The bandits and defenders slammed into each other’s ranks. They cut off each other’s hands, arms, legs, and heads as entrails covered the crests of the dunes. Atop one of these dunes stood a lonely figure.
Despite the heated battle around him, the man was calm. The people around him, seeing that he was standing not on sand, but on a pile of bodies, gave his manmade ‘dune’ a wide berth as they hurried on into the thick of the fighting.
The man was Hadjar. He sank deeper into the World River. His latest ‘mad plan’ had ripened in his head, but this time, he was sure it was feasible. Through the prism of the river’s energy, the battle looked like a clash between nebulae.
Bright and dull, clear and fuzzy clots of power merged in a dance. Sometimes, in the middle of this extravaganza of color, separate, more distinct silhouettes appeared. The cultivators looked much more real in this energy world than the ordinary practitioners did. Among them, like a colossus surrounded by children, the pillar of the Spirit Knight’s power stood out.
One glance at this concentration of energy was enough to make him believe Einen had been right. If they didn’t kill the bandit leader, not even the sheikh’s intervention would help them. Only the joint efforts of the surviving Heaven Soldiers of Kurkhadan were keeping the Knight’s onslaught contained.
Hadjar cast one last look at the storm of steel and blood as he began to sink even deeper into the River. He saw distant stars sometimes flicker in the darkness. Despite their countless numbers, Hadjar felt only one pull. He headed toward it, pushing through insane resistance. He hadn’t tried to make his way over to the Sword Spirit for many months. He never knew what else the Sword Spirit might decide to take as payment for power and knowledge. However, this time, Hadjar’s own life was on the line, and no matter what he sacrificed, while he was still breathing, everything else could eventually be recovered.
Every time he ‘swam’ forward, the resistance of the River and the Spirit intensified. In the physical world, this manifested as long, bloody streaks creeping across Hadjar’s body, as if hundreds, no, thousands of blades were rending his flesh, pouring his blood over the bodies of the defeated warriors.
At some point, Hadjar realized that his next move could be his last. He still had an incredibly long way to go before he reached the Spirit. Hadjar could see only the distant silhouette of the blade of pure energy. However, this was still a lot more than he’d ever seen before his fight against ‘The Black Gates’ sect.
Ignoring the pain and pressure, Hadjar mentally sat down in the lotus position and gradually began to absorb the echo of the Spirit’s power.
In the physical world, as he did so, the storm of battle continued to rage. The cultivators of Kurkhadan were attacking the Knight, but all they could do was slow his progress toward the city for a short while.
The bandit leader, standing on the shell of the huge three-tailed scorpion, amazed the ordinary practitioners. None of them had ever seen a warrior like him before. Armed with two blades, the Knight created horizontal, scarlet lightning bolts with each swing. They ran along the sand and charred bodies, eagerly smashing through the protective Techniques of the Heaven Soldiers. Some of them managed to withstand the Knight’s fury, while others disappeared in flashes of scarlet with a cry. Proud true cultivators had been reduced to blackened cinders, and their souls now sought refuge at the threshold of their ancestors’ houses.
Behind the Knight, the ghostly figure wrapped in a thick, hooded robe, fluttered in the wind. It was the personification of his Spirit, strengthening its master’s essence many times over. That was why this level of cultivation had gotten the name ‘Spirit Knight’.
The Kurkhadan cultivators were too busy with their Techniques to pay attention to a slight shadow gliding across the sand. The hidden Einen hurried to whisper a few words to each of the Heaven Soldiers. Some of them shrugged it off, plunging back into the whirlwind that was the battle with the Knight. Others only nodded silently. Of course, the Knight noticed this. However, he had reached his new level of power only recently, so he was drunk on his own might. He was going to let the miserable little Soldiers try to enact their plan just to toy with them.
