Light in the Darkness

by Patrick Laplante

  “I believe everyone deserves a chance,” Cha Ming said softly. “I will save him.”

  The doctor shrugged. “I think that’s foolish, but I won’t stop you. It’s your right to choose to save a life. However, you must be willing to shoulder the consequences of your actions.” Then the doctor stepped out of the clinic and began to disperse the crowd.

  Cha Ming first cut out the barbed arrow that was protruding from the man’s shoulder. Then he adjusted the man’s bones and set them in place with splints. Afterward, he stitched up several larger gashes, cleaned him, and set him up in the room next to his.

  With any luck, he would recover.

  A few days passed by before Cha Ming woke up to a crash in the room next door. He yawned and put on his robes. The man’s reaction was expected. After all, he’d restrained him, confiscated his weapons and bag of holding, and drugged him so he couldn’t harness his qi.

  Cha Ming knocked on the door before opening it. He was greeted by an attempted back kick to the mid-section. Snorting, he dove past the kick, grabbing the man by the neck in an instant. Then he squeezed slightly, showing the man that if he wished to, he could kill him in an instant.

  “Where am I? Why did you lock me up? What happened to my cultivation?” the man asked ferociously.

  “We found you washed up on shore, and I saved you and treated your wounds,” Cha Ming replied. “If you don’t want me to create new ones, I suggest you get back in your bed and cooperate.”

  The man hesitated but ultimately agreed to sit on his bed. After waiting for a minute, Cha Ming came back with a flask containing a putrid-smelling potion.

  “Drink this,” Cha Ming instructed. “You’re extremely dehydrated. This will help alleviate the symptoms. Besides, even if your qi was unsealed, a measly sixth level of qi condensation wouldn’t pose the slightest threat to me.”

  The man sighed and drank the potion in a single gulp. He grimaced, but his countenance instantly improved. “I don’t suppose I need to drink something like this every day?” he asked.

  Cha Ming chuckled. “Only if you misbehave. I’ve confiscated your weapons and your bag of holding. I’ll give them back to you when you leave. In the meantime, recovering your qi isn’t out of the question if you behave.” He approached the man and directed his spiritual force to the man’s arms. The bones had already begun mending.

  “What realm of body refinement have you achieved?” Cha Ming asked.

  The man shrugged. “I cultivated to the fifth level many decades ago, but I wasn’t able to improve any more. It’s a hard life out there, and a man needs all the advantages he can get.”

  “Fair enough,” Cha Ming said. “It seems to me like you’ll recover within three weeks’ time. I’m afraid to say that due to your questionable background, you’re under house arrest. I hope that won’t pose a problem for you.”

  The man nodded. “That’s very reasonable. I would do the same thing. Very well, I’ll stay in this room and won’t complain. Besides, if I cause any trouble, it seems like you’re more than capable of chasing me down and handling me.”

  Cha Ming’s heart softened slightly at the man’s understanding attitude. “It won’t be necessary for you to stay in this room. I’ll call you out when breakfast is ready.”

  Weeks passed by uneventfully. Cha Ming continued to care for his lone patient while Li Yin treated the residents in their homes. This was all to maintain secrecy. The less the man knew, the less reason he would have to return to this village after he left.

  Cha Ming had even delayed his recovery to ensure that the man, Lei Dong, didn’t cause trouble. Fortunately, he had been quite cooperative. Cha Ming eventually allowed him to regain control over his qi so that he could at least cultivate to pass the time.

  Finally, the time came to send the patient on his way. While Lei Dong seemed full of gratitude, Cha Ming still didn’t dare expose the rest of the village to him. He had Li Yin alert the villagers, who were instructed that everyone should stay in their houses for two hours around lunchtime.

  “Is it really necessary to keep me blindfolded?” Lei Dong asked Cha Ming. They were both treading on a barely used path, the only way out of the village. The smell of roses invaded their nostrils as they proceeded. “The degree of secrecy you’ve treated me with is unusual.”

