Yu Bang entered the array room of the Black Serpent sect’s base and bowed to the master there. “Thank you master Xing,” he said, “for allowing me to go in search of Lo Chang.”

“We understand.” he said, the other array masters double checking to make sure the plan would work. “Of all of the people in the sect, you were the closest to him, so it is only right that you go and rescue him. Now, you have all of the supplies, correct?” Yu Bang pulled a second storage ring from his own and nodded. It had everything one might need to reconstruct the array on the other side, as well as several books and ingredients, as well as many potions. That would let Lo, a somewhat talented alchemist, make anything else he might need over there from the local materials. “Good. Once you are on the other side, you will need to find him, then construct the array at the location of your arrival according to the instructions, so that you can return. On your side it will need to be powered by at least three Immortal level artifacts or another suitable power source. Unfortunately, we can’t spare any, so you will need to find them yourselves.”

Yu Bang bowed. “Yes, master.”

The other members of the sect brought in twenty monsters, some tied up so that they couldn’t fight back. “The array must be opened by spilling blood, but we do not know how long this will open it. Human blood is more effective than that of monsters, as it was designed to use human sacrifices.”

Yu nodded again and said goodbye. While they had done their best to design a way for him to get back, there were no guarantees. Yu stood in front of where the portal had opened last time, and Master Xing signaled the twenty cultivators standing around the array. At the signal, each of them slit the throat of the monster in front of them and pushed the body over so that its blood would cover the array on the floor. Black smoke swirled in the middle of the array and, without waiting, Yu Bang entered it.

–

Lo Chang sat in the back of the cargo plane, watching Damian, who was chained to a wall at the back of the plane with seven other children. ‘You know, I could break free if I wanted. I could probably even destroy the plane.’ The words sounded in Lo’s head. Damian had shown a talent for telepathy and, while the others could only sense or project emotions so far, Damian could speak telepathically at a distance of eight meters.

‘Please don’t.’ responded Lo. ‘If you bring the plane down, we won’t be able to figure out who is behind the abductions.’

Two hours earlier Lo had brought Damian to the designated meeting point. One of the men there had pulled out a stone with his gloved hands and touched it to Damian, and the stone glowed blue. “Nascent?” asked one of the men standing there. “That’s quite the rare find. To be honest, we only offered one hundred thousand for one because we didn’t think you could do it. We were expecting you to bring in two or three Foundations, maybe with a meta or two mixed in.”

“Does that mean I’m not going to get paid what I was promised?” Soul Blade asked.

“Oh, no. If anything, we might pay you more. Anyone resourceful enough to find a kid of that level could be important to our organization.” He checked Damian’s bindings, then motioned for him to be loaded into the waiting cargo plane. “Actually, the boss wants to talk to you about that.”

“Fine. Where are they?”

“Not here. They’ll meet us at the base in Morocco. Make a good impression and even if you turn down the offer to join us, you’ll get even more lucrative work in the future.”

Lo nodded. “Fine. I guess that means that I should get on the plane?” The man nodded and Lo did so.

Six hours later the plane sat down at an airport outside the city. The merchandise was loaded into cargo trucks and several SUVs showed up to pick up Lo and the other gang members. Everything went by caravan to a warehouse a few kilometers away, at which point the goods were unloaded and drug off to the a set of cages inside. Lo got out of the vehicle and noticed that it was the middle of the morning. Strange, he didn’t think they had traveled for that long.

“So, when is your boss going to show up?” asked Soul Blade.

“They should be here any minute.” Five seconds later a black SUV pulled up and three large men stepped out of it. One of the men from the plane ran over and whispered something to them and the largest man nodded and walked up to Lo. “Hello. My name is Tahakum Althueban.” He held out his hand and Lo shook it. One of the man’s body guards was releasing small amounts of chi, maybe a late cleansing stage level, and looked Asian, while Mr. Althueban and the other guard looked middle eastern. Normally he would have assumed that the man was simply healthy, like Bruce, and had few toxins in his body, but the head of a snake tattoo poked out the top of the man’s collar on the side of his neck. Clearly, he was a member of the Black Serpent sect that was hiding his power for some reason. Of course, Lo was doing the same, limiting himself to middle Collection stage levels of chi output and wearing the improved Sword Chi relic bracelet he had made.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Althueban.” Lo responded. “I am called Soul Blade. Forgive me if I don’t give you my real name.”

The man smiled. “Understandable. Most super villains wont reveal that information. So, I am told that you captured a Nascent level cultivation talent. Impressive. What’s more, the boy appears to have already begun his cultivation. Can you tell me how you found him?” This wasn’t good. Damian must have let out too much chi and been detected.

