Tan Yi’s cold laughter rang through the ruined courtyard. “Of course we did! Fools thought a panic room would save them. They actually believed that their wards, scribed by that old doddering fool Qing Wu over twenty years ago, would do any good against us!” He glared down at the sobbing pair of children. “And you’ve dared to interfere with my clan yet again. Two sickly roots of a dying house are best cleaved entirely free of our city’s aristocracy!” He turned to his men. “Take this Ruidian fool down. I already know all his tricks. He’s capable of no more than a Water shield and an air blade that can cleave through our Shadow Pumas, which is why you all have my father’s amulets!”
He curled his lip, glaring Alex’s way as he said the last, before waving his soldiers forward. “We countered your only move, fool! Now strike him down, men! Your guandao will make short work of—“
Tan Yi stumbled back as Alex unleashed his killing aura, his furious roar now echoing through the courtyard.
“Kill him!” The panicked Duo Li scion screamed to his men before stumbling back when the courtyard flashed with lightning. The air shivered with a high pitched wine emanating from a fangtian ji now crackling with all the elements of the storm, swirling about the weapon head at unfathomable speeds.
Tan Yi’s eyes widened. “No. Impossible! Where did you get that artifact? Men! Take his head and seize that prize at—“
The youth lurched back in clear surprise when his foe moved faster than he ever had hunting spirit beasts as a student, effortlessly winding past the lead guard’s thrust, his blade leaving a brilliant crackling after-image as he cleaved the giant before him in twain.
The other five Bronze guardians lurched back in surprise as the largest among them began to writhe and scream, blood and viscera spurting from his rent torso, unable to stop the flow of entrails with spurting wrists cleaved free of all resistance. He had time for one final horrified scream before his eyes rolled up and his body thrashed in its final death throws.
Alex’s hate-filled glare froze the half dozen elites in their tracks, so many cocky smiles instantly wiped off the faces of men suddenly realizing that they faced not a naive idealistic student, but a hardened killer well used to cleansing the battlefields in the blood of his foes.
All of them shivered before the promise of death in Alex’s eyes. Most especially a suddenly blanching Tan Yi.
“No. there’s no way you could cut a Deep Bronze open like that! His armor was forged by Master Ya Tin himself!”
Alex let the meaningless dribble wash over him as he locked gazes with the closest guard who flinched, slowly raising his weapon, shouting to his companions. “We charge him on three! One… two...”
But Alex was already racing forward, giving vent to his fury as he windmilled his fangtian ji in a tight powerful arc that knocked aside a pair of guandao before cleaving right through the lead guard’s armored skull in an explosion of lightning and shattered steel tiles, washing the battlefield in a shower of crimson rain.
Quickness check made!
And Alex was already leaping back, yanking his weapon free of the corpse before him as the pair of Bronze that had tried to flank him desperately lashed out, putting their all into drawing blood before Alex could reposition himself.
And draw blood they did.
Quickness check successful! You have suffered two Glancing Blows!
But little more than that, their experienced veteran’s gazes widening in dismay as they sensed their sudden peril, having thrust point first in a spearman’s instinctive attempt to skewer an off-balance target, showcasing the vulnerability of lunging attacks that left one vulnerable for the heartbeat needed to reposition when not surrounded by men guarding one’s flank.
Just as Alex had intended, sensing their flank and goading them both to attack him as one. Desperately they tried to fall back, jerking up their spears in a last-ditch attempt to ward his windmilling strikes cleaving through the air as he roared and charged.
The first spear haft wasn’t even in mid guard before Alex’s half-moon axe heads struck true. The second would-be killer just barely raised his spear shaft in time… only for Alex’s crackling fangtian ji to blast through it like rice paper. And faster than Tan Yi could cry out, the flash of lightning blinded him.
By the time he rubbed the dazzle his way, two more of his men were collapsing in showers of crimson gore. One dying man gazed down in stupefied disbelief at the massive rent through his chest revealed a fresh crimson waterfall to feed Liushi’s parched soil that his one desperately clasping arm had no hope of staunching. The other had already collapsed when his skull exploded like a pomegranate, now possessing only a spurting stump where his skull used to be.
The remaining pair of Bronze sentinels lurched back, eyes wide with dismay.
“No Ruidian should have that speed and strength. He weaves his weapon around like it’s weightless! That bastard fights like a Silver-tier monster!” The nearest cultivator cried, glaring Alex like he was an abomination.
