He doubted he would ever be as fluid and agile as that incredible woman, even with all the hundreds of hours he had put into training, even with the advantages of a sixth rank basic cultivator flooding his limbs with strength and power.
But one thing he could do, he thought, as he flitted through the foliage that hardly felt his weight at all before dropping thirty feet behind his too deadly foe, was risk his life in an idiotic attempt to somehow save his friends from damnation.
Even if it killed him.
He did not dare to even whisper his intentions, terrified that even silently flowing through the trees, his foe would somehow sense him, spinning around and skewering him just as he sprung forward. Utterly still, frozen only for a second, Alex forced himself to move, to act, to deny terror a handhold upon his heart. Instead he screamed in his mind and focused his Qi, because the monster was about to drain another shrieking slave’s soul, laughing off the furious spear and polearm strikes his increasingly warping armor blocked effortlessly.
Bullrush!
You have successfully grappled your opponent! Your opponent’s arms are otherwise in use. Your opponent is distracted by 10 surviving opponents! You are opposing the use of no joints.
You are successfully hanging onto your opponent’s back.
And Alex quickly shut out the notifications his interface tended to blast his mind with in times of peak stress, instead focusing all his efforts on an incredibly mad hunch that would probably result in his hideous death when it failed utterly.
Yet when he felt the hideous touch of the infernal artifact vibrating against his clamping fingers and thighs, as his entire body was subjected to fingernails scratching across a chalkboard, he could sense the wild, chaotic forces barely kept in control that were somehow trapped in that armor.
He could so perfectly visualize his ultimate mentor’s foxlike smile from under the brim of his hat as he dared the unthinkable, grabbing ahold of the spinning globe of crackling Dark Qi he kept in the heart of his ring. He imagined a stream of Dark Qi flowing from his ring, out of his body, and into the tainted artifact that filled him with loathing just from the horror of touching it.
You are attempting to manipulate your skills and Qi in ways never intended! You have suffered 1 Light Wound and Mild Damage to your meridian channels!
Alex cried out as blood shot out of his nose, even as Scar roared with laughter.
“So! The little rat is not a rat at all, but a vile little monkey! Why do you cling so tightly to me, monkey? Do you think you can actually harm me? Do you think the sheer weight of your weak flesh can slow me down? Fool! You are but another tool I can use!
And Alex gasped as the man abruptly spun around, and a spear meant for Scar jabbed him in the buttock instead.
“Hold your blows! Ware your strikes!” Peng roared. “Alex! Don’t get yourself killed, you fool!”
Alex held back a cry as he felt steel prick his flesh. Though not deep, the man quickly pulling back, it was enough to jolt Alex with pain.
Pain enough to distract, or focus. Because Alex knew if he couldn’t pull this off, he was as good as dead.
Worse than dead.
You are attempting to manipulate your skills and Qi in ways never intended! You have suffered 2 Light Wounds and Mild Damage to your meridian channels!
Alex felt suddenly dizzy, knowing he was doing something wrong.
Scar roared and Alex was flooded with horror as yet another slave’s soul was torn free of his body, and Alex could feel how the chained demon within this tainted treasure fed upon the man’s soul. Could even sense how the chains rattled as the demon howled and bucked, Scar feeding upon the creature’s power even as the armor protected him.
And Alex suddenly understood what he was doing wrong. Suddenly he understood why Master Liu’s cultivating techniques were so important, finally adjusting his Qi flow in just the way he needed to exude his Dark Qi directly out of his pores, before sending it spiraling into Scar’s terrible prize.
And Scar only laughed, as his prize seemed to glow with furious power and potency.
“I feel stronger. So much stronger! Are you doing this, monkey? Are you surrendering your might and power to me? Wonderful. Wonderful! In return I shall reward you with a thousand thousand screams, so your mind will savor only sweetest agony!”
Yet Alex ignored the man’s furious laughter, his friend’s desperate cries, as Scar struck faster and faster, the surviving slaves at last breaking and retreating.
“Run!” Peng desperately cried. “There is nothing we can do! He is invulnerable, we are all dead if we stay!”
“I can’t!” Yong Ming sobbed. “He crippled me!”
Scar only laughed. “Run, fools! All of you run! This fight bores me. I hunger for the hunt!”
Scar howled, flexing muscles that now seemed to glow with eldritch power.
And Alex worked with desperate speed, sensing the trickle of Dark Qi flowing out of him transform into a stream and then a flood as his two purifying techniques somehow solidified into one, at least for the purposes of expelling his Qi, and Alex was almost hypnotized by the sight of his spinning globe of Dark Qi quickly fading away, before doing all he could to grab a hold of and channel that roaring torrent of energies right where he needed it to be.
And all the swirling power of chaos, change, and entropy, that which allowed time to spin forward and was presently heightening Fang’s already deadly speed, was also that which embraced corrosion, the enemy of rigid structure and order, d
iametrically opposed to the fragile stability keeping a greater demon at bay.
And one of the five soulbindings pinning the hideous abomination in place, allowing the infernal treasure to crackle with a power and potency far beyond what its forgers should have been capable of, finally broke free.
Alex felt a sudden jolt of awful terror as the armor was suddenly inhabited by a demon’s will.
“Run!” Alex screamed, leaping off just before a hand of steel and crackling Qi emerged from the armor.
“Run!”
Peng caught Alex’s gaze and paled, as if somehow understanding what it was Alex had done. He wasted no time, grabbing a crippled Yong Ming and darting away as fast as he could on his bleeding legs, the half dozen slaves still able to move having no idea what was going on but not hesitating for a moment to run away, leaving only the crippled slaves too exhausted or wounded to move on the ground begging for mercy.
A snarling Scar spun around, eyes glittering with malice and glee.
“So, the monkey finally reveals himself!” he roared, brandishing his spear. “Oh, the things I will do to you with the power you have unleashed within me!”
Then his eyes suddenly widened as his armor warped and distorted. A vicious taloned hand formed of glowing metal suddenly grabbed Scar’s jaw and tore it off in a shower of blood.
Scar’s eyes bulged as blood poured from the gaping wound where his mouth had been.
The forest suddenly rang with his agonized shrieks as he dropped his weapon and desperately tried to free himself of the armor that was now a writhing mass of metallic arms gouging and devouring Scar’s flesh, the man’s shrieks quickly turning to gurgling whimpers and then only desperately blinking eyes as his infernal artifact devoured him alive.
And Scar was somehow aware through it all, forced to endure every last moment, until wildly rolling eyes and brain were devoured with a final metallic crunch.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Reforged: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 2 Page 12
