“You’re right,” she agreed. “That’s strange. However, consider this: no spy would ever ride an Ancient Beast. Besides, have you ever seen such a monster be tamed by a Heaven Soldier?”
Derek had heard rumors that, in the very center of their vast country, the eldest heirs of the great clans of the Lascanian Empire and their parents had entire menageries of Ancient Beasts. Here in the outskirts, however… Regardless, only a Lord could tame an Ancient Beast, and Derek had never even seen a Lord in his life. The head of their school, the strongest man in the Barony, was a peak Spirit Knight.
“Maybe-”
Derek didn’t get to finish speaking. He was interrupted by Irma’s cry.
“Look! Boltoy!”
Among the rocky hills covered with golden grass, at the mouth of a dried up river, an ancient fort stood on a high hill. It might have been surrounded by a deep river once, but these days, the massive bridge that spanned the banks looked like a relic of the past. A winding path led to the second gate, wounding through huge boulders and jagged rocks.
A squad of soldiers clad in armor could be seen in the distance, dragging carts with the remains of provisions in some of them, and corpses in others. Derek’s attention was drawn to a cart with a cage that had been sealed tight with glowing hieroglyphs and runes engraved into its bars. Inside it, completely detached from the world, sat about two dozen people. Some of them were simple shepherds and farmers, but there were also Darnassian soldiers among them.
“That’s amazing!” Derek breathed out.
The girls exchanged a glance. They knew why their friend hated the Darnassus Empire so much, but they didn’t share his zeal. If a war broke out, and at this point, it seemed almost inevitable that one would, they would definitely join the ranks of the Lascanian Army. They wouldn’t do it to mindlessly slaughter their foes and burn the enemy lands to the ground, but to become stronger through battle with worthy opponents. Unfortunately, Derek had a very different outlook. As far as he was concerned, anyone who was part of the hostile Empire was his sworn enemy.
The soldiers soon disappeared through the gates of the fort.
An hour later, the trio found themselves in front of those same gates. Up close, the massive fortification made from gray stone looked monumental and foreboding, even with its blue-tiled roofs that seemed almost pleasant. For thousands of years, it had stood at the very edge of the two Empires, and for thousands of years, Darnassus hadn’t been able to conquer it.
However, the Lascanian forces also hadn’t had much luck taking Fort Darigon — the gateway to the entire Darnassus Empire.
“Who are you?” A gate guard asked them impudently. His power as a mid-stage Heaven Soldier made it so he could look down on a lot of people, but not on the disciples of the ‘Red Mule’ school.
Derek silently showed the man his school token. The guard immediately looked both fearful and full of regret.
“Please forgive my impertinence, honored disciples of the inner circle.” The guard bowed. “If there’s anything I can do to-”
“Open the gates!” Alea interrupted him. “We have a wounded man with us! He needs help.”
The guard swallowed hard. Gods and demons! If he ended up being responsible for the death of one of the ‘Red Mule’ school’s inner circle disciples, he would be sent to the battlefield in a heartbeat.
“Open the gates!” The guard commanded.
When the heavy gates creaked as they were lifted by a giant chain, the wounded man groaned.
“Look,” Irma said, stroking the cub and pointing at him, “he’s coming to.”
Chapter 537
Hadjar had been prepared to see anything upon opening his eyes, from the bars of a cage to the threshold of his forefathers’ house. However, by the High Heavens, he hadn’t expected to see the famous boundless Lascanian steppes. He found himself lying on a comfortable carriage sofa, and the vehicle itself was moving along a paved road leading into a fort. Going by the sounds and smells, Hadjar, as someone with a military background who had seen and personally captured many a fort, could never have mistaken it for anything else.
Peeking through the window, he was surprised to see that a Darnassian flag wasn’t fluttering atop the main tower. By the Evening Stars! He wasn’t in Fort Darigon, but in a Lascanian fort. Concentrating, Hadjar remembered the map of the enemy Empire he’d seen. The closest fort was Fort Boltoy, under the command of a weak Lord at the initial stage. But no matter how weak he was, Hadjar wouldn’t be able to fight him in his current state. He could still deal with a Spirit Knight, maybe, but not with someone who could combine the two types of energy into one.
“Calm down. Everything’s all right,” said the girl sitting on the edge of the sofa. She adjusted her brown hair. The token of an inner circle disciple glittered on her chest. Hadjar didn’t recognize the school’s emblem. “We’re in Boltoy. It’s all right. You are among your own people.”
“What makes you think we’re his people, Alea?” The young man sitting opposite her asked, flushing with annoyance.
“Shut up, Derek,” the other girl hissed.
“You too, Irma?” Derek rolled his eyes and frowned, turning away to stare out the window.
All three of them were disciples of the inner circle of a martial arts school, but they were all Heaven Soldiers. Moreover, the density of their auras indicated that they didn’t possess much power. They most likely wouldn’t have passed ‘The Holy Sky’ School’s entrance exam.
“How… did…?” Hadjar wheezed, feeling like someone was poking his throat with needles from the inside.
