Spell Cleave critically ruptures enemy wards!

  Your foe is drifting away in spiritual winds.

  The air rang with the roar of Alex’s foe, and he knew there was no way he could avoid the snarling Lion’s axe. Not if Wanshi’s fate hung in the balance.

  You have critically struck your foe with Black Lightning!

  Silver tier wujen FAILS to save versus oblivion.

  Silver tier wujen’s soul has been lost to Ethereal Currents.

  You have been critically struck by Metal infused axe!

  Right arm has suffered Severe Wound.

  You your right arm has been partially crippled!

  Tainted axe head FAILS to cleave through prismatic bones!

  Alex cried out as his forearm was infused with sudden awful fire and he could no longer hold his fangtian ji in a proper two-handed grip.

  “You thought you could strike imperial forces without consequence? Fool! When I present your head before the feet of my master, I will be rewarded beyond all other men!”

  Lion’s ugly laughter filled the air even as Asp’s doomed spirit shrieked her last before being shredded to oblivion, Alex having only a split second to wonder if her fate was now worse than even the lowest soul lost in the depths of the frigid waters, for she had been denied the river of death and rebirth completely, so terrible was the art she had dared.

  Yet the cost of Alex’s killing blow was black lightning that had stunned him for a split second needed for his foe to land a crippling blow, even if the same backlash had Lion stumbling back as well, blood spurting from burns up and down his arms even as Nili and Lini both cried out, having clearly suffered injuries despite leaving the room entirely.

  As for the supposed head of the JiangTu Sect who had taken Nili’s place, the man was wheezing and groaning on the ground.

  Lion roared. “Die, Ruidian scum!”

  He swung like a man who had nothing to fear. For he had indeed crippled Alex’s right arm, fangtian ji now worthless to him. So he let it fall as his madly grinning foe charged and lashed the air in a deadly series of cross cuts sure to slash open Alex’s throat.

  Yet the howling storm of Alex’s fury wouldn’t be so easily washed away, Alex weaving under the deadly pair of axes that could have sprayed his blood across the chambers so easily. Instead, they kissed nothing but air even as Lion lurched back and wheezed, blood shooting from his nostrils, gazing down in utter disbelief as Alex’s stiffened hand covered in shimmering liquid Qi plunged into his chest and pierced his heart.

  Find Weakness skill check successful!

  Enhanced Water Strike (Black Swan) now incorporates all the lessons once learned a lifetime ago!

  You may now embrace piercing and cleaving blows with your deadliest art!

  You may now embrace Black Swan with your naked limbs just as well as with dao & fangtian ji!

  You have successfully pierced the heart of your foe.

  Silver tier body cultivator has been slain.

  You now feel the storm of ascension howling through your soul!

  Potency-enhanced Prismatic Fox fully repairs Crippling Injury. You have full use of your right arm once more!

  Alex couldn’t help but shiver with revelation, sensing that he was on the cusp of a Sage’s Insight. A state of truly sublime awareness of self and environment that was almost transcendent, but treacherous. For no soul could bear its burden who wasn’t actually ready to transcend to Divinity or the next life, and he knew all too well how flawed actual divine personages were. He suspected that it touched a path far closer to Nirvana and oneness, becoming one with the heavens as opposed utterly defying it. Yet either way, it was a perilous state in one who was the farthest place from a safe cloistered sanctuary where favored elites could safely push themselves to the limit without any worry of consequence when exhaustion eventually struck.

  The irony was that those who dared the Path of Peril could only dare transcendent epiphanies and the resulting exhaustion at the risk of extreme peril. Just one more reason why perilous and seemingly ruthless duels were in fact a vital method of walking Peril’s Path, where, win or lose, most students would be assured escort to shelter and safety to meditate on their failings or breakthroughs.

  Yet Alex couldn’t deny the profound breakthroughs and insights he was on the cusp of embracing… a storm of potential he rode with the lightest of steps… a howling storm he allowed to lift him, buoy him up like a kite upon a breeze.

  For he could taste just how close he was to crashing through to Rank 10 in what had once been his favorite art. His deadliest art, before combining so much in Golden Crane, forging that legend right before challenging the gods themselves. The free enhancement his own quantized interface would allow him to evolve, a backdoor path to power gifted by his ancient mentor in a format no native could comprehend and no one from his culture would even think to deny, was truly a double-edged sword. It was an evolution that could tie the powers of his path to the reality of his present like nothing else… if he were not very, very careful. Already skirting the razor’s edge with the cloak of anonymity that he pushed so hard along Peril’s Path, as Enhanced Water Strike, now in a form that echoed his deadliest art, and Storm Swan Kung Fu, which enhanced all his Silver Tier martial maneuvers in a style that was now undeniably Hao Chan and Yinzi’s own, though with a few more air bubbles thrown in, were both just the slightest push from exploding in rank once more.

