Alex nodded. “No doubt you’re absolutely right. I can only hope my sense of his fighting style improves with each match. Maybe then I’ll have a fighting chance.”
She snorted. “Not likely. He’s a full sphere beyond you!”
Alex smiled, electing to say nothing.
Some cards were best kept close to the chest. He could only hope he’d eventually be able to play them. But right now, he needed rest like never before, and to do a gentle full body healing where he let his body regenerate as it chose. Obviously, his forced focus healing had neglected some crucial injury, because he was feeling dizzier by the second.
Qie Qie’s concern grew. “Alex, are you sure you’re alright?”
Alex forced himself to nod. “You know we cultivating Ruidians heal quick. A good night’s sleep, and I’m sure I’ll be able to face tomorrow without too many tears.”
Qie Qie flashed a worried look. She shook her head at the gate. “Damn. If I had permission to enter, I’d feel duty bound to watch over you tonight.” She sighed. “I’m just sorry there’s no way for you to stay in my dormitory. Women only, for obvious reasons.”
Alex nodded. He already knew a number of powerful Silvers who lived by their own rules, but obviously the lower your status, the more you had to toe the line, a truth that seemed fundamental to all worlds.
He still had the cheek to grin at his friend. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to tell Zhao Doushi what an awesome kung fu sister you are. A beautiful catch he’d be a fool to pass up.”
His friend blushed furiously and looked away.
Alex winced. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget that my Ruidian humor doesn’t always translate properly.”
She chuckled softly. “You Ruidians are awfully… direct, aren’t you?”
Alex nodded. “But to be fair, I’ve known some very direct Yidushians as well.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Of course, they were either kitsune or related to kitsunes by blood or marriage, come to think of it.”
Qie Qie snorted. “Yidushians?”
Alex shrugged. “Well, what else do I call you?”
“People?”
Alex grinned. “So you’re all just normal people and I’m the alien Ruidian?”
Qie Qie nodded without any trace of irony. “Of course.”
Alex just chuckled ruefully and shook his head. Then stopped, feeling both dizzy and nauseous.
“Alright, I really have to rest. I’ll see you tomorrow, Qie Qie.”
“Bye, Alex. Are you sure you’re alright?”
But Alex had already shut the gate and was too busy trying to walk straight to answer, collapsing into his humble bed mat just minutes later, savoring the glorious feeling of his exhausted body sinking into the soft furs as his interface blazed in his mind.
Intracranial hemorrhaging detected.
A flashing message he only sensed a heartbeat before surrendering to his own body’s natural regenerative techniques. Which were only a fraction as good as his own.
Panic jolted him out of his stupor.
He forced himself to take sharp, focused breaths, pulling himself free of exhaustion’s seductive embrace, slowly but steadily cycling his Qi and embracing his Eternal Fox technique the minute he had jolted himself back to full wakefulness, now terrified of just how groggy he felt.
He swallowed back panic clawing at his throat, forcing himself to focus. To relax.
To feel the Dark and Light Qi cycling through his cells, drawing away the tremendous metabolic heat generated as they healed themselves at hundreds of times their normal rate, his own mastery of his divine technique leaving the cells ageless and in perfect repair when he staved off the deadly bleeding just seconds, or perhaps it was hours, later.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, both relieved and horrified by how close he had come to succumbing to his own folly.
He then spent the entire evening embracing Eternal Fox, tapping into the storm of Qi perpetually around him, but allowing the healing energies to flow undirected, and naturally heal whatever damage to his body or meridian channels he might have missed before.
It was late into the night when he finally stopped, more than a little appalled by just how much damage his enemy had inflicted.
“Damn bastard was trying to burn out my peripheral channels!” he hissed to himself, shocked by just how bad the damage had been, knowing that if he had actually tried to channel Qi during that fight, he would have been in for a rude surprise.
His enemy was both more savage and more resourceful than even Alex had realized, but at least there was an upside.