  “We just like our privacy,” Cha Ming responded. “Outsiders aren’t welcome, and while I’m not so black hearted as to leave you to die, I don’t want to put our isolation at risk. Outsiders mean trouble, and I don’t want you finding your way back.”

  Lei Dong shrugged. “Quite frankly, I would only need to follow the scent of roses to find this place if I really wanted to. Still, I’m very thankful you’ve treated me, and letting you keep your secret is the least I can do.” Cha Ming wasn’t sure how to react to his sarcastic tone of voice, so he kept silent as they walked.

  They continued walking for an hour before Cha Ming heard some branches breaking. Sighing, he cast out his spiritual force and located two small silhouettes.

  “You can come out now,” he yelled.

  Two shy children, Yi Qiao and Ling Shen, emerged from the bushes beside them.

  “Didn’t your parents tell you not to come out?” Cha Ming asked.

  “They told us, but we really wanted to see the outsider,” Yi Qiao said. “It’s been over a year since we last saw one. Ever since you came—”

  “That’s enough,” Cha Ming said, cutting her off. “You’ve seen him, now hurry back to the village.”

  Both children looked aggrieved but scampered off nonetheless. Cha Ming’s authority in the village was quite high now that he had taken over as the doctor’s assistant.

  He continued guarding the man as he led him farther and farther away from the village, winding in circular paths to confuse him. Eventually, he took the man to a boat and brought him down the river. After another few hours of travel, they arrived at a small village, where he released him and returned his possessions.

  Cha Ming didn’t stick around. Instead, he took the long way around and returned to his boat, which he led down the river through an alternate path. He kept a careful eye out for the brigand he had saved, ensuring that there was no chance he was being followed. He had done his best to preserve the village’s secret.

  If it were to be exposed, disaster could befall them.

  Lei Dong was seated at the bar of a tavern. He ordered an ale; it had been far too long since he’d had a proper drink. A pleasant-looking tavern wench brought the drink over and insinuated that she had other services she offered. For a price.

  He shooed her off. He normally wouldn’t have refused, but his mind kept racing whenever he remembered one of the few scenes he had seen from the village. He had caught a glimpse of those two children while his caretaker, Cha Ming, shooed them away. In the short instance when he shifted his blindfold, he saw a little boy and a little girl.

  The two were both unremarkable. They had a different accent than Cha Ming, so it was just like they said—he was a foreigner as well. That meant that there was something in the village that Cha Ming knew would tempt him, thus the isolation. He wouldn’t have bothered to speculate what it was, and he had been prepared to never return to the village again.

  Until he saw those two children.

  The boy and the girl wore ragged clothes, clearly of crude construction. However, they had one thing in common. They each wore a bracelet, and the little girl wore a necklace. They were made of simple rope and clear crystals. But as a cultivator, how could he not recognize those crystals?

  It’s my lucky day today. If those children could afford to wear spirit stones like jewelry, there had to be plenty more where that came from. Sorry, kid. You might have saved me, but I’d sell my own mother if enough profit was involved.

  The young healer had thought he was being very clever, leading him in circles like he did. However, there were still a few hints that the experienced bandit could follow. For one, the village was within two ho
urs of a river. Most villages would be built very close to one, so he might have led him the long way for the sake of deception. The second clue was the steep drop in humidity after he left the village. It was as though the village was covered in a perpetual fog. Very few places would have such high humidity in the area. Therefore, he speculated the village was near a waterfall.

  The only tricky detail was that the healer was a powerful body cultivator. Fortunately, Lei Dong could feel that as powerful as he was, he wasn’t a foundation-establishment cultivator. Therefore, his strength wasn’t insurmountable.

  He mused at how his failed mission had instead changed into his greatest fortune. “The world of cultivation isn’t for the kind-hearted,” he muttered. “I’ll plead for them to spare you when the time comes.”

  After finishing his drink, he set off immediately. It would still take a few weeks to track down his leader and gather the bandits for an outing.

