And all Alex could feel when the vile Hao Zei laughed in his face was terrible pity for the man.
But it was nothing compared to the agony in his heart when he caught An Li’s desperate gaze, recalling how strong and fiercely she had stood by his side in the fight against the greater spirit wolf, now looking wan and ragged with the marks of a frightened slave already etched into once serene features. A girl who, beneath her fierce exterior, had only wanted to provide for her clan, and perhaps capture the eyes of a man who could win her heart.
Now she was forced to look on in disbelieving horror as Hao Zei roared unthinkable orders and the nearest cultivator struggled against his own hand spasmodically clutching the black dagger he was tossed, shrieking as he was forced to cut open his abdomen and pull out his own slimy blue-gray entrails with bloody hands before slicing his own throat, mouth open in a silent scream as he perished within that bloody star.
Alex’s Soul Sight forced him to witness the true horror of the act before him as the man’s soul was ripped free of the mortal coil and sent straight into the cracked shell filled with bilious green gas that Alex somehow knew held Hao Zei’s writhing spirit, forced back into a body it no longer belonged in, animating a decaying corpse struggling to live once more.
In a sudden frisson of horror, Alex understood what had happened. Hao Zei had not been brought back from the dead so much as risen to a state of undeath, either by a Calamity card or the gods themselves, and perhaps those forces were one and the same.
Worse, far worse, no one better than a cursed infernalist would understand the dark arts needed to secure his own rotting unlife, and the horrific consequences he would be forced to suffer, once the gods were done using him and Hao Zei was sent back to the hells below, where karma would take its bitter due.
Alex had absolutely no doubt that the vile merchant would do whatever it took to secure his own wretched existence for as long as he could, even as a cursed undead thing. And if Hao Zei could destroy the people Alex cared about to help secure his own unlife, the monster would be all too happy to do so.
When the warped and twisted merchant suddenly straightened, ravaged flesh snapping back into healthy place as if it were hot plastic reset in its mold, Alex’s worst fears were proven correct.
Shocked disbelief turned to horrified outraged. “No!” Alex screamed with such fury the air whipped and howled, Hao Zei’s hot gaze immediately turning his way.
The infernal merchant flashed the coldest of smiles. “Ah, maggot. You come before me at last. As the fates knew you would! Behold, bane of my existence, the price you pay for daring to cross me, for refusing to submit to me! Mark my words, worm. Every Ruidian within this sigil will perish by his own hand, cursing your link to your people for all time! Every cultivator within this sigil will die by his own hand, tainting your cultivation pearl for all future lives!
“They will suffer and die, their souls consumed by our mutual hate, and it is you that shall bear the burden, you that will suffer for all eternity for daring to cross Hao Zei, master infernalist, who always gets the better of every trade! In this life, and every other! Even the gods above will rue the day they brought me back, once I fully restore this cracked vessel and crush all who would dare oppose me!”
Alex’s vision turned red with the fires of his own hate. He did not think, only acted, darting forward with bitter hate in his heart.
Immediately the closest cluster of slavers readied their black-tipped spears and rushed in to meet his charge.
Silver Swan Kung Fu trumps Catastrophe! You are one with the storm of your heart!
White Crane Kung Fu trumps Catastrophe! Feel the whirling Light Qi all around you!
Alex flowed between them as if they were nothing, White Crane’s winding parries effortlessly knocking their weapons aside before Silver Swan’s sweeping strikes hammered into them with devastating results. No matter that he struck with the flat of his spear like a quarterstaff, it was more than enough to rupture even armored skulls and shatter limbs, hitting as he was with a Bronze cultivator’s strength combined with the force and fury of a tidal wave, effortlessly sweeping his broken foes off their feet before sending them crashing into the crimson seas of their own demise.
Half a dozen mortal slavers died to Alex’s blows, but it meant nothing as Hao Zei laughed in Alex’s face before fleeing along with his surviving men behind the crimson ward now pulsating with each additional death within the tridecagram, and Alex was forced to watch An Li’s desperate eyes, screaming for help as her hand twisted oddly, grabbing her own throat.
