Thank God for that Soul Meld, he thought, a bit put off that a day had come when he would be thankful for the nightmare that played out in that hellish independent space.
Several minutes later and his body was in perfect shape, with the exception of the energies that he’d depleted during the battle. As he was, he could only rely on spiritual arrayments to continue the fight. Glancing at the severed forearm that he still held in his left hand, he quickly refined all of the blood within it along with any that had dripped away since it had been removed from its owner’s body.
About fifteen percent of his inner essence reserves were replenished by the severed limb, which more or less astounded him. Just how much energy did that freak have in his dantian for just half of one of his limbs to possess so much inner essence?
Jason’s eyes tracked Great Elder Germiel and Elisa as they battled it out with their lives on the line, his wariness for their opponent having grown exponentially since he’d traded blows with the man. Even with only one arm, the great elder was still able to push Elisa back in every exchange that defined their current confrontation. Still, injured as Germiel was, Jason knew that this was the perfect time to strike. Since he couldn’t use his healing arrayment on anyone that wasn’t within arm’s reach of the diagram upon its activation, he instead opted to support Elisa by pelting the great elder with a near endless barrage of deadly grey discs. He had to be careful not to hit his ally, but with such a vivid spiritual sense he didn’t have much trouble doing so.
Dressed in the black robes of a core disciple of the Bloodhand Sect, hands covered in torso-sized cloaks of burning, blood-coloured energies as her chestnut hair whipped this way and that, Elisa was unrelenting in her pursuit of her opponent, who for the first time throughout the entire fight was now on the defensive.
By the time the hour was out, Elisa was covered in dark bruises and deep lacerations, patches of gleaming, mutilated skin where some of her hair had been torn out by savage punches or clawing hands. Jason’s spiritual space was almost completely empty at this point, as were his energy reserves, but the same could be said for the great elder.
After a particularly intense exchange of attacks, the bald man abruptly forced Elisa away with a violent, well-timed kick to her solar plexus. He then leapt from the ground with such strength that he easily cleared four kilometres within a matter of seconds after causing a great deal of earth to compact downward from the force of his jump, doing so again and again until he was out of the boundary of Jason’s perceptions.
Let him go, he said to Elisa, who had subconsciously made to follow after her former colleague.
“Now is probably the best chance we’ll have against him,” said Elisa, who wobbled on unsteady feet as all sorts of streams of blood trickled through the tears in her clothing. “Once he’s healed himself, he’ll probably come after us.”
Jason completely healed Elisa with an arrayment, which left her quite shocked. “There are a lot of camps in the area,” he said tiredly, exhausted after a long day of fighting. “Let’s stop at one on the way back to ours so that we can pick up some disciples to refine.” After all of the energies that the two of them had expended, it was urgent that they replenish all spent reserves so as to ensure that they were in tiptop shape in the event that Germiel sought them out sooner rather than later.
“I can refine some as well?”
“Yeah. We need to be ready in case something happens, and that means keeping our dantians full.”
A satisfied glint appeared in Elisa’s eyes, which shone with a crimson gleam as she redirected her gaze toward one of the nearer camps, which was about eight kilometres from their current location. Jason followed her gaze and found himself wondering what might be going through the minds of the disciples at said camp, who had undoubtedly just bore witness to the topography-altering battle that had just played out at the site of the former town. Even now, much of the mushroom cloud still remained as great clouds of dust and other particulates spilled off into the surrounding skies.
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These fights are getting out of hand, he thought after helping himself to a handful of relevant medicinal pellets and sorting out his physical condition. Just imagine what I could do if I had the power of friendship.
Ignoring Elisa’s raised eyebrow as he chuckled to himself for a few moments, Jason conjured a large serpent upon which to travel atop and abruptly headed toward the nearest camp. It would require the energies of around a hundred or so Integration-staged cultivators to completely refill his dantian’s dwindled reserves, and he intended to add a little excess as he set his sights on the initial stage of the Integration stage’s eighth level.
***
Jason stared up at the stars from the centre of the small clearing that he’d decided to bathe in at the onset of nighttime. After creating a large tub of polished wood and filling it with hot water, he had spent over an hour relaxing while lost in his own thoughts.
The stars shone bright within the clear, cloudless sky, tens of thousands of twinkling lights that made Jason wonder how many earth-like worlds he was unwittingly looking at during breaks between the steady waves of steam that constantly reached upward from the tub. After the Interspatial Migration, Jason had no doubt in his mind that there were other worlds like Earth that had the potential to house sentient life. Planets like Nia, the former home of the nearly-extinct Neomen, as well as whatever world the founder of the Blackstar Sect had originated from—the master of Actius’s master and the progenitor of the Ancestral Body Technique—or the world that the chained woman and the other Six Celestial Shadows left behind prior to their conquest of Venara. These days, whenever Jason stared up at the stars it was with a fresh perspective and a wondering mind, for his current view of existence was now far broader than it had been in the past.
“I’ve never seen someone so taken by the night’s sky,” came Sersa’s voice, drawing Jason’s attention to the fringes of the moonlit clearing. “If it’s nighttime, chances are you’re looking up.”
The clearing was about ten kilometres from their main camp, situated within the same stretch of forest.
“Trying to sneak a peek, huh?”
“So,” she said, stepping into the moonlight from the shadows of the surrounding forests, “how did it go?”
He let out a light snort that was something between a laugh and a snicker. “Right, you did say I could tell you all about the fight if I survived.”
“Which you somehow managed to do.”
“Honestly, I should have listened to you. I’m lucky to be here right now.”
“Seems to me like you’ve learned a valuable lesson.”
Rather than tease her for seeking him out, Jason went on to describe how the fight had unfolded after she’d tapped out, stressing his shock at Great Elder Germiel’s true strength and asking after the capabilities of the other seated elders. Sersa only had information about her former masters, the ninth-seated elder or the Lord of Castle Blackrock, Great Elder Kilian, and the tenth-seated elder, Great Elder Marcus. Both had been in the middle levels of Genesis at the beginning of the sect’s invasion of the Easterly Kingdoms, but as was the case with the majority of disciples and sect members that had survived thus far into the Acquisition of Hauss and of several other nearby kingdoms, they were likely to have experienced a significant amount of progress in their cultivations thanks to the excess of cultivation resources that were being sent back to the sect’s territories by those taking part in the invasions.
“And then he left, just like that?”
“Thankfully, else I’d probably not have come back in one piece.”
“And that doesn’t strike you as suspicious?”
“Elisa said that the guy’s a control freak that only takes part in fights that he’s a hundred percent guaranteed to win. Clearly he didn’t like the odds, so he left. What should I do, go after him right this second and demand we keep the fight going?”
“All I’m saying is that we should be on our guard in the coming days.”
As silence returned to the clearing, the two of them stared up at the sky above, both lost in their thoughts as they observed stars, moons and distant aurora-like lights.
Lately Jason had been coming to appreciate the talks that he and Sersa shared, for there were none among his ranks that he could speak with in such a casual way. Being constantly surrounded by people that hated him to the point of wishing him dead was very stressful at times, for everyone in his company these days was only there because he had literally enslaved them and thus they had no choice in the matter. Everyone aside from Sersa; she was the only one within their now thousands-strong war party that stood side-by-side with him on equal footing.