Street Cultivation 3

by Sarah Lin

  There was a moment of silence in which Rick caught his breath. He hadn't been sure how Josiah would react, but the immortal actually seemed pleased at the chance to restore his honor. Both Alger and H looked furious. If there had been any doubt left in his mind, it would have died then.

  Arguments immediately exploded, but they had changed in tone. Some wanted to investigate before doing anything else, others wanted to reorganize the tournament, and some seemed to argue simply to disturb their rivals. Thankfully, Alger and H were both too engaged by others to come after him, so Rick began to walk away. This was exactly why he'd carried everything he needed with him.

  No one stopped him as he left the tournament grounds, but as he reached the driveway Qing Shan appeared in front of him, watching him thoughtfully. "Were you behind this after all?"

  "All I want is to be done with this." Rick just stared back at her, letting her see his weariness. "Shouldn't you be happy? Two of your opponents are taken off the table in the very first round."

  "Ah yes, our house is quite pleased. We will make sure that the others cannot force you to take back your forfeit or otherwise disturb you. In fact, I would like to bestow one last Jade Seal on you, if I could have your card."

  "Sorry, but it's back in my room. You can apply it to my record." With that, Rick walked past her. This time, she didn't stop him, merely examining him with inscrutable eyes.

  Miraculously, no one else stopped him as he headed away from the mansion toward the highway. Or maybe the truth was that he just wasn't important enough in the grand scheme of things. Alger and H had used him in order to play these games, after all, not because they cared about him. Maybe he could actually walk away. Rick texted Lisa and Melissa to tell them what had happened.

  A swift blow struck the phone out of his hands, shattering it before it even hit the ground. Rick leapt back, arms raised defensively, and saw James Travis standing in his way.

  "So you're a cowardly little shit after all." James readjusted his tie and sneered at him. "Have you realized that you can't match your superiors? Just what I'd expect from someone like you. But the thing is, I really hate you, so I'm not going to let y-"

  "Why do you hate me?" Rick threw the question like a blow and saw James hesitate for just a moment.

  "It would take too long to count all the reasons! I hate mouthy little shits who don't know their place. I hate the commoners fouling the Showdown with thei-"

  "I don't believe you." After everything that had happened, the hatred just seemed too flat, too forced. It was a bit of a shot in the dark, but as he thought about how he'd met James, Rick realized the truth. "Did Alger hire you to harass me?"

  For a moment, neither of them moved. Then all the hatred on James's face melted into a slightly irritated expression. "How the hell did you figure that out?"

  "I guess I'm used to being manipulated by now. Let me guess: he had you insult us in order to motivate Raggest and me to give us a rival. Everything you've done makes a lot more sense if I assume you were working for him. I just can't figure out what you get out of it."

  "Money." The suited man shrugged casually, all the anger gone from his face. "He hired me to make sure you and Raggest met up, then to keep you motivated in the Showdown. So you're right, it's not personal at all."

  That fact was troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the potential implications. "Has he done this before? Did he ever talk about hiring mercenaries, or someone named Jack?"

  "This is just a job to me. All I care about is getting paid."

  Realizing that he'd find no answers, Rick simply gave the other man his best stare. "Are you paid to actually fight me?"

  "I guess not, if I can't trick you into staying."

  "Do you want to fight me?"

  Rick was gratified to see just a flicker of fear in James's eyes. The other man hesitated, then stepped aside and let Rick pass. In the end, he was just another employee, another way Alger intended to control him. He was also a dangerous opponent that Rick wasn't confident he could defeat, but he'd avoided the fight without throwing a single punch.

  No one else stopped him as he reached the highway. Rick pulled out his bike chip and manifested it again after so long. Though he worried that he'd have lost the knack, he was soon cruising down the completely empty highway.

  The oblivion of the wasteland around him was strangely calming, as if the mansion behind him and all its scheming immortals didn't exist. There was only the wind cutting into his body as he increased his pace. It seemed to stream over him, pulling away all the secondary thoughts and leaving him free.

  It had been terrifying for a time, but somehow he had passed through. If the immortals did investigate, they would find absolutely nothing in Raggest's system. It occurred to him that his fingerprints and DNA would be in the room, but given how everyone roamed through the mansion, that hopefully wouldn't prove anything. He also thought that Qing Shan would help a little, for her own self-interest if not for his.

  At last Rick began to pass by lampposts, which meant he was near the bus stop. He looked back over his shoulder and could no longer see the mansion in the distance, lost in the endless plain. Of course, there might not be any bus scheduled for a while, so he'd end up with a boring wait. All the planning he'd done and he hadn't thought to check the bus schedule before-

  Molten aura smashed into him from above and suddenly Rick was flying, his momentum smashing him into the highway several times before he ground to a halt. Hitting the tarmac hadn't injured him, but his body burned from whatever had struck him.

  Some distance away, he saw his bike lying as a crumpled piece of metal. Behind it, H stood without expression, a cigarette between his lips, embers burning bright.

  Chapter 50: A Mentor's Guidance

  This was the point beyond any plans, where Rick could only hope that he could pull himself through. He activated the Triune Golden Spheres so that he would be fully aware and defended, but he hoped that it wouldn't come to a fight. Going up against his former mentor would be a bad idea, even if he only needed to buy time.

