Mind now racing at desperate speeds despite his growing fatigue, Alex eyed the steel grill letting in the only air available to the family. Reinforced just as the doorway had been, so tightly that no Silver tier wujen or warrior could hope to break through.
A safety measure which had become a deadly trap from which there would be no escape for the doomed family, as the hallway filled with the roar of the building collapsing upon itself, due to superheated flames that could only have been brought forth by a wujen in the first place, Alex was increasingly sure.
A dying child’s glassy gaze met his own. A beautiful little girl who couldn’t have been older than four gazed at him with desperate eyes as she choked a wheeze that was killing her, lungs being seared by caustic fumes that draconic blood alone allowed Alex to endure for so long.
Her eyes the very mirror of his daughter’s, so many lifetimes ago.
The first of his family that Shalu and his vile ilk had consigned to bitter flames.
“IT DOES NOT END HERE!”
It didn’t matter that he was teetering on the cusp of absolute exhaustion, his massive Qi Pool that should have lasted indefinitely now utterly depleted. His attire seared off his flesh, hair a smoldering ruin. Alex’s heart pounded in furious rejection of bitter cold cards played by laughing gods a thousands years ago. The torment of countless lives lived and lost, precious angels he could never hold or love or bring comfort to, ever again.
He squeezed his fists tightly upon the haft of his weapon as the low pitched thrum forever resonating through his soul began to roar. At that moment he was both a young man moments from collapsing from toxic fumes and exhaustion in a panic room that had become the ultimate trap, and bearing witness to the massive accretion disk around his soul that had just caught ablaze. Countless potencies swirling into the inky black vortex of Alex’s Dantian.
Then the vision was gone as his fangtian ji blazed to hot furious life once more, a storm like no other as he struck the wall he now faced, a neigh indestructible barrier just as well warded as the door and grill was.
Wards that erupted in an explosion of wooden support beams, ruptured enchantments, and stone as Alex howled and lashed out with his fangtian ji, this time holding nothing back as he blew out a massive hole in the chamber that should have been a death trap.
He refused to collapse from a Prismatic Strike, momentarily embracing all the elements that should have been utterly beyond him as he sensed exhaustion trying to pull him under once more as the final wheezes of a little girl dying in her mother’s arms rang endlessly in his skull.
Somehow he found the strength to lurch back to his feet, arms trembling not with weakness, but fury. White hot fury for bitter fortunes, spite-filled gods, and murderous bastards who would so casually slaughter an innocent family for their own ends. Alex howled with the fury of countless mocking smiles and contemptuous sneers he had once endured over lives forever lost to him, for all that the pain lived eternally on, an open wound in his soul.
A wound now filling him with the furious hate he needed to defy immortal edicts and rip free of restrictions others had dared to put upon his soul.
His heart pounded in furious rebuttal.
He refused to let yet another child die of smoke and despair in this life, or any other.
You have dared to stretch the divine envelope constraining your soul, pushing your spiritual energy reserves beyond all mortal limits!
You have successfully saved versus oblivion.
You have successfully saved versus divine detection!
You have had a spiritual Breakthrough!
YOU HAVE ACHIEVED RANK 6 SILVER SPIRITUAL ENERGY RESERVES!
Your Soul now stretches beyond the scope of Silver tier curses!
All previous penalties and strictures have been lifted.
New Qi Pool: 190.
The interface messages flashed before him in the blink of an eye.
Yet he cared nothing for it as his limbs trembled with a sudden storm of power and potency, both awed and dismayed to find that, even with Rank 5 Silver earned such a short time ago, unseen banes had still been crippling his power in ways he hadn’t even sensed until now.
Well no more, he thought with a fierce, wild smile of hope, desperation, and furious resolve as his Qi Pool expanded beyond all past precedent, blasting through any curse his foes had once used to bind him over countless lifetimes he had been forced to play the bitter games of gods and madmen.
If he had tapped into the storm’s fury before, now it was a cyclone that could wash entire cities away.
“Avalanche!” Alex roared as he abruptly struck the ward-shattered wall before him, and the entire wall gave way in a sudden explosion of shattered stone and gravel that sprayed out in a glorious plume over the carefully tended back yard facing the lush valley that this once prestigious manor stood sentinel before, and Alex dared to laugh through his tears as the night sky in all its beauty was revealed, along with the sweet aroma of life-giving air rich with the scents of the garden before him and the valley below.
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And Alex wasted no more than a single heartbeat before racing back to tend to the six painfully still figures as his stomach churned with sudden desperate hope as he tenderly grabbed the beautiful little girl that could so easily have been his own, placing her gently upon the grass before darting back inside for her sister, parents, and the two serving girls who couldn’t have been any older than him.
He allowed himself only a single panicked whimper, taking full advantage of Rank 5 Bronze Finesse and Quickness and superhuman strength to gently retrieve all six in less than a handful of seconds, holding on to the desperate flickering embers of hope that he wasn’t too late.