“Fill the collar with flame! Fill the collar with flame!” Alex screamed in sheer desperation, knowing the chances of success were minute, but if there was even the slightest chance that it could work, that he could save her from this horrific madness...
Adderstrike! Adderstrike! 1 out of 16 Qi drained!
Black Swan! You have failed to shatter the barrier!
Skill check made! You have avoided Meridian Strain! 5 out of 16 Qi drained!
Alex roared, committing himself utterly to smashing down the barrier, the midnight sky itself growing all the darker as clouds snuffed stars and the weight of doom and fury filled the air.
And all his struggles meant nothing as he hammered futilely against the barrier. Even gauntlets of Dark Qi did nothing to rupture the ward. He could fit his hands and forearms through, but no more than that, the barrier stopping him cold, his enemies contemptuously stepping away just far enough to be out of the range of grasping limbs, though Hao Zei’s gaze widened with momentary fear.
Before laughing with contempt when he saw Alex’s limitations.
“Alex!” An Li screamed, her gaze beseeching, beautiful green eyes locking with Alex’s own.
Soul Sight skill check made! You sense An Li’s deepest secrets!
A girl desperate for a hero, heart bare for Alex to see. It didn’t matter her pride or the slow dance of admiration she had hoped to embrace with her future half. If there was ever a time for a hero, for a girl to reveal everything she felt, everything she hoped for, it was here and now.
He gazed at a girl who had dreamed of him from the moment he had shown his mastery over her, and his gentle mercy. Strong, proud, and tender to those he cherished.
Like the man she had once called father.
Power and tenderness in one perfect package. Too ashamed to ever say it aloud, hoping time and adventures shared would forge a bond between them that Alex would feel just as deeply as she already did.
Only to find that time, and a storybook destiny, were two dreams forever out of reach for both of them.
Soul Sight permits full use of Spiritual Teacher! Spiritual Teacher synergizes with Spirit Qi! An Li understands what you’re trying to teach!
Eyes widening with awe and wonder, An Li understood all of Alex’s bitter struggles against the collar, and how he eventually broke free. No words were wasted on the impossibility of the psychic transmission. Nor did either worry about the hopelessness of mimicking with Fire what Dark Qi alone had mastered.
With a desperate cry, An Li forced her own self-throttling hand to the collar and screamed like a woman burning alive as she channeled all of her power through the now white-hot collar.
And in a flash that even caught Hao Zei by surprise, she was free.
Triumphant eyes gazed into Alex’s own as An Li cried out for joy, ignoring the pain of third degree burns all over her flesh.
“An Li!” Alex screamed.
But it was already too late, and Alex had never known such hate as when he gazed into Hao Zei’s piggish and once more fully human features, for all that his fat bulbous lips widened in an inhuman smile, cackling with glee at the screams he tore from Alex’s horrified lips as he drove his dagger into An Li’s side and tore it free.
Beautiful green eyes widened in horrified disbelief.
And before she could utter a single spell, Hao Zei had shattered her jaw with the hilt of his blade before smashing his fore
head into her skull with a roar, glaring his hate for Alex as he pounded the now spasming An Li’s head into his own, again and again, his hideous demonic rictus of a smile growing wider as An Li’s spasming body grew slack.
The vile merchant tossed her dying body aside with a laugh, thinking nothing of the cuts and bruises upon his own face.
Alex heard an inhuman roar like the most hideous of beasts which caused even Hao Zei to pale as lightning flashed and thunder cracked.
Yet only for an instant did the monster within his warded tridecagram flinch, laughing his mocking contempt just a heartbeat later. “You cared for that wench? Good! It pleases me to know she died before your eyes, maggot!”
Hao Zei’s dark twisted laughter echoed endlessly through Alex’s screaming soul.
“The look in her eyes, sweetest triumph turning to blackest despair when I tore all hope from her! Allowing her to taste victory only long enough to smash in her skull and tear it away!”
