Chapter 20
“Everyone kit up fully! I should have insisted we do so before entering, but storms like this are extremely rare.”
“But a good sign,” Kuaisu gamely noted. “We’ve all heard the tales. It’s when winter storms are howling that the greatest prizes can be found!”
“And the greatest peril,” Tang calmly noted even as he kitted himself in full winter gear, Alex wordlessly watching over them all after helping Rachel into her attire. And the look of gratitude she gave him when his own winter coat became hers…
Kuaisu snorted. “It’s fine to take care of your wives, boy, but you do us no good if you come down with frostbite and lose a finger when we need you holding that fangtian ji like the warrior we all know you are.”
Alex smirked. “No worries. The undercoat is more than enough for me.”
This earned a laugh from the normally limber-looking Kuaisu, who was dressed in an oversized winter suit, the same as everyone else. “Unless you’re going to tell me the blood of fiery dragons pumps within your veins, or you’re actually a fire cultivator and not a Ruidian blessed with a diamond—”
Her words cut off when Alex’s fist erupted in flame.
“Well I’ll be a goat’s get. You ARE a cultivator!”
Alex’s smirk turned into a pained smile when absolutely everyone was looking at him a bit too intently, and coolly.
“An elemental body cultivator?” Lao Tie smiled and shook his head.
“So, not a pure-blooded Ruidian at all, then. The ancient aristocratic bloodlines clearly flow strongly in your veins to grant you such striking features. Yet I’ve never seen anyone at court bearing the stamp of your features.
I take it you’re one of Dongfang Hong’s associates, then? ”
Alex shivered at the way the man said it so lightly. So casually. As if it weren’t any big deal at all.
Yet he was no fool.
He could tell that the formerly jocular party members comfortable enough to joke with him and his companions had turned into absolute professionals, ready to do whatever they had to at their lord’s behest.
Alex took a steadying breath, doing his best not to feed into the hot, fiery potential of the moment, having learned his lesson already that day and tired of constantly playing the fool after every brilliant insight or breakthrough he enjoyed.
“Would I be correct in assuming that any core of Water or Ice we might find during our delve will not be finding its way by fair means or foul, by clever bribes, honeyed words, or cold threats, into the pockets of the Red Prince or his cronies?”
Lao Tie and his men went deathly still, peering at a coolly smiling Alex for long, painfully tense moments as the wind shrieked and howled all about them.
Lao Tie seemed to be weighing Alex’s life in his eyes before he spoke.
“The answer to that is no, Alex. I have no intention of our prizes—any of our prizes—falling into the hands of Dongfang Hong or his… cronies.” He flashed a smile both fierce and hopeful.
“Why would I sell such a prize that would doom my city, shame my clan, and deny me the hand of the most beautiful woman in the entire kingdom?”
Alex opened his mouth, at a momentary loss for words. Before forcing himself to focus on what mattered.
“Then we feel the same,” he said softly.
Lao Tie scowled. “You, too, seek Princess Sunlay’s hand?”
“I seek to make sure that this city never falls into the hands of Dongfang Dickhead, and I’ll do whatever I have to, to make that happen.”
Lao Tie’s eyes crinkled with genuine warmth, features easing into a bonhomie grin as the quartet’s deadly tension eased, warm smiles all around.
“Wonderful, Alex. I knew our meeting was a fortuitous encounter!”
Kuaisu crossed her arms. “Even if he comes from a powerful aristocratic clan?”
“Even so,” Lao Tie said without hesitation, before giving Alex a curious look. “I don’t suppose your clan is in opposition to Dongfang Hong’s own?”
Alex couldn’t help smirking at that. “I despise that treacherous despot with every fiber of my being,” he said, his senses wide open for any flare of alarm, fury, or betrayal, and already knowing what his counter would have to be.
“I knew there was something I liked about this kid,” Tang said with warm approval, earning a snort from Kuaisu.
“Really? You were suspecting the worst, just seconds ago.”
“Never mind, Kuaisu.”
“Wonderful! Then we have an accord, my dear old-blooded friend! You may rest assured that the Lao clan takes good care of its friends, and should we manage a miracle, I’ll make sure that all of you are feted in a manner worthy of any city lord!”
“Feel free to think of me as Ruidian, if you like,” Alex said with a chuckle. “For all you know, I’m a cultivating Ruidian, even if ‘old-blooded’ fits remarkably well.”
“I mean, clearly!” Ya Ling declared, shaking her head with wry exasperation. “Did they really just forget that you’re using a Ruidian party-forging technique, even if they wish to call it a ‘spiritual awakening,’ to allow us to coordinate and connect so well?”