  "You think you can just walk away?" H spoke as gruffly as usual, but there was something new in his eyes. Rick slowly rolled his shoulders and stood firm.

  "Yes, I think I can. Our contract said exactly that."

  "After humiliating me in front of all those immortals? After throwing away your chance at-"

  "I know you work for Alger." Rick saw no reason to play games, so he just struck out with the accusation. He saw the hesitation in H's eyes, the consideration of whether or not to try to deceive him. Eventually his former mentor's scowl faded into an empty gaze.

  "So, you figured it out." H took a long drag on his cigarette. "Alger thought you would never catch on, so long as I was rude enough."

  That set Rick back a bit, but he didn't let it slow him down. "So you're telling me you aren't really an asshole, you were just playing one?"

  "I do my job."

  "And exactly what job is that?" Rick stared forward, trying to find some trace of emotion or intent in the older man's face. "Why do all of this? It can't be to make lucrim, since Alger obviously has more than he knows what to do with."

  "Alger likes his toys." After a pause to blow a long stream of smoke, H continued. "He does this every few years, getting excited about some new young warrior he thinks will upend the status quo. Eventually he grows tired of them and throws them away. I guess this is happening sooner rather than later."

  "What, you're going to kill me?"

  Rick had said it mockingly, but H only stared at him without expression, face wreathed in smoke. For a long time they stood facing one another, the highway stretching forever in either direction, the only two people in the world.

  Then H moved his hand, faster than Rick had known he could move, and golden light encompassed him. He could feel it pulsing through his veins, trying to drain everything he had... and failing.

  There was no time to think, Rick just used a Bunyan's Step to prope
l his elbow into his opponent's face. The attack that H had once scorned and easily blocked now smashed into his shocked expression, sending him tumbling back over the asphalt. His cigarette spun in a different direction, embers fading in the wind before they snuffed out on the ground.

  "You..." H started to pull himself up, and though Rick tried to kick him while he rose, this attack was easily blocked. Rick backed away, watching carefully. "So it was the Formula T that tipped you off, huh? I wouldn't have expected you to get clean so quickly."

  "So it had a method to disable me built in?" Rick was surprised that they hadn't even noticed such a thing, but he should have known, given how good his opponents were. "Why go to so much effort? I would have gladly worked for you just based on the terms we agreed upon."

  "No, you wouldn't have. You didn't even last a year before you began rebelling. So we needed hooks to reel you back in."

  With that, H flicked his fingers, releasing a wave of burning embers. Rick's defenses hadn't been able to handle the attack the last time they'd sparred, so he used his absorption sphere to consume the embers as he closed the distance between them again. This time he didn't aim for an elbow, just a blow to the ribs to soften his opponent.

  It didn't land, and H was hitting back just as quickly. The two of them exchanged blows, a far more vicious version of their common sparring. Rick realized that he was actually the better hand to hand fighter, but H had a larger portfolio and could hit harder and faster. Those two might cancel each other out, except they were intimately familiar with the other's style.

  Instead of just using his sensory sphere for incoming attacks, Rick directed it toward his opponent's every movement. He could feel each shift in H's weight, each movement of muscle and lucrim. Using that, he could get a slight edge, anticipating each step until at last he had opened the tiniest of windows to strike...

  Then his senses went dead and fire struck him directly in the face.

  Rick skidded backward across the road, still in shock and unsure what was happening. He couldn't sense anything at all, but he could see that H was leaping after him. Without thinking about it, Rick Bunyan's Stepped away from the stomp that smashed deep into the road and scrambled into a better defensive position.

  "You should know that we gave you everything." H advanced on him with a simple confidence, sure of his victory. "You were a mediocre talent before Alger noticed you. Everything you have is a gift, and these gifts can be taken away."

  The spheres of light rotating around Rick had flickered out. He desperately tried to relight the Triune Golden Spheres, but they felt dead inside him, refusing to respond to the flow of his lucrim. His eyes widened as he saw the crystal spheres fall from out of his soul like dead weight, then shatter into dull shards. A hollow space remained in his portfolio where the Triune Golden Spheres had been.

  He knew an attack was coming and used a Bunyan's Step to escape, but his spirit was in shock and he could only manage leaping straight back. H was already coming for him, so Rick rushed back to the fragments of the spheres, trying to gather them up. Yet the lucrim seemed dead and unresponsive, refusing to...

  A hand clamped over his face.

  Embers poured into his eyes and nose, and when he screamed in pain, they flooded down his throat. Rick collapsed backward, trailing flames as the embers seared into him from within and without.

  His extra defenses were gone, he could no longer absorb aura, and he could sense nothing. Yet as Rick lay on the asphalt, half-blinded by the embers, he realized that he still knew his opponent was attacking. Not through lucrim senses, but simple instinct. And though the embers hurt deeply, his original defensive core was up to the challenge.

  When H lunged down to deliver the killing blow, Rick struck back, ramming him with a shoulder. He tried to follow up with a knee to the chest, but his opponent straightened back up too quickly. Rick focused on staying on his feet and wiping away the embers while his opponent recovered.