“Don’t try to talk,” Alea said gently and put her hand on his chest. It became easier for him to breathe. “She brought you here.”
She pointed at Azrea, who was sleeping peacefully on the sofa. Hadjar looked from the cub to Alea, and then back again. It was unlikely that the girl was lying to him, but he doubted that the little cub could’ve carried even his sword.
“You’ll tell us your story later,” the girl continued, making Derek nod in approval. “I’ve cured your physical body, but your energy one is still in bad shape. I’m keeping your channels from disintegrating for now, but I won’t be able to do so for much longer.”
A shiver ran down Hadjar’s spine. For a cultivator, any sort of physical wounds, even the most terrible ones, only left a few scars behind on the physical body. The situation was quite different when it came to their energy one. Even the most insignificant wound inflicted on the nodes (gates) and channels (meridians) could result in a long and difficult recovery, if not an outright regression on their path of cultivation. Deciding that it was better to know the bitter truth than bury his head in the sand, Hadjar dove into the World River.
After separating a part of his mind from his physical shell, he turned his attention to his body, which was lying on the sofa. Here, within the world of energy, the three cultivators from the unknown school looked like small, indistinct dots. They could, of course, be ‘zoomed in on’ and examined in detail, but… Even the weakest of cultivators could feel when they were being observed thoroughly. He was certain that they wouldn’t appreciate him doing so.
Dismissing the momentary temptation, Hadjar focused on his energy body. What he saw didn’t inspire much optimism.
His fall and subsequent tumble along the rocks had cost him a fair bit. The once unified, complex pattern of wide channels that had connected all of his nodes… now looked like the remnants of a torn tapestry. If not for Alea, he would’ve died a few days ago.
Returning his attention to the physical world, Hadjar once again looked at the trio. They were his enemies. Lascanians had tried to kill him at least twice before — at the ‘Heaven’s Pond’, whose legendary cuisine he hadn’t tried because of the assassins of the Apocalypse Sect who worshiped the Black General. The cooks, who had been the reason behind the restaurant’s fame, had been killed in that battle. Hadjar was still sad that he hadn’t gotten to try their food at least once.
However, this trio… Above all, Hadjar was a man of honor. With great difficulty, he raised his fist and touched his chest with it.
“I swear-”
“Shut up, lest you go to your forefathers!” Alea exclaimed, amplifying the flow of energy she was using to keep his broken channels somewhat functional.
Hadjar, despite suffering unbearable pain and tasting blood, continued:
“...that... I’ll repay... this debt.”
The strength left him. His hand hung limply, and his mind turned off.
***
“Idiot!” Alea shouted, but it was already too late.
The injured man, who hadn’t even said his name, lost consciousness.
Striking the side of the carriage with her open palm, she made the horses neigh and run faster. Had she not helped him, the stranger would’ve been crippled by that stunt. At best.
“Are you satisfied now, Derek?” The infuriated girl grabbed her whip. The only thing that stopped her from using it then and there was the fact that if she moved her hand off the stranger’s chest, he would die immediately.
“What did I do?” Derek exclaimed.
“If not for your accusations, he wouldn’t have made that oath!”
“Well, to begin with, he didn’t take a blood oath. Those were just empty words and-”
“Have you ever seen,” Irma interjected, “Darnassian spies, or anyone else for that matter, swear an oath to their enemy?”
Both girls were well aware that the stranger might be a man of honor, but Derek wasn’t as optimistic. To him, all Darnassians were dirty animals. Their argument was interrupted when the horses halted at the gates of a small building. All the local buildings were exactly the same, made of gray stone with blue-tiled roofs. The only thing different about this one was the golden coat of arms hanging over the porch. It depicted a bunch of herbs and the ancient hieroglyph for ‘life’.
“We’ve made it,” Alea breathed out.
Chapter 538
Several doctors and a healer immediately came out onto the porch. The difference between the two was that doctors weren’t strong cultivators — most of them were only at the Transformation of the New Soul stage — while the healer was a Spirit Knight. He was an old man dressed in very expensive scarlet clothes. His long, gray hair, which reached almost to his ankles, had been woven into a tight braid decorated with numerous metal rings.
“Honorable disciples.” The healer nodded at them. In the hierarchy of cultivators, despite their difference in social status, he held a higher rank. “The guards told us that you had a wounded man with you who required urgent care.”
“You’re right — urgent care!” Derek, who liked healers just a little bit more than he did Darnassians, shouted.
“Of course.” The old man smiled wryly. “Carry him inside. I’ll do whatever I can to help him.”
“You’ll ensure he’s all healed up by nightfall,” Derek growled. “I, Derek Le Bria, son of Baron Bria, the Lord of these lands, order you to do so!”
The old man’s eyes flashed with an evil gleam. This time, instead of nodding, he bowed low, not wishing to anger someone as powerful and influential as Derek.
The doctors, who were all young boys and girls, picked up the stretcher and carried it into the building. The trio followed after them. They breathed a sigh of relief as they stepped out of the midday heat and into the coolness of the interior. However, their relief was short-lived — they soon started coughing and wincing. The pungent smell of dried blood, medicine, pain, and despair filled their nostrils.