His partner cursed and spat, glaring Alex’s way. “His monstrous artifact is the only reason why he still lives. Retreat! We need clan elders to take out this threat!”
Tan Yi, no fool, was already sprinting back the way they had come, screaming for aid.
Alex’s lips curled in a snarl, ready to rein final death upon them all… his furious dash cut short only by a child’s desperate cry.
“Father, please wake up! Mommy! Mommy! Please, I’m scared!”
Alex froze where he was. Sensing that for the moment that he and the fallen family were alone, praying that his desperate gambit had worked.
Only then did he dare check the interface messages now flickering across in his mind’s eye as he raced to the children’s side, falling to his knees in relief when the children’s despairing wails turned to sobs of joy as the father’s eyes bolted open and he wheezed for breath before bending over and retching ash and bile.
“Father!” He was immediately swarmed by his sobbing children as Alex raced to their mother’s side, sensing a life so perilously close to being rescued, a single spark of potential away.
You have successfully channeled potency into Xu Tie Slave Nodes!
Slave node Xu0714 neural matrix has been successfully stabilized.
Slave node Xu0715 neural matrix has been successfully stabilized.
Insufficient potency to restore cardiac stability to Xu0715.
You have successfully channeled Lightning Qi!
Lady Tie’s heart beats once more!
The sobbing girls hovered anxiously around their father as he wheezed and sobbed for desperate breath. Their terrified expressions immediately filled with joyous relief when their mother cried out a second later, right before retching out black bile as Alex gently shifted her as she gasped for sobbing breath.
“Mother, you’re alive!”
It was some moments before the clearly exhausted woman could find the strength to nod as her daughters clung tightly to her, all semblances of noble decorum shattered in the face of all they had endured and the sheer joy of surviving.
So great was their exhaustion that Lady Tie didn’t even question being propped up by the concerned-looking Ruidian covered in ash and blood until she could find the strength to stand once more, suddenly wrapped up in the arms of her husband, now gazing Alex’s way with a look of wonder and awe.
“I know not who you are or why you chose this hour to come to my families aid, but thank you, Ruidian. From the bottom of my heart.” The lord of the house took a ragged breath, a once proud man now radiating the power of a Deep Bronze wujen that was clearly his birthright, unable to hold back the tears streaming freely from his soot-stained face. “You have rescued my family, and I will forever be in your debt.”
Alex took a ragged breath, suddenly overwhelmed by a hot sting in his eyes he had never expected.
It was as if, in sparing this family the horrors of what he and his loved ones had once endured, he was finally able to put just a few of his own memories to rest.
“You’re more than welcome,” Alex said as he swallowed the lump in his throat, wiping his eyes from the ash still in the air. “But you’re still in danger,” he said with a bitter glare for the corpses littering the once beautiful garden facing the lip of the caldera. The former manor that was now a raging inferno had no doubt once enjoyed a beautiful view of the lush green valley below.
“The Duo Yi clan has chosen this night to orchestrate their coup. And though I don’t have a damned clue who all the players are, they’re clearly intent on seizing power at any cost, and that includes cleaning up all loose ends.”
Lady Tie’s eyes flashed with bitter heat. “Those treacherous monsters dared to enter our home under pretexts of negotiation. If our alarms hadn’t gone off, if my husband hadn’t sensed the peril of Silver and immediately rushed for our warded chamber...” She shuddered with remembered horror. “And still, we came so close to death. I thought… I thought we had died, in fact.”
She shook her head, staring in dazed disbelief at the corpses in various states of dismemberment upon the yard, then gazed at Alex with something close to wide-eyed awe, holding her sobbing daughters tightly against her soot-stained robes, as her home blazed in an all-consuming inferno, protecting her children as best she could from the horrors of war.
“We must get to the council chamber at the palace,” Lord Xu Tie uttered, eyes flashing with the blazing embers of his ruined home. “Once my compatriots find out just how treacherous and vile the Duo Yi clan is, they will refuse the vote of no confidence our prince now faces!”
Alex frowned at those words. “This vote of no confidence… from what I understand, the Duo Yi clan is actually sponsoring an outsider, a very powerful outsider with no previous ties to Liushi, to claim that post. How likely are your fellow counselors to actually allow an outside power like that to replace the prince?”
