“And can you not only sense it, but use it at will? Not that I even need to ask, all the hours we spent sparring together while you were embracing the most delicious hallucinations upon death’s doorstep, absorbing an entire greater spirit beast core, forging your own glorious transcendence!”
Alex smiled. “You’re right. I can tap into it at will, Master WiFu.”
His patron nodded. “A novice student transcending from a beginner’s first footsteps to an adept’s assurance in just a few short weeks. Quite remarkable, Alex, by anyone’s measure. And how about that wonderful forbidden art, Silver Swan? Streamlining the flow of Qi so efficiently as to allow sweeping kicks and cleaving cuts with the force and fury of the ocean behind your blows! Are you able to channel even a sliver of the Water and Steel Qi that, by rights, no one below Silver Giant in status should be able to tap into?”
Alex felt his cheeks flush. “You already know the answer to that, sir.”
WiFu nodded. “Indeed I do. Adept rank in that skill as well, able to call forth the force and fury of the sea itself with every one of those whipping strikes your lovely Hao Chan employs so gracefully, having struck your own heart like a bell.”
The former chief inspector smirked at Alex’s expression. “Of course, there was a cost to embracing that art, was there not?”
Alex felt his cheeks blaze. “I need to achieve Silver before I can possibly hope to… well...”
“Fill the world with little blue-eyed Hao Chans, and protect them from all those who would strenuously object to their very existence? Ah, yes. The tiny drawback to the killing art a handful of predators had once used to prime the girl you rescued for the most destructive of dominations, where she would be forced to surrender not just her body, but her very life-force to the appetites of countless rapacious men. Truly a heroic act, forging her in fire as you did, gifting her with the missing elements she needed to turn her Clipped Wings kung fu into what had once been the favorite killing art of countless concubine assassins of the Jade Emperor’s court, their purity forever assured, immediately earning entry into his harem upon their Silver transcendence!”
The elegantly dressed inspector gave a nonchalant shrug. “Of course, the art fell into disuse after the schism half a millennia ago, with only weakened variants used to permanently maim harlots and concubines, as well as extract their life force, being prevalent for the last few centuries. And do you for one moment think that you would have been successful in your attempts to rescue her, had you both not been forged by the bitter trials of your journey and all those you slew to save her?”
Alex flushed. “No, sir. No, I do not.”
WiFu chuckled. “Of course, it should be impossible for any male to learn that art, but somehow you managed it, no doubt thanks to your Spiritual Teacher skill working both ways. Not that I’m at all surprised by whatever delicious feats my youngest disciple manages to pull off. To say nothing of your ascent to Bronze, or so artfully synergizing the boons of White Crane and Silver Swan warding and striking techniques in the countless hours we spent sparring together that, of course, never happened. And you did score several unexpected points on me with your Golden Realms Adderstrike, such a jarring contrast to the flow of most other arts that rely on the external flow of Qi!"
WiFu gave an approving nod. “Your deadly internal art is nearly impossible to detect, save in the instant you strike, though it does drain you over time, does it not? Also a favorite tool of General Cui Jian’s elite specialists, and some of the very few who understand the true potential of Golden Realms kung fu.”
Alex frowned at those words, not quite sure he understood, but suddenly afraid he might.
WiFu sighed. “Yes, the true name of your former mentor, the alchemist Liu Jian, so afraid of Golden Ascension that he locked most of his deadly power away, until fear for his daughter and the threat of a greater demonlord bursting into this realm forced him to tear free his disguise. And he too taught you as well as he could in the limited time he had with you.”
Alex blinked, momentarily speechless from revelation after revelation, the overwhelming magnitude of all he had seen and endured just in the past three sleepless days finally catching up with him.
“Impressive as your accomplishments are, young cub, there is one that astounds me like no other.”
Alex blinked. “What is that?”
His master furrowed his brow. “Isn’t it obvious? Alex, you’ve broken through to Bronze without any study of treatises or manuals, using a pristine technique originally based on regenerating the body and soul that you yourself forged into being!”
WiFu flashed an approving grin. “Though I do rather like the title, and since longevity is one of the secrets it holds, ageless perfection until mishap or violence destroys one utterly, Eternal Fox is a fitting name. Yet somehow you managed to fuse your understanding of White Crane cycling into the technique, bypassing the need to master the placement of individual elements in a cohesive skein entirely! A brilliant hack, as I believe they once said in your world and, may I add, there actually is no such thing as Light Qi cycling.”
Alex blinked. “You mean...?”
WiFu grinned. “You made up White Crane cycling on your own. Instructor Liang had no idea what the hell you were doing, but it was working for you, and you were appropriately respectful to him at all times. So he just nodded and left you to your own devices. Rather kind of him, compared to those that hated you on sight.”
WiFu shrugged. “Of course, the rate of progression is impossibly slow compared to any other technique that is element specific, or would be, had you not been channeling over thirty spirit stones and an actual typhoon into your Bronze masterforging. But for one such as you, dancing upon the precipice of life and death itself, impossibility is just an inconvenience, an added challenge. Ultimately, it was just what you needed! Of course, you had to forge bleeding fragments of your very soul that naughty Lai Leng broke every alchemical edict in daring to strike at directly. And how fortuitous it was that linking a pristine cultivation technique to your divine soul served as a handy backdoor for devising an ideal meridian channel blueprint!”
