Chapter 11 #2
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It was several seconds before the girl in his arms jerked herself awake, gazing at him in puzzled confusion.
He couldn’t hide the relief in his smile.
The gaunt cheeks and dark circles under her eyes had transformed to the plump vitality of healthy youth. And the awful wounds, shattered teeth, and thousand-yard stare of a girl who wished only for it all to be over—those traumas were gone as if they had never been.
His smile assuaged her fear, causing her to look curiously up at him and somehow ignore the blood and gore as they quickly made their way down the completely empty hallway, Alex’s Barrier of Silence so powerful, and now incorporating earth as well, that neither sound nor vibration from his slaughter had disturbed anyone in the adjoining chambers.
Still, he walked at a fast clip back to the water cistern as the girl in his arms gave him a puzzled look.
“I know you, don’t I? You helped me… rescued me from something?”
For just a heartbeat, a flash of horror overcame her features, replaced with confusion just a second later.
“It’s all right.” Alex smiled reassuringly.
“You were at a cantina, spilling your troubles to a nice-seeming gent who was anything but. He plied you with poppy-infused wine and tried to talk you into going away with him, but one of the serving girls talked you out of it. She told you what the life he was trying to entice you with was really like. You swore off poppy-infused anything for life and made a new friend as well as a possible work contact for a future job, now that you’re living on your own.
Of course, that was when you and dozens of other girls were kidnapped.
Fortunately a nice guy with a really big fangtian ji happened to be in the neighborhood, so we’re now sorting everything out. ”
The girl stared at him, her strained smile caught between wonder, disbelief, and fear. “Is that what really happened?”
Alex winked. “The beautiful thing about the past is that it can be whatever we need it to be. So long as we move forward. So long as we leave no loved ones behind.”
Ling Ri looked suddenly on the verge of tears. “My uncle… he’s all that I had left, and now he’s gone!”
Alex gave a sympathetic nod. “I know. Let me introduce you to some new friends. You’ve all had a rough time of it, and together, I think you can pull through.”
He hurried his pace to superhuman speed once he braced the girl who gasped against his chest, grateful that his attire was so resistant to battlefield spatter, the gore fading away like a summer mist seconds after the storm of conflict had passed.
Then he was carefully slipping inside the vast cistern, the warded door opening with a single brush of his fingertip as if he had never sealed the entrance at all.
The still-shaken and confused girl he carried invited whispers and looks of surprise, confusion, and concern.
“Jinni?” Lini’s hopeful features immediately fell as she and the young cultivator approached, though her expression turned tender with concern a second later for the girl in Alex’s arms.
“Hero?” Li Li gave him and the girl a pointed look. Somehow, she knew not to say anything that would break the fragile peace Ling Ri’s psyche desperately clung to, the other girls already following the young cultivator’s lead.
Alex smiled. “Ling Ri’s another one of the captives that I was able to free in the nick of time.
” His gentle smile turned intent with meaning.
“She’s been through quite an ordeal and has no family left at all.
It would mean a lot to me if she could find friends who might know a place where she could work and start life anew. ”
Li Li exchanged looks with a girl whose discerning gaze and thoughtful frown reminded Alex so much of his merchant friend Yingpei Lin of a lifetime ago. She and Li Li shared a nod that eased the bitter storm still howling in his heart.
“Good. I might be back later with more captives. Once I’m finished handling things, then we’ll head out and find your families.”
“Alex…”
He caught Lini’s worried gaze. “And I’ll keep a lookout for your friend as well, Lini. I promise.”
He then turned around and headed back toward the exit, his exquisite Perception picking up their whispered comments as he left the cistern once more.
“Wait, what’s he doing? Why can’t we all leave together right now?”
Li Li’s gentle voice soothed the other girl’s panic. “Because he has to make sure they can’t follow us or kidnap anyone else.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“You’re not stupid, Sulia. I think you can figure it out.”
“But he’s just one man!”
