He couldn’t help but flash a mad little grin.
He wouldn’t be Silver Fox’s disciple if he could resist such an invitation, racing down the steps on feather-light feet, eager to explore the secrets within.
Strangely metallic stairs gave way to a perfectly squared hallway that seemed to be made of chrome, a sourceless light giving a pink, shadowless cast to everything as Alex quickly made his way down the hallway that soon opened into a vast domed chamber filled with shimmering apparatuses of crystal and metal that left Alex stunned with the brilliant interconnected latticework of spiritual energies pulsating through what seemed countless crystalline tubes, or perhaps circuits would be the better word, making up the heart of this massive chamber.
His eyes widened as he took in how truly massive this vast, auditorium-sized room actually was…
Insight check made!
…before crashing to his knees, shaken by an epiphany so profound it left him breathless.
For the spiritual energy racing along countless crystalline channels had little in common with the steady flow of Qi Alex associated with a cultivator’s power. Rather, the tubes flashed with what seemed to be precisely modulated pulses of energy. Like... electricity.
Twelve different frequencies of energy, all of them resonating with one another in a complex harmony that was far beyond Alex’s comprehension, though he got the awe-inspiring sense that he was glimpsing nothing so much as a magnificent instrument playing an unspeakably complex melody, or perhaps a super computer working in ways that were utterly beyond him.
And if that revelation wasn’t enough to send shivers of wonder racing down his spine, his stunned gaze then caught sight of the pods spaced throughout the massive chamber. Exactly one dozen elevated coffin-like structures made of matte black material, covered in opaque domes that shimmered with a rainbow hue.
A breathless Alex was speechless, feeling like he was floating almost inexorably forward, both awed and horrified by what he might find. As vast as he sensed the chamber to be, he knew he was still walking far too many steps for the distance covered, before glimpsing a wonder that filled him with both horror and awe.
A body lay within the pod, opaque glass turning semi-translucent when glimpsed at the right angle. But it was a body unlike anything he had ever seen before. No desiccated mummy, no perfectly preserved corpse seen in gentle repose.
Instead he saw a human-looking skeleton that would have been at home in any anatomy classroom, save for its brilliantly shimmering crystalline hue, as if it were made of diamond or glass. Then Alex was jolted out of his awestruck daze when his eyes alighted upon the one odd feature he noted. A hole exactly two inches above the normal pair of eye sockets one would expect to see. And it did not seem to be the result of any injury or deformity, the bone forming a natural socket nearly identical to the pair below.
Alex suppressed a shiver, now burning with curiosity, examining all twelve dome-covered pods. Each and every one was occupied by an identical skeleton, each with a third eye socket in the center of their foreheads.
For what else could it be?
Save for the twelfth pod, somehow left open, the silver mesh bedding within waiting for an occupant that had never arrived, or perhaps left long ago.
Alex shook his head, awestruck by all he had seen and experienced since stumbling across this sanctuary in a the heart of a massive cavern that would kill almost anyone with thick, smothering Dark Qi of such concentrations that only someone like himself could flourish within. Him and the crew of murderous cultivators led by Xiao Shen himself, who had apparently started embracing the darkest of rites to maintain their cultivation bases, and who even now were coming for his head.
Alex gave a frustrated shake of his head. As much as he wanted to stay and explore… he knew had no more time to waste. He had to prepare himself before it was too late.
But even as he turned to leave, something called out to him.
A lone voice.
That of a child.
Alex swallowed, forcing himself to turn around, sensing nothing save utter stillness and the exquisitely complex symphony of Qi resonating through the arcane instrument all around him.
And his Qi Perception detected no trace of anyone or any living thing.
But still...
Somehow, he knew.
Knew just where he would find the discreet paneled door, on the opposite side of the massive domed chamber from where he had first entered, needing just a single caress of his palm against a silver panel and the slightest surge of pure Light Qi to slide open.
Knew as he raced onward, as if in a daze, through chrome corridors and branching hallways, darting past numerous rooms with silvery panels that slid open as he approached, displaying quick flashes of steel, chrome, glass, and shimmering mirrors attached to exotic contrivances of crystal and silver he was almost afraid to look at too closely.
Lest learn secrets that would send his whole sense of reality crashing to its foundations.
Heart pounding, he raced on, instinctively loping around corridors and racing down winding staircases before arriving at last before a thick metal door emblazoned with glowing red characters in a language he had no hope of deciphering, but the meaning was clear enough.
Deadly peril lay beyond those doors.
Alex swallowed, placing a sweaty palm against the panel, and with a soft surge of Dark Qi, the massive barricade of exotic alloy slowly began to open along a tight hermetic seal.
You have taken 10 damage from high frequency energies!
You have taken 15 damage from high frequency energies!
You have taken 20 damage from high frequency energies!
Power Healing engaged. Stabilization achieved. Eternal Fox regeneration exceeds rate of nucleus decay.
There was no light, save for the blinding glare of radiation so intense it could fry out a normal person’s eyes almost instantly. But with the ability to Power Heal at a regeneration rate of 0.125 pounds per second, Alex had transcended normal long ago.
