The blood-soaked chamber beyond the shimmering golden portal rang with a madman's furious declaration as hate-filled eyes bored into Alex's own.
"I should thank you, Ruidian excrement. For you have given me a purpose, a cause beyond even the rank and glory that is my birthright! I will now give my oath to the heavens above to do all that I can to erase the blight of your people's existence from these lands forevermore!"
And Alex couldn't help laughing as the former headmaster-turned-fanatic did just that, a beatific expression gracing his features as he raised his hands and seemed to glow with a sudden pale light.
"Of course you will. How could you possibly resist embracing a god's fury?” Alex said, not even caring that he was naked before his foe, as Sudong continued blasting streams of ice and lightning at the barrier between them.
Alex frowned, his focus now entirely upon the set of clothing that was somehow stacked neatly before him, without a single stain or tear, despite all he had endured. Only now, there was an unexpected addition. A pair of oversized dao sheaths and belt that secured his sharktooth blade as if custom made for it. Articles of clothing that had never formed before, but they somehow suited his outfit perfectly. And it was with a satisfied smile that he found his new bone button changshan shirt, pants, and leather shoes fit hit him just as well as before, as if he hadn't just put on twenty pounds of muscle.
Alex tilted his head, finding it so easy to imagine a pair of gods laughing and gloating within a certain divine gaming hall, impossibly far away.
"His very existence is anathema, WiFu. The more he struggles against our traps, the more our own pawns will take up arms to destroy him! It matters not whether you have gifted your piece with Fog of War, when our chosen champions can see him clear as day!"
Flashing a fierce smile, Alex strode over to the remains of the Gold cultivator whose heart he had claimed, infusing his soul with such incredibly sweet potency that he could hardly believe the powerfully built body he now found himself in was his own. While he was still proportioned very much like he had been before, with the muscles of a world class gymnast more than those of a power lifter, they were definitely bigger. And when he flexed them, they felt hard as steel.
He frowned slightly, noting that he also seemed just a bit taller. Perhaps an inch. And he was glad it was no more than that, lest too much height and reach differential, combined with a shifted center of balance, necessitate him relearning the basics of so many techniques he had fought so hard to master.
But an inch?
He grinned at the thought of the girl who had so deeply touched his heart before blossoming in the most delightful of ways, as both a warrior and courtesan's path now defined her soul, and her body sought equilibrium between the two. But still, for all that he fiercely adored the striking beauty who haunted his dreams, there was a part of him that very much liked the idea of once again being taller than her, fulfilling some primal need to protect her against all threats, he was sure.
Just like the threat glaring at Alex with hate-filled eyes at that very moment, swearing to purge his kind from this world for all time.
Alex couldn't help but smirk before the man's zealous hate. "Now I see it, more clearly than ever. And what a fool I was for not recognizing the stamp of his features, knowing we could never be anything more than blood-sworn enemies from the moment I first caught sight of you."
Sudong spat on the barrier between them, seething with hate. "Who, worm? Who is this being you dare say I resemble? A sworn enemy of your own, perhaps? Another soul who has been wronged by your kind, whom it will be my greatest pleasure to walk beside on a path that leads to your utter destruction?"
"Zheng Yi," Alex said almost offhandedly as he eyed the massive Titan’s Golden body, only now sinking completely into the River of Souls. And how odd it was that it had been hours—or at least, it had felt like hours—since Alex had torn out and devoured the man's semi-divine heart. And while he bitterly regretted the loss of so many wonderful prizes in the form of ruptured artifacts and soul stones gone before he could claim them, Alex thought the trade worth it a thousand times over for the boon he had gained.
Of course, there was at least one intact treasure that remained in this gore-spattered slaughterhouse, shimmering in a corona of its own perilous glory.
Alex suppressed a shiver as he caught sight of the Divine Hammer that had nearly destroyed him, its slightest touch utterly obliterating an entire limb. If Eternal Fox hadn't transcended as far as it had, able to counter even infernal wounds and the River of Souls, Alex had absolutely no doubt that nothing short of another divine artifact would have healed his devastating wound.
