“Just ignore it,” he said apathetically. “It’s terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.”
“Then we need to get help. They had a sword against her neck, this is a big deal.”
“Quiet down.” He’d pulled her a few metres past the alleyway. “Look around you. Who can we ask for help?” There were only a few people in their line of sight, none of which were guards.
“What if they kill her?”
“Listen, this sort of thing happens all the time in this world. That’s just how terrible of a place we’re in.”
“She’s young and alone! Just imagine how scared she is right now. She’s probably praying for someone to come and save her.”
“What do you want me to do?” he snapped. “Should I run in there and die for some stranger?” He loosened his grip on her arm. “Is this really about the girl?”
Amy retracted her arm and then fell to her knees. She began to cry.
Of course this happens right when we’re about to leave. Amy’s right about wanting to save her, but damn it, there’s nothing we can do.
The girl had been wearing azure robes with silver trim, a handful of gemstones worked into the collar. Walking through a dark, sketchy alleyway, all alone and expensively dressed, what did she think would happen? She couldn’t have been older than thirteen, so perhaps she was just naive. Damn it, how can I not want to save her?
The urgency in Amy’s eyes gave way to disgust, which reminded Jason of the looks he’d shot Quin so many times in the past. Only now did he see how foolish he’d been.
“Then what about me?” she said. “I was just a stranger, but you and Nolan still saved me.”
“That was different.”
“You’re right. Your friend saved me, not you.”
Shrill cries began to drift out from the alleyway, though they were quickly muffled.
Amy stood up and wiped at her tears. “I know I’m being stupid, but my world was just turned upside down. Everything feels so wrong and out of place, nothing makes sense. Apparently my family’s dead, and everything I’ve ever known or cared about is gone. Even with all that, right now all I can think about is how that girl needs help. How could I live with myself if I ignored what I just saw?” She turned around and took a step toward the alleyway.
“Wait!” Jason reached out to stop her.
“What do you care if I get hurt? I’m just a stranger, right?”
He grabbed her arm again. “Just stop it already. You’re being too unreasonable!”
Was this seriously happening? Jason couldn’t believe it. This girl’s insane! Or maybe… Had she lost her will to live?
“You’re just making excuses,” she spat, eyes still wet. “At the end of the day, you’re just a pussy who’s scared of getting hurt.” She shook his arm off with an angry, puffy-eyed glare. “We’re strangers, right? So let go of me already.”
“Stop it,” he hissed. “Point out any kid on the street and they can kill you with one punch. Those guys had swords. This is some serious shit, Amy, and I honestly can’t believe you’re putting me on the spot like this.”
A sudden flash of light drew their attention to the alleyway, which sat about four metres behind them. Following a few grunts of pain and several curses, the blonde-haired girl stumbled out onto the street and collapsed at the alley’s mouth. “To think that I was tricked by such lowly scum…”
Amy ran up and hauled the girl to her feet, supporting her with a shoulder. Just as she was about to drag her back onto the street, a man wearing black clothes appeared right before them.
“Damn brat!” One hand covered his eyes, which leaked jagged lines of tears down a scraggly face. In his other hand was a crude short sword, which he stabbed toward Amy’s heart the moment that he noticed the new arrival.
Jason had a short sword of his own and it was already in his hand by the time that the man made his appearance. Heart pumping, Jason forced him to take a step back with a quick but sloppy swing, which drew a thin cut along the man’s right bicep. Being so close to the attacker, he’d been able to sense the man’s cultivation. Fourth level of Body Nourishment! Jason lunged forward and pushed him back with another blow, barely succeeding thanks to his opponent’s blinded state.
Another man was quickly approaching, blinking his swollen eyes rapidly and cursing as he prepared to join in on the fight.
Shit!
Jason nearly froze up, but urged his hand into the spatial bag at his hip and pulled out a cask of gunpowder. He struggled to calm his mind, to focus long enough for his fickle inner essence to activate the snapfire bean at the bottom of the cask, but the pressure got to him.
