Chapter 23 #3
With such terrible force that even Gold-tier Vitality began to waver, as blows that should have destroyed any cultivator’s Silver-tier physique, no matter how enhanced their body cultivation, did nothing but bruise the hardened knuckles covering prismatic bone.
Instead it was Gold-tier organs that were bruised, and monstrous ribs that suffered hairline cracks that would, over time, surrender to the pounding seas.
Yet Gold-tier beasts were the furthest thing from easy prey as a roaring Alex found when he was suddenly sent flying back once more, his shoulder nearly torn out of its socket, crimson drops of blood spraying the air, thanks to a back claw that would have so easily sliced through both his ribs and heart, were it not for his prismatic bones.
Somehow, the galleon had managed to right itself with the desperate will and fury of the pilot itself.
And the sudden flare of spiritual energy would have warned Alex, had not the frenzy of battle replaced the ice-cold analysis of tempered fury that made him so much deadlier than poorly flash-hardened steel.
Steel that cracked yet did not break, as a now wheezing Alex power-healed once more, gripping so tightly the pommel of his sword, sensing his foe wheezing just as he was in the woodland sea, the maze itself now near completely destroyed, thanks to their engagement.
A tragedy he promised himself he would correct, one day, should he manage to survive and return.
“You will pay for that, mortal! I will crack your bones and savor your marrow and your screams. Then I shall leave this maze and hunt down all who dared to savor the spirit fruit within my domain!”
Alex forced a smile through his still-aching chest, choking back a scream as his nerves blazed with the agony of countless hours’ worth of painful healing forcefully crammed into the handful of seconds he could spare, all his focus on riding the epiphany he could now feel roaring through him.
Fearing no longer the Sage’s Insight, no matter its cost.
For he was now truly one with the storm.
He furrowed his brow, seeing it in his mind’s eye so clearly.
The perfect synergism of eight elements that had made up the potentially life-saving Prismatic Shield. The very technique that Long Wang had tried so desperately, so hungrily, to steal from his mind. As if fate allowed his nemesis a singular attempt it had taken Alex all he had to thwart.
A technique he had lost access to anyway, so eager to dare a storybook cultivator’s path with fortuitous encounters, Divine-tier spirit fruit, and the fusion of Wind’s blessing to his soul.
To his children’s as well, perhaps, unlikely as he was to live so long as to ever be able to cherish that dream.
Yet the cost of such daring had been losing the ability to harmonize the flow of all eight elements, and not even he was foolish enough or idealistic enough as to think that he would ever stumble across eight different Divine-tier spirit fruit that would enhance each of the elements that so readily defined his soul.
Nor could he crush the gift that now at least partially defined him, defined his path as White Qi techniques were replaced by Wind, and in some ways, at least, Piercing Strike and Storm Swan kung fu and so many other arts were made all the stronger as he reforged so many old paths that his enemies would otherwise sense.
So many skills transformed along new paths that made his abilities even stronger and, hopefully, impossible for his enemies to detect, no matter the struggles he had endured to get to wear he was.
He had reforged himself anew and in so many ways benefited from the transformation.
Save for the loss of Prismatic Shield and Prismatic Strike, which would serve as such a boon in the present as he dared to face a Gold even now roaring for fresh blood.
Alex flashed a smile and spat blood, now so in tune with the sea of trees that he knew exactly where his opponent stumbled through the underbrush, furiously devouring spirit fruit for what sustenance and recuperation it might offer the beast.
For now was the time to strike. The absolute best time to strike.
Yet Alex couldn’t ignore the whisper of an epiphany now thrumming through his soul.
Already having reforged a path to power, adding ever more elements to an elemental technique that was truly one with his path.
Storm Swan. Storm Strike. Storm Wing. Martial techniques and Qi abilities that dared to fuse not just Wind’s fury with the sea’s metallic, salty tears, but the furious Lightning of their collision with Dark Qi of the stygian depths as well.
A synergistic communion of five elements that now allowed for a sixth as well, as an art originally based on the sense of rolling boulders slowly gaining momentum became the instant crashing ruin of foes slammed by stormy seas into pitiless rocky shoals that ground them to oblivion.
Which meant that he was on the cusp of understanding a path to fusing six elements to at least some of his attacks.