He should have bled out in seconds, in fact, completely unable to staunch the loss of blood.
And he knew better than to ever touch that hammer with the obsidian head that hummed with the solemn promise to shatter every bone in his body, and the pair of golden dragons etched on the sides, shimmering cascades of light making them seem to coil and hiss as he caught their ruby gazes.
He wouldn't dare.
Even now, he could feel an odd pressure as space seemed to twist and roll about the artifact, much like it had for the heartbeat when he had once exposed his greatest prizes while walking along the most mundane of hallways, just before revealing his own divine tomes to a beloved friend in desperate need, what now felt a lifetime ago.
Somehow, he just knew that the slightest shift or pressure to the handle before him, and that sacred hammer would slip and fall through cracks unseen, or it would end up rescued and claimed and lost countless times over, in the most unlikely of circumstances. Whether it took a day or a season, that very hammer that had nearly destroyed a sanctuary that WiFu's own divine talisman had warded, would find its ultimate owner once more.
Alex indulged in a fierce smile, not even daring to breathe too hard, while doing nothing to set that artifact on the journey that would send it back to his enemy's hand.
Not even when Sudong's too-eager voice, calculated to startle just when Alex realized he was somehow hovering right over that dread artifact, which pulled at him like a gravity well, washed over him with surprising volume.
And compulsion.
"Touch it, fool! The gods themselves would welcome what you would then be forced to endure!"
Willpower Check made!
Alex paused, refusing to obey the odd sensation that he had no choice but to fall on that shaft, knowing it would pierce his soul and destroy him utterly.
Instead, he lurched back, shaking his head. "I don't think so. But could you do me a favor?"
Eyes filled with inconceivable hate and surprise met his own.
"Tell your master that his grandson's favorite toy just went bye-bye."
And the bloodcurdling howls of outrage roaring through his skull mirrored the furious pressure he felt, forcing open a portal underneath that brilliantly shining hammer, a dimensional rift that absolutely refused to form. Not until Alex felt himself attune to the howling storm of oblivion he had embraced when cleaving a divine serpent in twain, power roaring through a card suddenly trembling upon a board of fate surrounded by gods watching his writhing cards with troubled eyes.
And in the blink of an eye, the hammer was gone.
"Your disciple has dared the forbidden, WiFu! We will destroy him, utterly! This I, Zheng Yi, god of justice, swear!"
And Alex could sense his mentor's quiet chuckle before the hate-filled accusations of his relatives, though Alex himself shook with sudden dizziness, now fully depleted of his Qi reserves.
"Which you have sworn to do to my pieces countless times before, with your inconceivably twisted sense of justice, delighting in every mishap and setback you could devise for all of my pawns to suffer," WiFu declared before the trio of gods who had begun pounding the table in their fury, ravaging countless territories with earthquakes and general devastation, from what little Alex could sense at such a distance. "You have all made it painfully clear that my pawn can expect ne
ither mercy nor quarter from any of you, in this life or any other. So why shouldn't he make it his life's mission to destroy absolutely everything near and dear to your jaded hearts that he possibly can?"
WiFu's mocking smile turned cold with contempt. "Because even the most naive idealist can tell that you'd all happily do the same to him."
"He claimed my hammer!" Long Wang roared, haunted eyes filling with limitless fury. "He will give it back. He will give it back, or I will purge this board of every single Ruidian that has ever lived!"
"That you will not, Long Wang," snapped a voice so filled with deadly promise that it chilled even Alex to hear.
"But Grandmother!"
"But nothing!" said none other than Grandmother Yi Wang, the diminutive goddess responsible for easing life's burdens and memories from each and every soul before they began life anew. Every soul, it seemed, save perhaps Alex's own.
At least this time around.
The diminutive, ancient woman now spoke with a sudden authority somehow greater than the terrible beings fuming at the board of the world as if it were their personal plaything. "You have all sworn an oath to avoid all acts of punitive genocide, in return for concessions that WiFu and his pieces made two turns ago. To break it now is forbidden."
"But my hammer!"
