The Grey Ghost: Book Two of the Archaic Ring Series

by Reed R. Stevens

  One of the disciples laughed. “A barrel? That is your treasure?”

  “It’s obviously not the barrel,” the boy said impatiently. “The treasure’s inside the barrel.”

  The disciple narrowed his eyes, air bending above his blood-red hand as he reactivated the sect’s most common martial skill, the Scarlet Serrated Hand.

  Serp eyed the barrel with suspicion. “Let him speak.”

  Silence persisted within the camp. “About a year ago, I found an old man lying in the woods, all banged up. Long story short, my family took care of him until he was healthy enough to leave our place. He gave me this barrel on the day that he left, and said it was filled with the ground-up bones of some extinct demonic beast. He said that if I were to sit on top of the barrel whenever I cultivated then my progress would speed up tremendously.”

  Serp inspected the barrel with his spiritual sense. “Do you take me for a fool? That barrel is filled with nothing but dust!”

  “You say that because you can’t sense the aura of a demonic beast, right? That’s because the bones that were ground to dust and put in this barrel belonged to a unique type of demonic beast that no longer exists in this world, at least according to that old man. To draw out the hidden aura within the powder, it needs to come into contact with fire. Once the powder touches even the smallest flame, the nourishing properties of the beast’s bones will pour out into the area around the barrel.”

  Jas, a short and chubby man, looked over at Serp with annoyance. “He’s clearly lying. There’s no way the contents of this barrel could be so amazing.”

  “I’m not lying!” It was difficult to discern even a tiny bit of dishonesty in the boy’s desperate expression. “I’ve only been training with this barrel for a year and I’ve already gone up two levels in cultivation, and I’ve even formed a dantian! The old man said that an hour of cultivation with this treasure can produce enough energy for someone to jump to the fifth level of the Profound Entry stage from the fourth.”

  “A dantian, he says!” Jas laughed. “Jump to the fifth level from the fourth, he says!”

  The boy shot him a glare. “You have a small knife in the folds of your robe. Would I be able to sense that if I was lying?” He looked back at Serp. “This strange treasure allowed me to form a dantian at the Body Nourishment stage. The Origin Energy that the dust releases is extremely pure. The only problem is that it can only be used twenty times, and I’ve already cultivated with it seventeen times. Honestly, it’s wasted on me, since I can only absorb a small fraction of what it releases.”

  Serp was quiet for a moment, angry despite not believing the youth’s words. If the contents of the barrel turned out to be a legitimate treasure, that some weak commoner boy had enjoyed most of its benefits would be a crime against the world itself.

  In order to activate the strange properties of the dust, it needs to come into contact with fire? That would explain the snapfire bean, at least.

  “If it doesn’t work and it turns out that I’m lying, then wouldn’t I be the stupidest person in the world for coming here with such a shitty plan?” The boy climbed on top of the barrel and took up a cross-legged position. “If you don’t believe me, I can demonstrate it for you!”

  “Wait!” Jas grabbed the boy and threw him off the container. “If this treasure only has three uses left, how could we just watch you waste another one?” He turned to Serp with a look of dedication in his eyes. “Elder brother, please allow me to test out this treasure. If it turns out that the boy is telling the truth—”

  Serp infused his legs with inner essence and jumped over to the chubby disciple, leaving a light gust of wind in his wake. With a resounding smack, he struck the man to the ground with a look of derision. “If you’re going to scheme against me, at least put some effort into it.” He turned to the other disciples. “Bring me the barrel.”

  Once his junior brothers had complied with his demands, he dragged the barrel to the centre of the camp, impatient. He’d already given it a thorough scan and was positive that it was simply a barrel filled with strange powder. Climbing on top and settling into a seated position, the surrounding bandits and disciples watched in silence as everyone present anticipated the supposed treasure’s activation.

  “Wait!” the boy looked flustered as if he’d just realized something horrible. “When you see that I was telling the truth, you’ll let me and my friends leave, right?”

