The square-faced cultivator spun his arms in a flashy maneuver, dragging silver light behind his hands and gathering it up as if it were a gel, then molding it into a solid shape. Silver mana had aspects of both white and black, life and death, illusion and genuine genesis. Sunwhisper saw motes of the energy floating away from the main mass that took on the appearance of moths circling back toward the light, and then fish, and then fog. The entire process took only a few seconds, but to Sunwhisper it seemed much longer.
Wen Lambo had forged a sword of pure mana. It was as long as his body, with a blade as thick as his waist that shimmered with the mystery of ten thousand stars.
(MOVE!)
Spirit energy surged through Sunwhisper’s meridians at the warning from his companion. Xanthous Ascendancy lent him the strength of ten men, and the speed of a wraith, but that would mean nothing if he stood still and allowed Wen Lambo to slice him in two. The sword had a mesmeric aspect, and it was only his connection to Starscream that saved him from it.
Sunwhisper threw himself to one side, taking Lead Grasshopper stance to aid his movements, just as his opponent rushed forward, his mana forged blade leaving a blazing trail behind him as it cut the night.
"Good," Wen Lambo said, "I did not want this to be over so quickly."
Starscream sent a line of webbing at their opponents face at the same time as Sunwhisper used Impurities Rejection to launch his spear.
Wen Lambo leaned to one side to avoid the web shot, and batted the spear aside with his massive, flashing blade. He watched with interest as Sunwhisper tugged it back into his hand on an elastic line.
The spiders jumped, moving faster than Sunwhisper had ever seen them. It was a blink he could barely follow even with reflexes enhanced by an ascendancy technique.
Wen Lambo was faster. His sword was too large to have been used effectively if it were a mortal weapon, but when he spun it in a vertical arc, rather than getting stuck in the ground, it cut a deep furrow in the soil as easily as if it had been water, coming up in time to meet the first spider and slicing it from its head to its abdomen so cleanly that the two halves continued their flight to either side of the cultivator.
The thread thin line of mana that connected Sunwhisper to the sacred beast snapped, and in the same instant, he lost the portion of the hunger he had carried on their behalf.
The second spider sank its fangs into Wen Lambo's arm, injecting deadly venom, but he batted it away as casually as he would have an offending fly. It landed in a tangle of over articulated limbs and rolled to stillness.
"There is no point in fighting me, boy. "Wen Lambo said. "Whoever sent you sent you courting death."
Three-star cultivators did not need an Ascendancy technique to enhance their bodies, because their bodies had become so infused with mana that the technique became redundant. Apparently, that freed them to use their energy in other, more creative fashions, such as mana forging.
The gap between three and two, however, was not so great as it initially appeared. Sunwhisper considered running, he estimated a reasonable chance of success if he bent both his cores and all of his mobility techniques toward the goal of escaping Silk Flower Town at a sprint. The thought passed through his mind of using the web lines to swing around one of the higher buildings, pulling with supernatural strength and launching himself as surely as he could launch his spear.
It was a thought for another time.
There was too much inside of him to focus on strategy. The echoes of nerve pain, the existential terror of an initiate still dying in the underground hall outside the cell, a potentially mortal wound, and louder than any of these, because he had not shared it, the hunger of the remaining spider.
Wen Lambo’s aura was so strong that it could be sensed without the aid of a technique. Sunwhisper felt the power radiating from this man, bleeding from the edge of his sword, and it made his mouth water.
(Hey kid, you thinking what I’m thinking?)
{I suspect that I am.}
Sunwhisper’s own core was becoming emptier by the second. He needed to rest, and to channel. What energy they did have was necessary to maintain Xanthous Ascendency, without which, they would be instantly outclassed.
"A moment," Sunwhisper said, and popped open his own chest. Cultivators witnessed many strange things on their journey to immortality. There were eight elements to master, and twelve colors, each lending a particular flavor to a given artist’s style. Sacred beasts and plants filled the Blessed Lands with danger and treasure, and the world was so large it might as well have stretched on forever. Nowhere in all of that were you likely to see a young man treating his own chest like a cabinet, reaching inside, and producing a spirit fruit to eat in the middle of a fight. Sunwhisper wanted to keep his opponent from growing too comfortable or assured. With his own uncertainty pouring out of him like an unignorable song, and the fact that he really did possess qualities no one in Silk Flower Town had ever seen before, it wasn’t too difficult.
"Beetle’s burning heart," Wen Lambo swore, "what are you?"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Hungry," Sunwhisper replied through a mouth full of spirit fruit. The warmth and energy of the Soma coursed through him in an instant, filling first his own core, and then overflowing to surge through Starscream.
He closed his chest compartment and stuffed his face with what was left of the fruit before squaring off with his spear.
Wen Lambo’s gaze drifted, then refocused. He shook his head. “You’re going to answer my questions, golem.” The emphasis he put on the last word suggested it was supposed to mean something to Sunwhisper, but it didn’t. Of course, he knew the word. A golem was a magical automaton, but he had no idea what that meant in the context of cultivator society. Until that moment, he hadn’t known they had golems at all.
