His muscles strained as he walked the last few feet, and he looked to the sky. The sun had already set and the supposed master cultivator was panting heavily. One last look to the sky before he dumped the war hammer from his shoulder onto the ground with a loud groan of relief. The wind runes he carved helped the weight but didn’t completely ease it.

Only a moment later he slumped down on the ground and leaned against a tree. He still struggled to breathe and the man even felt a stitch in his side. He sat there slumped against the tree for several moments before he could regulate his breathing. Once he finally opened his eyes, he saw a familiar face perched on a fallen tree near where he was.

“Looks like I should go back to working out huh, Shu?” Silas smirked and looked at the phoenix.

The phoenix just gave a loud squawk in response before bowing its head.

That’s when Silas squinted and really inspected the phoenix. Phoenix’s had a bright flaming end of their tail. Shu’s while the tail did still have the flame to it, the base of the flame was darker than usual. The flame was usually a deep crimson color that turned lighter and then golden and now the base was just black and ended into the deep crimson that it normally started at.

Silas let his eyes wander over the animal and even in the dark of night he could tell the phoenix was darker than usual. Not overly so. He didn’t think he’d be able to notice unless he really knew Shu, and had seen the phoenix almost every day for the past handful of years. Still though, he noticed.

“Maybe we should start calling you Kurai?” Silas said in a joke to the phoenix.

Shu just seemed to eye the cultivator and Silas could swear that if possible the phoenix sniffed at him. Silas narrowed his eyes before he shook his head. He was imagining it. The night was playing tricks on him. It’s not like there was any light. The moon was thin, and it was overcast covering the starlight. Silas nodded his head as he convinced himself.

Silas gave himself one last nod before he closed his eyes and did the thing he should have done much earlier. He had to inspect not only his channels but also his core. He breathed in deeply and went inside himself, but only for a moment before he opened one eye and looked over at Shu.

“Are you going to be here awhile? I’d appreciate someone watching over me while I do this and then sleep,” he asked the phoenix. Shu should be far enough along in his cultivation to understand Silas’s words.

Shu looked at him indignantly but the animal nodded its head. Silas smiled and gave a soft thank you. He saw the understanding in the phoenix’s eyes. His wife had pumped enough pills and elixirs into the animal to make sure it got to the spiritual realm of cultivation. Of course, it was for her own interests but she cared for the beast.

Silas breathed in deeply one more time and closed his eyes in concentration. Cultivators could feel the channels through their body and feel the core behind their naval. As far as actually looking though? A person had to do some inner reflection. It was one reason people failed going down their cultivation path. They ignored the very real problems and told themselves, and imagined everything was fine in their body and spirits.

Silas inspected his core first. The area just behind his navel was a good size, and deep spiritually speaking. Thanks to his upbringing he had a solid foundation. His mana he always thought of a dull gray color, the color of unworked steel waiting to be molded into a weapon. The thick liquid in his core was not at all what he expected it to be. Mostly it was gray, but there was more of a blackness to it than normal. The gray was deeper than it was supposed to be.

Silas frowned and worked his examination from his core outwards. He traced along the channels that went through his body now. There the mana was the normal gray color he was used to. The channels themselves though, were an issue. Again, thanks to his training when he was young both from his father and martial teachers and then later from the sect he had strong channels. He could always expend more mana than anyone of his cultivation rank. Able to wield more of his inner power than anyone he knew. Now they seemed cracked and broken.

No, Silas realized. They weren’t broken or even cracked. His channels were actually fully intact there was just…. Simon frowned. He wasn’t sure how to explain or describe what was wrong with them. It looked like cracks, but it was just bits of that black in his channels. Silas thought back to when he was attacked by that creature in his wife’s lab.

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Did the creature do more damage than he originally thought? Silas opened his eyes and finally opened his robe up to inspect where the beast stabbed into his upper chest. The wounds seemed fine, there weren't even marks there anymore. That made little sense either though, did it? He was straining himself even before he fought the beasts off of Shu’s cage.

Finally Silas looked over to Shu and frowned. “What is going on with us?” he asked. He didn’t expect an answer of course. The phoenix wasn’t at the point where he could talk yet but there was clearly understanding in Shu’s eyes.