Yet there was more. So much more, even as the sacred grove’s fecundity cried out against the furious guardian that ravished what it should be protecting.
Gnashing on precious lychee, spirit peaches, and guava trees, before destroying their roots with vicious sharp claws, honing killing blades and stealing boons in twisted ways, all so it could kill the interloper who had dared to wound it so badly.
It was a defiling, a travesty that filled Alex with fury.
A bitter hot fury that roared and blazed within his soul.
For he could do nothing about the terrible monstrous cost that had been paid by sacred forests in his desperate battle with a divine general so eager to purge Alex, all his ancient progeny, and any ethnicity that didn’t fit monstrous standards of purity.
He could do nothing to save the forest that had surrounded the sacred city he had been able to claim for his own realm.
A realm now the size of Earth, or larger, covered with the forest he had made a pact with, in the life he had lived before.
Yet still he felt the weight of his actions, his choices, and the terrible price so many had been forced to pay.
And he could do nothing to ease the past’s burden.
Yet in this moment, in the glorious here and NOW, he could affect changes that might one day shake the entire world.
He shivered with intensity, summoning once more a sacred Silver-tier art, or its echo.
Shield of the Burning Grove. Yet the endless forests he now visualized were an echo of this tormented grove…
and the shocking devastation of the seven-thousand-plus square miles of forest that had been devastated as he dared to claim an entire world’s elite forces attempting to cross the gates between worlds while shattering the gate—and unleashing a hellfire storm of shocking proportions.
A quark bomb of furious, deadly potential.
A quark bomb of FIRE filled with the bitter Spirit Qi of fury and regret that made it so shockingly hot. Hot enough to melt slag.
And that was when epiphany struck once more. For he had seen enough recordings of volcanoes and nuclear explosions to know that both Wind and Lightning were as much the province of the clash between Fire and Earth as Water.
Wind and Lightning and Spirit Qi itself. Elements that both surrounded and embraced the five fundamentals. Catalyzing so many reactions, allowing reality to be aware of its own existence. Autonomy and will in what would otherwise be a universe of blind chemical reactions and soulless automatons.
Spiritual wrath that tasted of the Wood’s fury, Fire’s madness, and so much more.
The disk of blazing wood fastened like a shield upon Alex’s trembling arm took on one layer after another.
Blazing with shocking monstrous heat as white-hot magma gave rise to bitter sharp elements of Steel flash-cooled by Water that became furiously hot steam, propelling the spinning disk of flesh-shredding teeth covered in the Dark Qi of pristine destruction spinning around the rim of his monstrous shield faster and faster.
The air began ringing with an unending thrum as Alex felt the sudden sharp drain of his Qi Pool that was a new technique of perilous potential and power being forged in a moment’s epiphany while daring to take on a Gold.
His agonized face twisted in a rictus of fierce vindication, holding tight to the epiphany even as he squeezed tight the hilt of his now ebony dao.
Walking a tightrope between transcendence and exhaustion, not daring even to Spring Leap as he bounded from the tree branches he had hidden within and slowly made his way to the center of the grove, where the roaring sentinel of this place waited.
He smiled, wanting to laugh as he embraced the Fox’s tale once more.
Instead, he gave a wordless cry.
One the tiger, covered in still-bleeding wounds that low-tier spirit fruit had done nothing to heal, its one remaining eye crackling with monstrous fury, immediately answered.
“You will pay for daring to mark my flesh, mortal!”
The tiger’s roar rocked Alex with a wave of dizziness that was nothing compared to the horrors of chemo.
Yet still he stumbled back, crouching over and groaning as the Gold-tier monster howled with mocking laughter as he pounced.
“Worthless, inferior trash! My wounds will be revitalized with the sweet nectar of your blood! My eye reforged with the insights of your obliterated soul! But fear not. I will leave you alive after I tear free your entrails and devour your manhood! Long enough to howl and gnash your teeth when I present the skulls of each of your friends who dared to feast upon my prizes! Who dared to gaze upon me with their unworthy—”
The words cut off when a snarling Alex snapped back into a warrior’s crouch. His shield of swirling elements, crackling Lightning, and ripping Steel was suddenly before the tiger that roared and swiped it as casually as a house cat batting a mouse to the side.