Instead of using his voice, Red used his expanded awareness to communicate with the mist. “Hide my killing intent.”
“… Difficult.” The voice resounded again inside his mind.
“I only need five seconds.”
The mist didn’t respond. A few seconds later, Red felt this strange being pulsating inside of his body, reaching towards his head for a few seconds before retreating.
“… Done.” the faint voice said.
The youth didn’t feel any different, but he knew better than to doubt this being.
The voice that was speaking to him was none other than the crimson mist, the very source of his demonification and detection powers. Of course, speaking was a generous term.
It was more akin to Red’s mind translating the meaning and feelings of this mist into comprehensible words for him. This was something the youth found himself capable of doing as his expertise with the Radiant Current meditation technique grew. He felt his awareness grow stronger inside his body, being able to examine parts of his own being in ways he had never seen before.
This included the crimson mist inhabiting his body.
Red was mortified when he heard this strange voice in his head while meditating one day. Yet, he soon found out its origin - the crimson mist. At first, the youth was reluctant to communicate with it, afraid that this demonic being would corrupt his mind.
No such thing happened, though, and eventually he felt assured of his own safety. Red could ask whatever he wanted, but the being’s responses would never be very complex or thorough, and most of the time, it would be uninterested in his questions. This meant holding a conversation was pretty much impossible, and Red was unable to gleam any additional information from the mist.
That being said, this line of communication was very useful for him, much more so when he needed to request the mist for help.
After confirming there was nothing wrong with his body, Red opened his eyes. Barely a minute had passed, but now he was ready to act.
The merchant was still inside the room, occupied with writing whatever letter. Red considered waiting for a better opportunity to strike - maybe when the merchant was back on his way home, or some such thing - but Domeron made it clear this was something that needed to be done as soon as possible. The youth didn’t know when his target would be alone again, and as such, he couldn’t waste this opportunity.
He approached the ledge of the roof of a building neighboring the merchant’s office, keeping over 20 meters of distance from the man in his room down below. This was the range any talisman alarms should activate, as Red recalled from experience and from his discussion with Domeron.
Then, the youth took a deep breath and stepped forward.
Nothing happened.
No alarms went off, and neither did the merchant look up and notice his approach.
Red was relieved, but now came the hard part.
He considered sneaking up to the target’s window and entering his room unnoticed, but the merchant positioned his desk in the room so he was facing the window at all times. This was probably a deliberate positioning of someone who didn’t want to get stabbed in the back by an assassin, but unfortunately for the man, it wouldn’t stop Red.
He got as close to the ledge as possible, leaning down and measuring the distance to his target. Then, slowly, the boy took out his weapon from his sheathe, holding it in a tight grip with his right hand.
Red took a deep breath, and then his entire body tensed in preparation. A feeling of serenity came over his mind, but this was just the calm before the storm.
A few seconds later, Red exploded into movement. He pushed off the ledge of the ceiling, charging down towards the window in a blur. Glass and wood shattered as he crashed through the window, entering the room in a single step.
The merchant looked up from his letter in horror, but before he could even react, Red charged forward. He crossed the rest of the room in a single movement, his blade stabbing forth like an arrow.
His target seemed to be trying to reach for something below his desk, but he was too late. Red’s sword reached him first, stabbing deep into his chest and piercing his ribs and heart. His weapon was so sharp that it found no resistance against the merchant’s thorax, causing an almost certainly fatal wound.
Still, Red was aware of the wonders of the cultivation world and how it could heal a person from almost certain death, so he wasn’t about to take any chances. He twisted his sword, causing the merchant’s body to seize, and pulled it across his thorax, slashing through bone, heart, and lungs like butter.
Satisfied, Red pulled his sword back and allowed the man to crash on the floor, where he was quickly bleeding out. Then he reached down and grabbed the letter on the man’s table before turning around and dashing out the window.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
From crashing through the window all the way to retreating took no more than four seconds for the youth.
The next instant, white light was emitted from inside the room and he heard the door to the merchant’s office crash open, followed by the screams of alarm from his bodyguards. By that time, though, Red had already left and disappeared into the night of the town.
…
Of course, suffice it to say, the entire town went into high alert. In the past, when Red killed a target, he would do so in secret and then get rid of their body so there would be no cause for alarm in the town’s guard.
This time, he didn’t have the privilege, though. This was an imperial agent that he was targeting, and he needed to do it as soon as possible before he was tipped off. It all worked out in the end with surprising ease, so much so that Red wondered if they had the right target.
This doubt went away as soon as he read the letter in his hand.
‘Cultivator Hector refuses to leave the sect. Likely noticed something strange.’
Red frowned. It turned out the elder was right to worry.
