“Alex, are you sure you want to do this?”

Alex spun around with a startled curse, as Ya Ling, flashing a mischievous smile, formed from the sand just behind him.

“Jeezus! Ya Ling, what are you doing here?”

She rolled her eyes. “I think it should be obvious.” Her game smile turned strained. “Unless you don’t really want me to be here...”

“I didn’t say that,” he admitted, voice huskier than he intended.

“Good.”

He froze, when soft lips touched his own. Losing himself in soft brown eyes mirroring his hunger… as the throbbing ache in his core made it clear the price he would pay.

And how desperate he was to reach Bronze.

She broke it off with a shy smile. “Sorry.” She then turned to face that which had compelled Alex free of the wagon’s homey warmth and companionship.

Alex could sense her flinch, before glaring at the imposing sight of so many twisted figures made of ice and hate. The earlier stench of the river long gone, the only smells that of ice, sand, and the few living plants, mostly cacti, that could endure the deep desert.

“After all you’ve already been through, and endured, you now wish to hone yourself against a Silver’s frozen ice, and death’s disciples frozen underneath?”

Alex couldn’t help laughing at that. “They’re hardly death’s disciples. Merely corrupted souls so filled with black karma that they’re denied the bliss of sleep while waiting in death’s frigid waters for their next life to begin. And with both would-be guardians happily declining that shitty, thankless job, a few desperate assholes took the opportunity to escape. Which I guess explains why undead revenants are always corrupt and evil in all the stories. Because all the good-natured souls are safely asleep, happy enough to await their next life without trying to slip free.”

Alex froze when he heard Ya Ling’s unexpected gasp, belatedly realizing what he had just said. And how he had said it.

“Alex, how could you possibly...”

“They need to be stopped,” he said with quiet intensity. “Even your uncle, for all his power, hopes only to slow them down. Until daylight culls the weakest. But then the strongest will be left to prey upon traders, travelers, farmers heading home after too many hours tending to the fields.” Alex’s gaze hardened. He glared at the figures. “That’s just not fucking acceptable. Not in my book. And if there was ever a time to try to hone my arts, to see just how good I can get at sending these asshole fucks back to the river of souls… that time is now.”

And that’s when he heard it.

A sound that sent chills racing down his spine, Ya Ling’s face a mask of fear.

“Alex, that was a crack. The ice cracked! Already!”

Alex swallowed, hardly hearing her over the roar of his pounding heart, gripping the hilt of his dao tightly. “I’m not sure if you should be here.”

Ya Ling’s fear turned to a glare. “I’m not leaving you here alone. We should flee. Both of us!”

Alex angrily shook his head. “No. We strike here and now, as hard as we can. If the ice is already beginning to crack...” But there was silence. Not the silence of relief, but that of ever-growing pressure. Like a submarine sinking to stygian depths, every desperate sailor sensing the strain, knowing that a horrific rupture was just a few short minutes, maybe seconds, away. Or gazing at a grenade whose pin had been pulled. One that could explode in the blink of an eye. With no warning given save for an ever growing sense of pressure. Not of the physical world, but of the soul. When you knew the only prudent course was to grab your family and run… praying you made it to safety in time.

Instead Alex drew his sword. Stepping into that awful growing sense of pressure, glaring at the ice-covered revenants radiating such hideous killing auras that Alex knew he wasn’t facing simple walkers, but Silver Tier monsters, hidden in that ice.

Monsters that would be all too eager to slaughter the entire caravan…

unless he could somehow pull a miracle.

And do it fast.

Ya Ling’s voice came in a breathless whisper. “Alex, you’re right. These creatures are monsters and we’re in trouble out here, and you really don’t have any chance of cracking uncle’s ice before the monsters break free and slaughter us, and we really should just head back and tell uncle we need to move faster, push the spirit beasts as hard as they will go. They’re lives are on the line just as much as ours! So let’s go back, okay? Please?”

In answer, Alex’s dao grew translucent, surrounded by a whirlwind of tightly bound Wind and Water.

Ya Ling’s eyes widened, her fear distracted by something close to awe. “Alex, I can taste the metal in the water. Metal salts so find they’re almost... sand?”

Alex didn’t respond, all his focus on the fine latticework of spiritual energy trapping the revenants slowly being drained by the undead abomination frozen in ice. If it had been a mortal, it would have perished instantly of course, a lifeless block frozen in time, every ruptured cell expiring upon thawing out. But this was different, and the Silver tier killing ritual powerful enough that even the residual ward was stronger, far stronger than that of a certain alchemist that Alex had once faced off against. Which showed anew just how powerful Qing Wu was, and so easy to underestimate with an almost grandfatherly gregariousness, for all that he wore the robes of a Deep Silver wujen.

