Chapter 11
“You here for the girl already? I’m afraid she won’t be much good for your regular customers.
Not unless they like them toothless and well-tenderized,” sneered a cold-eyed soldier before flipping over an oddly decorated card upon a pile of copper coins.
The other half-dozen men seated at their gaming table chortled coldly.
All of them were kitted in linen gambesons with dao at their hips, their sneers turning into icy glares and cold frowns when Alex calmly shut and sealed the door behind him.
Wind Ward successfully formed.
Alex cracked his neck, feeling the increasing tension and hot glares from the men who clearly cared nothing about the victims they had so cruelly broken.
Only then did he allow himself to register the bruised and battered girl covered in blood beside the soldier snoring on the bed farthest from their gaming table.
“We’re allowed access to the girls all night! So go tell your mistress to fuck off, you Ruidian mongrel. She’s lucky we even let you—”
Black Swan!
You have obliterated your target!
Sound grew tinny and faint, drowned out by the hot-blooded fury roaring through Alex’s soul as his fangtian ji tore through air. Or perhaps it was the howl of the storm crashing through him, flowing through his meridians and body much as it had, a lifetime ago.
He felt things shift within, his Dantian coming ever closer to embracing an alignment so ideal for channeling the storm’s wrath as he became like the wind, weaving under desperate thrusts before blowing right through the remaining soldiers.
Or perhaps he was the crashing currents of the river, the entire chamber now awash in a sea of blood and gore.
All he knew was that haunted, desolate eyes upon a face covered in blood could have been Hao Chan’s own, in the awful life her tormentors had so eagerly anticipated.
Eyes that pinned and tormented him with their desperate intensity.
A silent plea that might never be uttered.
A voiceless cry that summoned the might of an ancient storm.
It was as much howling hurricane winds as water crashing through and obliterating all resistance, the stone walls themselves scored of all ornamentation under the Metal salts saturating the bitter tears of that storm.
Midnight waters filled with Dark Qi and regret.
Yet somehow, there was a moment of tranquility in that storm of retribution, a single girl’s shattered bed the only bubble of calm in that cauldron of rebuttal as every last soldier save one drowned in that black sea…
before slipping into far colder waters still, where the howls and screams of every last victim to fall to their blows would haunt them for centuries, if not eternity.
The only one left standing when the violent storm passed was a heaving Alex, drenched in the crimson aftermath of his fury, ankle-deep in the spattered viscera of his foes.
The girl in the far bed trembled, gazing at him with an odd mix of awe and horror as System messages rang inside his head, even as he felt his Dantian finish settling comfortably and irrevocably back into the position that he had embraced so utterly a lifetime ago, now perfectly aligned to channeling the storm that was and had always been one with his soul.
Congratulations, you have had a breakthrough!
Visions of the past and insights in the present have helped you unlock a Silver-tier Martial Art!
This art embraces the flow of howling Winds so drenched with Water and fury that they might as well be rivers of retribution, smashing through all your foes.
Move with the grace of the swan as you weave and dart past all foes while forging a masterwork of retributive destruction!
You have learned Storm Swan Kung Fu at Rank 1.
This art fully incorporates the elements of Wind and Water, and you sense it has the potential for SO MUCH MORE!
Each rank of your art adds to all applicable Silver-tier combat modifiers in martial contests against your foes!
Alex felt almost as if he were in a trance, for the first time in this lifetime feeling so viscerally the flow of furious battle that had comprised so many of his adventures in the life he had lived before.
Embracing the dance that had gained him a world and a love of his own—and had cost him everything as well.
Yet even a lifetime away, so deeply had he imprinted Silver Swan upon his being, forging an art that had allowed his disciples and would-be wives to ascend the golden steps of ascension all the way to the first steps of divinity, that it had clearly left an imprint upon his soul as well.
Even if he only sensed a whisper of its potential, it was as if a dam had cracked, bringing water to a lifeless desert.
Yet his own lessons and experiences of a literal lifetime ago had benefited from his most recent forging, including his greater mastery over Wind as he learned to embrace the echo of that ancient pristine art and reforge it anew.
His reclaimed art now resonated with the power of nature’s mightiest storms. Skies blackened with the weight of bitter rain, unleashing downpours so furious and violent that it might as well be drowning in the sea.