The first man fell to the ground with a scream, black veins beginning to appear on his skin. Remembering that he’d coated the tip of his blade with poison from Nolan’s Heartrending Lillies, he quickly stowed the cask away and jumped after the second man. Damn it, I can do this!
The man sidestepped Jason’s lunge and punched out with his free hand. “Trev, quit lying around!”
Jason barely avoided a strong punch, his stomach surging with fear as he noticed that this man was stronger than the first attacker. Jumping backward, he swiped out with his sword and prepared to open up some distance in order to pull out the cask of gunpowder so that he could bet his life on activating the snapfire bean. Even though the man could hardly see, his cultivation was still two levels above Jason’s, which was enough to steal away the momentary boost of confidence that the poison brought him.
Fuck, I’ve never used a sword before! Needles of dread poked at Jason’s heart after the brief exchange, making it harder for him to think clearly. He’d barely pulled out a cask of gunpowder when he felt an intense, white-hot pain in his gut. He looked down with wide eyes and saw that a short sword had pierced into his stomach far enough for him to know that the bloody blade was protruding out of his back.
“Ah!” Jason cried, dropping his sword to the ground with a clang, the cask falling to his feet along with it. He’d never been in so much pain in all his life, and was unsure how to react. It hurt so badly that he couldn’t even scream. He could only shiver on the spot as the man withdrew his sword.
Jason fell to the ground just inside of the alleyway, facing the street. Amy and the girl were nowhere in sight.
“Who the fuck was this kid?”
Jason shivered as a blade was wiped clean on his tunic. Amy…you fucking bitch…
“Trev? Trev! Shit.” The man retreated into the darkness of the alleyway, leaving behind a brief mumble. “What the hell happened to—”
The voice cut off abruptly, replaced by a strange sound that was similar to that of a balloon being popped with a needle.
Oh God, no.
Jason could feel the chill of death in his bones as he tilted his head back with great effort. He barely felt a spray of wetness settle onto his face as a sudden, ruby mist began to dissipate into the atmosphere wherever it hadn’t clung to the shaded stone walls and the eroded cobblestones of the alley’s floor. The man was nowhere in sight, though a young woman with long black hair now stood in his place.
She wore tight-fitted black leathers, her lean, athletic body covered by a short cloak of similar shading. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but she gave off an imposing air as she idled in the alleyway, watching Jason bleed out with an indifferent look on her face.
Just as his vision began to fade at an alarming rate, she walked over and knelt down to face him, her narrow face now all he could see.
“Have you seen a girl with blonde hair, a bit younger than you? She would have been wearing nice clothes, had blue eyes with dark brows.”
Jason threw up in a series of painful coughs, scared as he noticed the scarlet puddle that spewed from his mouth. Shivering and cold, he grated, “S—she’s safe.”
The woman glanced at his fallen sword, her gaze lingering on the rigid corpse of the poisoned man. “Where is she? Do you know?”
Any hope Jason held for survival res
ted on the dark-haired woman. “Yes.”
“Where is she? Tell me.”
Jason clung to his consciousness with the persistence of a cockroach. He closed his eyes and prayed.
The woman cursed and placed something in his mouth. “Swallow it.”
He tried to comply, only to realize that he could no longer move. In this moment of imminent peril, a soft warmth spread across his lips as an external force ushered the pill down his throat.
His vision went black, though he could still hear the sound of someone spitting at the ground from right beside his ears. “Such a waste. How infuriating…”
It took a while for his vision to return, during which time he’d faded in and out of consciousness at least a dozen times, always waking up in a blinded state. Eventually he awoke to find that not only had his sight returned, but his body was filled with an immense amount of extremely pure Origin Energy. The sheer amount made it so that his dantian struggled to filter it into inner essence. As it was, small amounts of blood were seeping from his pores, and he quickly noticed that his skin had torn in numerous places.