Summoning his Spirit’s power, he crossed his blades in front of his face and then swung them outward with all his might. Two crossed lightning bolts that assumed the form of thirty-foot scorpion stingers swept across the battlefield. They easily burned through three cultivators and their defensive Techniques, and then, after covering nearly three hundred yards, they blew up a dozen houses in Kurkhadan. The Knight looked at the fire with a bloodthirsty smile. The citizens’ cries and screams were like sweet music to him. He hoped that the cowardly sheikh could hear them. He hadn’t dared to leave the safety of his palace. In the desert, there was one immutable law: cowards deserved a jackal’s death.
Suddenly, it all ended. It had been a long time since the Knight had felt that burning sense of danger caused by a hungry beast staring at his back. Dismissing his attack, he turned eastward, where, almost five hundred yards away... something was happening. The Knight couldn’t find the right words to describe it.
Surrounded by a crowd of simple practitioners, a warrior sat in a lotus position on a pile of bodies. It was difficult to find a spot on his body not covered in bleeding wounds. His torn clothes fluttered in the wind. Only there wasn’t a wind blowing through the desert tonight. And yet, it was whirling around this warrior, and only him. Evening Stars! For a moment, the Knight could’ve sworn that the wind wasn’t swirling around the man, but... emanating from the warrior’s body. Had a pathetic practitioner just made the Spirit Knight feel fear? Nonsense! He would grind him into dust with his will alone!
Gathering some energy in his blade, the Knight was about to launch his Technique
when the warrior opened his eyes. Those bright blue eyes couldn’t belong to a human. There was so much rage in them. A frenzied dragon raged violently within the man’s pupils.
The wind around the warrior froze, and then a pillar of razor-sharp steel energy hit the sky. The wounds on the warrior’s body deepened and expanded. His body clearly couldn’t withstand such power. Only the radiance of his blade didn’t allow the man’s flesh to disintegrate into thousands of pieces.
The practitioners near the warrior were reduced to a bloody mess. They fell across the sand, or, more accurately, across the sandy dust, for the grains of sand had been cut into pieces by the energy as well.
The pillar of power spun, turning into a dragon with its mouth wide open. The warrior’s blade blazed with an eerie, frightening light.
“An Imperial weapon,” the Knight suddenly realized. He was already reaching for his Spirit in order to use his best defensive stance, but it was too late...
The Heavens cracked.
The dragon’s roar swept across the battlefield, forcing everyone, without exception, to stand still for a moment.
Chapter 300
With each breath he took, Hadjar felt the energy of the Sword Spirit fill his body. The sensation was alien to him. The soft, familiar current of the world energy would flow through his meridians like honey, promising peace and pleasure. The Sword Spirit’s energy was like the fury of an enormous army.
Hadjar’s heart beat faster, thudding like a war drum. Thousands of warriors marched in his veins. They cut Hadjar’s flesh from the inside with their razor-sharp helmets as they slashed his spirit and soul.
No practitioner could ever hope to hold the energy of a Spirit in his hands. If not for Ignes’ hieroglyphs, shining in the darkness, he would’ve disappeared right then and there. He would’ve simply dissolved into the ocean of power, and his body would have turned into a bloody mist to be scattered by the wind.
The Spirit’s energy went through Hadjar’s body, lingering inside him for a while. It surged toward his blade, trying to get to the inscriptions on it. It flowed into them, making them brighter and more powerful.
At that moment, Hadjar was a simple power conduit. He endured e
xtreme pain, feeling like the weapon in his hands had been imbued with unimaginable power. For the first time in his life, he was going to bet everything not on his skills, but on the soulless piece of iron he wielded.
It went against all of his convictions, but it was the only way he could cut a hole in the shroud of hopelessness they were all covered in for the light of hope to shine through. When the energy became too much for Hadjar’s body to bear, help came from an unexpected source. In the world of energy, a few lights flashed — the bracelets he’d been given by the Bedouin shaman.
Thin threads of power flowed out of them. They touched his left arm affectionately, right where his scarlet Name tattoo was. He started breathing more easily. Hadjar felt the wind’s presence, the comfort of his companion that had whispered secrets to him since childhood. He got a second wind and the Spirit’s energy flowed into his sword. When it broke out into unquenchable flame, Hadjar opened his eyes.
