The steel bars fly out the wall, letting sunlight come into the dreary dark room. Ash is so used to profoundly disgusting scents that he never realized the distinct taint of feces and urine. This is a sick place where sick people perform sick acts. There are discarded corpses littered throughout the room, flies hovering and dipping into the discarded viscera. The cloaked man play in the blood with delight, drawing smiley faces on the walls. The wooden walls are covered in a thick layer of mold and mildew, making it difficult to discern where one disgusting stain ends and another begins. It's only the fresh ones which stick out. The floors are sticky with bodily fluids and littered with discarded parts, still oozing with blood, moss, and maggots.

"Oh shit! Baro!" Ash yells. The four people here are filthy backwards savages. They either want to eat them, take their organs, both, or worse. The tall, cloaked man flashes a perverse smile. Ash has no doubt he's got some sick fantasies brewing in that god forsaken skull of his. He ducks out the man's grasp, then collector glides under that oversized cloak, a moment hidden.

"Where'd he go?" The other guys whisper. Ash weaves between fabric and feet as the tall cloaked man turns to face the others.

"He couldn't have gone far! His arms are broken, find him at once," He said. The other men nod and scatter. The man laughs as he lightly kicks Baro over, who wakes up.

"That's one bad friend you got, left you all alone and ran like a coward the first chance he got," The big man said, lifting Baro up by the collar of the shirt. Baro reels his fist back and steadies his qi. The cloaked man laughs. He's a Qi expert, what's this tired little brat going to do against him, especially when he's perfectly healthy and in an advantageous position.

"An attack? You realize I'm holding you up, right? It will never work."

"Is that so?" Baro said. Ash is going to be mad when he sees this, but it's not like it was a good idea for Baro to use it during the one on one. The charge up and the side-effect would be too much for that situation. Ash would counter or dodge, leaving Baro vulnerable. A weaker but quicker version was what that situation called for. However, in this situation, his opponent is arrogant enough to taunt rather than put his qi fluctuations to an end. This moment's hesitation will be his downfall. Baro saw Ash sneak under that man's cloak. Baro knows Ash remembers these fluctuations. Baro used them to nearly burn Ash to ashes.

Ash's hands may be useless in combat, but his feet aren't.

Ash knows this. All he needs to do is tweak the footwork and the Garbage Collector's Glide will become a devastating leg sweep. Instead of using qi for linear movement, the momentum is instead used to for circular momentum, rotation.

Baro smiles as the cloaked man lifts him high. Baro's fist ignites.

You learned to qi step on your way to fight me, there's no doubt you've been thinking about the applications since. Feel my qi, Ash, This is the time to act.

"Hey Pops!"

"Wha-!"

There is no room for errors.

Ash flickers from below. This move, a khal sect fundamental, is adapted for combat. Ash's latest heresy against the ancestral ways.

"Ignore them and keep moving forward!" Sect Master Khan said. Ash opens his eyes, there's no time for hesitation. He's been preparing for this glide for all his naps. It's time to put those mental simulations to the test. He has performed all the motions needed for this attack in some shape or form, he just needs to sequence it right in this moment. It's all or nothing, death or salvation.

"Garbage style, Heretic's Saw in Two Glide." Ash yells as his feet flicker like whips, nearly tearing the cloaked man's ankles apart. The man's grip on Baro falters as his knees buckle. Baro raises his arm high as the man falls, flames bursting blue.

"Over Flaming Strike!"

Cloaked men from across the hideout gather. Outside is just a moss covered swamp and tall grasses. The rotted wood hut blending amongst the trees and grass, obscured further by vast collections of moss and roots growing through the walls and roof. The city outskirts in the distance.

BOOM!

The boss flies out a wall with blue waves of flames. Grass burns and smoke pours as the man leaves a crater of dirt and fire. Men gather near their cloaked comrade, staring at the blue burned walls he came through.

"They're tired, get them before it's too late," The tall cloaked man said before passing out.

Ash and Baro flicker out from the other side. They duck and hide under some loose floorboards. The rooms are humid, moldy, and reek of sulfur and blood. There are red stains throughout the blotches of green and brown beneath the floor boards. A dreary color combination. This is why the Khal Sect sought the protection of the Kireina Kami mixture. One bath in it will wash all this taint right off. It's the thought of cleansing himself in that glorious mixture which kept Ash focused in this abhorrent space. If he were strong enough, he'd burn it to the ground with all the rats in it.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Ash has no idea what's going on here, but he doesn't need to. He's felt sick from the moment he got here, there a constant pain in his gut, and it's not because he's hurt. The fear is palpable, he just wants it all to stop. On the bright side, the rats here are qi practitioners at best.

"So, any ideas where they hid the gold?" Baro said. Ash's eyes widen as his jaw drops with shock. Baro wants to grab the gold? Who is this guy? He just got kidnapped, escapes, and wants to hang around to loot? Do life and death situations not phase him? This place doesn't seem big. It shouldn't be that hard to track the gold.

"No, but even if I did... my arms are busted," Ash said. Baro scratches his nearly bald head, his other arm drooping uncomfortably.

"One of mine is busted too, but I refuse to help fund these scavenger scum. You're too young to know this... much like me, but since you're here you might as well know. These guys are the worst type of organ harvesters, not only do they lack any and all moral values, they also have zero regard for any hygiene standards. Just look at this filthy room, the layers blood on the walls are so old they're peeling off, we're literally breathing in the blood of the people they've slaughtered. Can you feel the agony left in their qi? It's sickening."

