Rei Yang woke up with an unladylike groan. It was like she’d been through a wringer. Her body ached and even lifting her hand passed for a feat of strength. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this weak.
Her tongue felt like twice its regular size and her mouth was so dry that forming words seemed an impossible challenge for the moment. She had no recollection of where she was or what had happened.
Cold, rough surface pressed against her back, prickling her as she shifted her weight. With an effort of will she cracked one eye open. Pitch black darkness greeted her. Her breath quickened. With newfound strength, born from the mounting panic, she forced both of her eyes wide open.
Nothing changed. She could see absolutely nothing.
”H-Hello? Where am I? Anyb-, Anybody there? Hey!” She croaked.
Instant later, a hand wrapped around her mouth. ”Be. Quiet.”
Instincts took over Rei Yang. She grabbed the hand by the wrist with her left hand and threw a blind punch towards the origin of the voice with her right. She was rewarded a satisfying impact and a grunt. A thud, followed by a mix of scraping and scratching sounds of something rolling through the darkness painted a clear picture in Rei Yang’s mind.
She gritted her teeth and rose to a fighting pose. ”I may be blind but you will not find me so easy to assault!”
”What the hell is wrong with you, woman? And keep your voice down, you idiot! ” A voice from the general direction of her attacker whispered furiously.
Even in her situation, blind as a bat and weak as a newborn fawn, she bristled with anger. ”Who are you to talk to me like that? I am the daughter of the Soaring Phoenix Sect’s patriarch. He will have your head for this!”
”I don’t give a fuck if you are the Emperor’s favourite grandchild. If you don’t shut up, we’ll both end up as crackmaw dinner way before that. So. Stop. Fucking. Yelling!” Her attacker hissed.
The alarm in the man’s voice gave Rei Yang a pause. ”What do you mean by that?”
She heard some rustling as the man shuffled closer to her. She prepared for a fight but no attack came.
”We’re inside the mines and we’re definitely not alone in here. You’re not blind, it’s just that dark in here. What do you remember?” The man whispered, now a lot closer to her.
Rei Yang raked her mind. Everything was in a jumble. Slowly, like through a fog, the memories of riding a skycoach emerged. That broke the floodgates and it all came crashing back. The annoying trip to the very edge of civilization. The bleak fortress with the dirty miners, especially the infuriating bumpkin who they’d picked for a servant. And finally, the last thing she remembered was Jun Chang serving them tea.
”We were... Jun Chang brewed us tea.”
”Yeah, the asshole poisoned you and Shin Yang.”
”What? Why would he--? No, no way. He’s arrogant and ambitious but he’d never go so far as to...” Rei Yang said.
”He did. And seeing how Shin Yang was so furious that he nearly killed the asshole, it must’ve been serious.” The man said in a low voice.
”Of course it is. Using poison is the coward’s way--. Wait, nearly killed? He could’ve swatted that pompous ass like a fly if he wanted to” Rei Yang said.
There was more rustling of clothes in the dark. It sounded like the man sat down somewhere to her right side. ”The prick is one arm and I’d guess about a bucket of blood lighter than he was yesterday, but he did get away. Shin Yang was poisoned as well.”
”He’s a Martial King. Martial Kings don’t get poisoned” Rei Yang said.
”They way his eyes were bleeding I beg to differ. He said it was something called Soul Sundering Poison.”
”Wait, what? No, that’s-- That’s impossible. Even manufacturing Soul Sundering Poison is banned all across the Empire. No, if it was that, I would be dead.”
”Believe me, you were well on your way to an early grave. But Shin Yang shoved some kind of glowing red and white pearl down your gullet. And then, as if I didn’t have enough problems of my own, he dumped the responsibility of protecting you on me.” The man said.
Rei Yang’s nostrils flared. ”You, a-, a-, a common hick, protect me?”
”Believe me, I’m not enjoying this any more than you are. And I have a name, it’s Min Yon Sul.”
