Chapter 5: Beasts and Bandits
The world turned dark and wet. Liquid cold as ice and black as night rolled over me. Stars poked through like pinpricks in a blanket, dots of light that were visible even as it covered my eyes and submerged me, soaking through my robes and pressing against my skin. Then it began to boil. I blinked to try to clear the black liquid enveloping me. The tiny pinpricks of light glowed brighter and brighter until an entire world took shape around me.
I was on a wagon. A blue sky stretched out above me, the sun beating down. For a moment, I thought I had been teleported again. I tensed as I took in the sprawling wilderness.
The untamed wilds were dangerous, even for cultivators of the Third Realm. The lands that men did not claim often belonged to Spiritbeasts.
But nothing moved. I couldn't shift my body beyond where I sat.
Birds remained frozen in the air, leaves from massive trees remained in the air, and the wagon beneath me remained in place.
Text boxes scrolled in front of me.
[Level 15 Scenario]
[You are a cultivator guarding a caravan from threats. Prove your worthiness by defending the caravan from all threats without the use of [Skills.] Deliver the caravan back to Windhewn Peak. Attributes have been suppressed for the duration of the scenario.]
[Reward: Levels, Attribute Points, Spirit Healing Progress]
[Anti-Light Scepter Detected; Additional Information Authorized]
[This challenge, localized to the Ludus Arbor, is designed to pass down power to potential inheritors of the Anti-Light Order's Legacy. Each completed trial will raise a users access to the labyrinth and affinity to an Anti-Light Path. Be wary; the challenges within can and will kill.]
The System's scrolling text confirmed my thoughts — this place was a legacy — a massive one, the kind of inheritance that a sect leaves behind. The kind of inheritance that the Anti-Light Order leaves behind,
This Labyrinth was a legacy — a massive one. Cultivators, when they reached a certain realm, all built Legacies of their own — manuals to inherit their original techniques, but often also great training halls to pass them down; it was so widespread that I had suspected it was a quintessential step to advancement.
But one this massive, this hidden, and this forgotten? That was unheard of. And I had never heard of Anti-Light; not as a major attribute of qi, a path, or a sect. Whoever they were, they had long since faded from Bloodstone's history.
Time unfurled like a wet cloth, moving forward drip by drip.
"What's wrong?" A man — a mortal — asked me, looking up at me with worry on his face. The wagon we were on rolled unsteadily on a wild path. A spear rested between my legs, pointing upward, the tassel tied near the blade bouncing in the wind as we rode between gigantic trees. There was nothing like them in the territory of the Feng; the closest I had seen was at Snowshadow hall.
[Be wary; the challenges within can and will kill.]
The man looked upset, his face twisted in a rictus of fear.
"Nothing is wrong." I said, plastering a smile I didn't feel on my face. The mortal calmed, but not completely.
"You frightened me, my lord."
There was a feeling settling in my stomach in those moments; it was like the sensation of drowning, the moment where your body demands air and demands that you breathe. It wasn't my lungs demanding air, though. It was a sensation I had long become comfortable with, one that had turned into a dull ache.
I grimaced as that ache became a sharp pain, wincing and preparing for it to hurt more as I dragged qi from the air into my meridians and toward my dantian. But instead of the sharp pain of the qi bleeding out through my shattered core, I felt the core inside me.
The qi in the air was so dreadfully thin that it was nothing more than the tiniest wisp of power I had pulled there; but I felt inside of me a sensation I hadn't felt in years; a sea of power, calm and quiet in my core, ready to boil out. My eyes widened.
[You are a cultivator guarding a caravan from threats.]
This illusion was capable of fully simulating a dantian. It was there, real to all of my senses, boiling with power under my own control.
With the tiny wisp of power I absorbed, I felt the qi in the world around me. Under me, inside the tied down crate I sat on, were piles of what felt like spirit-stones; each one bled specific attributes of qi, rather than the pure, unattributed qi I was used to.
This was a wagon loaded with cultivation resources. A pang of greed filled me as I stared at the cultivation resources. Even though I hadn't properly accumulated qi in years. Even though I could do nothing with them. Even though they were power for a path I only held as long as I was in this illusion.
I was always taught that it was good for a cultivator to be greedy.
But this wasn't really my dantian. There was no way it would stay after this scenario ended. And besides that…
"Tell me of the recent spirit beast sightings in the land ahead." I told the mortal.
"No sightings, Lord."
I raised an eyebrow. That was hard to believe. Even if there were no spirit-beasts about normally, the cart of goods would attract them like nothing else. Especially with the abnormally dispersed qi of the area; this place must have been a barren land, like the Feng desert territory surrounding Sandgrave.
"Just the regular losses. Three wagons this year, loaded to the brim. No survivors, no corpses… you'll keep us safe, yes, Lord?"
That explained the mortals fear at my reaction. He had assumed I had sensed something, and that an attack was imminent.
"Of course." I said, gripping my spear tighter.
The qi coiling in my meridian wasn't exactly Storm-qi. It definitely wasn't whatever Anti-Light was, either. It was wind-qi; not so different as to be completely unfamiliar to me, but not similar enough to the storm-qi I had cultivated to be comfortable.
