The miniature forest rang with his peals of laughter as he embraced the sweet joy of finally succeeding at what he had fought so hard to achieve.
Despite all the hardships suffered, all the obstacles put before him, he had finally found the path to his own success. To facilitating his own evolution as a cultivator.
Solemnly, he went to his knees and kowtowed to the garden as a whole.
He said no words. No words needed to be said.
The garden had served as his sanctuary, had given him shelter and life when he had no right to expect either.
He did not hesitate then, when the rustle in the leaves overhead made his obligation clear, smiling in the perfectly still air as he drew one of the razor-sharp dao of his enemies that he had quickly stored away when covering his tracks just before darting into the pyramidal temple above.
The slice was long and deep, and he smiled as the crimson drops of his life force fed the roots of the rustling fruit trees that had taken such good care of him these past few weeks.
Power Healing accessed!
Grateful as well that he still had a few untapped beast cores, for all that so much of his treasure and stored experience had been invested in his incredible breakthrough.
He grinned with satisfaction when he sensed his debt had been paid, rolling back up the sleeve of Wu’s elegant shirt which had become Alex’s own, wound already healed.
And for all that he sighed regretfully as he caught the farewell fruit dropped in his palm, he didn’t hesitate to pack up his gear, understanding in that moment that it was time for him to leave.
His studying up to that point had been laser focused, directed upon one thing and one thing only; forging the strongest Bronze cords imaginable to assure unlimited advancement. And he had forced himself to forgo so many other glorious avenues of study, locked within the priceless cultivation manuals he had claimed as his own.
But as much as he would have loved the chance to study all the body cultivation and Qi manipulation techniques locked within tomes of Silver and Gold in that perfectly safe sanctuary, savoring the most delicious spirit fruit while picking up new Qi skills and powers he could spend months or years just lost in the wonder of learning and perfecting, he knew all of that would have to wait.
As happy as he was with his most recent finds, he had a ring to reclaim, a girl to save, and perhaps a city to rescue. And the path to those latter prizes might just require him playing the role of the hopeful student cultivator once more.
Despite everything he had been through at Dragon Academy, he still found his heart swelling with a certain amount of excitement at the thought of having a second chance to find his way, having learned so much and overcome so many hurdles within Yidushi.
Perhaps now he could find a way to get into the good graces of whatever patron might be able to aid him, forge friendships and alliances thanks to his newfound confidence and skill, and perhaps even find a library with scholars willing to help him, as much of a challenge as that might be. Because just a quick glance at all the cultivation sections that did not pertain to cords in the Golden tome he held before putting it away made it painfully clear that he was still just a babe in the woods when it came to comprehending, let alone mastering, all that it meant to be a cultivator.
But even with all the obstacles he knew still lay before him, he couldn’t totally suppress the shiver of excitement he felt at the thought of starting the next chapter of his life.
But first, he had a wolf to kill and a ring to claim.
It was only when he took his first step upon those endless stairs leading to the caverns above that his warm sense of elation fled.
Replaced by the cold certainty that death was coming for him once more.
Only this time, there was no place to hide.
If he had thought his pace fast before, it was nothing compared to his frantic race back up those steps, once inviting, now seeming to skew and twist, slanting ever more downward. As if between one eye blink and the next he was no longer ascending from the most peaceful of sanctuaries but rather racing desperately to outrun the very throat of Hell swallowing him whole.
It was mad delusion. He knew it.
But with the air suddenly shimmering with malice, the stairs before him seemed to waver and stretch, the top of the staircase growing impossibly distant.
It was a desperate sprint that saw him finally before the exit, the portal only grudgingly giving way before his furious onslaught, and he burst out at last, panting great heaving gasps, grateful just to have escaped a stay he feared might have lasted forever.
But his momentary sense of relief quickly froze to icy dread once more as he gazed about the now mist-filled cavernous chambers, grown eerie and strange.
His eyes widened when he suddenly figured out what had changed.