”As if I’d care about the name of some common bumpkin.”
”Suit yourself, princess.”
”How dare you--?” Rei Yang raised her voice.
”Shhh! For the love of every deity there is, keep your voice down. We are in the Sector fucking 13. This place is crawling with things that will happily kill and eat us.”
”I’m not afraid of some low level beasts.”
”You should be. You’re weak as a kitten.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
”You lowlife, I’m one of the strongest in my generation. I’ll-”
”Oh please, I’ve been hit harder not half a day ago by a common, run of the mill overseer.”
That stopped Rei Yang in the middle of her tirade. She had not held back when she’d struck the man. A strike from her Gold Body should’ve severed his head clean from his shoulders. She sat down in a lotus position and cycled her Qi.
A gasp escaped through her lips. Her Core was in tatters. In her mind’s eye she could see cracks running all across her foundation. Her body wasn’t in much better shape. It was still a Gold Body in name, but her Qi channels were so fried that barely any Qi travelled trough them.
”No, no, no, this can’t be happening!” She whispered.
”Oh, trust me, this is about the last place I want to be in, yet here we are.”
”No, you don’t understand. My cultivation, its--, it’s ruined.”
The man grunted. ”Shit. We are going to die in here, then.”
”You're welcome to do as you will. I’m going back to my uncle, he will surely fix this.”
”You can’t.”
”You don’t get to tell me what to do, bumpkin.”
The man let out a sigh. ”You literally can’t. The safety gates only open from the outside. Unless you somehow carve through two paces of solid, glyph fortified rock, we’re not getting out of here.”
As the reality of what the man had just said hammered itself home, Rei Yang sagged against the wall. She barely noticed the rough stone scraping her back.
”Besides, I believe your uncle has his hand full with the situation above.”
”What do you mean by that?”
”They didn’t just leave it to the poison. He’s fighting against some people called Elders.”
”Wait, what Elders? From which sect were they from?”
”Hell if I know. He told be to take you and hide. I didn't stop to ask.”
”And this is the place you chose? Really?”
”You think I want to be in this shithole? Huh?” A fist thudded into a wall, followed by a growl. ”I wasn’t exactly spoiled for a fucking choice, because I was lugging you around. You should be thankful I didn’t dump your body in the first fucking ditch I came across. Maybe I could’ve slipped away in the chaos and I would’ve--, I would’ve been... free.”
The last word was whispered so quietly that Rei Yang barely heard it. She listened to the heavy breathing. The raw anger in the man’s voice was palpable. She wasn’t going to admit it in a million years but the man may have had a point. If here uncle really was fighting another sect’s Elders, she most likely would’ve died in the crossfire, had she been left there.
”Hpmh. So, what are we going to do now?” She said.
”Tch. We’re knee deep in shit no matter which way you cut it, so might as well wade through it. You can do whatever you want but I’m not going to just sit here and wait for my death. I will get out of this hellhole.”
Clothes rustled, followed by a shoe scraping the floor. Shortly after pair of footsteps started receding into the darkness.
”Wait.” Rei Yang said, pushing herself up.
Finally she’d regained some measure of control over her Core. With what felt like a monumental effort, she coaxed a tiniest sliver of Qi into her spatial ring. The weight of a small Qi lamp dropping in her hand rewarded her.
Moment later faint light lit the cavernous space. The man walking ahead of her froze.
He spun around, squinting his eyes against the light. ”Are you mad? The light will draw the crackmaws to us! Where did you even get that from?”
”From a spatial ring. And face it, if we are to have any hope of finding a way out of this place we need to see where we’re going.” She said.
The emotions warred on the young man’s face. Finally his shoulders sagged. ”Fine. But keep it as low as you can.”
With another flex of her Core, she pulled two water skins from her ring and tossed one them to the young man.
The man caught it from midair and after realizing what it was, drank with abandon.