Just as he fell into a state of panic, he felt a light touch on his back and then froze up as a second tranquil energy tunnelled into his body and worked its way over to his dantian. Surrounding the quarter-sized orb of light, this foreign energy lessened the burden on his dantian by a great degree. Now that the abundant waves of purified energy had grown easier to manage, Jason closed his eyes and spent the next ten minutes focusing on his ever-expanding spiritual sense, doing his best to rein in all of the energies within him.
When the process finally began to show signs of slowing down, he realized that his cultivation had broken through to the third level of Body Nourishment. Once the sudden increase stagnated, he was surprisingly on the verge of breaking through to the fourth level.
“T—thank you so much!”
The darkly-dressed woman removed her hand from his back, glaring at him with evident frustration. Her hand flashed as she pulled out a simple dagger, which drew a line of blood as she placed the cold steel against his neck.
Didn’t she just save his life? What was going on?
“That was a Heavenly Light Pellet that I just fed you. Its value is outside of your comprehension, and your body was only able to absorb less than one percent of its energy.” Her grey eyes narrowed. “You’d better know the Young Miss’s location, or you’ll wish I didn’t save you.”
Jason lowered his eyes. His sword and the cask of gunpowder sat beside him, though it seemed that the woman had moved him elsewhere within the expansive network of alleyways that encroached upon the city’s main roads. Though he wouldn’t lose any sleep if he never saw Amy again, he had a good idea of where she might have taken the girl.
“Follow me.”
Praying that his guess was on the mark, Jason swore to himself that he’d give Amy the slap of her lifetime if he managed to live through the day.
Chapter Twenty-two: A Spark in the Night
Out in the flowery meadows that made up the Verdurian province of Flora, a young disciple of the Bloodhand Sect stood a short distance away from an eerie mass of shadowy woodland, his dark robes making him all but invisible amid the moonless night. The endless sea of veiled flowers were jostled by constant winds, yet not a single strand of his golden hair stirred, not a fold of his clothes influenced in any way. Eyes closed, a blanket of pulsating energy covered every inch of his body with an ominous scarlet glow.
By now Brecht had developed a decent understanding of the offensive martial skill that his grandfather had passed on to him, though it would take a few days before he could use it. Since leaving the Southern Plains region, he’d spent most of his time experimenting with the three alternate circulation routes for inner essence that served as the foundation of the technique, and had grasped the first set of patterns with relative ease.
With his dantian as the focal point, he sent several pulsations of inner essence throughout his body, the reddish energy meticulously arranged in slithering tendrils that trickled throughout his inner essence channels at regular intervals. A dozen silent rotations bolstered the natural energy within his blood, which lent the resultant aura a more aggressive hue of scarlet.
Maintaining an iron focus, he held out a hand and projected this altered energy out of his body, a small sphere that hovered above his palm like a tiny, dying sun. Although the energy had severed contact with his dantian, it still responded to his will. He steadily altered his breathing pattern and transitioned into the second circulation route, one that enabled his dantian to resonate with his external energy more proficiently than what he was naturally capable of achieving.
Spiritual sense on full alert, he fought back a surge of triumph as he noticed that the sphere of energy had begun to move around as he wished it. He had successfully executed the second circulation route.
Calming his mind, he began to shape the sphere into a phantom hand, stopping once the scarlet, translucent substance had grown to the size of a man’s arm. Stilling his mind, he attempted to undertake the third circulation route and began operating a sprawling net of delicate energies all throughout his body, with his heart at the centre.
The expelled energy began to distort almost immediately. Within seconds it fell apart with a resounding concussion. The force of the fallout sent Brecht tumbling backwards at least ten paces and left a sizeable patch of barren soil where the small blast had shredded all plant life within its area of effect.
Although his latest attempt had failed, Brecht was far from displeased. Rather, for him to have progressed to this stage within such a short amount of time, and without a mentor for guidance, he felt nothing but well warranted vanity. Of the countless disciples in his domain, how many could grasp an advanced martial skill so quickly?