Ancient ruins that before had been little more than shattered buildings and a maze-like skeleton of half-standing walls and ancient corridors were now whole and intact, what little bits he could see through the glowing white fog.
But his Qi Perception picked up nothing at all.
Then his eyes widened as it finally clicked. The protective dome that had kept him safe, even the ancient sigils themselves that had once been before the temple he had just stepped out of, were now gone. With no trace that they had ever existed.
Heart racing with the odd scrapes and thumps he heard in the distance, Alex turned around.
And saw nothing but thick white mist filled with shadowy silhouettes in all directions.
Fists clenched, he felt protective sheaths of Dark Qi forming around them.
And suddenly the silhouettes went stock still.
Alex felt an icy shiver race up and down his spine.
But it was nothing compared to frigid chill washing over his feet.
He gasped, looking down.
Shocked to find his feet under several inches of frigid ice-cold air.
Only the way it wavered when he gazed at it, the odd blue tinted light reflecting off it, made him wonder if it wasn’t air at all but water.
Water he feared he understood all too well.
Mind flashing upon desperately grasped snippets of conversation, he raced for the far end of the cavern, farther north than he had ever dared travel before, racing through the frigid medium that left his feet icy and numb.
He pretended the splashing gurgle he heard wasn’t the sound of a tormented ghost being drowned, or the sound of a powerful specter laughing.
It was just the splash and gurgle of liquid flowing into cracks and crevices and layers of the underworld far deeper than this one. He told himself that, even as the chilly waters slowly began to rise.
If there was one bit of good news to cut through the terror he suddenly felt, there was not one spirit beast to be seen anywhere.
It was if they had disappeared entirely.
He darted past myriad buildings risen like the bones of a long-dead sentinel, quiet in their pristine perfection, not a speck of dirt upon them even as the water steadily climbed.
He could all but taste the doom all around him.
Before his racing feet squashed down upon a fresh corpse.
It was perfectly preserved, lying on its stomach. Alex suppressed a shiver of horror when he realized he recognized the broken body with its weirdly mangled arms and caved-in skull.
It was Kuaisu.
The speedster he had killed.
It looked like the shadow pumas hadn’t gotten a chance to devour him, after all.
For just a moment, despite the dreadful anxious knot in the pit his stomach, Alex felt a flash of pity for the man, wondering how different his life tale might have been if Headmaster Bingwen hadn’t tried to destroy Xiao Shen’s sect in such a vicious fashion.
If Kuaisu hadn’t been poisoned by corruption, would he have chosen other than to give in to darkness out of simple desperation?
But it was too late to worry about such things now. Dead was dead, and life had already played itself out for the fa
llen cultivator, Alex thought, knowing he needed to pick up his pace if he didn’t want his own end to be equally ignoble and bleak.
And Alex was just about to turn away when the broken body of Kuaisu seemed to twitch in the odd fey light illuminating that narrow alleyway between the pair of ancient stone buildings.
Alex felt his skin prickle with horror he was too shocked to feel directly, gazing at the remains before him, slowly backing away.
Even if that were a spirit beast burrowing within...
But it was no scavenger twitching inside the fallen man’s remains, as made all too clear when shadowy limbs suddenly twitched with violent life.
Saving throw versus paralysis failed!
Alex found himself too stunned to move. As if a marionette slowly jerked to life by a pair of strings, the entire body began to lift itself up out of the water that didn’t act like water at all but rather like the ice-cold currents of the River of Souls, Alex thought, his heart now pounding in his chest.
The undead marionette abruptly twisted itself around, and Alex could hear the grinding and snapping of bone as forces eerie and unnatural controlled Kuaisu, who had probably never dreamed of waking up a soul locked in torment when he had last gone to sleep with dreams of Silver in his broken little head.