  Serp placed his hand down onto the wood and remained quiet as he focused his spiritual sense on the snapfire bean. Very carefully, he sent out a tiny thread of inner essence and established a thin connection between the bean and his fingertip. Until he reached the Integration stage, his inner essence would rapidly dissipate whenever he cut its connection with his body. If it turned out that the boy was telling the truth, three uses with this treasure should be more than enough to allow him to ascend to the next stage, at which point he could finally project inner essence from his body with no need for a connection.

  He hurriedly stimulated the snapfire bean with a small jolt of energy, which it to snap in half. “What’s your name, boy?”

  All throughout the conversation, the youth’s forehead was creased with lines of worry and glazed over in an anxious layer of sweat. As the two of them locked eyes, his nervous and panicky disposition melted away to unveil a stern and expectant look. The odd staredown only lasted for a moment before a tremendous cracking sound filled Serp’s ears, as if a peel of lightning had crashed down upon him from the heavens above. Immediately after, his vision went black and all sound seemed to dwindle away, replaced by an eerie silence that him feel as if he’d fallen into an endless abyss where time no longer existed.

  His body had gone cold and completely numbed over, and his vision didn’t return until a few moments later. What is this? He was airborne, about twenty paces above the ground and still soaring upward. Despite being so high up, he was surrounded by a vast cloud of billowing smoke.

  What just happened? Had this cloud spat out the lightning that had harmed him? How high up had he gone?

  He reflected on things in a detached manner, as if he were observing a scene unfold around a stranger. A part of him pled for the rest of his mind to understand that he was in urgent danger, but the larger part of his psyche couldn’t find a secure enough foothold in his thought process to care. Had the boy brought a powerful cultivator as backup? No, the blast had clearly come from that barrel. Serp finally understood that he’d been had, though he couldn’t muster the energy to react.

  So it truly was a treasure…

  Just as he reached the apex of his upward momentum, an imposing figure emerged from the smoke with billowing clothes. This person quickly caught up to him and grabbed hold of his neck with a deathly grip. He was none other than the brown-haired boy, who’d clearly vaulted into the air as soon as the strange barrel had thrown Serp up into the sky.

  One arm dangled uselessly at the boy’s side, where the clean white of an unknown bone protruded from just above his elbow. The stream of blood that poured out from the injury sent small flecks of scarlet rain spattering into the smoke cloud beneath them. His sleeves were missing, his tunic more torn than whole, with more blood visible around the ripped areas of his clothing.

  Nearly thirty-five paces above the ground, fear-driven rage spewed forth from the boy’s eyes as if he were a blood-soaked devil that had just escaped from the flaming hells. The boy screamed something, clearly in fury, and it was at this point that Serp realized that he’d gone deaf from whatever attack that the barrel had unleashed upon him.

  Just as the two began falling back down to the forest below, the haze within Serp’s mind cleared just enough for him to comprehend the gravity of what was happening. You cretin! You’ve already used your treasure, yet you still intend to fight me? You’re simply asking to die!

  Overtaken by a flood of anger, he reached for his spatial bag only to notice that no sense of touch was perceived and that his body felt as if it we
re made of lead. Only then did he realize that the lower half of his body was gone, and that his mangled arms hung limply as he plummeted toward the ground at an increasingly rapid pace.

  Just what sort of treasure…?

  It took almost all of Serp’s energy to turn his head enough to get a view of the forest’s upper canopy, which was rapidly approaching. They would land amidst a tangle of healthy branches, about ten paces outside of the clearing where he and his men had been camped. Even in his delirium Serp could see that his chances of surviving the fall were slim at best, but he gained comfort in knowing that his killer would also have to pay a heavy toll for jumping up after him. With those injuries, he will definitely…

  Once they were only twenty paces above the treetops, the boy released his neck and summoned another barrel, which separated the two of them as they continued to fall.

  Serp struggled to curse at the boy, who steadied himself atop the barrel despite the rapid freefall and kicked it straight into his gut. Using the momentum from the kick, his trajectory changed and he veered off into the forest and out of Serp’s view, which went black as he crashed into the ground amidst a large group of bandits.