Skill check successful! Water element allows you to bypass wards. You have successfully chipped Silver tier ice!

Despite the almost cheerful blinking of his Interface-acknowledged achievement, no one was more acutely aware than Alex of just how unimpressive his thrust was, when the power of his blow resulted in nothing but the smallest chip of ice, flaking off on the desert floor.

Ya Ling snorted, eyes twinkling with both amusement and, oddly enough, relief.

“Alright, Alex. You actually managed to chip uncle’s Black Ice. Which is pretty damn impressive. Not many people know how truly powerful that ritual is, save of course for the assholes who tried to butcher and enslave us earlier.”

“But I didn’t actually manage to do anything to the revenant buried within.”

“No, you didn’t.” She sighed, looking strangely serene. “Which makes me feel so much better, actually seeing that even a genius like you can’t do everything perfectly on the first try. Even if you had the lost one’s own luck, so blatantly beyond the pale that I was halfway afraid I’d wake up one morning and find you gone… or that you had never been here at all.”

“Like a character in a tale?” Alex said with a chuckle. “Popping into existence just long enough to play the hero before folly takes him or he fades away into the setting sun once more?”

Ya Ling’s eyes were painfully solemn. “Exactly.” She flashed a teasing grin. “Just one of the reasons why I wanted so much to make you mine.” She smirked as he blinked, caught off guard by her confession. “To capture a sweet, too-perfect dream, and claim him for the mortal world...and perhaps my heart as well, before he fades once more, like so many gods and divine disciples, when our world was shattered.”

Alex felt an awful chill with those words, and very deliberately, with great care, said absolutely nothing on it. Because hearing the reality would be cleaving free all hope, leaving nothing but bitter certainty and the loss of people he could finally admit that he loved… and would never see again.

Instead, all his focus was on the head of his freshly summoned fangtian ji, now also crackling with the whirling winds of a steely storm rich in iron salts and lightning.

A single moment of absolute stillness, feeling his connection with the majestic desert, the star-filled heavens, with the dao of his own perpetual and permanently tattered existence, before unleashing a killing strike with all the force he could bring to bear.

You have successfully shattered Black Ice.

You fail to puncture Silver Tier wards!

Additional Meridian Strain sensed.

Alex frowned at the head of his fangtian ji, wanting to curse himself for an idiot as he felt his Dantian shift ever closer to the ultimate alignment that had allowed him such power, and at such bitter cost… a lifetime ago.

Striving for ranks he might never achieve in this world, with a girl even now staring at him with slack-jawed awe, wide brown eyes gazing disbelievingly into his own.

He was already being forced to wait until Bronze. He’d be an absolute fool to make his situation any worse than it already was.

No matter the sudden flood of sweet, sweet potency coursing through his soul, potency, what he might once have called experience, transduced in its purest form into the essence of insight and growth as his enlightenment and understanding of his now deadliest attack, and himself, continued to grow.

You have successfully slain: Trapped Revenant.

Stormblade is now Rank 2!

“Alex! How the hell did you do that?”

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Alex flashed a rueful smile at the exquisite beauty he might never be able to kiss, no matter if he made peace with himself or no. But he had no choice. He realized that now.

Not if he was going to evolve his art in the way that he knew he must, struck with a flood of insights he had never sensed before this moment, no matter that he had so recently been on the cusp of Gold.

It was all about balance, he thought to himself, staring at a second frozen popsicle of a revenant, glaring Alex’s way with eyes that promised all the torments the that river had to offer, the black ice securing it away already weakening before the revenant’s killing gaze.

Before it was extinguished forever, as Alex struck once more.

Because truly, that poor lost fool whose head exploded in icy shrapnel and lightning had absolutely no idea of the true depths of the river’s torments. Not like Alex.

But the fallen soul soon would.

You have successfully slain Trapped revenant. Skull fails to save versus rupture.

Ward intact!

“You were serious. You really are this strong,” Ya Ling said breathlessly, to which Alex gave a curt shrug.

Because he hardly felt strong at all, failing to rupture a single strand of the exquisitely complex latticeworks locking the ice in place, perhaps for an eternity.