Qi Absorption is now Rank 3! Fire & Poison aspect specializations reduce all Qi attacks from these domains by an additional 5 points!
Your meridians have been forged in fire! Your peripheral meridian channels are now Extremely Resilient, and enjoy a total +5 modifier to all durability checks, +6 against all meridian-searing attacks based on Fire.
He smiled with relief, realizing that as scary as spotting that damaged path of peripheral channels had looked, like a wilted cluster of vines, it was just the tiniest patch of the massive network of peripheral channels he was blessed with, localized to where Lai Wei’s fists had pummeled Alex with Fire Qi, and he sensed that even here, his heightened meridian channel durability had mitigated a great deal of the damage.
And most important to Alex, his main meridian gateways, massive as they were, had taken absolutely no damage at all. Which humbled him for long moments when he realized just how much Qi they had evolved to handle over a thousand years, or a thousand breaths, balanced between Heaven and Hell, one life and the next. Not for the first time, he felt truly overwhelmed by the momentous task before him. For the path he dared to walk was a divine path, Alex now possessing Meridian gateways somehow evolved to what might one day, countless years from now, transcend even Jade cultivators.
Assuming Alex could truly ascend the cultivation summit.
Because just devising a Dual Path cycling technique that would comprise all eight elements that he had an affinity for, in addition to Dark Qi, was a daunting task and would probably require the use of multiple cultivation manuals he still had to accrue. And who knew how many credits it would cost, just to earn basic access to the library. And to top it all off, he still had a massive blockage in his seventh meridian gate to cycle through.
Alex frowned then, realizing the blockage was just a tiny bit smaller than it had been the day before. Almost as if… no. It was too risky. He knew that. But if he didn’t know better, the mad inspiration that had led him to combine three interrelated techniques, to say nothing of Silver Swan, might have been doing him more good than even he had realized.
He chuckled softly, collapsing back in the thick carpet of grass by the garden, feeling an odd mixture of exhaustion, relief, triumph, and despair. That’s when his wandering eyes caught sight of a certain pillar of perfect blackness.
The obstacles before him were herculean. As bitter a struggle to overcome as the massive obelisk of obsidian stone that his mentor had shown him, seemingly on a whim, just the other day.
Alex felt a chill, quickly forcing his eyes away. It was the one piece of architecture that didn’t really belong in this pristine cultivation nexus, having no place in the garden’s harmony, no balance at all.
Then he shook his head, refusing to surrender to what he now realized was fear, no matter that exhaustion made him feel weak. He turned around and forced himself to contemplate the struggle before him, encapsulated so perfectly by the sliver of midnight on the other side of his master’s luxurious home, recalling with perfect clarity the morning his master had left on another mysterious excursion.
“Come, Alex, there is something I want you to see,” his mentor had said, a curious Alex following, for all that he was in a hurry to rush to first period and not give Master Fu Shen any further excuse to focus on him, knowing how utterly he was despised by the man. Best to slip in and out of his class as silent and unobtrusive as a ghost, and earn at le
ast some measure of tolerance.
Elder Panheu then chuckled, surprising Alex with just how well his mentor could read him. “Afraid of offending old Fu Shen? Such caution is fine if life had relegated you to slipping unseen among the cracks and crevices of fate, sheltering in comfort as the storms of destiny howl all around us, so much coming to a head, these past few years. But that path suits you poorly, lad. You were made for conflict, to laugh in the eye of the storm!”
Alex had felt his guts twist with his master’s fierce smile, though he had only nodded and followed his patron, feeling an odd flash of discomfort when he first saw the obsidian edifice cleverly hidden on the far side of his master’s house, away from the heart of the property, for all that there was still a good bit of space between it and the far wall of the estate.
“What the heck is that?” Alex had asked, sensing a pressure from it unlike anything he had ever sensed before. It was neither infernal nor divine, neither malicious nor saintly.
Qi Perception check made!
It was massive, imposing, and seemed almost to repel the presence of spiritual energy altogether.