Lady Tie laughed bitterly. “All too likely, I fear. All the fools taking Duo Yi’s bribes and all the others who would blame our prince for the lack of Water Cores. Declaring him and the former Silver Sands headmistress as being guilty of deception, when the decision to use illusion magics to hide the tragedy of the northern face was a move that the Duo Yi clan’s pawns had themselves insisted upon!”
Alex’s cold expression transformed to a tight-lipped smile. “Well in regards to the flow of water, at least, I have good news. All the barren ritual sights now have fresh Water Cores. And if my understanding of the artifact fused to your city wall is right, no force below Jade could hope to pull them free. And if the words my ally was whispering under his breath at the prize I gave him are accurate, at least one of those cores should last for decades, the other for upwards of a thousand years. So that’s a hell of a lot of water security right there.”
Lord Xu’s eyes widened with desperate hope. “Truly?” He asked, before falling into a fit of ragged coughing.
Alex solemnly nodded. “Truly. It was a pristine Gold-tier Water core claimed from a Titan Worm. And I’ll let you guess who tried to interfere with our rescue of the northern falls.”
“Duo Yi himself!” Lord Xu Tie said with a furious snarl.
Alex smirked and nodded. “Got it in one. That asshole even had spies at the academy, with his brother Xuon Li seizing the role of headmaster. So he was right where he needed to be to intercept us. Only thing is, it didn’t quite work out for him the way he had expected. So… yeah. One less enemy at your back.”
Lord Xu Tie eyes widened with an odd mixture of hope and dismay. “Are you saying that Elder Yi has perished?”
Alex shrugged. “All I’m saying is that the desert sands have revealed and covered all sorts of interesting truths this night, and maybe the Duo Yi clan over-extended as well.” His gaze turned solemn. “I hope that, at least, can bring you some comfort. Unfortunately, our enemies have clearly been planning this gambit for quite some time. From what my friends tell me, all paths to the palace have been blocked.”
He closed his eyes, sending his thoughts Ya Ling’s way. “Linnea! Ya Ling! Lord Xu Tie lives! Are you guys safe? Do you need my help?”
But there was no answer, only a blurred panicked vision of his friends running for their lives.
Alex’s blood ran cold, sensing their peril even as his eyes snapped open, heart going out to this vulnerable family in what he had once thought a beautiful sanctuary, now overrun by jackals and wolves.
“I have to go. Is there somewhere safe you all can shelter? At least until I get back?”
Lord Xu Tie’s desperate gaze met his own. “All our allies are either at the counsel or no doubt fell afoul of Duo Yi’s treachery this night, just as we have.”
Alex’s response was cut short as his interface map of the local area flared with a surge of reds, Qi Perception allowing him to sense all hostiles within eighty yards. “Head to the lip of the caldera, behind your manor, and stay down!” Alex hissed, just before the air rang with Tan Yi’s voice once more.
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“There he is! That damned Ruidian! Destroy him, Tan Tan! Make him pay for daring to cross us!”
Alex, racing toward his foes, made out Tan Yi’s mocking smile, his early cockiness restored, no doubt thanks to the older-looking version of himself that was probably a sibling radiating a Silver’s potency, surrounded by a swirling maelstrom of Ice, and flanked by crossbowmen on each side.
Alex wasted no time, instantly summoning forth the only defense he had against enemy wujen, surrounding himself with a whirling shield comprised of half of the eight Light Qi elements he knew, his dao now vibrating with the ebony sheen of darkest Metal ready to cut through all resistance.
Skill check made! You have successfully summoned Doom Blade! Dark Qi contained along length of dao. Beast core strain minimized. Qi depletion minimized.
His eyes widened, so many ephemeral truths coming to sharp crystalline clarity in that perfect moment.
Holding tight to epiphany's grace, he dared to infuse his swirling disk with another element as well. Tied fiercely tight to Metal… yet he knew, eventually, he could infuse it directly into Water as well. As he once had to such devastating effect in the last life he recalled living.
You have had a breakthrough!
Skill check made!
You have successfully infused Storm Shield with Dark Qi!
Flexibility perk now allows for Dark Storm to be summoned at will! Qi Cost per minute has tripled!
Alex allowed himself a quick half-smile at Tan Yi’s look of wide-eyed surprise as Alex’s fangtian ji was instantly replaced with a whirling shield of Wind, Water, Lightning, and razor sharp furiously spinning steel splinters that he doubted his foe could sense at all. Before the entire thing was infused with glittering obsidian darkness, more powerful than any shield he had dared since losing access to his prismatic variant.