All of the artifacts stored atop the wagon matched the qi perfectly.
I needed information. And I needed it as fast as possible. Powering an illusion like this was beyond expensive — I should know. I trained for hours in similar illusory formations — though mine were less impressive by far.
I couldn't tell that the sky was fake here.
"How long until our arrival?"
"Another few days, my lord."
I hesitated. Days? That couldn't be right.
I clutched my spear tight and waited.
But hours passed, and no threat came.
As the sun began to set, I started to ask more questions.
"How many shipments do we sent a month through this pass?"
"Oh, no less than thirty, my lord."
Which meant three a month was no less than one-in-ten. But there was no way the simulation would put me in a scenario where we weren't attacked.
"And we're carrying the standard transport?"
The mortal laughed.
"The standard transport doesn't involve a cultivator guard such as yourself, my lord. No, this shipment only happens twice a year."
I could sense the man's growing suspicion, but none would dare talk back to a cultivator. I knew this was a simulation. I knew this wasn't real. But every time I addressed him as a mortal in my mind, I felt an itch, a memory digging itself to the surface. I knew I shouldn't have asked him his name or learned anything about him. He wasn't real.
But this entire illusion felt too real.
His name was Jian Yi. He accepted the carriage work — taking goods to and from the pass — because it paid more. Much more. He had a sick wife and young child at home, who relied on him when he returned, and his trips often took weeks. The entire county was in a state of famine — the taxes on crops to the local cultivation sects had suddenly increased, and mismanagement left too little food in the city.
This job, though dangerous, allowed him to sustain himself and his family. He had never been attacked on his route. But he had stumbled across carriages that had been attacked.
He kept doing the work anyway.
"We're expecting another kid." He said, unprompted. He was smiling. "We're saving up to expand our home. To build on another wing, my lord."
We had stopped for the night now, putting the wagon adjacent to the side of a cliff. I had helped construct a fire pit. It was crackling now. The horse was feeding from a bucket, and Jian Yi looked ready to fall asleep, bundling on a log I had carried over as a makeshift seat.
"That's good news. I will pray for the child's health."
"I'm hoping for a son, my lord." Jian Yi said. Then his face turned serious. "Shall I take the second watch for the night?"
I hesitated. Then I poked at my core with my senses. My body had been tempered in the Second Realm, and taken a step into the third. Staying awake for a few days would be fatiguing — but not difficult, unlike what a mortal would experience.
"I'm not tired." I said. "I'll wake you when I need you."
Poppy Vascara held up the ratty, splintered board that had worked as a makeshift shield for the two weeks. The wood was already rotting and splitting when she found it, and now, she hovered behind what was left of it as they ventured into the deepest, darkest, and most dangerous pits of the labyrinth their clan of looters had been tearing apart.
She paused at the corner.
"Sense anything, Thane?"
The Archer stood to her left, stopping to listen, also crouched. His breath was visible in the dim magical light coming from the rock tied around her neck.
"Don't hear nothing. Save running water. Anna…" Thane said.
"I'm not wasting mana stealthing ahead." She said.
"Somethings wrong." Poppy said. "There were at least eight more goblins in that pack. What if they're sitting in ambush?"
"You're paranoid." Anna said. "Listen to that. It's dead quiet. And if we really do get in trouble, I might need that mana."
"It's too quiet." Poppy said.
Poppy nodded, warming herself up. The bottom of the labyrinth was freezing cold, pitch black, and smelled like goblin shit.
They crossed the corner.
"Well, that's three of 'em." Thane said. He spat to the side.
"Corpses?" Poppy asked. Her Perception stat wasn't as high — she couldn't see in the dark as well as he could.
"Yes'm. Bled out, I'm guessing."
They crossed over the bodies, collecting the ears as they went.
"Almost to quota. That means dinner tonight." Poppy said, injecting all the cheer in her voice she could. No one replied. She fiddled with the ring on her finger as Thane worked on removing the last ear.
[Ring of the Bleeding Crown, Level 3, Bonded to Poppy Vascara]
[This ring transfers 30% of all Experience gained to the wearer of the Bleeding Crown. This ring grants Plus Five to all attributes. Warning: This Ring has leveled and Soul-Bonded the Contract between Poppy Vascara and Solder, and removing it will Shatter all levels and skills gained during the Contract. The contract will be annulled only by the consent of both parties or on the death of a contract holder.]
She sucked in a breath. She had read it over and over again, but there was no way out. When she reached the shores of the Savage Continent, a land untouched by the Three Great Families, she had thought for certain she would find her destiny here. But even with her two retainers, she struggled to reach level ten, let alone beyond it.
Poppy Vascara was suppressed from the day she was born. She was seventeenth in line for a throne that rested on an estate she had never visited, on a world where the political elite were so entrenched that there was no shift in the balance of power. The Old Continent didn't change.
Blood and Steel was the motto of House Vascara, the Iron Vanguard, the Siege Breakers. Their legacy was carved in stone, entrenched in the earth, and tested in battle.
