Chapter 204: The Field
They walked through the tall grass for ten minutes before Alena spoke again.
"You truly repelled Kai Reventon’s attack with nothing but a wooden sword?"
"I did."
"And you channeled actual Sword Intent through it?"
"Sword Intent, yes."
She shook her head slowly, as though the information refused to settle properly inside her mind.
"That isn’t normal, you understand. Sword Intent is a concept most cultivators chase for half a lifetime without ever truly grasping it. The eldest sword disciples at the Azure Dragon Sect train for thirty, forty years before they even touch the threshold of it. And you’re eighteen."
"I had good teachers."
She glanced sideways at him, forest-green eyes narrowing slightly beneath a furrowed brow. "Who? Which master in this region could have produced results like that in someone your age?"
Damon’s golden eyes drifted forward, fixed on the swaying grass ahead of them. His expression didn’t change. "Dead ones."
Alena stopped walking and turned to face him. Her eyes searched his face for something. A lie, maybe. Or a crack in his composure.
She didn’t find either.
"You’re a strange one, Damon Arcknight," Alena said after a long moment of silence, her forest-green eyes still studying his face with that sharp, analytical precision of hers.
The words came out almost reluctant, as though she hadn’t entirely meant to say them aloud.
"I’ve been told that before."
"By who?"
The corner of his mouth curved slightly. "Everyone who’s ever met me."
She let out a small laugh. It was genuine. The sound softened her features and made her look younger than her twenty-two years.
"I can believe that."
They started walking again. The field gave way to a sparse forest with silver-barked trees and leaves that shimmered like liquid metal.
Alena pointed at a cluster of purple mushrooms growing at the base of one tree. "Shadow Caps. They’re used in high-grade poison antidotes."
Damon looked at them. His new alchemist knowledge confirmed the identification.
"Harvest them with a bone knife," he said. "Metal ruins the compounds."
Alena’s eyebrows rose. "You know alchemy?"
"I know a little."
"A little more than a little, if you can identify Shadow Caps and their harvesting requirements."
Damon shrugged. "I read."
She gave him a skeptical look but didn’t press. Instead, she crouched beside the mushrooms and produced a bone knife from her storage ring.
Damon watched her work. Her movements were precise and economical. She cut each mushroom at the stem, careful not to damage the mycelium network beneath the soil.
"You’re good at that," he said.
"I’ve been doing it since I was twelve. My mother was an alchemist. She taught me everything."
"Was?"
Alena’s hands paused for just a fraction of a second. Then she continued harvesting.
"She died when I was sixteen. A beast attack during a gathering expedition."
"I’m sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
But her voice carried an edge that said otherwise.
She finished collecting the Shadow Caps and stood. Her knees cracked from the crouched position.
"Where did you learn alchemy?" she asked, brushing loose soil from her fingers as she slipped the bone knife back into her storage ring.
"From memories," Damon said.
Alena turned to look at him properly, those sharp forest-green eyes narrowing. "What do you mean, memories?"
"I acquired them. Purchased them, essentially."
A beat of silence. The silver leaves overhead rustled softly in the wind.
"You purchased memories," she said slowly, as though testing the words for structural flaws. "The way one would purchase a technique manual from a sect library."
"Something along those lines."
Her brow furrowed deeply, the analytical part of her mind visibly wrestling with the concept.
"That isn’t possible. Memories are bound to the soul. You can’t extract them, package them, and sell them like dried spirit herbs."
"And yet," Damon said, holding her gaze, "here I am, identifying Shadow Caps and their harvesting requirements."
She let out an exasperated breath. "You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true."
Alena shook her head and started walking again. Damon followed.
They emerged from the silver forest into a clearing dominated by a massive stone altar. Symbols were carved into its surface, worn by time but still visible.
Alena approached it cautiously.
"What is this place?"
Damon activated his Incubus Celestial Eyes. The altar pulsed with residual energy. Old magic. Pre-creation era, if his instincts were right.
"A trial ground..." he said quietly, studying the carved symbols with the particular focus his Celestial Eyes afforded him.
Alena turned from the altar’s edge to look at him, her forest-green eyes narrowing with the kind of sharp, assessing suspicion she reserved for ingredients she hadn’t personally verified.
"How can you be certain?"
"The energy pattern. The stonework. The symbols match." He gestured toward a particular sequence of glyphs carved into the altar’s northern face, half-swallowed by time and moss.
"I’ve seen markings like these before."
She studied them for a long moment, then exhaled through her nose — the reluctant sound of someone who had just been proven correct by a source they hadn’t expected to trust.
"Can we activate it?"
Damon ran his gaze across the full breadth of the altar, measuring it, reading it the way another man might read a map.
"We can try."
Damon stepped onto the altar platform. The symbols beneath his feet began to glow a deep blue.
Alena joined him. The glow intensified.
A voice echoed through the clearing. Ancient. Hollow.
"Two souls stand upon the Scale of Worth. One shall rise. One shall fall. Choose your champion."
The ground beneath them shifted.
Damon and Alena were lifted onto separate stone pillars that rose from the altar’s surface.
Between them, a third pillar emerged, bearing a single jade box.
"The champion who claims the prize shall earn the right to challenge the Warden of the Eastern Gate. The loser shall forfeit all cultivation below the Heavenly Spirit Realm."
Alena’s face went pale.
"That’s... that’s everything I’ve built."
Damon looked at the jade box. Then at Alena.
"Then don’t lose."
"You don’t understand. If I lose, I drop to the True Spirit Realm. It would take me years to recover. The tournament would be over for me."
"I won’t let that happen."
"How can you promise that?"
Damon drew the Chaos Devourer. The black blade hummed with barely contained power.
"Because I’m going to win."
The altar flared with light.
The trial began.