Chapter 18: First Battle, First Blood
Five days later, the routine had already become the norm of his new life. The day of the monthly resource distribution arrived, but he had learned earlier that you could let it accumulate and pick them up all at once whenever you had time. Since he still had enough spirit plants to last him a whole month of practice, An decided to skip this month's distribution.
Two more weeks passed. An's dantian was now filled to 26%. He optimistically assumed he could reach 30% before the next monthly distribution.
His progress in alchemy was also decent. He had managed to achieve a 25% potency loss for the Qi Enlightenment pill, using up eighteen attempts in the process. After checking his remaining spirit plants, he realized he only had enough for nine more attempts, if he saved materials during two next batches.
His stash of Kavana fruits was already half gone. Thanks to constantly eating them, An had increased his physical strength by nearly 40%. But he noticed that the effect was starting to drop off significantly. According to the spirit plant compendium, Kavana fruits could ultimately increase body strength by about 80%, though the exact number varied from cultivator to cultivator. Still, he wasn't sure he could reach that limit, given the sheer number of fruits he would have to eat.
Four days later, all the spirit plants for Qi Enlightenment were used up. But An wasn't too disappointed. In the end, he had managed to lower his potency loss to 18%, which already qualified him to become an Alchemy Apprentice.
Even though he still had other spirit plants left, both from the bundle Elder Shoa had given him and from the trading quarters, An decided to put alchemy aside and spend more time on cultivation before the upcoming monthly distribution.
Opening his eyes after another cultivation session, he looked at the makeshift calendar lying in the sand and realized that the day of the monthly distribution had arrived.
Closing his eyes again, An felt his dantian walls strengthening with each cycle. Three days ago, he had managed to fill it to 30%. But since this was a breakthrough from the early stage to the middle stage of the Qi Condensation realm, An needed more than just filling. He had to spend time reinforcing his dantian walls so they could withstand the breakthrough and the increased Qi density of the fourth layer.
Opening his eyes and looking down, he saw Baldi lying beside him, huge belly, rolling on his back, beak open, snoring every now and then.
The bird was getting fat fast from all the feeding. An figured it wasn't such a bad thing. This wasn't just a chicken anymore, it was a spirit beast. And judging by the Qi flows coming off him, Baldi had already broken through to the middle stage of the first rank, equivalent to a cultivator at the fourth layer of Qi Condensation. Not bad at all for an ordinary yard chicken.
Getting ready, An stepped through the gate and headed toward the Outer Hall.
Walking along the path, he suddenly felt something strange to his left. His entire body broke out in chills. He barely had time to glance over before activating his Qi and wrapping himself in a thin membrane.
"AGH!!" He clenched his teeth against a sudden wave of agonizing heat. A massive fireball slammed straight into him, sending him flying dozens of meters deep into the forest.
He crashed among the trees: disoriented, confused, blistering burns covering his body. He tried to stand, but immediately felt a tearing agony in his legs. He only managed to rise to his knees before using Frequency Control on both hands and raising them desperately over his head.
"AAAAH!" A wild scream tore from his throat as he caught the sharp blade of a sword just in time. Even with his vibrating membrane and physical strength, his hands were badly damaged. The blade cut deep into his palms, stopping only at the bone, flooding everything around with his blood.
"F-faster! He caught my sword!" An looked up at the owner of the sword, folowing the trembling voice. In the attacker's eyes, he saw a messy mixture of uncertainty and fear.
Then he felt a dense mass of Qi flying straight toward his head.
Every hair on his body screamed danger. Without thinking about the consequences, he instantly converted the Qi on his palms into fire and detonated it.
A blinding flash filled his eyes, followed by a deafening clap that stunned him. He felt the flesh of his hands hardening and cracking.
The explosion threw him backward, dragging his body several meters across the ground.
He ended up on his side. Gritting his teeth, he flipped onto his stomach and started crawling toward the nearest tree. Dragging himself with both hands clawing at the dirt, he managed to get up and press his back against the trunk.
His hands were red, crusted, burned to the third degree, inflicted by his own desperate move attack. Strips of torn flesh and skin hung from the edges of his palms and fingers.
The reason his own attack had hurt him so badly was simple: when two tagged energies clash and create chaos among the Qi particles, the ownership tags get erased, creating an uncontrollable mass of energy.
"AAAAH! M-my arm!! Ah! UAAA!" He glanced at the source of the screams. The disciple who had been holding the sword, now, instead of one hand, he had a shredded mess with bone sticking out through torn meat. His face and chest were burnt, scorched black, crusted scabs.