The Vascara ruled a third of the continent from a castle in the sky, surrounded by a war fleet that hadn't seen battle in a dozen generations, whose admirals held levels and ages in the triple digits, impossible to displace, impossible to rise to.
The old continent had been practically freed of threats, the wild monsters that remained only enough to sustain each generation of carefully nurtured and raised elites, and those who met their standards disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.
So when a recruiter offered her a place in an expedition that could promise levels, and equipment including a ring that would increase all of her attributes, she took it, and so did her retainers.
Of course, they didn't mention the negatives of it. And they didn't start out that way. At level 1, the ring only consumed ten-percent of your experience. And it wasn't bonded. You could take it off any time. But the ring grew with you. Leveled with you. Devoured you.
"Poppy? You ready?" Thane asked.
"Yeah. Sorry." She groaned, working the cold from her bones, and then they crossed the next corner, moving slow and steady. They stopped dead as they stared down the hall.
The hallway widened and grew taller and taller, opening towards a massive, arched door, one they had never seen there. The door had been opened, swinging inward to reveal a ceiling covered in glowing figures.
"What in the Voids name…?" Poppy asked. She crept forward. The three of them exchanged no words as they crossed the threshold into the room. The air smelled ancient and stale. Poppy was immediately hit by how dry it was compared to the room outside, how the place smelled sterile and untouched. Except for the blood of the five goblin corpses laying on the ground.
"Found out why it was so quiet." Thane said, slinging his bow over a shoulder and walking to the corpses. He looked at one. "The cuts on these bodies are so clean. There isn't a Swordsman that fights like this in the camp."
"There is no feasible way another party could have slipped passed us without us noticing. In either direction." Poppy said.
"You think this was a monster?" Thane asked.
Thane inspected the corpses. After a moment, he walked to the wall. There was damage there — the goblins had used their sling. He stared up and down the wall, eyes still dimly glowing, before looking at the ground.
He leaned down and wiped a finger in a spot of blood, rubbing it between his hands with a frown.
"What is it?" Anna asked, leaning over with a frown.
"I… I don't know. [Tracking] is telling me that it's [Altered Human Blood.] But I don't know if that means the Blood has been altered, or…"
"Or the human has." Poppy finished. She looked back to the entrance. Then around to the unopened doors.
"Should we report this?" Thane asked with a frown.
"And have someone else loot all the rooms attached to this? No. Let's close the door before anyone notices, collect the ears, and climb back to camp."
Once the party collected their bounty, they turned to leave, climbing the spiraling labyrinth.
"Poppy!" Anna shouted, suddenly enough to catch Poppy off guard.
Poppy reacted, lifting her shield and looking around. But there was nothing to look at.
"The door…" Anna said, pointing a dagger to one of the many doors along the dungeon. Unlike the others, it glowed with magic pulsing along the finely detailed carvings in the stone. A swirl of rainbow colors covered it.
Poppy flinched back, holding the shield up higher. Thane drew an arrow. None of them moved.
"It's not opening." Poppy said after a moment.
The three of them sat in tense silence without moving.
"Why isn't it opening?" Anna asked.
Poppy furrowed her brows. They had seen the scenario doors. No one ever escaped any of the scenarios alive. Not even the ones that had promised to be [Level 5] challenges. The only thing that ever exited a scenario door was a corpse, often mutilated beyond recognition. And there was never any sign of what had done it.
"What if it's already activated? If there's someone already in there?" Poppy asked.
"Poor bastard." Thane said. "We can come collect their corpse later. Hopefully there will be enough of them left to identify them."
Chapter 6: Bandits and beasts
The spirit-beasts fell upon us quickly and quietly.
There was so little qi in the world and so little qi inside of them that they almost snuck up on me. I felt them in the last moment before their arrival; their spirits were like the static of a dust storm on the wind, making my hair standing on end. Their eyes lit up the night like a hundred glowing jewels. I was already standing with my spear at the ready.
They were a hundred shapes in the night of fur and fang, and they charged me in a sweeping tide. Not just at me, but also unto Jian Yi. I swung my spear incessantly, each swing of the spear's blade cleaving at least one of the beasts in half, each reversal of its haft crushing a skull and flinging bodies away.
It had been years since I had brushed up in my training in the spear. Still, something about this illusory formation seemed to make recalling my skills easier. With each swing, I remembered the drills I had practiced for months on end. I fell into a state of flow as I carved a tide of monsters apart.
The creatures were all misshapen; bent, broken spirit-beasts, starved of qi and left in the wilderness. It was like a spirit-beast horde made entirely of pests. Jian Yi was long since awake; he cried out, but I had no time to pay him any heed. My every action brought death to the little monsters. They were like miniature wolves, like rabid rats and rotting, featherless birds.
My muscles burned and sweat accumulated on my skin by the time the last of them fell.
"Are you unhurt?" I asked Jian Yi, turning to him with my entire body. He flinched backward at the motion.
I paused and collected myself. The relationship between mortals and cultivators was always tense outside of my own city. I had forgotten so easily. I tried again.
"Are you alright, friend?" I asked, giving my best smile.
"There's blood on your face, my lord."
I reached up to wipe my face. I smeared blood across it instead. My hands were covered.