The bloated merchant’s smile widened to hideous proportions, revealing black pointed teeth, smiling at Alex even as he bent down, black dagger in hand, caressing the chest of the dying girl. “How sweet it was to have you witness her death, Alex. But not nearly so sweet as consigning her soul to Hell!”
With those words he drove the dagger into her heart.
Alex could hear the bell toll for An Li’s dying soul, taste it, thanks to his awful Soul Sight, being pulled into the darkest pits of the Abyss, knowing it would be countless lifetimes of torment before her soul could ever tear itself free. Damned for no karmic sin, but a mockery of the natural order, a blasphemy before all that was just and true.
Destroyed by an abomination that Alex swore with all the fury in his soul that he would one day destroy. Utterly. He swore it even as he screamed and raved and tore at the barrier, fruitlessly, futilely. Swore with every fiber of his being that the monster before him would pay, utterly and dearly, like no creature ever had in this world before.
“I will destroy you for that, you goddamned bastard! I will destroy you, Hao Zei! I will tear your spirit free of the River of Souls no matter the cost in karma and pain! You will know the taste of oblivion by my hands! This I swear!” Alex screamed the words forcefully, spitting blood that hissed and crackled against the infernal ward.
Words that seemed to reverberate endlessly through the air.
Words that gave even Hao Zei shocked pause, before he bent over in laughter.
“Fool! To threaten that which you cannot possibly achieve! To promise that which the gods themselves can’t achieve! I welcome your bitter despair, worm! I welcome your bitter hate turning inwards, destroying your own cultivation base! And soon, worm, soon you will fall, weeping and wailing before me!”
Alex flashed a killer’s smile. “I swear it upon my soul, Hao Zei. I will devour you. Utterly. By my hand, by my will, you will know absolute despair. You will know the taste of oblivion. And you will know no more.”
The infernal merchant snarled and spat. “I will break the arrogance in your gaze, worm! Your pride will turn to terror as you pay the true cost for daring to cross me!”
And with eyes glaring with caustic hate, the monster of a man began chanting in the foulest of tongues, the air itself quivering from his tainted words.
Alex shuddered with fury and anticipation, sheathing his hands in pure Dark Qi.
Before being forced to stop and spin around to face the massive threat his Qi Perception immediately pinged, suddenly feeling the terrible aura of a Silver-ranked spirit beast, even as his heart lurched in his chest, feeling a connection he had feared forever lost.
The mixture of terror and exultation magnified a dozen-fold when he caught clear sight of the massive roaring beast as high at the shoulder as the courtyard itself, glaring at diabolists and Alex alike with baleful yellow eyes.
“Which one of you is my prey?” roared the wolf. “Which of you fools is fated to die by my will?”
Hao Zei laughed with glee. “Even the night wolves of the forest hate you, worm! It’s time for you to run! Run as I sacrifice the last of my slaves, sup upon their power, and reach my ascension upon their cries and your bitter tears! And then, fool, it is I who shall hunt you and your nemesis down. Then you shall know agony beyond even the taste of your own death when I rip free your corpse from its belly and consume your very soul!”
With those words Hao Zei began to glow the color of blackest night as his ebony hand tore free An Li’s heart, devouring it before Alex’s eyes.
Alex screamed his bitter fury as the vile merchant laughed over the body of a girl who had actually thought Alex could somehow save her, before this monster had turned all her hopes and dreams to ash.
The wolf’s massive head snapped around, wild yellow eyes glaring into Alex’s own. “The vile torment burning in my craw is your doing, mortal! The stars have led me to the one who has wronged me, and by blood and fury, I will put this right!”
Roaring, the beast charged, effortlessly leaping over the wall as Alex darted as fast as thought back from the deadly predator, all his fury squeezed into a fierce dark ball of absolute focus as he raced for the far wall, leaped over, and dashed for his only hope of salvation.