The world around him looked very different than what he recalled from a few moments ago. The hours he’d spent inside the River had been just a couple of seconds in reality. However, everything that had seemed solid and unbreakable before had now turned into something… shaky.
His every gesture seemed capable of splitting reality itself in half — a false, intoxicating sense of power that Hadjar immediately suppressed with his will. This helped him oppose the alien power he was borrowing for a few seconds.
Obeying his will, the Sword Spirit’s energy surged out of the spell on his blade. It spun around Hadjar, creating a heavy tornado, easily turning people into dust. Hadjar crushed, dropped, and changed it as he wished. The tornado soon turned into a dragon, and then Hadjar brought the energy back into his sword.
He stared at the Spirit Knight. Their eyes met and Hadjar was surprised to see fear in his foe’s eyes.
Was the Spirit Knight truly afraid of him, a simple practitioner?
Hadjar had neither the time nor the energy to think about it. He turned back to the depths of his soul. There he found the black sword, which he didn’t attach to the blade in his hands as usual, but mentally picked it up and assumed the ‘Spring Wind’ stance. The effect was significantly less powerful than if Hadjar had done this in the physical world, but it was enough.
This time, Hadjar imagined more than one leaf falling on the Knight’s head. Remembering the Tree of Eternal Autumn that Traves had shown him, Hadjar was able to hold the image of three leaves in his mind, visualizing them lying on his opponent’s head and shoulders.
“Falling Leaf!” He roared and swung down with his sword.
To everyone else, including the Knight, it looked like a single slash. However, Hadjar had actually swung three times in the span of a second with speed that was simply incredible for his level of cultivation.
What happened next surpassed even Hadjar’s wildest expectations. Before this adventure, he’d wanted to attain a Heaven Soldier’s power. Now, looking at the results of his attack, he doubted whether he could ever settle for just that much. The sky seemed to split apart over the Knight’s head. From the deepest reaches of its abyss, three black lightning bolts struck. They rushed toward the ground, growing larger and more distinct as they did so. A gust of wind preceded them, hitting the crimson sand and turning an area of about twenty yards across into a shallow hollow. The practitioners scattered in all directions like broken matches.
The lightning kept falling. It was possible to distinguish the paws, tails, long, diamond-scaled bodies and scarlet eyes, glittering in the darkness, within them. Three dragons made of wind, blades, and lightning surged downward. They circled each other. Then came the thunder that sounded like a dragon’s roar, like Traves’ own roar, in fact.
The Knight still managed to put up his defensive Technique.
The figure behind him straightened its robe, covering the bandit leader with its body. Under it, two crossed blades formed an X of scarlet lightning, atop which lay a round shield with a skull in the center.
The three dragons attacked the layered defense. They tore through it, and the impact echoed for many miles around. The clash easily decimated the dunes, kicking up a sandstorm that seemed to reach for the sky.
The idea of a coordinated attack from the Heaven Soldiers immediately failed. Even they had to assume defensive stances to keep themselves from being obliterated by the lightning bolts. Red and black, they struck the sand and the people repeatedly. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
Hadjar leaned weakly on his blade, which was embedded in someone’s armor. His Technique had acted by itself and he’d had no power over it. Hadjar was no stronger than a mere mortal right now. He’d lost all his energy. The hieroglyphs on his blade were fading as the first cracks snaked across its surface.
The dragons tore through the Spirit’s robe and slammed themselves against the bars of the lightning cage. The Knight held his crossed swords aloft, roaring with the strain. Sweat poured down his face, and there were shallow scratches on his body, but nothing more.
It was clear that the bandit leader was gradually pushing back. Hadjar’s attack had lacked the power to defeat him. The battle was a foregone conclusion...
Hadjar was covered by a quick, dark shadow. A heron song swept across the battlefield, and then the dragons struck... the sand.
The Knight, who’d been impaled by a long arrow, had flown several yards away and been nailed to the sand. Blood poured from his chest. His body quivered in its death throes and then froze.