"My lord…" Jian Yi said, pulling free a rag and passing it to me.
"Ah, thank you." I said, taking it with a smile before wiping clean my face and hands.
"You're uninjured?" Jian Yi asked. He was still shook.
"Of course." I said, turning back to stare at the carnage. There was nothing else left that I saw, just the piles and piles of tiny, malformed spirit-beasts. I sat back down by the dying fire and continued to wait out the night.
Jian Yi slept no more. He clung to wakefulness with an unrested and shaky paranoia. When the sun rose, it revealed the corpses of a hundred starving, corrupted monsters. I frowned at them.
There was something deeply wrong with this place. They weren't just small and misshapen — they looked starved. But not of food. Of qi. They looked like they had taken in aspects incompatible with their cores, corrupting them. I squinted down at the bodies. The spirit-beasts in this place were corrupting themselves, consuming power that warped them.
"The sun is rising. Are you able to control the wagon?" I turned to Jian Yi. The world flickered. Instead of Jian Yi sitting, I saw him splayed across the ground, covered in the corpses of monsters and blood. A pounding head emerged behind my eyes. Then the vision was gone.
Jian Yi looked back up at me. He blinked away apparent confusion.
"Yes, my lord. We still have another few days travel before we arrive."
"Okay." I said, staring at him for a few moments longer. Nothing else strange happened. Jian Yi stood with a huff, shouldering past me and preparing the horse and wagon. I extinguished the fire.
[Warning: Scenario integrity degraded 7%. Additional Change has been harvested to restablize. Scenario altered.]
[Level 15 Scenario]
[Objective: Defend]
[You are a cultivator guarding a caravan from threats. Prove your worthiness by defending the caravan from all threats without the use of [Skills.] Deliver the caravan back to Windhewn Peak. Attributes have been suppressed for the duration of the scenario.]
I froze, rereading the prompts several time. They absolutely hadn't changed — the scenario remained the same. I turned to look at Jian Yi, putting together what was happening.
In this scenario, Jian Yi was supposed to die. A normal cultivator wouldn't have been focused on protecting him. I turned to the wagon. Almost none of the monster corpses had died at the ground around it. But a normal cultivator would have defended the wagon. Even the scenario's description matched that — defend the caravan.
Not Jian Yi.
We were back on the road without any abnormalities within the hour. Maybe the lack of sleep made me paranoid, or maybe it was the lack of feedback in the air. We continued down the road until it sunk into the earth, a trough carved into the wet dirt from years of caravans crossing this very road. The foliage and trees grew thick around us.
The road curved around boulders. The calls of birds grew more and more incessant in the thick foliage.
"Stop the cart." I told Jian Yi, readying my spear.
Just around a bend in the road, there was an upturned wagon. I squinted at it.
There was no horse to pull it. Two men stood outside of it, arguing. They hadn't noticed us yet. Shabby swords hung at their waists, but their spirits were so weak in my senses that they barely registered. They definitely weren't a threat.
I leapt from the wagon, books squelching in the mud. The two of them turned to look at me, anger still on their faces. One of them went pale as a ghost. The other turned tense.
"Greetings." I said, offering a closed fist salute. My palm touched the fist holding the spear, and my eyes stayed fixed on the tense man. They didn't have a horse with them. "Can I help you two?"
"Yes. Our wagon fell. Could you help us right it, my lord?" The tense man asked. His tone was biting. I squinted at him.
The tense man turned to the pale man, who started walking off the road.
"Where are you going?" I asked. "Where's your horse?"
The nervous looking man turned back to me, eyes wide.
"He ran off, my lord!" The nervous man said. His eyes kept glancing to the woods. "I should go look for him. He can't have gone far."
I nodded. "Go. I'll help you upturn the wagon."
The more assured of the two men walked to the wagon's edge, grabbing hold of the turned over carriage as if to flip it over.
"On three, my lord?"
"You can leave it to me." I said, waving the man back with the spear in my hand.
I circled qi through my left arm, grabbed the edge of the wagon, and pulled it upright with the sound of groaning wood. Its wheels hit the mud with a wet plop.
"That's done." I said, turning back to the man. "Now we wait for your horse to return."
"I should help him look." The sharp man said. He was eyeing the treeline nervously.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Stay here with us, brother." I smiled at him.
The demeanor of the two men made me wary. So did their eagerness to leave. I was feeling fears that they were here to rob passerbys. The tiny spirit-beasts that I had slaughtered should have left behind corpses — infact, it wouldn't surprise me if a mortal could kill a few before being overwhelmed. They wouldn't align with the story that Jian Yi told me — that they never found remnants from the caravans.
Monsters didn't leave no trace behind. Men did.
"I really should go help him…" The man said. "You see, he's really no good with animals!"
"I'm sure he'll be okay."
We waited for a few minutes. The sharp man grew increasingly nervous and agitated.
I turned to Jian Yi. He had a calm smile on his face. He knew I would protect him.
This illusion was so real that it felt like someone else's memory. Was there a real Jian Yi? One that didn't make it home to a wife and daughter that he worked so hard to care for?