"Elephant Strike! First form!" Behind him, from behind a tree, An heard a low shout. He felt something with terrifying force pass through the trunk and rush toward his back.
He pushed off the trunk, barely avoiding a direct hit to his back, but then a massive fist wrapped in brown Qi clipped him in the side with a crack and crunch.
"AAAGHA!" He hit the ground. A sharp snap echoed in his shoulder, a stupid, clumsy fall that shattered it, paralyzing his left arm completely.
Screaming, tears in his eyes, An found the strength to spring back up from the ground.
He saw that the owner of the massive fist had turned his body toward An, leaving his side completely open. An activated Frequency Control on his legs and right hand. One sharp step and instant stop, he channeled all the momentum into his right fist.
Before the impact even landed, he felt the burnt skin and flesh peeling off his hands in layers.
Then he felt something solid at the end of his fist. He had hit almost exactly where he had aimed.
He watched as the wave from his punch traveled from his fist and spread across the large disciple's back, skin cracking open and flying off with blood in every direction.
The large disciple lost consciousness without a sound and collapsed.
Without hesitation, An raised his right foot. He was about to bring it down on the disciple's head when he felt intense heat at his back.
At the last second, he managed to wrap his entire body in Qi.
He felt his skin sizzling. Even keeping his eyes open caused unbearable pain.
An was thrown by the force of the blast once more, though not as far this time. A thick tree trunk blocked his path. He crashed into it and started screaming, no longer holding back, choking on his own agony.
His membrane wasn't holding. The fire Qi was still raging on his back.
He started redirecting all his Qi to his back, converting it into fire, trying to absorb the foreign Qi, acting entirely on pure instinct.
Somehow, it worked.
He activated Frequency Control, focused it on his chest, and slammed himself against the trunk.
The massive energy discharge squeezed his insides into a tight knot. The air was instantly knocked out of his lungs. Everything swam before his eyes.
Through the haze, he saw the tree trunk cave in and explode into splinters with a deafening crack.
The shockwave threw An backward, sending him straight along the path the fireball had come from.
He crashed painfully to the ground, rolled, force himself bak onto his feet, and sprinted at full speed toward the third attacker.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the first one still wailing, holding what was left of his hand with his intact one. Right next to him stood Brother Rollo, holding a talisman, frantically rubbing it, trying to activate it. With every fraction of a second, he glanced at An’s mangled figure charging towards him.
An saw the fear growing in Rollo's eyes. He knew this was his chance. He channeled more Qi into his legs, closing the distance by several meters in an instant. He drew back his right hand, aiming straight for Rollo's heart.
"STOP!" A loud voice came from above.
An saw a wall of Qi form in front of him in an instant. He couldn't brake in time. He slammed into it and flew backward through the air.
Barely opening his sticky, blood-crusted eyelids, he looked up into the sky. He saw an outer disciple, standing on a floating sword. Red robes with gold trim. It was a girl who looked about twenty, blue eyes, beige hair, a face that was simultaneously warm and cold, the kind that would have started wars in ancient times just to have such a woman by your side.
"What is going on here?" She descended to the ground and looked around.
Less than a hundred meters from the path, four disciples had turned the forest into a bloody battlefield. Blood everywhere. Pieces of flesh. Shredded clothing. Two burnt talismans. A cracked sword with a bent blade at the base.
One disciple sat in the dirt, missing an arm, body and face burnt, just sat there wailing in pain.
On another part of the field lay the massive disciple, his back bloody, chunks of skin and flesh torn out, bones visible through the wounds.
She turned her head and saw a burnt, bald disciple. By size, just a child. His whole body was covered in burns. Blood was coming from every possible opening. His ribcage was deformed. One of his arms was strangely bent and bluish. His clothes were torn to shreds, barely covering his private parts and part of his left leg.
She looked into his eyes, and their gazes locked.
She heard only a wheeze from his lungs, mixed with blood bubbling from his mouth.
After examining him, she turned her head to the only uninjured disciple left standing : Rollo Por.
Before she could ask anything...
"I'm so glad you arrived, Senior Sister! If you hadn't come so quickly, I don't know how this horrific incident might have ended..." Rollo spoke first, letting out a dramatic, trembling sigh. Seeing this, An's brow furrowed. He opened his mouth, then immediately closed it from the searing pain.
"I tried to summon someone from the Hall of Justice immediately, but I couldn't find the right moment, Senior Sister!" Rollo continued.