WiFu cleared his throat. "Perhaps if you were to actually honor the covenant struck, instead of doing all you could to weasel your way out of it..."
"Never! I know how much you hunger for my secrets, you damned fox! Dongfang Hong has served his purpose. The tome is back where it belongs, and your piece will never be allowed to catch a single glimpse of the secrets it holds!"
"One of his purposes," the ragged voice of Shalu corrected. "I still have plenty of uses for that power-hungry puppet."
WiFu flashed a cold smile. "Well then, I'd get to forging another artifact if I were you, brother. Because it seems like you're not getting your hammer back any time soon." He quirked a taunting brow. "That is, unless you're actually willing to dare Oblivion's Waters?"
And the laughter that met the furious roars of an enraged coven of gods near perfectly matched Alex's own, in counterpoint to a furious headmaster's curses as he swore to see Alex fall if it was the last thing he would ever do.
"Do you truly think you have a hope of escape, putrid filth? A futile wish! The entire library is now filled with guardians loyal to the Crimson Lord who will claim Cui Li and bed and butcher that damned fox-princess before the year is out!" declared the wild-eyed Sudong, pounding upon the golden barrier between them. One pupil had dilated, while the other was just a pinprick, his once exquisite robes now a tattered wreck, despite the glittering enchantments that Alex sensed were unraveling spiritually as well as physically, making it clear that the headmaster hadn't escaped Alex's deadly trap without taking at least some damage.
Alex choked back the sudden surge of killing fury he felt, at the mention of Dongfang Hong's true intentions for the kitsune girl that Alex had once come so close to falling in love with, settling instead for a mocking smile.
"That remains to be seen. But one thing's damn certain," he mused, picking up one of the many torn and shredded bodies that decorated the blood-soaked chamber. "The portal back to the library is on my side of this barrier. If you're too much of a coward to lower it and challenge me, then I'm guessing you've got a good mile of rock to climb through before you exit from wherever the hell this chamber is hidden!"
Finesse Check made!
Even as Sudong’s eyes widened in outraged protest, he flinched at the unexpected torso hurled at head-height to smack the forcefield with surprising force in a big bloody splatter of ruptured organs, thanks to Alex's newly ascendant Strength.
Not surprisingly, the man's protest was cut off by a startled yelp as he stumbled back, far faster than any middle-aged man of Alex's youth could manage. At least as fast as a professional baseball player dodging a tag as he slid in for home.
Yet no faster than that.
Alex flashed a smile of coldest satisfaction as his foe's features blotched with fury, clearly visible once more, as not one trace of gore stuck to the barrier any longer than it would take rain to run down a windshield.
"How dare you accuse me of cowardice, Ruidian worm! It is you that hides and cowers at the other side of this barrier. It is you that prances about like a damned monkey, daring to mock his betters! It is you that fears even to leave this library, and it is you that knows he's doomed the moment he does!"
In a heartbeat, Alex lurched forward, slamming his grizzly prizes of battle against the immovable barricade, holding back his fury no longer as he roared his wrath at the shaken headmaster, who frantically stumbled back.
"I’m the one who defeated your champion, Sudong! No matter that he wielded the Hammer of Long Wang, my sworn enemy! I’m the one who devoured his golden heart, the might of a dragon now flowing through my veins! I’m the one that sent my divine enemies howling with outrage so fearsome it makes even you tremble with terror, and I’m the one that turned your once sacred sanctum into a tome-free slaughterhouse!"
Alex roared at the man, white-faced with unleashed fury as he banged the portal with the sightless head of yet another foe fallen to his deadly trap, pounding so hard that the skull burst under the force of his blows. "Do you understand, you pustulent, pockmarked coward? I’m the one who destroyed your temple, slew your men, and robbed you blind! Me, and no one else! It’s me you fear, it’s me you hate, it’s me that you’re eager to destroy above all others! Do you deny it, you pathetic excuse for a coward? Me! Your clan’s sworn enemy, laughing at your cowardly shriveled form quaking before me even now!"