The image of Jian Yi dead at the horde of spirit-beasts flitted through my mind again.
"Jian Yi…" I said. I was going to ask him something. I wasn't sure what.
Then I heard the first of the arrows. They must have fired a dozen at once. I grabbed the stranger and pushed him between myself and the noise — just in time.
The wet thumps of a half dozen arrows answered every suspicion I had been harboring. One of them even grazed me, the sharp edge of an arrow cutting the skin of my arm. I winced.
Few cultivators were even aware that a mortal bow, strung to enough pounds of weight, could pierce the skin of lower realm cultivators. We looked down on them so much that the only times they saw combat were as fodder, pressed into lines at the walls of cities to repel spirit-beast hordes.
The complete lack of qi inside of them, and the lack of qi in the air, made them all but invisible to my spirit-senses. It was like trying to peer into a blizzard.
A second round of arrows came, this time from the other direction. My skin may not have been able to resist them, but I could hear the sound of bows being drawn and tensioned, shifting my human shield in time to absorb all of the blows. I rushed forward into the treeline, still carrying the man as a shield.
I broke the line of brush and foliage with a shout, throwing the corpse of the man into the rough half circle of bow wielding mortals.
"Run!" One of the men shouted.
I was far too fast. My spear pierced through the chest of the first man. He coughed, thick red spilling up his throat.
He snarled at me even as he died, hands gripping the spear's shaft, teeth coated with his own blood. I turned to the second man, cutting him down just as easily as I had the spirit-beast horde. All six of them tried to scatter in different directions. It made no difference. I was far too fast, and they were far too slow.
I killed them before they managed to cross fifty paces away, then turned back toward the road, crossing to the other side. I only spare a moment to glance at Jian Yi — he cowered behind cover, face pressed into the side of the wagon. That was good.
The other six mortals fell just as easily. Withou the element of surprise, it was easy to move too fast for them to track. They weren't skilled archers, even if they had practice, it wasn't against targets who moved as I did. Each one fell with the simple swing of a spear, their unreinforced bodies too weak to resist me.
The anxious looking man from before was among the second set of ambushers. I attacked him last, disarming him and pinning him to the ground after the other five were dead.
"Are you responsible for the missing caravans along this trail?" I asked him.
The tip of my spear rested against his chin. He closed his eyes. The fear on his face disappeared. He looked up at me with resolution in his eyes.
"Go to hell, cultivator scum."
My eyes widened. But I didn't move.
"Not going to execute me? Just going to wait for all of us to starve? The dread-hordes ravage our farmland and massacre towns, and what are you doing? Protecting a cart of treasures. You value them so much more than human lives?"
"You're not a bandit." I said, my eyes wide. "You're a rebel."
He also wasn't real. This was just an illusory formation — a training tool. Maybe it was built out of a cultivator's real memories — but my actions wouldn't change the pass. A rebel was a traitor to his men, to his country, and the punishment for treason was always the same.
My own father had taught me that lesson.
The first time I killed another man, I was eleven.
The sword in my hands was too large. It was unwieldy. Qi I could barely control pumped through my meridians from daily practice. My arms buzzed with power I had only ever gathered for training. The tip of the sword in my hands cut the wooden platform below us. Around us, blood stained sand filled an arena in the center of rising seats. So many mortals talking at once made the air buzz, the weight of a thousand stares heavy on my shoulders.
"Dad… do I have to?" I asked, staring up at the Patriarch.
His robes flowed to the floor. His hands were behind his back, and his eyes were dark as stared down at me. The mid day sun burned above us. No clouds blocked the sky, but in that moment I stood in my father's shadow.
The sound of the crowd around us dulled. I felt my father's aura at work — a solid wall. Reliable and unfaltering.
"A Patriarch must always do what is best for the clan. Sometimes, that involves sacrifice."
"So we have to kill him?" I asked. "Can't we do something else? Can't you do it?"
"The sacrifice we make is a sacrifice of ourselves. We make the hard choices so that our people don't have to." He stared out over the gathered crowd of mortals in the high seats. In the low seats, dozens of nobles gathered. None of them cheered or talked. Instead, they wore heavy, solemn expressions. "If you do not learn today, when will you learn?"
I stared at the ground.
"Chin up. Stand proud. You must represent the clan."
Wen stood behind my father, staring down at me. His eyes were soft, though. Regretful.
"Yes, Patriarch." I said, straightening my back.
I followed in father's shadow as we approached the execution stand. His aura retreated. The and terrible roar of the crowd fell on us, the mortals now cheering rather than talking. A handful of cultivators watched, the qi in the air disturbed by their presence, while the mortals on the seats around them roared and called for death.
The main show was over. All that was left was the execution.
"Governor Song has failed the nation." The Patriarch's voice boomed.
I walked to my rehearsed position.
Governor song was a fit man, body covered in muscles and scars. Long disheveled blond hair hung from his head, blocking his face. Dried blood clung to it.
"He stole from the Blood Stained Peak, embezzled wealth owed in tithe to the Grim Tempest, and in doing so, endangered the nation." The Patriarch boomed again. The crowd quieted. "Governor Song secretly exported a number of mined spirit-stones, failing to report the wealth to the clan. In doing so, he endangered all of us!"