The letter itself seemed to be a report on the people of interest inside of this town. This included Red himself.
Unfortunately, it only reported on his recent activities and the merchant seemed to be deliberately vague in his writing, not spelling things out as the youth had been hoping. In the end, he couldn’t tell what information the Imperials had on him, but it was still the confirmation he needed that he was being watched alongside his sect members.
‘I need to deliver this back to Domeron.’
He was eager to do so, but he decided against doing it immediately. As a precaution, Red decided to wait amidst one of his hideouts in town before returning to the sect, just in case he was being followed, which didn’t seem to be the case, judging by his crimson sense.
Still, he played it safe. This was one of the good habits he had learned from Rimold over the years, and the rogue was kind enough to provide Red with access to his own hiding spots in town.
The youth arrived in a dark alley near the edge of the slum. Here there was a tool lodge that looked mostly abandoned, and that was too small of a building for even the homeless refugees to take an interest in.
Red opened the dilapidated door, wandering inside. There, at the corner of the small room, was a bunch of wood and other ruined materials. The youth moved them aside, revealing some slightly displaced floor tiles that didn’t seem to belong.
After making sure no one had fiddled with the spot while he was away, Red popped the stone tiles out of their spot, revealing a large trap door beneath him. He used a key to open it before swinging the door open and climbing down a set of stairs.
He looked around the small room, which contained only a bed, a lantern, and a few boxes of supplies.
‘Everything is in order.’
Satisfied, Red climbed up and closed both the stone tile and the trapdoor over his head. He jumped down into the pitch black room but didn’t bother lighting up a lantern.
With his dark vision, Red would never need light again, or so he hoped. In truth, he didn’t think a power acquired while opening his veins was absolute in this world, but so far, it had yet to fail him.
Red sat down cross-legged on his bed and assessed his performance in the assassination. Everything went according to plan, and none of the guards had even seen a glimpse of his features. He left no evidence behind, and even if they investigated the wounds made by his sword, all they could discern was that it was a very sharp short blade responsible for it. Suffice it to say, Red’s sword was only one of a few dozen that fit the bill in this town.
The agent was dead, and nothing connecting Red to the occurrence was going to be found. Still, the youth felt an inexplicable anxiety when he thought about the matter, as if something horrible could still come out of all of this.
‘What is this sensation?’
Red frowned. He had never been one to believe in intuition, but over the years, he found himself having these pervasive thoughts more and more often. They came and went without explanation, and they seemed to be warning Red of incoming doom, even if there were no signs of it.
He didn’t understand it. In fact, he was quite annoyed at it. Still, he thought it better to warn Domeron of this once he had returned.
With nothing else to do, Red focused on cultivating. He had opened all the special acupoints from the Storm’s Blessing Vein Opening technique, and the power they had provided him was part of the reason why Red could execute such explosive movements with ease. These acupoints, located in his vital organs, could release an energy on command that could send his entire body into overdrive and force it to react far quicker than normal.
It was how he dodged the bodyguard’s first strike earlier, and also how he could kill the merchant and retreat in a matter of seconds. It was an extremely useful ability, which complemented Red’s fighting style perfectly. He believed that under the right conditions, he could even wound a Lesser Ring Realm cultivator with his abilities.
As for winning a fight against one, that was still far beyond him, but he wasn’t disheartened. A mortal shouldn’t be able to kill a cultivator through normal means. This was common knowledge.
The reason why people like Viran and the ghost that possessed Narcha could do it was because they were once powerful cultivators, armed with the knowledge and experience needed to accomplish such a feat. Even then, Viran died in the process of defeating the insectoid, and Red was quite certain that woman was using Spiritual Energy to some degree to defeat the Curse Breaker knight.
‘Maybe once I have opened all my acupoints, I will be able to do the same.’
Now, only two acupoints remained closed in his body, and they both belonged to the same vein.
The Third Eye vein.
This was the most difficult vein to open in cultivation, and it had a singular use for cultivators: they helped one detect and control Spiritual Energy to the minimum degree needed to open their Spiritual Sea. This was why it was called as such, the eye which would reveal the path towards cultivation.
However, that was the only use this vein had as far as anyone knew. Once the Spiritual Sea was open, the acupoint in this vein became obsolete.
In fact, during his research, Red learned that the Third Eye Vein only contained a single standard acupoint, and no one in human history had ever been able to find or open a special acupoint in that vein. Suffice it to say, this left the youth completely surprised.
After all, according to Viran’s technique, the very last acupoint he needed to open was a special Moonstone Energy acupoint contained in his Third Eye vein.
As of yet, Red was unable to verify the existence of said acupoint.