So long as his beast cores lasted, he’d be fine. And he sensed each one would last quite a while, far more efficient than the crappy power cores a certain game he had once loved linked to their most powerful battlesuits, which never really made sense to him, considering that those same cores were supposed to have maintained the power of entire facilities for centuries.
And that was why mods were invented, he thought with a certain amount of satisfaction, such that a single power core would last him and his power suit right through the central story line, Alex happy to lose himself in ancient memories of his favorite games as his nerves screamed with pain while his footsteps led him down endless tiled passages. Each one under the brilliant glare of what his regenerating eyes now registered as the headache-inducing lights of halogen bulbs, not an intense storm of violent Qi, or perhaps gamma radiation, sufficient to slowly cook flesh from bone, that was setting the shiny chrome instruments upon granite slabs to brilliant contrast.
Until at last Alex’s smoking footsteps brought him to the final room.
Never mind nerves screaming in pain. He shivered at the cold, septic sight of dozens of metal alloy cages in the back of the chamber of horrors he found himself within that truly reminded him of nothing so much as an abandoned research lab that had once specialized in live subjects.
Run by madmen who enjoyed squeezing every last iota of pain from their test subjects before they finally expired from their torments, or the administrators in charge finally butchered whatever had actually managed to survive their ordeals, just to see what exactly made them tick.
As if the terror those creatures had felt, the loneliness, abandonment, and cold isolation, to say nothing of endless pain, had mean absolutely nothing. And no matter how their subjects screamed, screeched, howled, or wailed, in the end their trials, tribulations, and hollow triumphs meant absolutely nothing to the soulless masters who would dissect them at the preordained time, no matter what they did.
Alex shuddered with disgust.
He and his family had never been anti-science back home. But never had he been reminded about why his parents had been such advocates for what they called humane testing as he was at that moment, a universe and countless lifetimes away from the boy he once had been.
Because after just one moment in that terrible, soulless laboratory, bombarded by constant searing radiation, the blinding light leaving not a single trace of shadow or refuge for whatever creatures had once been held in those cages… Alex understood the strange, haunted look in his mother’s eyes better than he ever had before.
Yet despite his moment of visceral horror, Alex couldn’t help but note that all of those ancient cages were empty, save for piles of dust and just a few traces of petrified bone.
And he would have turned around and left right then, the desperate cry he had heard in the back of his mind fading to ancient memory, had he not caught a prismatic flash of crystal, shimmering like a rainbow, to the rear of those man-sized cages.
Alex swallowed, forcing himself forward as his shadow puma poncho began to wilt and crumble under the intense storm of spiritual energy, or perhaps it was just deadly radiation, saturating this terrible place.
Alex’s guts twisted with horror.
He could only wonder what sorts of dreadful experiments might have taken place on the inhabitants of those cages.
Or how many thousands of years it had taken the bones within to crumble to dust or petrify to stone.
Then he forced his bowed head to raise as he finally faced the what he dreaded most of all to see, already knowing what he would find.
The perfectly-preserved crystalline skeleton of an inhabitant who had been forcibly stuffed into one of those cages.
Smaller, more diminutive than the others.
A child’s bones.
Alex blinked away tears of horror that evaporated in an instant within that deadly environment.
As to why whoever had been in charge had done such a horrible thing, he had an awful suspicion.
But it was only when he had popped open the cage door with a single surge of Dark Qi upon its lock and dared to cradle the long dead child in his arms that he knew for certain, deformities revealed at last.
You have taken 30 damage from high frequency energies!
Arms trembling with strain and fury, he didn’t care that the background radiation had abruptly increased. That he was now burning alive. His soul screamed with outrage every bit as great as the screams of his flesh, those crystalline bones revealing all their secrets to Alex as his mind seethed with horror at the injustice of it all.
Under brilliant lights eager to sear flesh from bone, he slowly made his way back the way he had come.
It was only when the massive reinforced metal gate shut behind him that the agony at last abated, and Alex realized that he had burned through an entire beast core. The constant agony of scorched flesh that he had desperately transmuted to furious resolve had been replaced by the tingle of renewed flesh that caused Alex to sob with relief.
Yet even with his Rank 2 Bronze strength and an abrupt cessation of pain, it was all Alex could do to struggle under the terrible weight of those inhuman bones.
A child’s bones.
Left to rot in a cage while eleven other crystalline skeletons without a single oddity or defect, save uniform third eye sockets, lay in perfect serene repose within the grand chamber above, resonating forever with the soft susurrations of the most magnificent of songs.
“It doesn’t end here, WiFu, I promise you that,” Alex whispered to the bones he held, grimly making his way down endless corridors and up countless stairs once more, until he had returned to the massive domed room of twelve ancient pods and fantastic technological or perhaps elemental cultivation marvels, his arms trembling with awful strain as he carefully placed the child’s remains in the twelfth pod, laying the ancient crystal skeleton in as gentle repose as he could before placing his hands upon the hatch and carefully closing it.
For long moments Alex did nothing more than take deep breaths, profoundly shaken to the core of his soul by all that he had seen, and what he had dared to do.
He could sense the mad blinking in the corner of his eye, but he paid it no mind.