“This past week has been a stressful one,” the healer said as he opened the doors to the medical wing.
The trio froze. Their school’s Mentors and Masters had told them that the situation at the border was tense and that the two Empires hadn’t known such tension since time immemorial, but they could’ve never imagined it was this bad.
In the huge hall, the ceiling of which was about thirty feet high, bodies lay everywhere. Bunk beds with eight or more beds stacked atop one another were filled to the brim. One look at all the wounded was enough for them to realize that the war had already come to this region.
“Mommy…”
“My love, don’t die…”
“It hurts! It hurts so bad!”
“I want a drink before I die…”
“Damn it…”
“Aaaaaah! No more! Please…”
Shouts, groans, moans, pleas, curses, and the screams of the wounded that were being operated on without anesthesia flooded the room. The higher the bunks the wounded were on, the more likely it was that they’d already died. New patients were constantly being brought into the hall through four different entrances.
“Two squads have returned from battle,” the healer explained. With a wave of his hand, he cleared away numerous empty flasks and bottles from the nearest table. “Set him down here,” he said and looked at the bunks. “Sadly, just as many soldiers have been left behind in the lands of Darnassus.”
Derek clenched his fists.
“Bastards,” he hissed and turned away.
It was difficult for him to be here, not because he had a weak will or stomach, but because the sight brought back painful memories and filled him with rage.
Soon, he told himself. Very soon, they’ll pay for everything... Do you hear me, mom? They’ll pay!
Having laid the stranger down on the table, the doctors rushed to aid their colleagues. Some bandaged up the patients, some made medicine, some operated on the wounded, while others… painted dots on the foreheads of the new patients. Depending on the color of these dots, the healers and the doctors knew whether it was worth wasting their energy on the wounded or whether they should just give them painkillers and allow them to meet their forefathers peacefully. It was impossible to save them all.
“Well, let’s see what we have here.” The old man rolled up his sleeves. The rings in his hair rattled musically. “The physical shell was patched up properly.”
Alea breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been worried that she might’ve hurt the stranger. His injuries had simply been too severe. The treatment of the man’s energy injuries turned out to be a complex and time-consuming process.
Suddenly, the healer’s eyebrows rose, and his gaze became curious.
“It’s good that you didn’t try to restore his channels,” he said.
Alea didn’t understand how he knew that she was the one who had treated the man.
“They seemed unusual to me.”
“Unusual? That’s an understatement.”
Alea could barely create two energy needles, and could only use them to clumsily mend the simplest threads, but the old man, who, despite being a Spirit Knight, didn’t have any outstanding fighting abilities, created twenty needles. Each of them seemed to have a life of its own. They performed some sort of complex work, looking like the synchronized dance of twenty spiders.
By the gods, Alea thought, what a sharp mind he must have to be able to control so many needles at once!
“What’s so unusual about them?” Derek asked, ignoring his friends’ disapproving looks.
“Everything.” The old man shrugged. The only visible sign of his exhaustion were a few drops of sweat running down his wrinkled forehead. “His channels are unnaturally wide. I studied near our capital, and it was rumored that the best healers could help the children of the richest families expand their channels.”
The trio exchanged glances. They’d heard something similar as well. The wider their meridians, the more energy a cultivator could draw from their Core.
“But the oddities don’t
stop there,” the old man continued. “Not only are his channels wider than normal, they’re also... longer. I haven’t even heard of such a thing being possible before.”
“Longer?” Alea asked.
Once, in a healing class, she had asked her Mentor about the possibility of expanding the channels. He’d replied that this was an incredibly complex procedure that required not only incredible skill and power from the healer, but the rarest ingredients as well. Naturally, the next question Alea had asked had been whether it was possible to extend the channels rather than simply expand them. Her Mentor had said that it wasn’t. And yet, right in front of her, lay living proof that such a thing was, indeed, possible.
“A spatial artifact, strange meridians and tattoos, and an Ancient Beast acting like a loyal pet,” Derek whispered. “Who, by all the demons and gods, did we pick up on the road?”
Indeed. The situation didn’t look promising. The stranger could truly be anyone, from a descendant of one of the strongest clans hidden from the world of martial arts, to the heir of some House from the capital. All of these options sounded like a whole lot of trouble for them.
“Be glad that he took that oath,” Alea whispered back. “If he’d been at the top of his game, the three of us wouldn’t have been a match for him.”
“The three of us?” Irma snorted. “I’m sure that only the best of our school’s personal disciples would’ve stood a chance against him-”
“I don’t think even they could’ve survived fighting him,” Derek added.
The best spearman of their school, a personal disciple of the rector himself, a Spirit Knight at the initial stage, would’ve been able to fight on equal terms with this monster. Maybe.
“If you’re going to talk, you’d better leave,” the old man said, sweat already streaming down his forehead.
One of the doctors standing nearby picked up a piece of cotton with a pair of tongs and dabbed at the old man’s forehead with it.
Dragon Heart: Land of Demons. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 7 Page 2