"What happened here? I need an explanation right now!" The Senior Sister from the Hall of Justice demanded, her tone turned even colder. Her eyes held undisguised danger as she stared at Rollo Por.
"Ah... well, you see, Senior Sister... It's An. The new disciple." He pointed at the burnt body nearby. "We met and conversed about a month ago. It turned out he was a peasant… and he spent most of his life as a slave..." Rollo began speaking, putting on an expertly crafted sace of pure innocence.
"A slave?" the Senior Sister murmured, looking back at An.
"My junior brother An was eager to learn how to quickly accumulate spirit stones. I described a few methods, but An said they were too slow and tedious. And... ah... I made a follish joke. I said the easiest way to get spirit stones was to rob other disciples." Rollo smiled slightly, as if admitting his mistake, and kept shaking his head.
"But who could have known his primitive mind wouldn't understand I was just joking?" Rollo exhaled and looked at An with pity in his eyes.
"Kkhhaahhhhh... shhashhhh..." An desperately tried to speak, but with his burnt throat, all he could do was hiss, just letting out air.
Standing up, even moving his head, was nearly impossible.
While An lay there wheezing in his own blood, Rollo Por seamlessly spun his narrative, painting him as a vicious savage who had orchestrated a ambush with the sole intent of robbery.
"I am Ru Meng." After a long silence, Senior Sister Ru gave Rollo Rop a firm nod of acknowledgment, completely diverting her attention away from An.
At that exact moment, the light in An's eyes died out completely. All that remained was a pure killing intent, surfacing involuntarily for the first time in his life. He began radiating an almost hidden but desperate desire to kill.
He watched their every move with one single desperate hope: that they wouldn't kill him and bury his broken body somewhere under the roots of the trees.
Glancing around with litl vision he had left, An realized there was a real chance he might never leave this forest. His mind started spiraling, panic took over. Every thought circled back to the same conclusion: they were going to kill him here.
Turning desperate ideas over and over in his head, he came to only one solution: pretend to be unconscious. Rely on the principle that the less you see, hear, and know, the better your chances of survival.
Still consumed by panic, he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself down.
"Senior Sister Ru, it's a pleasure. My name is Rollo Por!" Rollo stepped closer to Ru Meng and handed her a spatial pouch.
"Senior Sister Ru, this is An's pouch. I've already checked it. It is clearly the stolen loot he managed to gather from previous victims." Looking at his innocent face, Ru Meng hesitated for a moment. But she still took the pouch from his hands.
Hearing this, An cracked his eyes open slightly and looked deeper into the forest. In the bushes, he spotted his pouch. The truth was, when he was first thrown by the fireball, the pouch had slipped off its string and flown into the brush.
Realizing they weren't talking about his belongings, he understood: this was a blatant bribe.
"What will become to Junior Brother An?" Rollo glanced at An. For a split second, a dangerous flicker danced in his eyes.
"Him? A severe violation of sect rules. I'll escort him directly to the dungeons of the Hall of Justice." Finally, Ru Meng turned her gaze toward An's prone bloodied body.
At her final verdict, a shadow of disappointment flitted across Rollo's face, but he quickly hid it.
"Take your friends to the Workshop and find a healer. I'll take this one to the dungeon myself." Ru Meng spoke in a commanding tone and walked toward An.
Rollo bowed and quickly went to help his friends.
Approaching An, Ru Meng bound him with a talisman, attaching it to his chest, completely severing his senses.
An plunged into darkness.
But in that darkness, he could still see everything perfectly through the Qi around him.
He saw himself being lifted onto a sword. They shot into the air. But with his senses cut off, he couldn't feel the flight or the wind against his face. He could only see and read the Qi streams racing past him at enormous speed.
They landed. Ru Meng stepped off the sword and walked toward the main doors leading into the Hall of Justice. An's body followed her, floating in the air.
Approaching a counter in the center of the Hall, Ru Meng said something. Someone answered. Immediately, they headed to the right side of the Hall.
After passing through several massive doors, she laid An on a huge altar.
An felt chaotic Qi, denser than anything he had ever experienced.
All the binding techniques fell away at once. He opened his eyes and looked around.
He saw a massive altar with runes carved into its base. Some were glowing. Others were flickering. A terrible hum filled the air, pressing against his ears.
Then! A blinding flash!
His eardrums nearly burst from the pressure and the sudden noise, like a thunderclap.
He suffered for what felt like an eternity until the blindness from the flash finally passed.
He was trapped inside a dark, cramped stone room, two be two meters in size. Cold stone walls locked him in from three sides, and in front of him stood a thick, crosshatched iron grate.