Lini snorted. “You know who he is, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sulia… have you never read the Fox’s tales?”
“Of course I have. But those are fables! Everyone knows that the gods and their champions left the world when lush forests and fields became endless desert.”
“Tell him that.”
The whispers and murmurs from girls caught between hope and dread cut off with absolute finality when Alex placed his Barrier of Silence across the once-more sealed door. They would hear anyone trying to get in and be able to take steps, but no one would hear them from without.
Alex made careful note of the dozen reinforced doors lining the hallways that had been repurposed into an extensive barracks.
He quickly considered the opportunity costs of slow and cautious versus fast and furious.
Foolish as he might be when allowing his passions to get the best of him, he was still wise enough to know that he couldn’t expect a slow pace to work for very long.
Sooner or later, a slip would be made. Guards would catch sight of him and alert both Nili and Chaoxiang. And if his kitsune friend was vulnerable, with her daughter effectively trapped here with nearly seventy other captives…
Alex frowned as he considered his next step while still trying to hold on to his near-transcendent epiphany, his exquisite sense of the storm of water, wind, and bitter tears he was so close to understanding completely... so ready to embrace bitter retribution once more.
His hands tightly squeezed the hilt of his resummoned weapon as he slowly made his way to the next room, before changing direction and racing all out for the farmost door leading to Chaoxiang’s wing. Because the solution was obvious, once it finally clicked.
He didn’t need to prevent his targets from alerting anyone else. He just needed to keep them from alerting Chaoxiang.
Not until it was time to spring the trap in full, and wash this entire underground base in crimson tides without end.
Skill check successful!
You have successfully placed a Barrier of Wind and Earth upon East Wing Door.
You have successfully synergized Wind and Earth into one unified technique.
You have successfully incorporated Earth’s impermeability with Wind’s buffer!
Now neither voice nor vibration will alert your targets before it’s time.
Barrier of Silence is now Rank 9!
Alex allowed himself a single fierce smile of satisfaction, all the more so because he could still hear the voices of Nili and presumably Chiaoxiang like a tiny echo inside his head as he got back to work.
The pair laughing and chatting like old friends.
Alex placed his fingers upon the hardwood face of the next door.
He sensed the desperate screams within.
And with a single twist and click of the door, he was through.
Qi Perception check allows you to sense all the foes before you.
You are now one with the storm!
“Who the fuck are you?”
“That Ruidian fool dares to bare live steel before us? There can be no forgiveness! Cut him down now!”
Alex’s fangtian ji moved in a blur so fast that an eyeblink would have missed it when the closest guard’s still-blinking head tumbled to the stone tiles in a sea of blood and shattered steel.
The remaining half-dozen soldiers stared at Alex and his blood-spattered weapon as if he were their worst nightmare.
And certainly the wild-eyed monster with blond hair whipping about in currents affecting him alone would have startled even him, had he not already glimpsed smiling death reflected in the closest soldier’s eyes.
Just a heartbeat before the vision was split in twain forevermore, along with his target’s skull.
Bronze-tier cultivator FAILS to resist the fury of the storm.
Your opponent has been cut in half!
“He’s a monster! We must flee!”
“Warn Captain Dong! He is our only—”
You have critically struck your foe!
“Run! Run for your lives, fools! It’s the monster we were warned about!”
Alex allowed the howling winds wet with so many bitter tears to flow right through him, and from him to his foes as together they became far greater than the sum of their parts.
Through the fury of conflict, a spark was ignited that catalyzed a storm that washed completely through the underground compound, gouging floors and ceiling, tearing off numerous iron-reinforced doors before drowning one chamber after another in a sea of blood that left nothing but cleaved limbs, ruined bodies, and shattered suits of armor in its wake.
For not everyone had been lax in their dress or behavior, yet all of them fell to the storm, just the same.
Alex felt it then, the pressure of an actual Silver in a sea of low and half-step Bronze who could have devastated a smaller unprepared city all by themselves… if not for him.