  Chapter Sixteen: Dead End

  Nolan nearly emptied his dantian as he scrambled to reinforce his body with delicately focused amounts of inner essence. Branches snapped and leaves rustled as he plummeted into the dense upper canopy of the forest, the surrounding air seeming to crack as a great explosion suddenly shook the land from not far off. Though his vision was a blur of motion, by relying on his spiritual sense he was able to twist his body at the last minute and narrowly avoided a situation where he might have landed on his head and snapped his neck. Grunting with pain, he recoiled from the inevitable impact as all of the air whooshed out of his lungs. He had to lie in place for two entire minutes before he stopped seeing stars, at which point he finally sucked in a desperate breath.

  Hundreds of birds fled for the skies as a second plume of ash-coloured smoke rose to merge with the first, which was quickly spreading to cover the forest’s core.

  As soon as he regained mobility Nolan pulled out a spirit stone and quickly siphoned its energy into his dantian, anxiously converting it into precious inner essence.

  Oh God, my arm!

  His left arm was alarmingly mangled, broken in several places and bleeding profusely. He’d used it to shield his face from the explosion of the first barrel, which had caused him a great deal of damage even though he’d been standing at the fringes of its blast radius. The disciples that’d surrounded him had all been thrown back, though he was only pushed back a couple of metres since he braced himself for the blast. Still, he was winded, bruised, and in terrible agony. How the hell had the explosion been so powerful?

  He sucked the spirit stone dry within minutes and fumbled to grab another from his spatial bag. Whimpering like a lost child, he did his best to distract himself from the exaggerated pains that raked his body, but then remembered that Nyla was stilled tied to that tree on the borders of the bandit camp.

  I can’t afford to wait around.

  Tears slipped from his eyes as he forced himself onto his feet and stumbled in the direction of the camp. If he were hurt this badly back in Canada, then he’d be rushed to the emergency room, and his family would have to undergo a heartbreaking crisis. It was worse on Venara. If he didn’t force himself to operate his weary, bloodied body, then his friends would die.

  Though he failed to fight back a wash of tears, Nolan acted without hesitation. He dipped his good hand into his spatial bag and summoned a blood breeding pellet that he’d acquired from the disciples back in Redfox Village, gasping as he did so. Praying for it to generate enough blood to keep up with the nightmarish amount that he was losing, he tossed it in his mouth and swallowed it down.

  Nyla…Quin…

  He took fifteen steps before he collapsed against the trunk of a wide tree, left bloody smears on the bark as he pushed himself back into motion.

  Hold on!

  Moving slowly to avoid jostling his arm, Nolan arrived back at the bandit camp only to walk in on an incredible scene. Both the bandits and the Bloodhand Sect disciples were currently doing battle against a group of heavily armoured men and women. They bore a sigil on their tabards, two red roses crossed over one another on a white badge, the scarlet flowers run through with a black sword that pointed downward. That’s the city lord’s symbol.

  More than twice their number, the newcomers looked like a small army of feudal knights as they ruthlessly slaughtered dozens of bandits with trained efficiency. Such a gruesome yet riveting scene was shocking, to say the least.

  There were nearly two hundred soldiers, most at the first level of the Profound Entry stage, with the weakest at the fifth level of Body Nourishment. Most prominent among the group was a tall man wearing an elegant helmet of dazzling gold, who brandished a silver longsword with quick and concise movements as he killed one bandit after another without batting an eyelid. At the fifth level of the Profound Entry stage, he seemed to be the leader of the large force. Aside from him, there were also five men at the fourth level of the same stage, each wearing a silver helmet that gleamed in the sunlight as they mowed down their remaining enemies.

  The remaining disciples of the Bloodhand Sect fled amidst the chaos, but were quickly surrounded by the squad of silver-helmeted warriors. Tents blown over and fire pits scattered, dead bandits littered the entire camp as a dominating silence seized the area.