He could all but hear the gods laughing in his skull as he raced for the trees, thinking up mad desperate plans as it seemed darkest coincidence had brought not one but two of his enemies to the fore, appearing just where he had hoped to find sanctuary, or at least, answers.
“A third Calamity, General? Stacked or not, that finishes your turn,” WiFu said just as dispassionately as any strategist judging his opponent’s moves.
“It doesn’t finish mine,” declared the icy cold voice of Long Wang, echoing through the endless forest Alex desperately raced through.
“Nor mine,” declared none other than Zheng Yi, voice crackling with the same brooding warning as the thunder rumbling overhead, brilliant lightning lighting up the night sky, assuring the massive wolf was able to see Alex’s form clearly.
But Alex dared not spend a moment longer analyzing the fading voices in the back of his mind.
He had a massive wolf, far bigger than the one he had brought down before, doing everything it could to snap him up in its jaws. For all Alex knew, Hao Zei himself was not far behind, using his entire coterie of collared slaves to blast apart the woods and cut Alex down if he possibly could.
His situation was beyond awful. But he could spare no energy to rail against the injustice of it all.
All he could do was his best to survive, darting between copses of tightly-interlaced trees to buy himself precious seconds as the monster behind him effortlessly tore them completely free.
Survive and, if he had what it took, turn his enemy’s cards against them.
His grin was as much a grimace of terror as an actual smile, but grin he did as he sensed his enemy closing in on him while he maneuvered back to the crater where he now knew the territory as well as anyone with an internal map ever could.
Sure, death was literally breathing down his throat, but he had intended to go after that damned wolf anyway.
When he looked at it that way, he wasn’t dodging fatal snapping teeth that could clamp down on his skull at any moment.
He was tactically moving his foe into position.
Save for the almost dying part, everything was going according to plan.
He’d have his ring before he knew it.
Or die trying.
Probably the latter, he admitted to himself as he felt the hot breath caressing his skin while frantically Bullrushing over the steep ledge face and into the crater beyond.
And much to his horror and relief, the crater below was exactly as he had hoped it would be.
“Calamity card in play.”
Those words echoed through his skull from just minutes before, Alex forced to wonder just how terrible were the cards played so casually by the deities above that allowed them to effortlessly put his ascension in jeopardy, raise the dead, or transform
a deep underground cavern that perhaps touched secrets mysterious and grand into an actual portal to the Netherworld with all its dark rules and twisted magics below.
Certainly those vile cards were potent enough to tie Alex’s most hated enemy, his most vulnerable ally, and the very spirit beast who had captured his greatest prize into one terrible fusion of horror and woe, calculated to destroy him in every way conceivable.
Alex flashed a bitter smile through his tears, An Li’s desperate screams still rattling inside his skull.
Finding fierce, dark comfort in the faint traces of mist now covering the lowest areas of the crater below.
“I’m back, asswipe!” Alex screamed. “Calamity card two! You’re back in play!”
Finesse check made!
Bullrush! Lightness in effect!
He knew it was madness. Words of panicked desperation that instantly gave away his location and caused the vicious predator, momentarily thrown off when Alex darted down the steep chasm’s face with a monkey’s grace, to hone in on Alex with a roar.
Alex gazed down at the billowing mist now covering the crater.
Serpentine words slithered across his soul. “You wish to challenge Shui Jun, the eternal serpent and guardian of these waters, mortal? Very well. Face me if you dare! You need but walk closer. You will find me soon enough.”
Finesse check made!
It was Alex could do to hold his perch, wanting desperately to move as a certain massive wolf gazed coldly down at him, snarling with itself as it thought to dare the hundred feet drop.
If it succeeded and swiped Alex as he crashed into him, Alex was as good as dead, no matter his Vitality score.
And the cold lupine smile made it clear that his enemy was aware of that too.
“It will be a pleasure devouring you, worm! Devouring you, and ending this pain forever more!”
Alex laughed. “Yeah, good luck with that!”
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior's Oath: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 4 Page 49