The crowd booed.
"He risked the life of each and every one of you."
The Patriarch stepped to the side, looking at me and nodding.
I swallowed hard, whispering.
"I'm sorry." I told the Governor.
He laughed, whipping his head up. The hair fell away, revealing a bruised face. He smiled at me, but there was no mirth in his eyes. That moment stretched. He stared at me with pity, not anger. Then his eyes turned to my father's back and hardened.
"Hurry up and do it boy." He said. "I would kill you gladly if the tables turned. And your bastard father."
I didn't want to. I had political instructors. They taught me about social manipulation.
Song was trying to convince me to kill him. To make it easy for me. I could hear that he didn't mean it.
He was trapped in a pillory that restricted his qi, his head forward, neck exposed, unable to move or resist.
The Patriarch turned his head slightly, focusing on me. His qi weighed me down like a mountain. Solid. Reliable. I swallowed again. My mouth was dry.
I raised my voice.
"Governor Song, as is my right by the blood of the Feng Family, I sentence you to death for the crime of treason."
I raised the blade and swung it.
The blade struck. Song grunted. I panicked, hands trembling raising it and swinging it again. Even without his qi, a cultivator's body was strong. I stared in horror at my dad.
"Swing again, boy." He said.
I did.
Again, and again, and again. The entire time, my father stared down at me.
His aura never left my shoulders.
When it was done, my arms ached.
Governor Song's head laid on the ground.
They burned his body with the stage. Then we sat in the stands as musicians came out and played for the crowd. We ate dinner. Governor Song's blood stains marred my boots.
I left all thirteen bodies in the woods and returned to the caravan.
"Jian Yi!" I said. "It's safe now. You can come out."
I walked casually to where I last saw him cowering against the wagon. He was still there. With a frown, I leaned down and touched his shoulder. He slumped as I pulled him free.
He wasn't cowering. He was dead. An arrow was embedded in his neck, leaking blood to the ground.
"Jian Yi…"
If this illusion matched reality, then Jian Yi had never made it back to his family; to his unborn son or wife and daughter.
"Is it over?" I asked, looking up. "I killed the spirit-beasts. I killed the rebels. The scenario isn't over?"
Another system prompt appeared in answer.
[You are a cultivator guarding a caravan from threats. Prove your worthiness by defending the caravan from all threats without the use of [Skills.] Deliver the caravan back to Windhewn Peak. Attributes have been suppressed for the duration of the scenario.]
I reread it three times.
It wasn't done until I delivered the caravan.
I rifled through the goods we were transporting, ultimately pulling free bandages — emergency medical supplies — and wrapping Jian Yi in them. I rested him at the top of the caravan. And then I drove him back.
It took another day and a half before we reached our destination. I followed the road blindly, hoping that taking the more traveled path would keep me on the correct route. It did.
There were no more threats. No more attacks.
The guard at the gate — an aging cultivator stuck in the First Realm — greeted me with a dour expression.
"What's this?" He asked as I carried Jian Yi's body down from the loaded wagon. He had a look of disgust on his face.
"The caravan driver perished. We were attacked by rebels hiding in the forest two days back."
"Leave it outside the gates. I'll send someone to dispose of it."
I carried his body forward numbly. The guard seemed unmoved.
"I'd like to arrange to have the body buried." I said. "To see his soul to the afterlife."
[Warning: Scenario integrity degraded 15%. Additional Change has been harvested to restablize.]
Reality buzzed. Everything froze. The guard in front of me disappeared. Jian Yi disappeared from my arms.
I stared at my empty hands. His body was gone. The cultivator in the memory hadn't brought it home. He had left it behind.
The guard at the gate slapped a palm on my shoulder with a happy smile.
"Don't worry senior brother. I'm sure the governer will raze the forests of the Western Reach to the ground. No rebel will remain."
"I… thank you." I said, catching up. The memory had glitched again, Jian Yi was gone, and the secenario continued.
It continued into the night as they celebrated me. The governor hosted a banquet with me as a guest of honor, sharing a position with him at the head of the table.
Sickness roiled in my stomach as noble guest after guest greeted and paid their respects to the cultivator who had descended the Windhewn Peak to aid them in their time of need. Not in helping with their fields and defending them so that their peasants wouldn't starve, but in protecting a single caravan of goods.
I recounted briskly how I had met and killed the rebels over a dozen times that night.
The scenario was mocking me. It was unending. I had thought that maybe it had lost so much integrity that it had broken entirely when it finally ended. The world ground to a horrifying halt, the people around me seeming to buzz and melt away.
[Scenario complete!]
[Generating rewards…]
Chapter 7: Old Ghosts and Tired Thrones
[Reward: Legacy Authority Three]
[You may now freely enter and exit all rooms, including the Third Grade of the sealed chambers of the inner legacy. Complete more scenarios and be deemed worthy to have your authority elevated.]
[Access to the Third Grade sealed chambers granted]
[You reached level 4!]