Instead he bowed solemnly and low before the coffin of the long dead child, then turned away, tears leaking freely down his cheeks as he raced up the stairs and out of the shimmering crystal pyramid, knowing he would never return.
Congratulations! You have completed a Divine Quest! Rewards: unknown. Consequences: unknown.
Congratulations! You have found 3 Silverbell Blossoms!
Alex took a deep breath as his eyes registered the tiny bundle of brilliant shimmering silver flowers radiating Earth, Wood, and Water Qi, somehow perfectly preserved in a tight bundle of moss and loam in the middle of the woodland path just before the entranceway to the stairs leading back to the obsidian pyramid perhaps a good mile above.
Alex flashed a grateful smile, having left that sanctuary of wonders and dark secrets in a daze, now feeling far more at peace and in tune with his surroundings after his walk through the trees, profoundly grateful for the boon.
He had known better than to dare claim a single silverbell blossom shimmering upon the ceiling above, and wouldn’t dream of stealing a single artifact from the sacred place he had just left, his mind still reeling with the implications of all he had seen and done.
But this? Just like the ripe bounties fallen from the myriad fruit trees all around, Alex could sense it was a gift freely given. And for all that he lacked a perfect means of transportation, he didn’t hesitate to pick it up.
He then proceeded to take up his near-indestructible stone spear leaning upon the first ascending step by the entrance after unhooking the thankfully still fresh kill he had crudely pickled and hung.
“Thank you,” he said aloud to the mysterious woodland grove buried a mile underground before heading back up the stairs, Alex bereft of attire once more, save for a twined necklace of beast cores, already wondering if he would ever find a little Eden like this again.
Before being forced to wonder what terrible secrets it too would inevitably hold.
23
Alex felt his pulse start to race just as soon as he exited the obsidian temple, relieved to find the shimmering field of Qi still very much in place.
He carefully put down his kill and the trio of silverbell blossoms, the latter immediately perking up and glowing upon exposure to such a Dark Qi-saturated environment.
A quick scan with Qi Perception made it clear no one was in ambush range.
Hopefully he had time. Plenty of time.
From the fanatic desperation he had seen in Xiao Shen’s gaze in his vision, Alex knew he would need every second he could get.
But first, to secure his trump card.
He steadied his pounding heart, focusing as intently as any scholar upon the frisbee-sized sigil-laden disks surrounding his present refuge, sensing the deadly flow of Qi more clearly than ever. And when he used his spear to chip a groove that went all the way to the temple entrance, he found it almost effortless to fill it with blood from his slashed open wrist, before letting his regeneration abilities seal it up once more. He flashed a bleak smile when the blood began to crackle and smoke with the violent energies of the protective ward, satisfied to see the deadly current ended with his black glove of Qi.
Then he drew back his blood into himself, finding it effortless and immediate, as if it truly was just an extension of himself, though he felt bloated and dizzy for just a moment as he adjusted. Before frowning, realizing dizziness at the wrong time could get him killed.
This time he repeated the maneuver. But not before deliberately saturating his blood with Dark Qi.
At which point the protective dome immediately faded, Alex’s ring of Dark Qi-infused blood acting as a circuit breaker around one of the runes.
Eternal Fox skill check made! Control your blood as if it were
an extension of yourself. Because that’s exactly what it is!
Alex gazed carefully at the shimmering black blood pooling around the rune, doing his best to commune with his blood, to see it as but an extension of himself, before abruptly pulling it back, just far enough that it touched the disk no longer, though still filled the channel.
The dome immediately crackled to life once more.
And a heartbeat later, when Alex commanded his blood to fill it yet again, the field dissipated once more.
Alex took a deep, focusing breath, and clenched his will around this strangely receptive extension of himself before pulling it back, if anything even faster than before, letting it refill after a few seconds. Then he performed the exercise again and again, dozens upon dozens of times, until the growing sense of dizziness at last leveled off and began to dissipate, and he had the odd feeling that the Dark Qi-infused blood was, at this point, truly an extension of himself, and he could manipulate it almost like a fifth limb.
For a single dizzying second, he wondered if there was even more he could do with it than that.
Eternal Fox / Water Element synergism detected. You are on the cusp of a paradigm breakthrough!
Before pulling back such speculations with a shake of his head.
There would be time enough to explore the limits of his powers later. Right now, he needed to perfect a handful of tactics that would prove vital if he wanted to survive what was to come.
You have found Amoebic Slime. 3 cubic feet of Amoebic Slime salvageable.
You have ingested Amoebic Slime. Amoebic Slime caustic compound profile mastered. You can now make Amoebic Slime!
You have mixed Amoebic Slime with Foolsbane, Deathberries, and Crimson Parsnip. You have found ideal ratios to accomplish your objectives.
Power Healing accessed. Shadow Puma consumed. Biochemical Mastery and Eternal Fox used in tandem to create Ideal Solvent. Dissolve almost anything!
For the first time in what seemed forever, but was probably more like an hour of desperately careful work, Alex allowed himself to lean back and take a deep breath, feeling a sense of pleased satisfaction with his handiwork.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior's Oath: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 4 Page 37