“SQUAWK,” it shouted as loud as it could.

Silas raised his hands in surrender and grinned. “Alright, alright. I’m sorry I asked. I don’t know what’s going on either Shu,” he sighed and looked down. “Maybe it is a good thing I’m going up to the sect. I’ll be able to see Master Eichi. Whatever is going on, he’ll know.”

The phoenix nodded his head, gave one last squawk and then flapped its wings before he flew away from Silas. Silas gave a sad smile. The creature did what it said it would do, now Silas supposed he was off to find his own answers. He dug in against the tree a little more and looked up to the sky as his mind wandered in thoughts.

Thoughts about exactly where everyone from the village went. If they died, there would have been bodies, right? Silas nodded his head. Right. He told himself, no, Silas promised himself he’d figure out what happened to not only his wife or his apprentice but the rest of the village. He told himself he’d find out just before he finally drifted off into sleep.

He woke when he felt the sun beaming down and warming his face. He blinked rapidly and rubbed at his eyes before he finally opened them and looked at the sun with a frown. A look up and into the mountains and he really frowned. He wanted to make it to the sect by nightfall at least, if not earlier. He needed to get there to see if the sect had some answers for him. If Master Eichi could get him some answers. Silas took a deep breath and grunted his way to his feet.

“May the Kami…. I sound like an old mortal man,” he grumped to himself as he stretched his body from his rough night’s rest. He shook off the sleep and even slapped himself in the face several times before he moved over to the fallen log that Shu had watched over him the night before with another grunt.

He sat with his feet even with the ground and his boots dug into the dirt a little. He wasn’t exactly sure how this was going to go, but he had to do it. Silas wanted to inspect his spirit once more, and try to cultivate. Maybe he could collect some aura from the world and replenish his inner mana. In truth, he should have done it last night but the realization that there was something going on inside of him he couldn’t even begin to understand. Well, it freaked him out a little.

Now he closed his eyes once more and began the inner reflection. It only took him moments before he realized nothing changed in his single night of rough rest. His core refilled a little, but it hadn’t gone back to its normal color. It was still darker, in fact, Silas realized, it was even a hint darker than before. He frowned and went through the channels once more. The dark markings looked like they had before. That was something at least. Silas wished they had gone away, but the fact they hadn’t gotten any worse was something he supposed.

Alright then, he told himself and pushed all of that from his mind.

He closed his eyes now and concentrated on nothingness. First the cultivator regulated his breathing. It was a fairly typical breathing pattern for cultivating. Once his breathing was even he reached out into the world with his spirit. He felt the aether all around him. The glittering bits of aura that flowed around him in the world. The various colors of different auras around him. Since he was in the woods of the mountain, there were a lot of browns and greens for the wood and earth of the world. There was some of the gray aura flowing from the world. Metal could be found almost everywhere because of various metal deposits in the world. Silas concentrated on those bits. He brought them towards him, called them to him until they flowed around him. Everything was going fine, just another good morning of cultivation. That was until Silas pulled the sparkling gray into his spirit to claim it.

Silas’s channels felt they were on fire. The metal cultivator gritted his teeth and sweat formed on his brow as he tried to force his spirit to accept the aura of the world so he can make mana from it. It shouldn’t hurt like this though. The man had enough experience to know that something was wrong and that he should stop. Silas was nothing if not hard-headed though. It wasn’t until he could feel the dark bits of his channels grow that he finally stopped cultivating.

He immediately cut his spirit off to the aether and went through his channels once more. The deep black mana still looked like cracks in his system but they grew out. They spider webbed towards each other. Silas opened his eyes and found he was panting. That feeling, he didn’t know what it could have been, but it didn’t help his growing worry. He thought he was feeling better and mostly recovered from the previous day's activities but now… Silas sighed and shook his head when he thought of his ruined channels.

With a huff he climbed to his feet. He went over and grabbed his hammer and by instinct cycled his mana when he went to throw it over his shoulder. As he tried to push the mana through his channels, they instantly burned once more. Silas fell to a knee and gritted his teeth once more than the feeling through his spirit. Once he cut himself off from the aether and regained his breath, he stood back up and wiped his brow from the sweat. He then headed up through the mountains.