  "You're really going to keep fighting?" H stared at him flatly, slowly drawing a cigarette from his pocket and putting it to his lips. "You realize that without the Triune Golden Spheres, you're nothing. You've been strutting around as if you really had a six digit generation rate, as if you weren't as much of a guided fool as Raggest. You can't win this fight."

  "If you expect me to lie down and die, you haven't been paying attention." Rick kept his shoulders up, now mostly free of the embers. Yet it was true that he didn't see a way to win. The Triune Golden Spheres had left a space hollowed out in his soul and vastly decreased his total strength. Without them, the difference in raw power stretched wide.

  "No, but I expect you to posture." H flicked the burning cigarette from his mouth, and for a moment Rick thought that he had drawn it for no reason.

  Where the cigarette landed, smoke began to billow up from the ground. It spread in a circle around them, and as it grew, it began to glow with the light of hidden embers. Soon they were both trapped within a broad ring of smoke and flame. The walls continued to grow, forming a dome. Not only did it keep him in, Rick realized that he had to assume that it might hide them as well.

  Then there was no more time to think, because H was attacking brutally. No more physical blows, he simply released ember after ember. Though Rick dodged the first ones with Bunyan's Steps, he knew that he would become exhausted far faster than his opponent. Dodging was a path to failure, yet he saw that H was keeping his other hand ready, preparing for a direct attack.

  The embers came more quickly and soon Rick was drawing on the demonic bond just to survive. There was no anger or glowering in H now: his former mentor simply continued to kill him in tiny cuts of a few lucrim at a time.

  But holding on to survival gave Rick time to realize something: H must be vulnerable to his own embers. If not, he would have made the cloud simply close over them both. Even now, he stood carefully several paces away from the smoke.

  It was a desperate gamble, but Rick would have to take it. He used a Bunyan's Step to charge at his opponent, then instantly leapt away.

  As expected, H hurled a torrent of embers at his former position. But Rick had moved directly next to the wall of smoke... and plunged his leg into it, a spinning kick swift enough to create a gust of wind. It blew smoke and embers into H's face, sending the man staggering back, and Rick struck.

  He didn't see the blow impact his chest, just felt it send him hurtling backward. The next moment his back collided with the column of a street lamp at the edge of the circle, bending the metal. Its light fell to the asphalt, but it only cracked instead of shattering.

  Rick realized that the blow had been carefully calculated to keep him within the imprisoning ring. Even taken off guard, H still had enough of an edge over him to plan that. The gap between them was simply too large. As Rick struggled to smooth the cracks beginning in his defensive core, H smothered a few embers and began to walk toward him.

  "I'm not trying to kill you, Rick. I'm trying to show you that fighting is utterly hopeless. If you surrender, you could still have a life, of a sort."

  All Rick could do was raise his fists alongside his face. H sighed and continued approaching, more embers gathering in his palms.

  "Very well, then. Keep showing me the very tricks I taught you."

  When the embers came toward him, Rick plunged into them instead of dodging. They burned fiercely across his chest, but it took H off guard. And there was one thing that his former mentor had never seen.

  Rick slapped a hand to H's chest and pushed the void flame deep inside him.

  The resulting scream of pain caused a shockwave that made Rick stagger back as the void began to consume H from within. He cried out in pain and clawed at himself, lucrim attempting to smother the attack but only feeding it. Embers began snuffing out all around them, the smoke fading as H was overwhelmed by the flame.

  Though H tried to struggle to his feet, Rick kicked him in the side, knocking him onto his back. The other man fell unconscious, his lucrima so
ul barely surviving as the void flame began to flicker out. Standing over him, Rick realized that he could kill him in that moment. A kick to the throat would be all that it would take.

  But he didn't want to be a murderer, he just wanted to escape. Rick took a deep breath and a step back.

  A column of red light erupted around them and Rick staggered away, crying out.

  He had a single glimpse of H rising in the air, floating on his burning aura. Rick knew that he should have moved, but he was too worn down from the many embers and all he could do was brace himself as the hand within the red column flickered.

  When the ember hit him, it was like being struck by a small meteor. Rick staggered to the side, clutching his ribs where the massive ember still burned into him. He struck it away and leapt to a different position, but there was already another ember flying for him. The light had faded around H, but he hovered above the road, eyes burning like coals as he released ember after ember.

  There were no more words, no more lectures. As Rick dodged yet another ember flying toward his face, he realized that H was striking to kill. With his life on the line, he should have been driven to new levels, but he only realized the truth.

  This was not a fight that he could win with raw determination. His opponent was too experienced, too skilled, too familiar with him. If he had a dozen void flames, he might have been able to come up with a strategy, but he had spent everything Melissa gave him. If he had somehow been able to master entirely new Lucores in his spare time, he could have surprised his old mentor again, but that was a fantasy.

  Instead, all he had were his familiar techniques and the gaping void where the Triune Golden Spheres should have been. Those wouldn't be enough. Just when he started to despair, he felt a cool breeze whispering into his ear.

  "I can buy you time, Rick. Draw everything from our bond."