  Chapter 13: Human Tide

  A fifteen-foot two-tailed fox leaped off a cliff, narrowly avoiding a flaming arrow. This arrow was naturally not shot by a beast, but rather a foundation-establishment cultivator. It was a very vexing experience to be chased by such lowlifes. Unfortunately, out of the eighty foundation-establishment cultivators who had come to the mountain, twenty were chasing him. How was such a coincidence possible in this world?

  The mountain leader had instructed all the beasts to defend their hovels and abandon those who fell to these early foundation-establishment cultivators—the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Huxian felt a conspiracy was afoot, but unfortunately, he had no proof.

  Three flying swords zoomed past his head, which he barely avoided. They shaved off three strands of his precious hair. As he dodged, he carefully avoided the various beasts that lived in his territory. Surprisingly, the qi-condensation cultivators had not assaulted these lesser beasts in his territory. It was as though they were avoiding the area on purpose, knowing that there would be much collateral damage from a major fight.

  Fine, then. If you want to play, let’s play rough. Huxian increased his speed by one tenth, forcing the cultivators behind him to use various exhausting techniques to keep up with him. At the same time, two saber-wielding cultivators flew out in front of him in an attempt to slow him down.

  Pitiful fools.

  His two tails glowed, summoning the image of a thirty-foot bagua, which imprinted itself on the leafy ground. The ones following him had no time to swerve away. As they passed over the bagua with their flying swords, all eight trigrams and the yin-yang rotated in a hazy swirl. The six cultivators slowed to a crawl as a result, and it seemed like time itself was affected.

  Huxian howled and increased his speed by a third yet again, surprising the two saber-wielding cultivators. He didn’t dodge them, however. Instead, he rushed at them, biting both their necks in quick succession. Their sabers bounced off his lustrous fur coat, leaving it completely undamaged.

  Meanwhile, the six pursuing cultivators regained their initial momentum and resumed their chase. The trap had only delayed them by two seconds, but in such a high-level fight, two seconds was a vital difference.

  “Water team. Go!” one of them hollered. Up ahead, he saw another five cultivators coming in from both sides. They formed numerous hand seals, which summoned five icy dragons. The dragons were linked together by a thin thread, and the circular formation condensed into a viscous liquid in the space around Huxian. He grunted and glowed white, his purifying aura forming a film around him and preventing him from being affected.

  Instead of trying to flee, he dashed over to one of the ice-dragon controllers. With a determined look, the man took out a complex-looking talisman, which he slapped on his chest before drawing two flying swords from his bag of holding. They quickly slashed at Huxian, who was unable to react in time. The cultivator let out a roar of triumph, as it appeared his swords made contact. He died with a grin on his face as Huxian’s mirror image disappeared. The crafty fox had used a decoy to slip behind him, after which he bit off half his body. The protective talisman served as little more than a condiment to the ravenous fox.

  “Get together! Don’t let him attack us individually,” one of the cultivators yelled. The confused cultivators quickly assembled into groups of five. They had clearly rehearsed these actions, and judging by their uniform robes, Huxian figured they were part of a sect and not just lone cultivators.

  Fortunately for Huxian, their assembly into groups lost them a few precious seconds, which he used to dart farther up the mountain toward his old friend, Lord Earth Ferret. His fifteen-foot form shrank as he ducked into the lord’s burrow.

  “What are you doing here?” the ferret yelled. “Get out of my hole, or I’ll tear you to pieces!”

  However, before he had a chance to act upon his threat, the burrow was torn apart by a large blast. Both Huxian and Lord Earth Ferret burst out of the burrow, their coats singed and full of dirt. Four cultivators floated above them on flying swords. Given their pale complexions, it was clear they had just exhausted themselves to destroy the burrow.

  “Fight with me or die,” Huxian growled at the ferret. His aura surged as he flew toward the four cultivators. They attempted to block him with great difficulty, but the little fox moved so fast he seemed to have an illusory double. They didn’t know he was constantly splitting and recombining himself in order to confuse them and hide his cloning abilities.