In a heartbeat, horror was replaced by fury as Sudong lurched forward, hands crackling with such a fierce storm of lightning that Qi Perception alone allowed Alex to track his foe through the terrible might of a Gold wujen's power. "Then lower your field, Ruidian filth, and I will happily give you the death you are so eager for! I will freeze you where you stand before tormenting you with a storm of lightning that will never end, crackling through your soul!"
Alex couldn't hold back his cold laughter, veins singing with fiercest exhilaration as his gore-covered left hand tossed free the remnants of his enemy's shattered skull, then grasped his soul-linked talisman, now glowing the same eerie luminescence as the blade sheathed by his side, shimmering like the moonlight reflecting off the Waters of Oblivion.
"Then challenge me, coward!" Alex raised his talisman, placing it just a millimeter away from the forcefield. "Put down your barrier and challenge me to a death match. No holds barred, anything goes! For those are the terms by which I now challenge you!"
Aquiline nostrils flared, hate-filled features twisting with unholy glee. "I accept the terms of the match, fool!" Sudong roared, charging forward and smacking his Gold talisman with a crown of Jade upon the barrier separating them, malevolent eyes glittering with madness locking upon Alex's own. "Now lower your force—"
Iaido skill check successful! You have destroyed your belt sheath!
SOULCLEAVE!
Headmaster Sudong's eyes bulged in horrified disbelief as his words cut off in a crimson spray of frothy blood. Alex's shark-toothed dao had sliced through its sheath and his belt as he lashed out from low to high, cleaving his foe completely in half, the barrier affecting Alex and his tool of death not at all as he tore free yet another soul from life's sweet embrace.
"No..." A breathless, horrified whisper Alex heard in his mind alone, while the chamber beyond was suddenly filled with a maelstrom of lightning.
"Yes!" Alex roared, fierce as death, channeling the horrific flood of experience now ripping through his soul into the darkest of epiphanies, his Dark Qi-covered limb lashing out for one final blow as Spirit Crane strike fused perfectly with Dark Qi Projection. Alex was no more damaged by the maelstrom of deadly lightning on the other side of that barrier than when he had last hip-tossed his foe through a field of absolute destruction upon daring to enter the
sacred temple of the gods, just a couple of months ago.
Yet the air rang not with the sound of shredded entrails and burst fabric, but rather the clash of jade against gold, the headmaster's talisman sent cartwheeling through the air after ringing against Alex's own.
And before the cleaved corpse or his talisman could finish crashing to the ground, Alex's spearhand strike plunged right through the spirit of his enemy, precisely where the heart would be, if Sudong wasn't already dead.
Dark Epiphany gained! You have successfully synergized Spirit Crane Strike with Dark Qi Projection! Sheathe your limbs in oblivion's grace as you tear free your opponent's most precious prize!
Spirit Crane Strike is now Rank 7.
Dark Qi Projection is now Rank 6!
And Alex held to his expression of fiercest triumph, so similar to how he had once felt crushing his opponents in FPS and strategy games a lifetime ago, for all that the air was now filled with the desperate cries of ancient sages, valiant warriors, and children pleading with their silent gazes for Alex to have mercy, to spare them their most sacred of all gifts.
"Please," said the ghostly memory of a once righteous hero, a nobleman’s unyielding stare softening to a boy’s desperate plea as Alex's obsidian grip squeezed tight his golden prize.
And for a heartbeat, Alex was moved to pity.
Before remembering the face of a princess whose despairing gaze had seared his soul a lifetime ago, when he had died while attempting to rescue her.
A precious jewel that Alex had known would be free to live the fairy tale life that should have been hers without question, in return for his sacrifice.
Before fate was twisted by jealous gods raising diabolists eager for Alex's head.
Monsters who went on to form alliances and perform the blackest of rituals fit to enslave even a princess, facilitating Sudong and his cronies in ravaging Cui Chan's body and mind, leaving her a shattered wreck of a girl burdened with the karmic weight of a foul diabolist, whose unspeakable crimes still blackened her soul.
Yet the infernal Hao Zei was out of vengeance's reach.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior’s Path Page 87