“Let’s just say that this was an excellent opportunity to get some revenge of my own, and make a profit while doing it.”

The other man nodded. “Then I take it this boy has something to do with that Jade Dragon that has been operating in Gotham?” It was a good guess. I had investigated Soul Blade a bit while in the Jade Dragon costume, and even interrogated some of the criminals that worked for Soul Blade, just to keep up appearances. Anyone in the criminal underground of the city would believe that my two alter egos had issues with each other, and Jade Dragon was the only other known cultivator in the city. “Is that his son or something?”

“Apprentice, actually. The man was lucky to find someone with such potential, so I decided to show him how much of a mistake messing with me would be.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The man nodded, but sighed. “The thing with attacking heroes, though, is that they won’t stop until they get their ‘Justice’, including getting their people back.” The man called out some orders in a language I didn’t recognize. While he did that, I pushed my fingernail on a hidden button on a fake gold ring Batman had given me. My cover was about to be blown, so it was time to call the League in. “I am having one of my men check him for tracking devices. Assuming they find nothing, we will pay you an extra fifty thousand and offer you further work in the future.”

I nodded. Maybe I could get some information out of him before the league got here. “So, I assume you are going to just harvest him for materials. Are they really worth so much?”

The man looked at me with a look of confusion. “No, not at all. Yes, many materials will be harvested, but with the power of your people’s alchemy we can restore anything we cut off.”

“So, they will become a long term source, and the money is just the up front cost?”

“No, they will become members of our organization.” He looked a bit concerned, but I continued my line of questioning.

“And what organization would that be?”

“Do you always ask so many questions?” he asked, then motioned at his men. They came over and patted me down despite my protests, finding nothing but my robes, cell phone, wallet, and two rings.

“What was that for?” I asked. “I thought we trusted each other.”

“Me too, but you are asking far too many questions.”

“Tell me,” said the Asian guard in my native language. “Who are you really?”

“I am a member of the Soul Blade Sect, or I guess former member, as they don’t exist in this realm.” I responded.

“You seem pretty weak for a Soul Blade.” His boss appeared to be listening to the conversation. Had he used and Elixir of Memories to teach this language to the boss as well?

“I was a pretty low ranked member.” I said. While the Soul Blades only had a few Nascent stage members and were mostly Foundation stage, they made an effort to get everyone to the Foundation level, so the only ones below that tended to be those that were recultivating to that level after improving their base.

“Moreover, I am sensing elemental chi within you. All five elements, but no sword chi. Are you a spy? A Jade Dragon that the other one sent to gather information?” The man flicked his wrist and a blood red orb formed in his palm. The other two drew guns.

I knew that this attack was a common one among the Black Serpents, and would cause blood poisoning if it broke the skin, so I had to think fast. “No, I’m not a Jade Dragon, not anymore.”

The man seemed to relax a bit. “Explain.”

“I was an outer sect member, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I couldn’t stand working in a field every day, cultivating spirit rice for them, so I decided to quit. I had made friends with a Soul Blade on a former mission, so I spent all of my contribution points on a sword and some materials, and pretended to go to hunt the monsters they wanted me to. Instead, I met up with my friend and he offered me a job. Sure, I was their alchemist, making healing pills and elixirs for them, but at least they appreciated me. They even gave me a few pills to help advance me toward Foundation. Then, one day, I was out killing a few weak monsters and gathering herbs for a batch of pills when I fell through a portal to Gotham. I assumed that was either the people on this side or your people experimenting with whatever array you used to come here.”

The man stared at Lo for a few seconds. “That explains the training bracelet you’re wearing. Why didn’t you break your cultivation and restart with cultivating sword chi?”

“Not enough experience with it, so my purity would be low. Plus, they wanted me to breakthrough to Foundation before doing so, so that I spent less time trying to get stronger.”

The man thought for a second, then nodded. “Fine.” he said in English, and his boss nodded. He went back to the SUV and got a briefcase.

Just as he got to me, however, he looked up in the sky. I turned around and saw several people flying there, including Superman and Jade Dragon, probably Martian Manhunter in my costume.

“Shit, the heroes found us!” yelled one of the men that was on the plane with me before stupidly drawing a gun and firing at them. Most were completely unaffected, but the fake Jade Dragon impressively drew his sword and parried all of the bullets.

“Run.” the boss shouted, before his assistant dropped the briefcase and did so, heading towards the building and the hostages. I grabbed the briefcase in passing, putting it into my storage ring, and followed them into the building. I was a criminal, after all.