How does Baro know all this? If there weren't more pressing matters, Ash would inquire more about it.

Baro speaks the truth, Ash has felt it for a while. The blood in the air is filthy, and it hurts in a way Ash hasn't been able to describe up until now. That fear he felt came from the qi in the blood. Ash has felt the pain in this qi for a while now, he just couldn't figure out what the negative vibes creeping into his bones were. Now it's clear. Qi is too direct to mince words. People here were tortured, hurt, broken, and eaten. Ash's stomach churns as his skin pales. Much of this blood was spilled from people who were wide awake during all of it. An act of pure malevolence, or ruthless efficiency? Nothing keeps organs fresh better than the body they grow, and turns out these scavengers are saving money on painkillers too. The pain in these walls dwarf the Khal Sects blatantly torturous training regimes. The qi memories in the blood came through as sensations in Ash's gut. Absolutely sickening. The more Ash dwells on it the more he desires to throw up. The sensations break as Baro shakes him.

"You see how obvious the injustice is here, but when the organs are properly cleaned up... it can be damn hard to tell where they came from. It's an unfortunate reality of the trade, and why the auctions peddle them all. Some scavs are careless and get caught on their way to these deals, easy pickings for nobles. Hunting them is sport to them. Doing the right things for the wrong reason, as always. Regardless, these Scavenger's filthy hands don't deserve to hold our gold."

Baro is ridiculously articulate for a six year old. Ash couldn't agree more. There are three other people here. With the right teamwork they can take them all out and get their gold back. Wait... their gold? Baro said it was "our" gold earlier, when did it become his money? Sect Master Khan's wisdom shines through Ash's mind's eye.

They were walking a landfill, where Sect Master Khan sought to personally show Ash the wisdom of Re-Scrapjitsu. Sect Master grabs a piece of PVC plastic, a basic tube about a foot long. Ash's poison clear sight at the time could not gauge the stats of the plastic as efficiently as Kaimen Garbage Vision, it was his loss as he could not unravel the majestic flurries of forms Master utilized. A mix of the two sacred forms, compress, and incinerate, utilized at an extremely precise degree to pull sharp defined edges and bend the plastic with impeccable precision. With a flurry of push, pull, cut, and form techniques from Junk-Fu, Sect Master Khan rapidly recycled the PVC in a manner which only a handful of people in the world would be capable of doing. If only the poison clear sight could make out the flurry of techniques Sect Master was using. Ash instead spent all his young adult life studying to unravel the intent behind the combined Junk-Fu forms, the purpose of each strike during the recycling process. How does Re-Scrapjitsu take these basic abilities, and deploy them with such profound expertise? Though Ash's eyes couldn't keep up, Master fed him lessons through words.

"There are seven trashy attitudes which you must overcome on the path to awakening Re-Scrapjitsu. By overstepping your bounds, and greedily using material without thought or care, Re-Scrapjitsu will fail to recycle as efficiently as possible. Energy lost in re-scrapjitsu is lost as heat, entropy! Do you understand, Ash? It's energy lost to the void, gone, forever trashed. The philosophy of Re-Scrapjitsu is to make use of every last atom, without letting bias cloud your judgement. To take too much for one part is to starve another, destroying equilibrium and tainting the proficiency of your recycle. Each strike must be intended to keep this balance, and deployed to maintain it while simultaneously altering the form. To achieve this equilibrium, you must abandon greed and give each part the materials it needs, neither too much nor too little. Only then will your Re-Scrapjitsu be truly efficient."

Sect Master Khan lifts a figurine of Ash smiling. It's fully colored. The details on the skin were immaculate, all the way down to the pores and micro-hair fibers. The varying depths define thousands of strands throughout his thick black hair. Even the black lashes on his grey eyes were given careful consideration. Ash's black gi was carefully carved out with every woven fiber, with details stretching beyond the limits of the human eye. It was magnificent. With just a thought and a touch of Re-Scrapjitsu, a world-class sculpture was formed out of what someone tossed aside as trash. What's the point of greed when you have a technique that can make art from garbage. As master said, Ash must abandon his greed in pursuit of this magnificent technique, the peak recycling form, Re-Scrapjitsu. No time like the present. Though it's weird of Baro to hint it in this manner, Ash acknowledges his right to be paid. Baro is sticking out through all this, despite being tired with a broken arm. Baro doesn't owe Ash anything, yet has done him so many favors. Baro has every right to half the money in that bag.

Two cloaked men walk by, Ash pokes Baro's shoulder with his elbow. Baro's eyes flicker open, he was falling asleep again. Is he a narcoleptic, or just that tired?

"We must have lost them, let's go heal the boss," one of the guys said, waving a green vial.

Ash's eyes widen. That mixture, he knows exactly what it is. He must get it no matter what. Without a moments hesitation, Ash burst forward with qi, swinging his foot up full power into the cloaked man's nuts. Baro charges the other man.

"Flaming Strike!"

"AAAHH!"

BOOM!

The cloaked man falls back, smoke pouring out his mouth as his eyes roll back. The man Ash struck falls with a high pitched cry, tears flowing as Ash yoinks the bottle out with his teeth. He and Baro make a run for it as the last cloaked man stops by his fallen comrades.

"How could this happen," he said with frustration. His comrade smiles from beneath his cloak as he struggles to give a thumbs up. What he had in his hand was no healing vial, it was a specialty mix. Rat feces, clotted blood, and powdered spinach. A most potent poison.