Hadjar turned slowly toward the oasis. On the roof of the palace, which was almost two miles away, stood a tall, proud figure. Its golden clothes fluttered and it held an amazing, beautifully crafted bow. Waves of power still radiated from the man. Behind the figure, a giant heron spread its wings. It was a Spirit. The sheikh had decided to take part in the battle after all. The bird’s cry that Hadjar had heard had been the sheik’s arrow.
Hadjar cursed.
His sword cracked and, after losing its support, he nearly tumbled down. Just before he fell, he was halted by the islander who had emerged from the shadows. He offered his shoulder to his companion and helped him stand.
“They’re monsters, Einen,” Hadjar whispered. “I’ll be damned if they’re human…”
Chapter 301
Einen carried Hadjar to the closest healer’s tent. After handing his friend over to one of them, the bald man disappeared into the shadows. Apparently, he was rushing back to the battlefield.
Hadjar turned eastward, where the flames of the battle were still burning. Now, looking at it from the sidelines, he realized this battle was very different from what he’d gotten used to in the northern kingdoms. There were too many strong practitioners here. Flashes of Techniques, explosions, screams — all of it had merged into a single symphony of death.
Hadjar flinched, remembering Serra’s stories about the battles between Empires. Here, a soldier was usually a practitioner, over there, they were often a true cultivator. What did a battle between thousands of true cultivators look like? What kind of devastation did they leave behind after the dust settled?
Hadjar was carried over to the infirmary and the flap closed, cutting off his view of the battle.
One of the chief healers approached the wounded man. He was easily distinguished by a yellow stone in his turban. Less skilled healers had red stones. He examined Hadjar and abruptly whispered something to his assistant. Hadjar was laid down on a makeshift bed: several tables stood together, covered with white cloth. It was a hard surface to lay on, but Hadjar still didn’t feel pain. He was glad that he hadn’t been put in the group of hopeless cases.
Hadjar had already seen these kinds of ‘hospitals’. The ‘healthiest’ warriors sat or stood against the walls. They had broken arms, cut off fingers, torn ears, or were missing eyes. They would be healed quickly, given some soothing potions, and sent back into the battle.
The second group, including Hadjar, were the severely wounded, but not fatally so. They would be put o
n stretchers and beds, bandaged, sewn up, their limbs amputated as needed. It was quite unsettling to witness two ‘red’ healers cutting off a drugged, snoring soldier’s arm as it hung by a small thread of muscle and skin.
The third group were the ‘hopeless’. They would also be given a drug. They’d fall asleep, and then, when their breathing stopped, soldiers would carry their corpses outside.
“Drink this,” one of the healers came up to Hadjar and held out a bottle with a fragrant, orange potion.
An explosion thundered behind the ragged walls of the tent. The tables shook, numerous bottles and flasks rang. A glow stained everything around them with a scarlet hue.
Hadjar drained the bottle in a single gulp. He hoped that he would wake back up in this tent, not at the threshold of his forefathers’ house. Being in the hospital after a battle was nerve-racking because you never knew whether you’d be leaving it yourself or if someone would be carrying you away.
He soon fell asleep. Perhaps Hadjar wouldn’t have even needed a potion to fall asleep, but this way he didn’t feel the healers swarming around him. Armed with needles, threads and ointments, they patched his body up. There were so many wounds that they had to work in several shifts.
Fortunately, what they had to do wasn’t complicated, just a chore. No veins, tendons, or nerves had been damaged. There were only superficial cuts on the man’s skin or deeper ones across his muscles. It amounted to lots of simple but tedious work for the practitioner healers.
Hadjar dreamed. It was an amazing and calming dream.
He was sitting on a hill, a sea of grass all around him. Tall, green grass swayed, caressed by the wind. The wind also played with unusual birds that were flying below massive, fluffy clouds.
Hadjar’s hair was fluttering pleasantly and his face was no longer sweaty. He was wearing his favorite clothes, simple and worn. A wide straw hat with a slit on the right side was on his head.
Dragon Heart: Sea of Sand. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 4 Page 20