A sea so welcoming of Lightning’s fury. A sea just a heartbeat away from incorporating the metallic Dark Qi–saturated salts of a thousand lifetimes’ worth of tears… or perhaps just the salty tang of the sea itself as air and ocean became one, wind and water fused, and Alex’s art was reforged anew.
Yet it wasn’t entirely the art he had mastered at least once before, having evolved it organically, incorporating an entirely new element as he dared a path that would allow him to embrace old masteries once again, and hopefully stay forever out of the bitter gazes of ancient, presently sleeping, foes.
Foes he was desperate to avoid at all costs.
At least until he could ascend so far and ensure a victory so complete that they would never dare challenge him again.
He trembled with that furious thought that earned the memory of a rueful chuckle from a certain mischievously smiling inspector before fading to reverie once more…
and Alex found himself ankle-deep in gore, gazing upon a girl so shell-shocked and damaged that his heart ached for the fragile soul eager to leap into the river she could just barely perceive as being all around them and end it all.
A river Alex refused even to look at, already sensing that he was going adrift, slipping ever further from the safe and happy shores of blissful anonymity a part of him was desperate to embrace for this one lifetime, at least.
Yet the hopeless, tear-filled gaze of the girl shivering beside the groaning soldier still on the bed demanded that he embrace that hero’s mantle once more.
No matter how bitter and cold its burden eventually became.
“I’m dreaming, right? I’m dreaming, and this is the end? Please tell me this is the end.”
Words Alex barely heard through bloody lips, cracked jaw, and broken teeth.
Yet he still felt a desperate glimmer of hope, willing to embrace a path that made him so uncomfortable… appreciating all too well how it could lead to a life of monstrous tyranny. And with so many of the desert’s children of mixed decent…
“I’m going to touch your brow, and no more than that, all right? Please close your eyes.”
The girl trembled. “Please… the pain!”
Alex’s fingers touched her blood-spattered hair.
He shivered when his cheerful interface rang with the messages he both dreaded and was relieved to hear.
Slave Node successfully accessed.
You have successfully formed a party with Ling Ri!
Warning! Multiple organs have been bruised. Internal bleeding detected!
The girl’s eyes bolted wide with horrified disbelief. “No, no, no, no!”
“Ling Ri?”
“Please! Make it stop! Make the pain stop!”
“Only you can make it stop, Ling. Do you see the man beside you?”
The girl trembled, eyes filled with an unexpected mixture of horror and fury. “He’s still alive! He has no arms or legs, but that bastard is still alive!”
Alex nodded, solemnly putting the soldier’s own blackened steel dagger in her terrified hands.
“How would you like to be healed in full, with no memory of the horrors you suffered tonight? And, should you wish it, no memory of your life before whatever fateful choices had you walking the path that led you here.”
The girl trembled and sobbed. “I want to forget. I want to forget it all!”
Alex flashed a gentle smile before his eyes turned hard and cold, glaring at the whimpering soldier who lived only because Alex’s mastery over Water was potent enough that he refused to let the monster before him bleed out.
No matter that the predator was now filled with agony and despair near the equal of his victim’s.
“Then thrust the dagger right there,” Alex said, gently placing the point of the blade upon the carotid artery of Dongfang Hong’s foot soldier. “Do that and—”
She didn’t bother waiting for any further explanation, eyes going wild with fury as she snarled and plunged the blade deep into her foe’s neck.
No matter that the man was a Rank 2 Bronze, his resilience brought him only a final handful of agonized seconds before he, too, joined his friends in bitter cold waters they would drown in for centuries.
Ling Ri trembled, stick-thin arms dropping the dagger as haunted eyes gazed into Alex’s own. “Please, make me forget? Forget ever coming here,” she sobbed. “Please make me forget all of it!”
Alex swallowed, knowing that one question still needed to be asked. “Do you have any children?”
The girl flushed, shaking her head. “No. I only had my uncle, but he perished as a guard on a caravan expedition. And then I was alone and didn’t know what to do. And then…” She shrugged helplessly, fresh tears flowing from her eyes. “And then I ended up here.”
Alex nodded, gently touching her brow. “Then let’s reset the clock, Ling Ri. And give you a fresh start.”