Kuaisu snorted even as she hopped lightly in her spirit fur–insulated boots, the same as what they all now wore. “The girl’s right. So, he must be a cultivating Ruidian, whether or not he’s actually pure-blooded. Have you ever heard of such a thing in your travels, Tang?”
She seemed surprised when Tang dutifully nodded.
“They do crop up at least as frequently as jewel-masters who could so easily pass for a native, like Rachel here, whose eyes are more hazel than brilliant green when out of the bright sun.” The girl immediately flushed.
“And even our Linnea is clearly of mixed stock, despite her bright red hair and emerald green eyes, and all the stronger for it, I’m guessing, as inbred Ruidians are the furthest thing from healthy, if you’ll forgive my saying so. ”
Kuaisu frowned, peering thoughtfully at an increasingly uncomfortable Alex. “Yet that boy all but glows with vigor, despite his pale skin and bright blue eyes. He doesn’t look at all inbred and sickly.”
“True, and his hair is as blond as golden wheat. However that mutation came about, it clearly did nothing but good things for his bloodline.”
Alex forced an awkward chuckle. “And on that note, what’s say we get exploring? I, for one, would absolutely love to test my mettle against whatever passes for spirit beasts around here.”
Kuaisu and Tang immediately exchanged worried glances, the air suddenly alive with a mournful howl.
Ya Ling glared. “Seriously, Alex?”
“What did I do?”
“Form up in ranks!” Lao Tie snapped, all earlier bonhomie replaced with a commander’s authority.
With a quick nod, Alex eased the communion he should have separated from the start, allowing Linnea to effortlessly link up her efforts with Lao Tie while gently squeezing an anxious Rachel’s shoulder through both overcoats as the three turned as one in the direction the howls had come from, Tang and Wu Xien directly in front of them while Kuaisu spread out to cover their left flank, before hissing at Alex and a momentarily flustered Ya Ling to do the same.
“Alex?”
He nodded as Ya Ling drew her jian, the howling winds not touching a hair on her head, for all that she had been prudent enough to kit herself fully in the winter gear supplied, Alex the only one who had foregone the thicker overcoat.
“Really, no spear in reserve, girl?” Kuaisu had almost teasingly called to Ya Ling, noting a weapon that, for all its courtly grace and elegance, most guardsmen and adventuring cultivators would consider secondary to a polearm or spear like the one Kuaisu now held at the ready, her pair of short gladii still sheathed at her hips, though she had re-strapped her weapon belt outside of her winter wear.
Her bow was gone, though Alex suspected she was now more openly using a storage space item after Alex had seemingly so boldly revealed his own.
Ya Ling flashed a tight, hard smile, not bothering to answer the question, though Alex’s Soul Sight made exquisitely clear the swirling storm of Wind Qi presently swirling about her, and he sensed that she was ready to take to the skies at a moment’s notice, waiting only for Alex’s nod.
“Kuaisu. Report!” Wu Xien’s rough baritone voice easily cut through the howling wind, but it was Ya Ling who hissed in alarm, spinning about on feet that left no mark in the snow at all as she jutted her blade toward the threat an alarmed Alex realized he hadn’t sensed at all.
“There!” Ya Ling cried at the sudden handful of massive white shapes blending so perfectly with the snow as they charged them as one.
Time seemed to stretch as peril abruptly manifested and the giant beasts leaped for unsuspecting throats.
A storm of fire swirled around Linnea as she and Alex fused fully once more.
Fire flaring far faster than even Lao Tie could spin around and adjust, Rachel utterly confused and already losing her balance as a trio of wolves tore through the air.
Wolves clearly aligned to both Ice and Wind as they crashed into Linnea’s now fiercely bright ward, eager for the ripe flesh guarded so imperfectly by confused sentinels…
Before the air flashed with the storm’s bitter rebuttal. For when the currents of chaos howled, it was the roaring sea that washed away all resistance, trumping even the fiercest gull or spirit beast swooping for prizes hidden in swirling currents below.
Black Swan!
You have successfully cleaved your foe in half!
Yet a single deadly strike wasn’t enough to avert three Silver-tier monsters leaping as one, even as desperate roars and a woman’s scream made it horrifically clear that they truly were under attack by multiple ambushing foes.
Fortunately, Ya Ling, truly one with the Wind, having blossomed so brightly in her own way, had already sprung forth.
The second wolf about to pounce down upon a terrified Rachel jerked in the air when enchanted steel rammed through its eye as Ya Ling’s blade struck with force beyond even a deep Bronze’s might, Greater Wind Affinity allowing her to puncture the creature’s skull with a Silver’s might.