  It was all he could do to take a deep breath and center himself. Steady himself. To ride the howling winds and roaring rapids and not crash over into profound revelations and the exhaustion to come.

  And his movements were effortless as he rode those perilous currents of air and sea… seeming to float upon the ground as he picked his way through the now shattered former office of the piteously groaning man that had thought to coax and intimidate his former master, who was himself either a cold-blooded sociopath with nearly seventy girls paying the price for his gluttony, or the biggest of fools with absolutely no awareness or control over his own supposed operation.

  Either way he was Nili’s problem, not Alex’s own, he decided as he effortlessly plucked the whimpering fool with his now fully regenerated forearm and turned back to the hallway where his serene state of mind was pricked by bitter chagrin.

  Gazing upon the glaring form of Nili, sporting burns over face and hands and a death glare for Alex. And Lini, looking so much like a chastised cub, for all that she suffered no worse than reddened hands.

  “You brought my daughter into this, Alex Hammer? How dare you! I don’t care what twisted games you and your ancient master so enjoy playing with us all! Tiny little pawns upon heaven’s game board and no more than that, yes? No, you bastard! You don’t get to play with my daughter’s piece like that! Not after abandoning us for a thousand years, you don’t! Not after allowing the entire world to turn into a desert with your callous neglect!”

  Alex winced, deciding that now was not the time to bring up that he had never told her his last name… nor the look of wide-eyed wonder Lini was now giving him.

  “Mother…”

  “Shut up, cub! Daring to dance with this fool? I don’t care if you’re sixteen! He’s the last boy you should ever bring to your bed! You’re lucky I don’t clip your tail, right here and now!”

  “Okay, first of all, in my culture, sixteen is way too young for marriage, so you don’t have to worry that I would ever—”

  “Shut up!”

  Alex sighed. Dropped the whimpering Choxiang covered in shreds of charred silk and lightning burns, then turned to face the furious kitsune. “Did you know that women are being held here, Nili? Does this fool who lives only at your sufferance, know?”

  “Everyone is here by their own choice!” Nili snapped. “Some girls like a little vice and bed play! And we take care of those who are ready for a fresh start. We’re not monsters! Not everyone chooses to walk the same path as you, disciple!”

  “I’m not talking about the women above, Nili. I’m talking about the difference between adult consent and girls being forced! 70 odd girls who were kidnapped and imprisoned here!” Alex snapped, loosing control of his voice, his patience, allowing his killing aura to flare just the tiniest bit.

  Nili blanched, her daughter whimpering by her side.

  It was all Alex could do to rein in the killing storm. “That’s right, Nili. Nearly seventy captives. Innocent victims who are about to be shipped right to Dongfang Hong’s troops who would use them up until nothing was left. And they’ve already begun using a half-dozen in ways you damn well don’t need me to describe. Girls now so badly abused by the hidden troops squirreling themselves away here in the bowels of the city that four of them went catatonic!”

  Nili’s eyes widened with absolute horror… before turning to a deadly glare for Chaoxiang alone.

  “Did you know?”

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  Her words were a sibilant hiss. Her former underling, who moments ago had so enjoyed giving her a hard sell, lording it over her even as he promised her a fortune, sobbed and whimpered like the broken man he now most definitely was.

  “You will answer me, you pathetic sack of filth, and you will do so now!”

  And it was at that moment that distant sounds had Alex jolting with sudden alarm as his cistern ward was suddenly breached, exchanging a look with Lini who, unlike Nili, wasn’t even trying to hide her quivering ears.

  “Alex! I hear soldiers trying to break through the far cistern door! Come on, we got to get back before they slaughter everyone we rescued!”

  Yet Alex was already sprinting at full speed, the wind at his back, even as Nili and Lini’s conversation continued to was over him.

  “Lini! Embrace Shadow, you foolish chit! This complex is full of enemy soldiers!”

  “Yes it is!” Chaoxiang gurgled in a scarred, broken voice. “You must leave, now! Just go, Nili. I will make sure no one ever knew you were here!”

  “Oh we don’t have to worry about that, Mother. Alex already slaughtered them all!” Lini said in a too cheerful voice.

  Chaoxiang gave a despairing whimper.

  Nili hissed. “He slaughtered… you know this? Lini, did you participate in this?”