Once we were inside we all ran to surround the victim cages. I went to Damian’s cage, pulled the ring he was using out into my hand, and flicked it to him stealthily when no one else was watching.

“Look, Soul Blade.” said the boss. “I’m going to need you to help us out here.”

“I’m a mercenary, and I have ways to escape. How much are you offering?” I need to play the role, after all.

“Fine, another hundred grand, and we’ll call you for future missions.”

“Weren’t you going to do that anyway?” I countered.

“Fine, half off any products we sell from these special children.”

“Make that on any pills or elixirs you sell as well, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Fine.” he said in annoyance just as superman tore a hole in the roof.

I smiled and drew my sword, running at the ‘Jade Dragon.’ We exchanged several blows, but when he took to the sky on his sword I did the same with mine. He threw blasts of water from Alfred’s bracelet and talismans I had left at the cave previously at me, and I threw sword chi back at him. Soon the area was filled with steam, dust, and destroyed rocks as I missed my sword chi strikes by just enough that it would look like I tried to hit him and failed.

Meanwhile the others were facing off against the prisoners, one of which melted the lock with a fireball and broke out, attacking the criminals that were gathered there. With Superman, the Flash, Batman, and several others like Nightwing and Green Arrow showing up, however, they didn’t stand a chance. Once the others were defeated I let one of the water blasts knock me off of my sword and fell twenty meters, Releasing my chi just as I hit the ground so that I didn’t get seriously hurt. The fake Jade Dragon came over and put his sword to my throat and I surrendered.

We were all taken to the Watchtower, the hostages included, as they sorted out this whole situation. I played the role of a mercenary, even letting my duplicate interrogate me to keep up appearances. After six hours I was sent back down to the surface to a group of Gotham PD where I quickly escaped because, somehow, I managed to ‘steal’ my ring back.

With my villain ID now a secret from everyone but the bat family and the Martian Manhunter, I put on plain clothes and returned to the manor. That identity would need to lay low for a while, and Jade Dragon could use a bit of downtime, so I decided that now would be a good time to recultivate.

I went to the bat cave, told Alfred to not disturb me, and found an out of the way niche in one wall. One of the things about breaking your cultivation was that all of the excess chi in the body needed to be released, and would be released rapidly if your body could no longer contain it. First I carefully dumped all of the chi I could into the environment. It started to hit the walls of the cave and other objects, transforming into other forms of chi and sometimes damaging the objects, but I needed to do this to safely complete the process. There were relics that could store the energy and let you reabsorb it later, but I didn’t have any.

Once all of the energy from the Foundation stage was completed, I grabbed the shell around my middle dantian and started unraveling it. For several hours I pull bits of it off as it tried to adjust itself to continue existing. The pain of the process started to get to me, but I pushed forward, fighting through the pain and disorientation to pull more of it apart. Eventually it started to break down and release the energy that the shell contained. After about ten minutes it had completely dissolved and I was back to late Collection stage.

That wouldn’t be enough, though. I needed to rebuild my cultivation from the ground up, so after a quick break I returned to the niche in the wall. All around the niche was massive amounts of elemental chi. If another cultivator happened to get near it they would immediately recognize it, but none could get close enough as deep as we were in the ground.

Just before I resumed my efforts, Bruce and the others returned. They immediately felt that something was off about the area around the niche. Sensing at opportunity for them to be instructed, I had them reach out and feel the chi, finding the parts that appeared to be Metal, or Water, or Fire, or Earth, or Wood. It only took ten minutes before the four of them could identify all five types. I then released a bit of Sword chi, throwing a blast at the wall and leaving a deep cut there. I had to do it several times before they could sense the difference in that energy and the other types, but eventually they got it.

“Now, I want you to learn to how to create each of those. They should all be at least three percent purity, preferably more.” I released some metal chi at approximately 3% purity to demonstrate. “If you can do that, I can teach you to breakthrough to the next level, as you’ll need to either gather elemental chi for the elemental cultivation, sword chi for sword cultivation, and will need to convert to those types quickly if you cultivate neutral chi, as otherwise elemental magic isn’t practical in combat.”

Once I was finished with my lesson I returned to my niche. There I sat down and once again started shedding chi. This chi wasn’t as pure as the chi I had released before, as it was only at around two and a half percent purity, but it still contributed to the large amount of chi in the area. Another three hour meditation session later and the shell around my dantians collapsed, releasing the chi the shell was made of and returning me to the height of the Cleansing stage.