Of course he knew how to slip a sharp piercing instrument through such a ward almost effortlessly. But to cut right through the cords? It needed more than a poor man’s salts.

It needed the fearsome synergy of liquid Steel and Water in perfect unison. Of course, then his art would be Silver Swan in every way that counted, his Dantian would shift irrevocably, and it was already painfully clear that sticking out in ways that mirrored his earlier self was absolutely asking for trouble.

At which point he heard a second sharp retort, as a massive piece of ice fell to the ground, smoking and sizzling, from a gigantic revenant that towered over all the others. Alex felt the hand of fate once more forcing him in directions promising bitter brews, no matter which path he took.

“But there’s more I can do. I know there is!” he whispered to himself as he summoned his eight element shield, sensing the connection between Desert Fox cultivation and Prismatic Shield.

Eight element conjoings were possible. He was doing it right now! Even if they were exceedingly rare, as evidenced by Ya Ling’s dumbstruck stare.

He was so certain that it would be years, if not decades, before he was ready to form any Silver tier prismatic attack. But what if that wasn’t actually the case? What if he just needed… inspiration?

He visualized his favorite attack of a lifetime ago, based on an unorthodox art that saw metal as liquid. Dense, steely liquid capable of cutting and rupturing through almost anything, with sufficient power behind the blow. An art so unorthodox that it had pressured his Dantian to such sterile perfection that Gold would have been needed before even a drop of his life force could be directed along any avenue besides pristine cultivating perfection.

Yet his Prismatic Shield, more powerful, perhaps, than even he had first thought, successful countering most, though not all, of an Infernal Silver technique, had only forced his Dantian into Bronze compliance. Shifting his spiritual self to a cultivator’s ideal, but not so intently that he had to forsake so much of what made him human and life so sweet.

Perhaps because this art was more attuned with who he was? What he was?

A cultivator who could balance a full complement of positive Qi elements… and one negative one denied him for the moment, yet that was fine.

Because he understood then, what he was doing wrong.

It wasn’t that he was trying to do too much with his four-element Stormblade… but that he wasn’t doing enough.

“Because I still can’t crack that ice. Maybe I’m using the wrong element!”

According to the classic cycle of elements, Earth countered and destroyed Water. But this was ice. A halfstep element.

“So maybe Fire counters Ice?”

The Alex froze in sudden epiphany as so many things clicked at once.

“Alex, what’s wrong?” Ya Ling’s anxious voice almost, but didn’t quite throw him off. But the solution, once it occurred, was so obvious. So blindingly obvious to him. A solution he might have thought of long ago, if he hadn’t already walked down a liquid metal path, in the life most recently lived.

“Liquid Metal is totally doable. Not by warping my understanding of the element, but just by applying heat!”

And it really was that simple, he thought, as he visualized the iron salts in his Enhanced Water Strike combining with obsidian salts as ever greater heat and pressure was applied. He grimaced with effort, as his companion gave a startled cry at the sound of more ice cracking under the starry nighttime sky, dawn’s cleansing light still hours away. Yet no matter how hot he visualized his hyper pressurized waters became, it wasn’t enough to turn obsidian iron salts into true molten lethality.

Not until he noted how his fires looked simultaneously hot and lethargic in their lifelessness, and suddenly understood what was missing.

The fires of passion, of furious determination. Wraths’ fury and Passion’s promise. All of it tied to the Spirit, inexorably joined to Fame in his own internalized comprehension of Elemental Qi.

Yet even Flame infused with Spirits’ passion needed fuel for inspiration.

Fuel for survival.

The fuel of an entire primal forest’s worth of spiritual energy.

And then it was complete.

Insight check made: Critical Success!

A single heartbeat, and the world stilled.

Stilled as a pulse of Qi rang out like death’s gong from his favorite killing tool.

Stilled as the girl beside him paled with awed disbelief.

Yet even as he closed his eyes against the powerful corona of spiritual energy released… Alex understood.

Intimately understood how Silver Swan’s killing liquid steel could be emulated by heat and incredible pressure, with deadly obsidian shards resonating between liquid and razor sharp solidity, fueled by fires that burned with love’s passion and hate’s fury, fueled by an echo of all the ancient forests that had once covered these lands, blazingly hot liquid steel and obsidian stone wrapped in a deadly, razor sharp sheeth, howling with death’s promise that allowed the storm of elements to extend three feet beyond the head of his fangtian ji, crackling with lightning sufficient to dispell any ghast, demon, or horror that dared to cross its master’s path.