  “Oh no. I didn’t kill anyone. He asked me to wait with the other girls. We met when he cut off the head of the guard who captured me sneaking in. I don’t even know how he saw me! Anyway, he was trying to ravish me when I most definitely did not want to be ravished, and I wasn’t even really sneaking in… it was more like investigating! So please don’t give me that look, Mother. It was important! I was looking for Jinni, my best friend who you made baklava for once, who was most definitely kidnapped. Only we didn’t find her. But we did find seventy other girls!”

  “Is that so?” her mother said in an increasingly cold, angry voice as Chaoxiang audibly tried to scurry away. Before stopping with a yelp.

  “It’s okay. All he did was tear my leathers. I mean… your leathers? But Alex took care of him anyway. And there were also the guards trying to ravish the girls in the holding chamber… forcing all the other girls to watch, probably to break their spirit and wills and force compliance, but Alex bisected them all quite neatly as well! But since I like hiding far more than I do, um… sticking my spear in people screaming at me to stop, no matter how well you and Father trained me, so I kind of didn’t do any killing? Mostly, I’ve been hiding in Alex’s shadow and watching. And learning. He’s really very good at chopping things up, isn’t he? And he hasn’t even noticed!”

  “Good,” her mother said with audible relief.

  “But now we really have to get moving or the invading sons-of-goats will be killing all my new friends!”

  “Agreed. Allow me to take care of one tiny issue here first.”

  “Of course, Mother.”

  “No, no, no! Nili. You don’t have to do this! Please! I had no choice but to serve them. I had no choice!”

  “Did you know, you thirteenth generation horse’s ass? Did you know about the captured girls? Did you know they had captured my daughter?”

  “Nili, please! See reason! If our enterprise is to get off the ground, concessions had to be made! Seventy is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the population! The soldiers would have been happy, we would have all been safe, and our opium enterprise would flourish. Before long, we would have dominated all the desert cities with the Red Prince himself acting as our logistics partner! Don’t you not understand, Nili? It would have been an economic conquest every bit as significant as the Prince’s own military coup!”

  His voice turned to a desperate plea, but Alex paid it no head. For the clever knot of Wind he had placed around Li Li’s neck was now ringing in his ear with the girl’s terrified scream.

  A scream that turned to a choked off gurgle and the distant sound of soldiers chortling coldly as Alex sprinted down the corridor and smashed the cistern door right off its hinges with a heel kick, instantly catching sight of dozens of terrified girls and the cold-eyed glares of half a dozen soldiers lifting blades from a handful of fallen girls while glaring Alex’s way.

  His heart clenched with horrified dismay when he caught Li Li’s doomed gaze as she desperately held back entrails spurting from her belly wound.

  The howl of outraged fury in his soul was far louder than Chaoxiang’s dying shriek he somehow heard so clearly as Nili forced her former underling to pay the ultimate price for selling out their city… and for imperiling her daughter.

  It was a scream that a roaring Alex was eager to hear echo through the throats of all the hard-eyed men charging him even now, as he embraced the storm once more.

  You have successfully weaved past gladius thrust!

  Bronze tier Strength and Basic martial techniques FAIL to counter multiple Silver Ranks of Strength, Quickness, Finesse, and your growing mastery over the Storm!

  You have successfully decapitated your foe!

  Multiple Bronze tier soldiers charge you in unison!

  Combined Barrage FAILS to mitigate Silver-tier martial art!

  You have successfully countered all blows!

  Steel lamellar tiles FAIL to counter your wrath!

  You have successfully cleaved through 3 soldiers in a single swing!

  You have successfully bisected one additional foe!

  Final foe attempts to flee!

  Alex let the interface messages wash over him as he became one with the howling storm of grief, regret, and fury now roaring through him as he effortlessly weaved and dodged past the blades of bloodthirsty monsters moving so slowly, stumbling like buffoons, earning nothing but Alex’s wild fury as his fangtian ji channeled his shrieks into the howling storm, embracing winds that could punch straw through the trunk of a thick otak. Or, in his case, indestructible steel cleaving right through lamellar, flesh, and bone.

  The cistern floors were soon covered in fresh spatters of crimson rain, a final shrieking foe right about to trample the very girls who had fallen to their blows, which a furious Alex would NOT allow, roaring and punching the fool’s back with such force that Dongfang Hong’s pawn was lifted right over a dying Li Li’s gasping form to crash a few yards away in a crumpled, broken heap.

  Alex ignored the stares of awe and fear being sent his way, having eyes only for the young woman gazing at him with such an awful smile, eyes already glimpsing death’s waters now watching his own.

  “So the rumors are true. The gods haven’t all faded into the desert sands. You really are the Eternal Disciple.”