  “Activate the trap!” the leader of the four shouted. Four more figures appeared, forming rapid hand seals. Multiple earth spikes jutted out from the ground, piercing toward Huxian at a speed much faster than he should have been capable of dodging, but he rapidly shifted back and forth, avoiding forty-eight spikes in total.

  As his figure ducked and weaved between the spikes, he saw light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, that light was yellow lightning. An impressive-looking cultivator looked down at him, smirking. He held a totem in his hand, and given its treasure aura, Huxian estimated that it was a high-grade treasure.

  I was baited! Lei Jiang, come out! Huxian ordered his general mentally. The small mouse burst out from the rune on Huxian’s tail, opening his mouth and forming a vortex. He swallowed the lightning like a light snack. Like Huxian, the Calamity-Swallowing Mouse was now an early-purification demon beast, more than capable of becoming a lord on this small mountain. He sped toward the lightning cultivator as though it were the most delicious prey in existence.

  Meanwhile, the ferret had not escaped. Although his rage toward Huxian had not diminished, he was utterly enraged that his entire brood had been annihilated by these damned cultivators. Like badgers, ferrets were not the calmest of creatures. His earth armor manifested, and he flew toward the water cultivators like a natural predator. They only managed to defend a few claws before being torn to shreds. After all, demons were much stronger than cultivators of the same level.

  While the ferret engaged in his bloody rampage, Huxian darted past the Calamity-Devouring Mouse and landed in the middle of the four cultivators who had destroyed the ferret’s burrow. Seeing that he only had half a second to dispatch them, he unleashed another black-and-white bagua beneath the four cultivators.

  This time, however, it spun in reverse. From his perspective, everything outside slowed down to a crawl. In reality, time inside had increased by a factor of four, and he used these seconds to devour the cultivators one bite after another. Those outside could only stare in abject horror at the gruesome spectacle.

  What kind of hellish two-tailed fox is this? the leader wondered. He only had around ten cultivators left with him, though another twenty were rapidly approaching.

  Our forces should have been sufficient for a simple two-tailed fox. Either they had been lied to or this was new information their informant wasn’t privy to. Either way, they could only win by pooling their powers into their sect’s battle formation. The situation was quite depressing for Zhong Fa. After all, he was risking his poor life to complete this oper
ation, and he would only receive a few paltry merit points as compensation.

  This is all because of the sect leader’s stupid agreement and his immediate need for a two-tailed fox’s beast core.

  Regrettably, any higher-level cultivators were strictly forbidden in this exercise. He could only wait for their forces to assemble before attacking once more.

  “Follow me, Lord Earth Ferret!” Huxian shouted. He instilled his words with the bloodline pressure of a Godbeast. Hearing his words, the enraged ferret regained a modicum of sanity and obeyed his command without question. A small mouse wreathed in lightning joined them a few breaths later.

  Master, what would you have me do? the Calamity-Swallowing Mouse asked.

  Break off from our group and head to the peak of the mountain, Huxian replied. Stay undetected. I want to know if the sovereign of the mountain is up to anything. If things are as I suspect, he’s colluding with the cultivators.

  The mouse’s expression contorted in rage at the news. Colluding with the humans? That’s despicable!

  Huxian nodded. Yes, it’s fine for the humans to vie for more territory, but that old bear is too despicable. He is far too worried about controlling the other beasts on the mountain, so much that he’s forgotten about his heritage and the nobility of us beasts. I suspect he has been supressing any ambitious spirit beasts with potential. In fact, he will do the same to you, should he discover your identity. This is how the humans have been able to slaughter us year after year with impunity.

  Master is wise, the mouse replied. If you don’t require anything further, I’ll be leaving now.

  The mouse vanished, and flickering lightning was the only hint that he had ever been present. Even though they were both early-purification demons, and Huxian was one tier higher, the mouse’s maximum speed was still twice that of Huxian’s. He was glad to have enslaved the little mouse early, because it would have been impossible to capture it if their cultivation levels were equal.