But it was only when the horror actually tried to smile that Alex could truly sense that Kuaisu was very much aware of what was happening to him, his lobotomized spirit shrieking behind the prison of his own rotting flesh, horribly distended jaw creaking audibly as one bulging eye suddenly popped, revealing a swarm of squirming maggots flopping through the air before suddenly freezing, lifeless, upon hitting the misty floor. Fragments of Kuaisu’s tortured soul washed away by an inexorable current Alex could feel pulling against him even now, for all that he was but inches deep in those terrible waters.
“Move, fool! Move!”
Alex blinked, realizing only then he was frozen with terror as a voice that might have been WiFu’s, that might have been his own, that might have been mere memory, howled through his psyche.
“You were given a chance.”
But it was only when the former body of Kuaisu actually tried to speak that terror finally turned to action, Alex turning around faster than he ever had before in his life, racing like a madman for where the tunnels leading to higher ground just had to be.
Betting his life on an unproven hope.
A howling wind that shouldn’t exist buffeted Alex as he continued his mad dash through unexplored alleyways and past ancient mausoleums and bone white pagodas reverberating with the dull thuds of occupants trapped inside.
But not all the monsters were trapped within.
Perception check made! Duck!
And it was reflexes alone that saved him as the headless corpse of Tang wildly swung an axe with one hand, the other holding his own furiously scowling skull, each eye a living pit of torment and pain.
“You were told to wait!”
Silent words from deathly pale lips Alex nonetheless understood perfectly as he dodged around the horror, somehow utterly certain, beyond certain, that he, a mortal cultivator, stood no chance against creatures of purgatory while trapped in their own realm.
To be touched by them risked instant death as they drew their victims’ souls with all the gravity of the realm they inhabited.
Somehow, he knew this, though he knew not how. But never had he been so horrified as when that bone-white axe lashed out for his head. Alex dodged and backpedaled for all he was worth, not even trusting Dark Qi vambraces to parry the blow.
Bullrush!
In the blink of an eye he was on top of the nearest mausoleum, desperately pushing back the terror consuming him, determined to think this through and come up with a strategy to survive the horrors before him. Only to sink into the mausoleum below, the intact roof no more solid than the mist of nightmare, crashing into ruins now inhabited by horrific abominations of bones and countless squirming maggots wearing masks of ancient dried flesh.
“A deal could have been made,” spat the closest abomination of maggots and filth as Alex howled in sudden terror, leaping straight up, fists already preparing for the obstacle he knew would be there, because this world was anything but fair.
Adderstrike success! You have shattered stone tiles!
Bursting through the now all-too-solid stone ceiling before launching off the rooftop and immediately Bullrushing to the flooded ground once more, knowing he would have to deal with the pale-skinned horrors lurching toward him, knowing that he could trust no wall to truly be there, and no structure to hold his weight.
He couldn’t help laughing at the mad horror of it all, refusing to give in to the terror any longer as he pulled out his fangtian ji.
He might not be able to kill the hungry ghosts coming for him, or whatever they were, but legs cleaved free of torsos made walking extremely difficult, whether or not the spirit behind took any injury at all.
You have surprised your enemies! You have decapitated two revenants!
Revenants temporarily disoriented!
You have cleaved the legs off three revenants!
It was a mad, terrifying handful of seconds as Alex broke through the encircling swarm that had gathered to surround him, moving with all the speed and grace of an arena survivor, decapitating and crippling with every strike even as he kept his balance and the shaft of his weapon between him and his opponents at all times, guarding his line even as he struck, winding around flailing limbs to cleave into ancient skulls to devastating effect.
And only once did a single claw brush against his skin.
You have successfully saved versus death!
And the horrific agony brought to bear, as he felt months of his life ripped free of his flesh in a heartbeat, was enough to rekindle his focused desperation into blind panic once more. A panicked Alex leaped fifty feet straight up before channeling his Bullrush twice more in quick succession, darting through the air faster than a hawk’s flight, touching the ground again a hundred paces away from the encircling mass of revenants and sprinting for the cavern entrance he finally saw in the far wall, now just a few hundred feet away.
He ran at a mad sprint, as if the armies of Hell were chasing after him.
Because they were.