  Alex swallowed the lump in his throat, trembling hands stilling as he placed his hands upon the spurting wounds and strove to embrace the very techniques desperation had allowed him to forge after a caravan’s defenders had fallen to gut wounds so very like this ones. Vicious debilitating wounds promising a slow, lingering death that Dongfang Hong’s troops seemed to specialize in, sadism and cowing their foes ingrained into every facet of their being as soldiers.

  “I tried, Alex. I promise you. I just… They were Bronze and I’m a basic and I—Heaven’s mercy, what are you doing?”

  “I’m cleaning your entrails with Pristine Water and packing them back inside. Please shut up, Li Li. I’ve only done this twice before, and I like batting a thousand.”

  “What are you talking—”

  Her words cut off in a guttural scream when Alex calmly dripped four drops onto the wound from a precious vial he had ironically claimed from the very enemies so devoted to slaughter, at which point Li Li began to tremble and froth at the mouth.

  And just seconds later, after choking back gut-curdling screams, it was over. “You bastard!” Li Li sobbed even as her eyes teared with gratitude and relief. “That hurt!”

  Alex nodded sympathetically. “I know. Please hold out your tongue, Li Li.”

  “Oh no, not again.”

  “I mean, if you want to internally bleed out and enjoy a slow lingering death after coming so close to a full…”

  “Alright, fine!”

  The other girls looked on with wide-eyed awe as Li Li shivered and allowed Alex to place a single drop from his vial onto her tongue.

  “Did you see the way he cut those men down? He was a… I don’t know! For a second, I thought we were all going to be swept away by a spring flood.”

  “We haven’t had rain in three years!”

  “I know. But he definitely moved like a force of nature.”

  But Alex refused to be comforted or embarrassed by those words. Feeling only shame. Not for the girl he had been able to save, but for the two mortal children who had already slipped into death’s waters. Girls who had been unarmed and defenseless. Cut down as if their hopes, dreams, and lives meant absolutely nothing.

  Cut down by sadists who would gleefully claim this city, and all the desert lands.

  Alex felt a towering fury building up within him, clenched fists upon the hilt of his fangtian ji now crackling with currents that had the girls nearby whimpering and flinching away as Alex strode to the far gate. The gate that he, like an absolute fool, hadn’t sealed as tightly as if death were coming for them all. And two innocent souls had paid the price for the madness of bloodthirsty soldiers and one unforgivably stupid fool.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Nili’s voice, so different from her bitter accusations of minutes before.

  “The hell it’s not. I could have done better. I SHOULD have done better!”

  “You cleared out a full platoon of Dongfang Hong’s Bronze elites. I saw the bodies, Alex. No one who wasn’t a Deep Silver should be capable of that. Not without backup. Certainly not a lost fool who is as much clueless child who barely looks older than my clueless daughter as he is any sort of divinity. A boy who doesn’t even know where his soul will blow off to in the endless sands of time, between one life and the next.”

  “And none of that matters, Nili. I should have sealed the door. I should have cleansed the far passage of any trace of threat before taking out the nest!”

  Nili sighed. “And by the time you were done, the soldiers making a barracks of a JiangHu safehouse, MY safehouse, would have discovered the freed girls, cut down my cub, and probably me as well. So don’t you dare blame yourself, Alex. You’re no wujen. Not this time around. There wasn’t that much you could do to seal a door against a Bronze soldier’s strength, the enchanted cutting blades he might or might not have on him. Not without being there to cut them down yourself. Which you did. To the best of your insanely gifted ability.”

  “I’m cleaning out this nest, Nili. And I won’t stop. Not until it’s done.” Alex glared at the dark passageway from which the soldiers had emerged, readying himself for what was to come.

  Nili wasted only a moment cursing stubborn fools under her breath. “Very well, Alex. You do that. I will lead the girls to safety via routes that not even these fools have uncovered. Certainly not the bastard of a goat I had once trusted with my sanctuary, willing to sell out Wanshi’s children for his own advancement. And then, Alex, we will have to return to make sure that no traitor remains to give the game away and doom us all.”

  Alex gave a curt nod, trusting the former JiangHu head to do her part.

  He knew there were countless strategies they should be going over, contingencies that they should be planning for. But not now. Not when seventy innocent souls, some utterly broken, many still believing in dreams of love and happy endings, could hear them.

  Not when the dying screams of disemboweled children were howling so furiously through his soul in a cacophony that could only be silenced with the death of his enemies.

  So he ignored the whispers and murmurs at his back as he entered the ancient tunnel and readied himself for what was to come.

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