His smile turned sympathetic. “Of course, you’re now committed to this life, body and soul. There’s no more rebirth for you, young Alex, so next time you find yourself in a butchered heap sinking deep into the depths of nod, you’d best pull yourself out right quick, just like you did after jumping into that pit of Hades. Because your next true death will be your last.”
WiFu laughed as Alex paled. “Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. And there’s nothing quite so exhilarating as betting all-in!”
Alex closed his eyes and groaned. “I really fucked up, didn’t I?”
The enigmatic gaze of the mercurial deity froze him when he opened his eyes into the sudden silence.
“How did you ‘fuck up,’ Alex?” asked a suddenly serious WiFu.
Alex flushed. “I’m sorry, I...”
“Overcame impossible odds? Defeated an alchemist who even now suffers the backlash of an unforgivable gamble he has yet to understand the true ramifications of? Grasped hold of an actual path forward? Took the first steps along a divine path when absolutely every stranger at this school would do all he could to sabotage you?
“Tell me, Alex, what would have been the chances of you actually finding the cultivation tomes you needed, let alone forging a pristine eight-element cycling technique, had you even attempted to make use of the library?”
Alex flushed. “Zero. And yet I still need to do that. Somehow.”
WiFu nodded. “You do. And by dint of your very struggles, offering to help my kin yet again, as Long Wang does all he can to destroy my daughters, you now have in your possession, here in this divine little sanctuary, a library fit to rival Dragon Academy’s own.”
Alex blinked. “But Jidihu said...”
WiFu smirked. “Jidihu is the head of the most ruthless organization of cutthroats in Yidushi Province, outside of the ac
ademy itself, and has managed to run it for decades while always keeping the demeanor of an elegant, soft-spoken woman forever in need of a good champion.”
The inspector flashed a grin. “Until she feels the need to actually flash her fangs. Few survive that without knowing their place. And fewer still survive those moments she chooses to show nothing of her true self at all.”
“Striking from the cloak of thickest shadow,” Alex whispered. “Like the most badass assassin of all.”
WiFu nodded. “My lovely girl climbed up the ranks the old-fashioned way. The fact that she actually treats her minions with almost motherly affection, so long as they do what they’re told, like good little children, has brought her the love and loyalty of scores of downtrodden mortals and cultivators alike. She treats every lost kitsune she finds like one of her own, and has forged strong ties of sisterly love and loyalty with noble kitsune as well. Further, she allows her hungriest servants to wear the face of her sect, so they may both savor that glory and endure all the risks of being one of the feared heads working in the city below, so long as they know where their ultimate loyalties lie. Thus, she has enjoyed a long and prosperous reign in an organization infamous for its hostile takeovers.”
Alex whistled. “Bloody impressive.”
“Indeed it is. Do you really think a woman like that is going to reveal all her secrets? Or just how precious the library you’re now carting around in your ring truly is?”
The former inspector chuckled softly. “I do think my girl is more than a bit smitten with you. Were she not quite so fond of Hao Chan, who so clearly wants to be your wife, and keenly aware of the doom that will befall you both should you surrender to temptation, you two might both be sharing the bed of the deadliest assassin within Yidushi even now.”
WiFu chuckled at Alex’s sudden blush. “She wouldn’t be the first of my descendants you fell for over the centuries, but the present is quite different from the past. And much to my sorrow, her own strategic gambit has now worked against her. As my brother deliberately moves his pieces in ways he swore never to do three centuries ago, Jidihu and the girls under her care must now part what has long been a sanctuary for her kind.”
Alex blinked at that. “But if she’s so deadly...”
“The headmaster happens to be Gold, with power at his disposal you can’t even conceive of. At least, not yet. And more to the point, she gave her oath before she earned guest privileges, decades ago. Able to taste the barest edges of Fate’s purpose, my descendant knew this day would come, though the headmaster did not. Still, he will keep to his oath: safe passage for her and her coterie from the school and the city if need be, assuming she can’t arrange it herself.”
WiFu’s eyes were suddenly hard as ice. “And for all that she and her mother before her have forged a library to rival the school’s own, to which you now have exclusive access, still she has found not one single treatise regarding the cultivation of Shadow Qi. My lovely family spent countess centuries destroying any traces of those ancient texts to be found anywhere within the major cities of the empire, where our influence is strongest.”
Alex paled. “An empire whose surface area is what, ten times greater than all of Earth?”
WiFu chuckled softly. “There you go, thinking small again, Alex. We’re bigger than that. Far bigger. But any ancient and long-forgotten texts regarding the manipulation of Shadow Qi gathering dust in an ancient temple in the middle of a jungle-covered city long forgotten by the world all around would take you years, literally, to retrieve. And that’s if you knew precisely where it was located, which you don’t. What I can say is that this wondrous world is chock full of all sorts of delicious mysteries and lost wonders.