Master Pan had chuckled softly. “Nothing infernal, I’ll assure you of that much, lad. But other than that, I don’t know!” He seemed almost to take pride in his ignorance. “It was a curiosity left by the previous master of this estate. A somewhat-eccentric body cultivator who eschewed all tradition, all precedent, determined to find his own path forward, he would say. He didn’t radiate any more power than a Bronze, so of course had no shortage of Silvers eager to challenge him for his estate! Only the newer Silvers, mind you. The older ones had long ago assumed he wouldn’t have held on to it for gods knew how many years, if he was truly as weak as he seemed. And when he actually did respond to challenges, I’m sure you can guess the results.”
Alex blinked. “You’re going to tell me a Bronze actually beat multiple Silvers?”
His mentor flashed a wicked smile. “Absolutely destroyed them! And again, no one’s quite sure how. No one’s even sure if he was actually a Bronze or something else altogether! He was an odd one. Much like you.”
Alex blinked. “He was a Ruidian?”
“Of course not. Don’t be absurd. You really shouldn’t even exist, you know. For all that the Ruidians of Yidushi have had their monstrous origins bred free of them with all those young bucks who enjoy the exotic, whelping god knows how many half-breeds upon Ruidian girls over countless generations, it can’t be denied that at this point your race is as much human as it is outsider! Still, all that being said, no city-born Ruidian has ever cultivated, though now I’m forced to wonder if there are entire tribes of cultivating Ruidians out in the wilderness, citizens of the myriad villages and towns that are too numerous to bother with, so long as they continue to provide Yidushians with the food that is our due.”
Alex shrugged. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir. Only that I hope you don’t carry that idea of cultivating Ruidians too far, because you just know crazy fanatics like a certain homicidal clan will use it as an excuse to enforce Ruidian purges. And if that happens, low morale and towns no longer willing to trade might crash the food supply and result in a lot of hungry Yidushians,” Alex had quickly added, desperate to give a reason that would be in the city’s own best interest to leave Alex’s persecuted people alone. Not that they were his people, but still.
But Elder Panheu had only snorted, gazing almost longingly upon the pillar of pitch-black stone. “Just look at this obelisk! Remarkable, isn’t it?” He then flashed a knowing smile. “Tell me how you feel, gazing upon it.”
Alex swallowed. “I feel like it’s… wrong, somehow. Like it doesn’t belong. It doesn’t flow with the rest of the garden. It’s not evil, per se, it’s just a, well...”
“An obstacle?”
Alex nodded. “Yes. Exactly. An obstacle one cannot flow past or avoid. An obstacle that one can only break through.”
Elder Panheu held up one scarred fist. “Indeed. I had once thought the same. I had no luck, though it did inspire me to embrace a new body cultivation technique.”
He then flashed a wicked smile. “Hit it, Alex, with everything you got.”
Alex had blinked at his master, then proceeded to do just that.
You have encountered a Qi barrier! Unable to pierce Qi barrier. Damage has rebounded. You have suffered 1 Light Wound.
Alex hissed, wincing at his own cracked knuckle, never having struck anything so hard before in his life.
His master had just shrugged. “You see? A very hard object. Immovable. Indestructible. Were it not for its discreet placement, it would be an eyesore. Fortunately, it does not disturb the flow of spiritual energy within the cultivation garden or my view of the sea, at its present location.”
Alex nodded. “Thank you for showing me, master. I’m just curious as to...”
“Why?” The man gave a thoughtful shrug. “Who knows? It just seemed like the right thing to do.” But the smile he flashed Alex implied so much more, his final words as Alex headed out the gate were, “By the way, Zhao Doushi and I will be gone for at least a week. Maybe longer. The gate will open to you and you alone. Try not to get killed while we’re gone, Alex. And when you fight, fight as if your life depended upon it. But please try not to kill anyone until we get back.”