"Thanks." He said. Seeing something in her face, he continued "What? I'm not above saying thank you, when it's due, unlike someone else here."
Without waiting for a reply, the man turned and started walking again, leaving Rei Yang to catch up to him. Cursing the man under her breath, she half sprinted after him. The lamplight danced on the rough hewn surface of the tunnel, casting new shadows on every shift of the Qi lamp.
Once she caught up to him, she slowed down to a walk without a word. Only an occasional sound of their feet shifting gravel filled the air, sending echoes bouncing into the darkness. As the silence stretched, Rei Yang fell deeper into her thoughts.
Why was this happening? The Winter Sword Sect was their ally. Jun Chang poisoning them made no sense to her, and with Soul Sundering Poison of all things. If word got out, the entire Winter Sword Sect would pay the price. What could possibly drive them to take such a risk?
A whiff of something rank in the air pulled Rei Yang out of her plagued thoughts. At first she wasn’t sure if her mind was just playing tricks on her in the monotonous darkness, but as they advanced it got gradually worse. Soon she was fighting not to retch.
”What in every deity’s name is that smell?” She asked.
The slave turned back to her, his face grim. ”If I had to guess, that is what is left of the previous squad of workers sent here.”
Before she could answer, they round a corner in the tunnel. A moment later she vomited.
Rei Yang was glad their small Qi lamp only partly lit the wide chamber. The scene in front of her was straight out of horror story. The ground, the walls and even in places, the roof, were covered in dark splotches. Decaying corpses lay in mangled heaps across the wide chamber, strewn around, like dolls of a little girl after a temper tantrum.
And yet, by far the worst part was the smell. Even in crippled Gold Body her senses were a sharp as any regular mortals. The putrid smell hung in the air like a wet blanket. She was certain she could actually taste it in the air. She gagged again.
The young man turned to her, a cold look on his face. ”What, never seen death before?”
”I-, I have seen duels to death, but this-, this is... I don’t...”
”This is the reality in these mines. This is our life.”
Rei Yang shivered. ”I-, I didn’t know. What even did this?”
He was about to answer, when a scraping sound from the darkness interrupted him. They both froze in place.
The young man grimaced. ”I think you’re about to find out.”
Instant later a spirit beast born of nightmares crawled out of the darkness. Its chitinous, inky black body gleamed in the cold light of the Qi lamp as it skittered closer. Too many legs to count carried the elongated body topped with a wide, flat head. Mandibles large enough to snap a man in half framed a row of dagger-sized, needle sharp teeth.
It stopped in place, lifting its head higher in the air. They way it turned its head and move its mouth, it looked as if it was tasting the air.
”What the fuck is that?” Rei Yang whispered.
”Look at the prim and proper princess swearing. That is the reason you were called here. That is a crackmaw.” The man said, slowly crouching down to pick up one of the abandoned pickaxes lying on the ground.
She ignored the quip and asked ”What are you going to do with that?”
”I figured you’re just about on the south side of useless the way you are right now, so we’re royally fucked. But I am not going to die laying down after getting this far.”
”You are an asshole, you know that right?”
”Guilty as charged.”
”I think I can kill that thing, but, as much as it pains me to say it, I’m going to need your help.”
The dirty miner glanced at her. ”I’m listening.”
”I need you to buy me enough time to construct a technique with this mess of a body.”
”How long do you need?”
”As long as you can give me, you’ll know when I’m done.”
At that moment the crackmaw’s head snapped towards them. It started slithering towards them with an alarming speed, mandibles clacking.
”Get to it!” The young man yelled, already running towards the side of the chamber.
Unbidden, a stray thought crossed Rei Yang’s mind. He might be a filthy, common hick and an asshole, but he is not a coward, that’s for sure.
Dismissing the weird thought, she fell into herself and started going through the motions for [Piercing Talon of the Phoenix]. They had a crackmaw to kill.