“Thanks to the constant ebb and flow of power and battles between countless shadow kingdoms wishing to rule their territories in relative peace from the empire at large, our lands are dotted with endless hidden cities and the ruins of lost civilizations located hundreds, even thousands of miles away from the High Roads my family forged at the empire’s founding, just as other pantheons forged gates between crucial nodes within their own family’s territories.”
Alex blinked. “You mean...”
“Of course. The major cities form around the gates. You can tell by the evolution of architecture occurring in concentric rings around them. How the hell else would humans be able to settle and colonize a world the size of your Jupiter?”
Alex blinked. “I had wondered about that...”
“Neither here nor there, Alex. The point is you. What you were able to forge in the bitterest of crucibles, and what you can do with that gift.”
Alex froze, suddenly understanding.
Insight check made!
“Eternal Fox technique. It’s not perfect...”
“Not by a long shot,” agreed the grinning fox god.
“Any proper elemental technique would do better...”
“No doubt.”
Alex gazed down at the flickering light from the fireplace that had not been there the last time he had visited his now-massive library, noting the way it lit up the gargantuan chamber, feeling a slight shiver as he gazed into piercing silver-green eyes, his ancient patron seeming to fade from sight within the cavernous depths of the plush, high-backed, and very English chair he had chosen to sit upon.
Because between perfect darkness and brilliant light lay his realm.
“Shadow,” Alex whispered, gazing at the feet of WiFu’s chair, shadows stretching and warping before his eyes. “Between the pristine strands of universal Light Qi and the perfect pitch blackness of Dark Qi, lie endless shades of gray. Shades of shadow.” Alex gazed back up at the plush seat of the massive chair, far too big for the library, really, where WiFu had been sitting. “Eternal Fox is the key!” Before blinking, realizing his patron was gone.
Perhaps had never been there at all.
But that didn’t matter.
For Alex felt on the cusp of something momentous… a transcendent understanding, a unifying theme to all that ways he had grown that past half year.
His heart began to race. Like looking at a chalkboard filled with the complex equations of his life and finally seeing how they all flowed perfectly together, he could all but taste the underlying principles defining not just his experiences, but his present and future as well. Or, at least, the path most likely to lead him to the future he so desperately desired.
So long as he didn’t mind the struggles he’d have to endure, every step of the way.
Alex suppressed a hitched breath, all but trembling with excitement, summoning forth pristine parchment and paper out of the massive stockpile of supplies whose contents he could organize as instantaneously and effortlessly as the inventory in any game while it was all inside is ring.
For a thousand breaths over a thousand years, he had forged the most basic understanding of his Dual Path technique, for all that he still had to discover techniques for fusing his eight positive elemental affinities together. But the insights he had gained in a mere half year felt no less profound. And he could somehow taste, upon the sunset of his incredible breakthrough to Bronze, with the remnants of a massive spirit beast core and an impossible Dark and Light Qi reserve still bubbling with so much potential inside him, that there was no better time to capture his insights and perhaps grasp that intangible truth that would tie it all together than at that very moment.
For if he could somehow capture the essence of all he had seen and done, all he had experienced, he knew it would lead to a breakthrough like no other.
And after a deep, shuddering breath as much terror as trepidation, knowing that to misstep in this masterwork would imperil far more than his fleshly form… he began.
24
Spirit check successful! You have forged the first tier of your masterwork!
You have 3 free Qi points to dedicate to the forging of your masterwork!
You have chosen to invest all 3 points!
Additional withdrawals will tap into
your Vitality directly!
The words seemed to flow right through Alex, who paid them no mind, caught up in the rapture and madness of the path he dared.
He had come so close to oblivion those first, most perilous seconds, feeling the sudden buildup of every fiber of power he had stored like a madman within his ring over the course of months, somehow knowing he would need that and more to pen his masterwork, before realizing to his horror as his magical quill burst into flame, as did the stack of parchment before him, that no mortal vessel could contain the burden of what he would dare.
Hard eyes of jade and silver had speared his soul when he was about to howl with despair.
“There’s no turning back now, little fox. Not when you already know the path you must take.”
And somehow, he did.
Even as he felt the stitches of his ripped soul begin to burst, tied as his very essence was to his pristine meridian configuration, he had been struck by sudden revelation, already knowing what fabric would transcend all others in holding the weight of knowledge and lore only a divine tome or spirit could contain.
Howling in agony and wonder, he tore free the tiniest portion of his own soul, lighting up at once with the golden light of the saintly artifact he had forged the moment he had sacrificed his life to save this realm from the direst of foes desperate to break through the rift Alex had closed with his sacrifice.
A lifetime ago.
A handful of years ago.
A few short months ago.
Alex gazed upon the pristine pages of the white-gold tome, knowing that only one type of ink would do.
Gazing up in stunned surprise to see his mentor peering down at him with the most curious of expressions.
“Allow me, disciple,” WiFu solemnly said, handing Alex one of the shimmering phoenix feathers from his tricorn cap. And Alex did not hesitate to prick his own finger for the blood he would need.
Vitality accessed! Rank 1 Bronze (21) permanently drained to Rank 1 Bronze (20) – good thing you kept track of all your points!
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Forsworn: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 3 Page 39