Every second he was terrified a new horror would burst out of the barren landscape between him and the far cavern walls, impeding his desperate attempts at escape, and his terror only mounted as no trap exploded through the ground, no monstrous apparition burst through the floor or ceiling.
But the waters were continuing to rise, now a good six inches deep.
He could still run, but twice he nearly stumbled, and he had no doubt, absolutely no doubt at all, that if his head was submerged for even a second, the fates themselves would never let him surface again.
Alex choked back a whimper, frantic mind haunted by fears of being locked in perpetual breathless torment, trapped underneath black, drowning waters. Because the deities in control of this realm were malicious fucks who had always hated him, and after his experience suffocating in the belly of an amoeba, he couldn’t think of a more horrific way to spend eternity, every cell screaming for air that never came, no matter that Eternal Fox would let him endure.
A handful of minutes forcing his screaming cells to survive on Dark Qi alone was something he could just barely endure. But being forced to endure an eternity in such a state was the very definition of Hell, as far as Alex was concerned.
So when he could make out the tunnels drilled into the living rock of the far cavern wall, it was all he could do not to shout for joy.
But he found it inconceivable that he would be allowed to catch even a precious glimpse of freedom without his enemies being ready to tear it all away, allowing Alex’s spirits to rise just high enough to send them crashing to oblivion when salvation turned into the cackling maw of one abomination or another, eager to grind his bones between monstrous teeth and sup upon his marrow for all time.
For all he knew, the shallow waters lapping at his feet and soul would drop off in a perilously deep chasm of darkness, just when he was at the cusp of freedom.
Or perhaps a midnight horror like that amoebic slime was sensing his racing steps even now, pseudopods attuned to every tremble, and in just heartbeats…
Terrified his worst fears were anything but unreasonable, Alex didn’t hesitate to Bullrush thrice in rapid succession once he was absolutely certain that the tunnels ahead were neither mirage nor deception, traversing the last hundred and fifty feet from where he was standing to the far cavern wall in the blink of an eye.
Desperate fingers just barely caught the lip of the nearest tunnel entrance when the ground behind him collapsed, and a massive serpentine horror that looked strikingly similar to ancient paintings of Chinese dragons burst from the ground that was no longer ground at all, but a massive roaring river, and Alex could see and hear the countless millions of souls whirling within.
So many souls with eyes closed within those waters looked as peaceful as a child in their mother’s arms. Yet every single soul with eyes open screamed as if they suffered all the torments of Hell.
The guardian serpent roared and snapped when Alex instinctively sprung away, deadly sharp teeth tearing at the air where Alex or any desperate soul would have been, had they not been able to make the transition in the blink of an eye.
The serpentine head immediately twisted around, freezing Alex where he now perched with deadly golden eyes.
“You should have surrendered your tomes, mortal. And every artifact you possess! Leaving with nothing save the skin you were born with is the rule of all those who would dare to enter my realm!”
As horrified as Alex was, looking death in the face from the tunnel entrance, he couldn’t help chuckling dryly at that. “Yet Xiao Shen and all his men entered freely, fearing nothing! It is only after they have fallen that living nightmare awakens. Of course you would demand the prizes I most desperately need. You’re just another one of Long Wang’s pawns, whether you know it or not!”
The serpentine’s forked tongue hissed cold laughter. “I, Shui Jun, serve as the divine guardian of this river, mortal, and I’m well aware that I am but one card in the glorious deck wielded by the gods themselves! It is my destiny to watch over these waters for all time and feast upon those foolish souls who dare to break free of Karma’s chains… or, far worse than any mundane crime, those who would dare to offend the heavenly lords above! And your sins, mortal worm who dares even think he is worthy of transcendence, are among the greatest of all those trapped within my waters! So, too, your punishment shall transcend all others who would dare look so far above their station as you have, Alex Hammer. For you and those like you will be reserved the exquisite doom of being plucked free of the cycle of life and rebirth before being consumed by these waters for all time!”
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior's Oath: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 4 Page 47