Alex shook his head at the memory as he gazed at that imposing obsidian obelisk once more. Almost sensing the challenge of it, feeling a curious twist in his gut.
Like it was waiting for him.
Which made absolutely no sense at all.
The next morning he got up with a start, groaning when his internal clock made it clear he would be late for class if he didn’t race across school grounds that very instant, which he did, panting for just a few seconds once he dropped into his seat, just seconds before Master Fu Shen began his lecture, this time paying particular attention to yet another historical battle, only one wherein a noble Yidushian cultivator challenged what Alex took to be a Greater Elementalist Ruidian, enjoying an absolutely astounding victory when he dodged all his enemy’s attacks and savagely, one might say sadistically, tore the Ruidian apart, limb from limb.
“Like Lai Wei did to the interloper here,” smirked Yu Chun, one of Alex’s more obnoxious classmates, who Alex didn’t even bother glancing at, having already sensed the bitter young cultivator’s broken meridians, knowing he’d never clear more than four, no matter how promising he had seemed when first entering the Academy.
“I’m surprised he didn’t slink away like an animal days ago with his tail between his legs,” sneered another student, this one female, who Alex also happily ignored.
“And yet somehow, he’s still here, looking as sharp as any of us, not like he just got trashed by a Bronze. That has to mean something,” noted a third student, looking at Alex thoughtfully, and he alone earned a derisive sneer from their professor.
“If you fools are done babbling like geese, get out of my class!” snapped Fu Shen. “Students who actually appreciate the importance of history, geography, and politics will be attending soon, and you beginners always make my lectures run late!”
Alex said nothing, though he was certain that the lectures only ran late because their professor absolutely loved expounding on the racial flaws of Alex’s supposed people, thinking he was somehow hurting Alex in doing so, though all the bitter professor ever earned was a guileless smile for all his efforts. Which of course infuriated Fu Shen more, which of course made Alex’s grin all the wider, and left the instructor furious by the end of class.
Fortunately, the remaining embers of hostility toward him didn’t follow him to the next class he shared with half the previous class, and Alex was grateful for the precious couple of hours where he could just center himself and cultivate, with their instructor doing little more than giving them all quiet nods of greeting before spending his time strictly on those students who were still struggling.
Though perhaps Alex should have been more cautious
before immersing himself in his modified technique, he instantly thought, when he reflexively popped open his eyes just moments before class ended to catch several dozen students quietly cultivating, most in the lotus position, and one Master Liang gazing at Alex with a sort of hyper-focused intensity that put Alex instantly on guard.
“Master?” asked a suddenly concerned Alex, fearing he had somehow revealed something that should have been kept secret.
But Master Liang just smiled. “It’s good to see a student gain such quick mastery over techniques that take most cultivators years to get a solid grasp of.”
Alex swallowed, not quite sure what to say.
Master Liang’s odd smile only grew. “If one didn’t know better, one would think your purification technique has actually evolved into a cycling technique. But that, of course, is impossible for any basic cultivator. Still, your peers could learn a lot from your dedicated focus, never growing bored or thinking to gossip with peers when you should be quietly cultivating.”
He turned to the class at large. “Young Alex here has progressed remarkably fast in developing his meridian purification technique! If you were wise, you would befriend him, or at least tolerate his competence, and learn what insights he has to share. Remember, the wise cultivator cares not the shape and color of his ally, only that his ally remains true.”
A couple girls actually favored Alex with thoughtful smiles, but the statement mostly earned surly glares sent his way. He couldn’t help wincing at those. It seemed that most of this class was at least tolerating him, but Alex greatly feared the cost of his professor waving his successes in his classmate’s faces. If it was anything like being the teacher’s pet in his childhood, it was a sure recipe for disaster.
Master Liang chuckled softly. “Ah well, do as you like. They’re your futures, after all, not mine. And whether you make it past the treacherous shoals before Bronze, or founder to your own destruction, you will have only yourselves to blame. Class dismissed.”
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Forsworn: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 3 Page 27