[Dantian Repair Progress Accelerated Using Consumed Change]
[Storm/Wind Dantian: Shattered][Repairing: 10%]
My heart raced. Instantly, reflexively, my qi coiled. My dantian was shattered, the top of it suffering a blown open hole that constantly bled away my cultivation base. But now the edges were rounded instead of jagged. They were smooth, no longer forcing me to recoil in spiritual pain at the touch.
And they were growing steadily, moving upwards, sealing the wound.
This place really could heal me.
But there was something wrong with it. The world around me faded away, pitch black replacing it until nothing remained, but my focus was consistently inward, prodding and feeling. The dantian I had inside of the scenario felt different from my own, sharp and silver and constantly changing.
The new growth around my spiritual core felt different from either. This place was healing me, but I was changing, too.
But we were always changing.
I blinked. The black shifted.
Jian Yi's body was on the ground in front of me, half dissolved into black motes. Blood was leaking from his mouth. His head turned to look at me. I felt a sadness inside of me.
Jian Yi likely died centuries ago. All that would remain of him would be the memory I now held.
[ERROR]
A dozen system prompts appeared and disappeared without warning. Jian Yi's mouth was moving. I spoke back, asking what he was saying, but I couldn't hear the words. There was no sound. Jian Yi's mouth moved faster and faster.
He shot half way up, gasping for air like a drowning man. His face started to warp, bend and change. I stepped back in alarm. The ground felt solid beneath my feet.
"Feng Sai." Jian Yi turned to look at me. The voice that exited his throat was deep, old, and imperious. Jian Yi smiled, blood pouring over his teeth. "Feng Sai. Feng Sai!" He spoke the name like he was testing it, each word causing blood to fall from his open mouth. It splattered, drops of red dissolving against perfect black.
"After all these years, a worthy heir has found and inherited my legacy!"
I froze, staring at the talking corpse. Something had gone horribly wrong. The system was breaking apart. Jian Yi was still melting into the black around us.
"This place… is your Legacy, Yi?"
Jian Yi laughed.
"No, boy. And no… I am not Jian Yi. This poor peasant has probably reincarnated hundreds of times since this memory was recorded — the scenarios are built of moments that changed a cultivator's Fate — places in time where their impression on the world and how they Changed is strongest. When you broke the path from the cultivators memory, the Legacy here adjusted the Scenario to match. I am able to reach you because of the excess Change you created — hence why I am puppeting this rotting vessel. But we do not have much time."
"So it was a memory." I said. "It all… felt so real. Pardon… what are you?"
Jian Yi's eyes were growing milky white, but the blood dribbling from him began to fade away.
"I am… my name no longer matters. It has been burned from the records of your world, struck from the annals of history. Your ancestors ancestor would not recall my name, though your very continent has been shaped by my hands. This fragment of my soul is bound to the scepter — the System you've inherited."
As the voice continued to speak through Jian Yi, more and more of its body dissolved.
"What is the System?" I asked, more hurriedly.
"It is magic from another world. Every great tree hosts many worlds and many powers — paths to reach immortality without cultivation. But we are special. I'm using that magic to heal your broken core — though it would have been best if a mortal discovered this legacy. Regardless… there is another who is attempting to harvest what remains of the Legacy here. Graverobbers. Insects. Parasites. You cannot allow them to take this Legacy from you. By any means. You need every scrap of power you can get. Time is already running out."
"Whoever killed those… goblins? In the halls?" I ventured.
"In a sense. I am only able to see them loosely through this place's decaying structure. Another few centuries and the Legacy here would have imploded. Not only that, but the rats who dare plunder this Legacy are not weak compared to you now. In fact, if you were to try to fight them today, you would die. And they will not allow you to leave alive. Not without restoring your core do you have any chance. I — "
"Pardon, senior!" I said, as respectfully as I could. The change in address was one of respect that many cultivators were too arrogant to give — but this disembodied voice was clearly ancient, and I was running out of time. I could physically see the time we had to talk fading as his chest dissolved. "How do I return home?"
Jian Yi's corpse smiled. His eyes began to glow green.
"Interrupting me is bold. You will return to your world in time, boy. But first, scrape every last level out of this place. While you're at it, clean out the rats who are plundering this Legacy."
"Apologies, Senior. But you said this Legacy isn't yours. Whose is it?"
His eyes glowed brighter and brighter as the dissolving black reached his neck.
"It belongs to… you can think of them as a sect. A sect that stretched across multiple worlds, to which I once belonged. Once, aeons ago, they lived both upon your world… and this one." The wave of encroaching darkness consumed Jian Yi's face, but he continued talking. "The Anti-Light Order. But they have been all but purged from the upper branches of reality."
"Sorry, Senior." I said. "I do not follow. When you say… this world, and my own, you do not mean…"
The voice laughed as Jian Yi's head fully disappeared.
White cracks fissured out almost instantly, like glass breaking, before a thousand pieces of black shattered fell to the floor. They boiled away, and I was out of the Scenario.
Instead, I was in a perfectly square room carved from stone. Stones in the ceiling shone light onto the ground. I was rooted in place, processing.
"Senior? You do not mean that this is another world entirely?" I asked. But there was no reply. The scenario was gone, and with it, so were any more answers. Instead I had new questions.