When Sunwhisper didn’t respond, Wen Lambo sneered. “I have heard your kind can survive without arms or legs. Let us find out if it is the truth.”
Wen Lambo rushed forward again, and Sunwhisper leapt straight up. It was going to leave him completely vulnerable to a follow up sweep when he came back down, and his opponent knew it, but that was only if he didn’t change trajectory. Sunwhisper shot a line of webbing at the Azai building and tugged himself sideways, flying well clear of the next arc of the mana forged blade. His spear had met that weapon and suffered only a light scratch. Eight Mines Clutch would allow it to survive long enough to do what he needed.
He shot another line to bring himself swiftly back down into position, and Wen Lambo rushed him a third time. Sunwhisper had seen the maneuver twice now, and it held no surprises for him, even if he could barely follow its speed with his eyes.
He crouched low, holding his spear in an angled vertical block so that the mana blade would slide up its length rather than meet it with full force and potentially break the shaft. He needed his full strength and concentration to avoid being struck, and so would have gained nothing from the exchange aside from sore shoulders and wrists if he had been fighting alone.
Starscream lunged for Wen Lambo as they slid by, grazing his side with his claws and leaving shallow scratches through his robes. It was good to know that he could be cut, a mana body was not so different from one under the influence of an ascendancy technique, but the intent of the maneuver had not been to draw blood.
Just as Sunwhisper could benefit and utilize the techniques that belonged to Starscream as long as they shared their cores, he could also transmit his own abilities through Starscream as if his passenger were a third hand.
River of Agony shared Hago’s nerve pain with Wen Lambo. It was so diluted now that a cultivator like him could easily ignore it, but that did not mean it was below his notice.
Wen Lambo spun on his foot at the termination of his rush and faced off with Sunwhisper, who had adopted a relaxed posture.
"Do you know what I have done?" Sunwhisper asked, trying to hold the pose of a master addressing a dilettante without giving away just how out of his depth he was.
"What?" Wen Lambo showed no concern. The pain would be a minor distraction if it bothered him at all, though he might wonder how such a light touch had caused it.
"I have established a link between us, and now your life is mine."
Wen Lambo barked a laugh.
Sunwhisper spun his spear and held it at rest behind his back, lifting his other hand so that Wen Lambo would see him snap his fingers.
The physical motion was nothing but drama. Internally, he tweaked the mana threads established by River of Agony, and transferred to Wen Lambo the fear of an initiate wrapped in webbing, alone in a dark cell with pain in his body and the knowledge that he had failed in his duty to the clan.
Wen Lambo took a step back, confused. Why should such an insignificant gesture give him such a feeling of dread?
"Do you yield?" Sunwhisper held his stance, giving the impression of someone in complete control of himself and the situation. Rather than suppressing Aura of the Bleeding Heart, he tried to bring the shades of the burdens he had taken to the forefront of his mind, the pain and the despair, hoping to demoralize those who were watching the duel, as well as maximize the influence of what he was sharing with Wen Lambo. It wasn’t hard to blend these feelings with a genuine lack of confidence when he knew very well that he was walking a tightrope over his own destruction.
"Your death rides on my blade!" Wen Lambo snarled, but in the bare instant he required to prepare his technique Sunwhisper snapped his fingers again, and the three-star cultivator’s bold assurance left him in a rush, he hesitated as if it was his own death he saw before him.
Sunwhisper had severed one connection, allowing the dying man’s experiences to flow back into him at full strength, and then passed as much of it as he could through his connection with Wen Lambo, who would not have the advantage of understanding where it was coming from, or an EQ high enough to manage such a sudden onslaught of despair and the shock of watching one’s own lifeblood trickle out in a slow but ineluctable drain.
For Sunwhisper, as much as he had improved his mind, it was all he could do to maintain the physical pose of nonchalance.
When Wen Lambo lost his concentration, the blade of silver mana burst in a shower of glimmering moth wings and mystic mist.
"What are you?" He asked again.
"Don’t you know already?" Sunwhisper asked.
There was recognition in Wen Lambo’s eyes, and he spoke a word just on the edge of audibility, even for Starscream’s hypersensitive auditory matrix.
“Zaibatsu.” Sunwhisper had no idea what that word meant, but it was obviously something scary, so he decided to roll with it.
"You may not understand why I am here,” he said, “but I promise you, that my purpose has been served. Should you yield now, I can leave without any further harm to the Azai, or any further strife between our clans. You will do the Azai a service by allowing this to end here and now. There was a blood debt to be considered,” the whole blood debt concept had proved a consistent moral reference in the Blessed Lands, and it couldn’t hurt to throw it in. “That debt has been repaid, and that is all you need to know."
Wen Lambo was panting, not from the physical exertion, which would have been negligible for someone like him, but from the storm inside. Sunwhisper knew what he was feeling because he felt it himself, and the moment stretched along the tight thread of tension that had developed between them, a construct of mana and of the tower of assumptions that could have tumbled in either direction at any moment. Below them, in a darkened hall, a man’s heart was slowly beating out the last seconds of his life. Sunwhisper could feel it, and so could his opponent.
"Go," Wen Lambo said. "Just go."
Sunwhisper didn’t need to be told twice.