Of course, in doing so, in addition to infusing his dao with a whirling corona of Wind, Steel, and Dark Qi, he knew he was taking a serious risk, if rumors of his ebony blade and shield ever slipped free.
Because if anyone with connections to hostile powers only fools thought were truly dead realized just how significant his abilities were becoming… the results could well be catastrophic.
But as far as he was concerned, the instant his enemies had returned, so eager to tie up loose ends, they had all made their final move upon the board of fate.
Alex wasn’t intending to allow any of his prey to slip free.
“Kill him! Kill him now!” A no longer cocky-sounding Tan Yi screamed, gloating bravado replaced by fear once more as the air filled with steel quarrels and icy bolts, Alex jerking behind his ebony shield, praying it would keep together as he dared to think it might. For the onslaught struck with a force and fury that could have totally shredded the wagon he had once called home.
Contest of skills: Rank 6 Dark Storm Shield versus Silver-tier Ice Barrage.
Critical success!
Alex blinked as he braced himself, and continued bracing himself as slivers of icy mist forced him to blink stinging eyes for a heartbeat… and he suffered no more than that.
He could sense so clearly the arrogant sneer on Tan Tan’s lip morphing into a grimace of surprise when, far from piercing Alex’s exotic shield and sending his opponent cartwheeling into death… ice shattered against steel shrapnel covered in darkness before becoming consumed by the primary element Water.
Far from disrupting Alex’s shield, his enemy’s power was actually making it stronger. Alex couldn’t help but flash a bleakly satisfied smile as a now panicked-looking Tan Tan hurled everything from icy daggers to crystalline spears, all of which shattered and was consumed as Alex tapped into one of his Dark Qi cores, having absolutely no problem relying on the same roaring flood of potency that had once helped put out an entire quarter of the city.
For what was a storm of hail and ice to the crashing fury of the sea itself?
“That’s a master ward. No Ruidian should be capable of such!”
Alex heard Tan Tan’s surprised hiss so clearly, and he couldn’t help but find furious satisfaction in his shield. For Tan Tan’s deadly spears of ice and bitter hate, that could have effortlessly skewered a pure body cultivator lacking his gifts, was no more effective than Tan Yi’s desperate screams for his men to reload and fire once more.
Tan Tan’s desperate voice suddenly rang with the words to a wujen ritual Alex recognized all too well. The very words that had once frozen an entire platoon in its tracks, including a demonic cultivator. And tasting the sudden influx of Icy Qi and what he sensed were deliberate shortcuts… Alex knew it was time to stop fucking around.
His enemies were foolish enough to challenge him in the ruins of a garden, even after Tan Yi had seen just how fast he could move, when even the grass at his feet obeyed his will.
And perhaps Tan Yi had at least a glimmer of a suspicion that things weren’t going to go completely their way.
“Brother, wait. We need to flee!”
But Alex had already vanished in a spray of shredded plants and tuft.
“Creo Frigidium Eternum!” Tan Tan crowed in sudden triumph. “Die Ruidian Sc--”
Bullrush!
You have successfully shield bashed your opponent!
Steel component of Storm Shield shreds through your opponent’s defenses!
Lightning pierces your opponent’s wards!
Dark Qi pierces your opponent’s wards!
Tan Tan has failed to save versus Stunning Blow!
Tan Tan has suffered Critical Injury!
Wujen battle-ritual successfully disrupted!
You have saved versus backlash!
Multiple opponents have failed to save versus backlash!
Alex howled as he charged for all he was worth, slamming out with his shield that was weapon as much as ward, earning a choked off cry when Tan Tan’s jaw was shattered, wards simultaneously rupturing as his face and hands were struck by lightning and shredded by Dark Qi-covered shrapnel swirling around Alex’s shield arm at hurricane speeds.
At that moment, nearly half of Alex’s would be killers stumbled back with desperate cries from the eruption of bitter cold emanating from Tan Tan’s disrupted casting, Tan Yi himself crying out and stumbling back, losing an ear that ruptured into icy splinters, yet surprisingly nothing more while the closest Bronze sentinels standing beside him tipped back and shattered into bloody frozen chunks.
Tan Tan himself managed to resist his own backlash with a Silver-tier’s art.