  While his soldiers continued their work, the golden-helmeted man jumped over to the entrapped disciples, his blade glaring in the sunlight as he fixed his dark blue eyes upon the panicked trio.

  “Disciples of the Bloodhand Sect, you know that your kind isn’t welcome in our kingdom. Yet you’ve entered our lands and plotted against our people.” He slashed his sword in a provocative gesture. “On top of that, you murdered the city lord’s youngest son. For that alone, you shall be put to death!” He didn’t give his opponents a chance to respond, simply shot forward and lunged for the nearest one.

  Just as Nolan thought the conflict was finally winding down, a blurred silhouette emerged from the nearby treeline, followed by the resounding clang of steel on steel. Four people quickly appeared around the cornered disciples, the newcomers silently staring at the soldiers that surrounded them.

  “It’s a good thing Brecht sent us ahead of the group.” Not handsome by any means, the young man had a thin face that was punctuated by a long and pointy chin. As he scanned the bloody clearing with his beady, mud-coloured eyes, he looked at the disciples that he’d just saved with a ghost of sympathy. “Where is Serp?”

  The three disciples cupped their hands together, relief on their faces as they collectively faced the other five, and exclaimed, “Elder brothers!”

  A disciple stepped forward, a young man in his mid-twenties. “Elder brother Serp was just killed! By the one that Lord Elder sent us to—”

  “Do you think you’re in a position to speak freely?” The man with the golden helmet pointed his sword at the lead disciple and then turned to his troops. “A rare opportunity has presented itself. Today the Bloodhand Sect will lose five disciples of its inner court!”

  Inner court?

  The new arrivals filled Nolan with a deep sense of dread. He could only sense the cultivations of three of them, which meant that the other two were at least at the sixth level of the Profound Entry stage. Someone at this level could kill any of the average soldiers in a single hit, armour and all.

  Nolan tore his attention away from the opposing forces just as their leaders dashed toward each other, which signalled the resumption of the conflict. The power behind the thin-faced disciple’s attack forced the man with the golden helmet to take a few steps backward. Half a dozen other soldiers arrived before the disciple could follow up on his attack, the rest of their ranks jumping in as well.

  Nolan was relieved to see that Nyla appeared unharmed by the detonations and seemed to ha
ve gone completely ignored by both parties present. She stared despondently at the ground as if the clearing were quiet and free of fighting. He couldn’t see Quin anywhere, so he hurried over to the tree that Nyla was bound to, took out his dagger and made quick work of the ropes. He dropped his weapon and tried to catch her with his good arm, but he was too weak to support her and they both toppled to the ground.

  He groaned, couldn’t help but shed a few tears as his left arm hit the dirt. “We need to get out of here…”

  Screams of pain and rage coloured the tattered remains of the camp, which had been carpeted with indiscriminate gore. All of the bandits had long since died and over fifteen soldiers had now met the same fate, though it was only a matter of time before the remaining disciples were killed.

  Eyes red and puffy, Nyla gave him a look that said more than the words she so desperately tried to squeeze out. “Quin, he…he…”

  “Nyla, I’m sorry. I didn’t make it in time.” Nolan nearly lost consciousness due to the pain he was suffering through. “Nyla, if we don’t leave now…”

  She nodded and then helped him back onto his feet. He retrieved his dagger and then replaced it with a spirit stone, clenched it tightly in his hand as they stumbled away from the camp and began to wade their way through overgrown underbrush.

  Not a minute later, Nolan sensed two life forces approaching from the direction of the camp. Fucksakes! Why can’t they just let us go? He was weaker than he could ever remember, so the prospect of fighting someone sent him into a panic. Not to mention that both auras were at the second level of Profound Entry.

  “Hurry up!” a wary voice spat from a few dozen metres away. “We need to hurry back to Brecht and the others. Those elder brothers said they’d only hold off the soldiers for a minute!”

  “I heard them!” a second voice wheezed. “My leg…it’s hard to run.”