Recalling with exquisite painful clarity at least three distinct screams, less than 30 seconds ago.
It wasn’t too late.
It wasn’t!
Slave nodes successfully accessed.
You have successfully formed a party with Xu Tie clan!
Warning! Detrimental neural cascades are in effect. Neural matrices must be stabilized within 60 seconds or party members will be lost!
Current party members have participated in no forms of experience point accrual. Current party members are unable to receive rejuvenating potency.
Note! Servants lack accessible nodes.
Heartbeats were faint in three, non existent in the others.
Alex allowed himself time for a single cry, before getting to work.
“Instructor Rah! Get over here now!”
He gently tilted up the heads of the fragilest victims, delivering two rescue breaths to each child before delivering a series of gentle chest compressions, knowing he was running out of time, desperate to save their lives.
“Instructor Rah!” He screamed as his hands carefully did their work, gazing desperately upon both dying girls. Before swallowing the awful lump in his throat and screaming for another.
“Seneschal! I need your help now!”
But of course there was no answer. He knew that. Yet he couldn’t help but call out for the gentle smiling seneschal of his world seed whose dapper grace and gentle demeanor hid the power of a divine spirit. Once his most loyal helper, what might have been a thousand years ago.
“Reny! If you can hear me, I need you!” A panicked cry, before realizing he wasn’t out of moves yet.
“Ya Ling, can you hear me?”
He would have winced at the horrified jolt this caused in a girl he could so easily have fallen in love with, in a lifetime where he wasn’t haunted by so many past memories… sensing with agonized clarity the absolute dread she now felt, sensing him in the back of her mind. Knowing how easily he could…
“Please! I’m back at the sight of the fire we sensed. It wasn’t an apartment complex, it was a lord’s manor! The staff inside was butchered. I only managed to pull six free, and I can’t get them to breathe!”
Miraculously, he sensed her horrified disgust turn to pity and a flash of warmth, the monstrous image she had been struggling to suppress now morphing into the gentle warm version of him that she had formerly seen him as in her mind’s eye. A bit handsomer, gentler, with darker skin and a softer smile… her mental image of the man she had once thought she might marry.
Before tasting the horrific ease with which he could control her with a thought.
“Please! Is there any word from our delving companions? Was their mission a success? Are Reny and Elder Wu safe?”
She said something then, but Alex paid it no heed, eyes widening with heartfelt relief when first one, then the second girl began to cough and wheeze for breath, tears streaming out of their reddened eyes.
He then immediately gave both parents two rescue breaths and a handful of panicked chest compressions he was afraid might have cracked a rib or two before desperately crying out once more.
“Rah! Where the hell are you?”
Qi Perception check made!
Alex immediately spun around, panic replaced by fury that only grew as he sensed the faint threads of vitality fading from the lives he was desperate to save as mocking laughter filled the air.
The sneering countenances of a full half dozen cultivators faced him. Each and everyone of them radiating the strength of a Bronze, all of them wearing the armor favored by the Duo Li clan.
And at the front of them all, eyes twinkling with malice, was none other than Tan Yi himself. “Sorry, Alex, but I’m afraid Rah won’t be answering your call anytime soon.” His grin widened at Alex’s horrified look, smirking and tilting his head in approval as his most powerfully built lackey, the monster’s brutal features twisted in a sneer as he licked the blade of his blood-spattered guandao. “You see, he came down with a bad case of decapitation. Just like you’re about to.”
The youths features twisted in an ugly snarl. “You were a fool cross me, dog! Had you thought to surrender your Ice core to my clan, you would have been spared. More than spared, we would have allowed you to leave our city with your pockets full of gold!” he sneered and spat. “Now you’ll get what all enemies of our clan will have coming to them, once this night is through!”
Tan Yi then flashed a mocking smile. “I’m glad my father chose me to scout our targets and clear out all loose ends. And don’t think I don’t know what you and your companions did at the gate! You’ll answer personally for that insult to our clan. But don’t think that they were anything but the least of our forces. Free mercenaries for us to use as we wish! What you face now, fool, is my personal guard!”
It was at that moment that Alex’s blood ran cold, Ya Ling’s panicked cry suddenly echoing through his mind. “Alex, we can’t make it to the palace. We’re being cut off along multiple paths!”
Tan Yi’s twisted smirk once more graced his aristocratic features. “Is that panic I see in your eyes? Or worry for your friends?” He laughed coldly. “As if we’ll actually allow them to attend the emergency vote. Fools! We would have never forced it, if we hadn’t already planned for every contingency!”
“Run! It’s a trap!”
The only words Alex could clearly formulate as his heart pounded and all he saw was red. His words a pronouncement of doom his foe was too stupid to sense.
“It was you, Tan Yi. You’re the one who burned them alive.”