As did Alex, the furious swirling storm he dared to hold like a shield sucking in the cold as the sea did even the iciest winter storms, Enhanced Wind Qi Deflection helping to mitigate the bitter cold with the help of the swirling warm currents of air now surrounding him, his Draconic Blood the final component that kept his nose from freezing off and his lungs from bleeding, even if he still took a Light Wound’s worth of frostbite, so fierce was the chill that actually got through.
Tan Tan somehow found the strength to smile through his shredded face, his still intact eyes clearly seeing Alex’s skin turn pale blue from the bitter, bitter cold.
Yet what he failed to register was the dao Alex held, so saturated with Dark Qi that he effortlessly plunged it right into the man’s trails, Alex sensing over half a dozen powerful wards and defenses pierced like parchment as Rank 1 Silver strength allowed him to rip his indestructible and razor sharp steel point right through the thin shirt of steel links the paranoid young scion wore, just in case any foe managed to rupture his interwoven mesh-work of wards and talismans.
And if Tan Tan’s horrified expression was anything to go by, he certainly hadn’t expected any single blow to pierce all his defenses at once.
The man gasped, opening his mouth as if to plea for quarter, but before he could utter a word, Alex tore his blade free with a savage twist, sending sending steaming hot entrails spurting all over the ruined garden.
Tan Tan crumpled to the ground with an agonized groan.
Alex took quick note of the rest of Tan Yi’s troops, for the moment stunned and disorganized after the wujen’s defensive wards had been pierced and ruptured, Tan Tan’s disrupted spell hitting them hardest of all.
But these were trained men and veteran killers. Alex knew he had only a seconds before they recovered themselves in full.
“Please, spare me! Spare me and wealth and power will be yours, I swear it!” Tan Tan found the strength to gasp, gazing up at Alex with desperate eyes as a scholars’ hand tried desperately to stem the flood of viscera seeping from his wound while the other sipped a potion with such quick practiced ease that even Alex had to dip his head in respect to a skill well practiced, one he should perhaps take heed of as well.
“There is now way you should be able to disrupt a wujen’s killing arts so easily!” Tan Tan hissed after gulping down the tincture radiating Wood and Water Qi so potent that Alex was suddenly dead certain he knew exactly where it came from, even as the man’s gaping wound began to seal itself in the darkness.
“Who are you, Ruidian, to make such a mockery of our arts?”
Alex smiled coldly, understanding that his enemy was just trying to by himself time. So he gave Tan Tan the only answer his foe deserved.
You have critically struck your foe. Decapitation!
Your opponents are now demoralized!
Alex wasted no time, his brutal execution of his foe buying him only seconds as he roared and charged for the Bronze sentinel closest to recovering fully, the monstrous giant already roaring and swinging his guandao with a furious roar.
Only for Alex to effortlessly knock the haft of the weapon off-line and weave past the strike a heartbeat before running the man through.
The giant’s eyes bulged with surprise. He looked on the verge of saying something before pink frothy blood spurted from his mouth, eyes taking on a dazed cast as he crashed to the ground, the clatter of his steel echoed by half a dozen of his fellows in no time at all.
You have critically struck multiple opponents!
Storm Strike successfully pierces all wards!
Alex flashed a fierce smile as the oddly chipper messages soothed the bitter horror of treachery and murder that the night had become.
A friend lost to these bastard’s blows… a family that had come so close to dying, just like his own had, countless lifetimes ago.
Alex channeled his fury into a masterwork of retribution, trading dao for fangtian ji once more, his crackling blade the brush with which he painted the battlefield in red.
Every scream from a snarling Bronze who over-extended, every strangled cry from an enemy Alex disarmed before running through… all of it was a symphony of bitter retribution until the ground was littered in the gurgling cries of the dying. Until it was only a heaving Alex who remained upright, now glaring down at a clearly panicked Tan Yi jabbing his finger Alex’s way with the arrogance only young masters possessed, completely oblivious to the doom stalking at his rear.
“You’re an abomination, Ruidian!” Tan Yi snarled, eyes wide with furious dismay. “You’re ruining everything!”
Alex flashed an ice-cold smile. “Is that a fact?”
His opponent and one time fellow student gulped. “It is!” He said in a rush, frantically speaking as if in a rush to defend himself, justify himself, or perhaps savor final gasps of precious life that even he knew were soon coming to an end.