The third circulation route called for a much more complex arrangement of inner essence, not to mention the heightened intricacies of the journey that these tendrils of energy would make throughout his body. The first step was similar to mentally arranging a small assortment of simple shapes and directing it down a straightforward path within his body. In comparison, the third was similar to forming his energy into a vast collection of rings and then linking them together as if to make chain-mail. He needed to maintain this arrangement while urging it down a web-like network of inner essence channels that were only visible to his mind’s eye.
If he could get a feel for the third circulation route then he could begin launching his technique in earnest. Still, it would be a while before he could do so while moving freely. At that time, how many disciples within the sect would be his match? Just wait Grandfather. After I usurp your position, the day that I become a great elder of the sect will not be far off.
He tore off his tattered sleeves and was reminded of Serp’s recent death at the hands of the target of their manhunt. Humph, that useless bastard was incompetent until the end. He couldn’t have handled the situation more sloppily if he’d been ordered to. Low-key? He had been discovered by the city lord within days of his presence around the city.
Smothering his annoyances, Brecht sat down and produced a large wooden bowl and a medicinal pellet, which he promptly swallowed down. As he’d done many times before, he slit his left wrist with a finger nail and bled into the bowl as the blood breeding pellet set about replenishing the lost liquid. Once the bowl was full, he ate a second pellet and produced a small slip of paper, a simple sealing talisman that closed his wound as soon as he activated it.
He took out a waterskin and took a long draught before he stowed it away and revolved his core cultivation method, the Blood Burning Heart Technique, throughout his body. Placing his hand into the bowl, he began to refine his own blood. He finished in due time, though had yet to fully recuperate when a prominent life force drew his attention from a few hundred paces out in the surrounding fields. He and his men had made camp within the forest that stood behind him, so the sudden arrival couldn’t have been one of his underlings
.
He stood up and straightened his robes, turning to face the newcomer with crossed arms. Less than a minute after noticing the approaching presence, a blurred shadow appeared before him, revealing the distinct features of an elderly man.
Dressed in dirty robes of passable quality, the old man appeared as if he were nothing more than a typical traveller. His grey hair was cut short, the greasy strands mussed from long hours spent on the road. Age lines pulled at his narrow face, which was decorated with an inch-long beard and a crooked nose that reminded Brecht of a bent nail. Although he looked ordinary, the speed at which he moved was at a level that only experts at the Integration stage could hope to match.
Brecht cupped his hands in salute, bowing ever so slightly in the most basic show of respect. “Elder Kanis.”
The old man frowned at the curt greeting, but his discontent melted away after momentarily studying Brecht with a shrewd gaze. “So you’ve broken through to the Integration stage?” He bowed his head a fraction, a first-time occurrence between the two. “Lord Zaro will be pleased.”
“I suppose so,” said Brecht. “Now, what did my grandfather send you to tell me?”
Elder Kanis kept quiet for a moment. Arms hanging laxly at his sides, he stood with a calm expression and stared at Brecht with cold, heartless eyes. A full minute passed before he finally spoke in a suspiciously obedient manner. “It wasn’t your grandfather who sent me. Lord Sect Master has given me a task to complete in a nearby city. When Lord Zaro learned of his, he handed me the sister slip of your sound transference talisman, so that I could check on the progress of your errand.”
“It’s hardly an errand at this point,” Brecht griped. “I delegated the task to your nephew and he went and got himself killed. Now the City Lord of Greenwall is aware of our presence, and the countryside is teeming with his soldiers.”
He’d never been fond of Kanis, and never hesitated to insult him. The man was simply a low-level elder of the sect, a follower in his grandfather’s camp, one of hundreds. He had to have been at least sixty-years-old, yet only boasted a cultivation three levels higher than Brecht’s. If all went well, he’d close the gap between them by his thirtieth birthday.
The Grey Ghost: Book Two of the Archaic Ring Series Page 21