[Quest Assigned: Reach the center of the Legacy]
[At the center of this legacy is a treasure to aid you in your journey. Reach it before the parasites infesting this tomb claw their way through the walls and rip it from you.]
[Reward: Teleportation Token to return to the Bloodstone Continent. Completion of spiritual repair. Divine Grade Cultivation Technique.]
[On failure you will be unable to leave this realm until you progress far enough to travel the Deep Black Sea on your own.]
Poppy, Thane and Anna dropped a bloodied leather sack at the desk of a man who looked like he was looking straight through them.
"Kill count."
"Fourteen for the night. All goblins." Poppy said.
With a grimace, the man nodded to the bag and spoke.
"Count them out."
He didn't perform the dirty work of actually checking each of the ears. He made Thane do that instead, counting them before adding them to a pile of extremely foul smelling trash. With a nod of satisfaction, the manager of the ledger pushed forward three wooden chips; the three of them exchanged them for food at a central fire of the camp.
Food that wasn't made of goblin meat; it might have still been made of monster, yes, but it was far more appetizing monsters than the bipedal kind. The three of them huddled together in a corner of the ramshackle camp. The mess had accumulated in the weeks they were spending looting the labyrinth. What was more was the number of tents now empty.
"Three whole teams missing." Thane quietly stated.
"Think they tried the challenge rooms?" Poppy asked.
"Or they just ran away." Anna said. "Still an option."
"We need a better plan to get rid of these rings." Poppy said.
"Solder will die eventually. We shouldn't be here with him when it happens."
As if summoned by the mention of his name, there was a shouting for attention. Almost a hundred people remained in this camp, but Solder was among the most imposing. He strode through the center of the dimly lit area, his armor a mix of metal and fur. He towered a head taller than everyone around him.
"Oh great. What is this about?" Thane whispered.
One of Solder's lieutenants prowled by their camp, leering, before stepping by and slapping someone who was still talking on the back of the head.
"We've been bleeding this hole in the earth dry for almost three weeks now." Solder said. His voice boomed across the tiny cave, amplified by his attributes. Poppy knew that Solder was approaching the threshold of the first tier — level 49.
"But we've failed to reach into the place's heart." Solder reahed out with a fist and made a grabbing motion in the air. On cue, a lieutenant behind him pulled up and unfurled a map. It showed a crude rendition of the dungeon and the camps location. He spun it around, point it at the members of Solder's inner circle at the gathering. It showed clearly that the rooms they had cleared all surrounded the actual center of the labyrinth. None of them penetrated the inner rooms.
"I'm sure you're wondering why we haven't punched a hole straight through the walls. And the answer is we have. But in doing so, we activated the labyrinths defenses. In a few days, we intend to finish what we started, and loot the labyrinth's heart. Then, and only then, we can return to Spearpoint victorious. Every survivor will receive their cut."
A half hearted cheer answered Solder's proclamation. He frowned.
"Rest and recover. We are going to be distributing any spare equipment. From now until our return to Spearpoint, I'm ending the food quota! Eat your fill!\ Soon we will empty this Labyrinth of every last treasure!"
This time, the cheer that answered was less forced.
The dissolution of the scenario had left me standing in a plain stone room. When I walked forward, the doors to the inside of the labyrinth once again parted autonomously, clearing way for me. But this time, I was not in the decaying and trash filled halls that had been occupied by beasts and looted by men.
The System had mentioned an inner legacy — something not uncommon in cultivation legacies, either; a place where those deemed more worthy than the outer disciples could enter.
"The Scenario likely tested not just my combat ability, but my character." I said outloud, turning to my left where Feng Wen was ever present. He wasn't with me, though, so I was talking to myself in an empty hall. I sighed. I was on my own with nothing but the ghost of an ancient and powerful mad man to guide me.
"I need to assess the threat of the graverobbers and see how much time I have left."
It shouldn't have been short. If the Legacy tested both character and power, then they likely couldn't force their way through the challenges. I frowned. Unless they were stupid enough to dig through the walls of a strange magical labyrinth.
After a moment, I opened the System, putting both unallocated attribute points into Willpower.
Then I took another look around at the perfectly clean and well lit hallway I was in. This place wasn't right, spatially speaking. There shouldn't be an entire deeper section of the labyrinth in this place, based on the halls I crossed to get here. I wasn't familiar with whatever formations created this place, but I could tell that digging through the walls would be a terrible idea.
The doors in this hallway all opened for me one at at time, revealing a pool of warping darkness that promised me power. There was only one small issue with most of them. [Appraisal] revealed each of their levels in order.
[Level 45 Challenge Room Portal]
[Level 65 Challenge Room Portal]
[Level 20 Challenge Room Portal(Party of Four Recommended)]
Almost all of the challenge rooms promised a difficulty far beyond what felt safe.
As I neared the end of the hallway, the trials lowered in level. I went to the very last door, stopping in front of it and [Appraising] it.
[Level 5 Challenge Room Portal]
[Accept?]
[yes/no]
I accepted.
A wave of black reached out, rolling over me, and the world changed.