“My family’s only goal is to rescue this city. To save it from all those who would see it fall to ruin! You know nothing as an outsider. You don’t know how the prince was imperiling us all! Refusing to see reason, refusing to understand the benefits of compliance, the security of becoming a protectorate to a power that would otherwise grind us into the desert sands! And we’ve come so close to success… so close to triumph, and you’re in jeopardy of ruining it all!”
Alex smirked. “Really. So your attempt to force a vote of no confidence was what… altruistic?”
Tan Yi nodded desperately, eyes wide, the last of his self-aggrandizing anger replaced by desperation as furtive glances caught sight of nothing but corpses and men seconds away from their final dying breaths. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying! Sometimes hard measures have to be taken when you’re trying to save an entire city!”
Alex chuckled coldly. “Your speech would be worth a lot more if you hadn’t been gloating about how your family was going to purge everyone who had ever defied you, once you had seized control.” His eyes grew ice cold and he did nothing to prevent the doom soon to befall the shivering youth before him. “Maybe I would even pity you, just a pawn of your family who couldn’t be expected to be any different from the people who had shaped you… if you hadn’t taken such joy at the thought of cutting down two innocent children whose only crime was surviving your attempted genocide of an entire clan!”
Tan Yi took a shuddering breath, clenching his fists. “You don’t dare strike me,” he said desperately. “I am a direct scion of house Duo Li. My grandfather is the head of the entire family!” He stole a glance and paled at the sight of Tan Tan’s headless body, crumpled beside so many others that had fallen to Alex’s ruthless blows.
“All else can be forgiven!” Tan Yi whispered desperately. “I will speak to my grandfather personally!” He flashed a desperate smile. “More than forgiven, you will be rewarded for your forbearance and wisdom. With a home, a manor of your own! My cultivator’s oath, Ruidian… Alex. I’ll make you rich! This night doesn’t have to end in tragedy for either of us. It can be a triumph, for both of us. Just present me alive to my grandfather, and all will be forgiven!”
Alex captured Tan Yi’s desperate gaze for long moments, making sure he alone was the center of the terrified youth’s world, before slowly sheathing his blade. “Alright, Tan Yi. You need fear my blade no longer. We’ll let the consequences of your actions alone decide you fate.”
Tan Yi’s face lit up in a relieved smile. “Thank you, Alex. You won’t regret this, I swear it! Now come, but escort me back to the palace and I’ll see you—“
His words broke off with a cry as he was abruptly yanked and spun around, forced to lock gazes with a furious Xu Tie, the wujen’s hand shivering with a coppery sheen.
“I let you into my house as an honored guest after breaking bread with you, just days ago. You and your father ate at my table! My daughters washed your feet! And this is how you would repay us? Slaughtering my servants? Laughing like a madman as you tried to burn us all alive? All because we refused to become a protectorate of the corrupt jackal that has taken control of our neighbors?”
Tan Yi’s features took on a deathly pallor as he stumbled back from the furious lord now looming over him.
Xu Tie snarled his contempt. “You wish to join the arena of the men who forged this city? So be it. Draw your blade, boy. We finish this now!”
Tan Yi’s terror turned to desperate hope as he yanked free a dao of finest steel… and something else a well.
“Ware, Lord Xu Tie! His blade is poisoned!” Alex shouted out as Tan Yi snarled and charged.
“I’ll kill you still, and sit by my father’s side!” Tan Yi shouted as he lashed out with a furious barrage of cuts, desperate to kill his opponent before he could even unsheathe the blade he wore.
Tan Yi’s sneer turned to wide-eyed dismay when Xu Tie contemptuously parried the blade with nothing more than his arm.
An arm covered with the essence of Metal so hard that Tan Yi’s blade clanged discordantly, flying free of his hands.
“No, wait! I sur—“
His words were cut off in a torrent of blood as Xu Tie lashed out with a spear hand strike radiating the essence of sharpness. Slipping effortlessly between Tan Yi’s ribs in a shower of shattered steel rings, bursting through the steel mail shirt as if it weren’t even there.
Tan Yi stiffened with a high pitched gasp as Xu Tie snarled and tore free his fist.
Holding nothing less than the young scion’s life in his hands.
And the look on Tan Yi’s face as he was forced to gaze at his own beating heart spurting blood in the hands of his glaring executioner was an expression Alex would never forget. Tan Yi’s look of horror faded to oblivion as his body went slack, and Alex could clearly sense the spirit’s screams as it desperately fled for the River of Souls.