His insights came not a moment too soon as the steady crackling of ice became the shatter of bitter tears as the revenants began to break free.

“Alex! Look out!” Ya Ling’s panicked voice washed over a strangely still Alex as that endless moment of communion between himself, his gift, and the weapon in his hand became an abrupt flash of lighting and explosion of fire, as the shadow beast of pale yellow eyes, torn throats, and silent screams became a howling specter unable to escape the fearsome burning might obliterating all sentience as it crashed back in to the River of Souls.

You have critically struck Lesser Revenant!

Lesser Revenant has been obliterated. Experience earned!

You have managed to synergize all major elements into a pristine unified whole!

All elements have been boosted by their underlying counterpart! All enhancements have been reinforced!

You have successfully learned Prismatic Strike at Rank 1!

You have saved versus Cleaving Blow!

Even as Alex’s interface screamed with commendation and warning, he was dodge-rolling to the side as a massive monster of rotting flesh, pulsating limbs and gnashing teeth burst free of its shell of ice. A monster that soared a good ten feet in height and looked nothing like any living cultivator that Alex had ever seen. So horrific in fact, that Ya Ling’s scream rang through the air.

A scream that brought dozens of pale, inhuman eyes tracking her terrified presence, even if only a few creatures had managed to break free.

“Run!” Alex shouted, before doing what he must, riding his insight for all it was worth as he lashed out and struck a smaller revenant of Shadows and hate, leaping for a stunned Ya Ling’s naked throat with claws extended.

Before collapsing in an explosion of rotting flesh and lightning as Alex struck once more, desperate to master the wild cycling power threatening to overwhelm him with every step he took. Daring the shadow of what he knew was a Jade if not Divine tier technique, channeling the wild cycling stream of power, building up upon itself at a shocking rate, into furious swings of his fangtian ji.

Cleaving through clawing limbs and frozen glares with equal furious abandon, ignoring the spray of deathly cold ice tearing into his flesh, or penetrating more than skin deep, when they bounced off his quickly lowered skull.

The monstrous abomination radiating a Silver’s killing fury shambled forward, inky black tendrils covered in gaping toothy mouths and angry red eyes glaring his way slammed down for their prey, eager to tangle his legs and tear out his throat.

He could sense that truth as he could its malice, its overwhelming desire to butcher and destroy. To drink deep of the life it dared intrude upon as a karmically laden abomination that could only pollute and destroy.

And Alex knew it was a distraction as he leaped back and raced to Ya Ling’s side, an instant before she was surrounded by a half dozen shadowy wolf-like twistings of spirits that knew they were too fowl to dare their human form once more, yet still hungered to hunt and devour fresh prey.

Turning to glare Alex’s way, looking the farthest thing from wolves as they hissed in way not even lizards, did, radiating a spite-filled miasma that would have sickened even Alex, were he not filled with a madman’s fury… had his crackling fangtian ji not obliterated the stink as quickly as it blasted through his foes.

The air flashed with sharp blinding cracks of lighting as first one, then a second and finally a third revenant found themselves missing limbs, torso, or head, as fast as they could blink thrice, so quick had their opponent struck. Yet that didn’t stop the other two so eager to make the kill, before their fangs were stopped by a brilliant flashing rainbow shield as fangtian ji was traded for dao, and Alex dared to channel his newly unlocked technique with a blade utterly different from his cleaving polearm of moments before.

Yet his prismatic stream of searing light blossoming from the tip of his dao, creating a light-blade like crackling effect six feet past the pommel, looked just as focused as it had, just moments ago.

If anything, it was more so, as Alex desperately weaved past disemboweling blows as ever more revenants emerged from the deadly ice, struggling to protect Ya Ling’s fallen form, who had collapsed utterly upon being exposed to so many of the living dead.

And he saw it then, the fear in the greater abomination’s eyes as Alex’s flashing dao kissed multiple throats of abominations wearing the skins of beasts or men, tearing through all resistance with even more force and fury than his favorite killing art.

“Ya Ling, get up and get out of here!” Alex screamed.

Before darting back, hoisting her up in a fireman’s carry, and sprinting away for all he was worth, the weapons radiating such killing energies now gone as if they had never been.

You have successfully escaped and rescued one party member from certain expiration.

Experience Earned!

You have successfully dispatched multiple Bronze Tier revenants.

Experience Earned!

Prismatic Strike is now Rank 2.

Prismatic Strike is now Rank 3!