“Is everyone ready?”
Within the courtyard of the Mystic River sect, a group of disciples stood around the transportation array at the center of it.
The other disciples muttered amongst themselves, their attention all on these disciples. It was still a bit early into the morning, so it shouldn’t have been unusual to see disciples still taking the transportation array. So why was it that this particular group had so much attention on it?
That would be solely because of the leader of the group. He was a tall, young handsome man with short, clean-cut crow black hair, just like most other men in the sect. He was dressed in the Mystic River Sect’s disciple robes just like everyone else, but there was also clearly an aura around his body. An aura of potent, light blue qi.
A signature trait of cultivators in the Aura Manifestation realm.
It wasn’t very often that cultivators in the upper reaches came down to the lower reaches. The only reason why they’d ever need to in the first place is for business.
Or, in some rare cases such as the current one, leading a group of Foundation Establishment cultivators onto a mission.
Ten minutes had passed since the young master of the Ling family, Ling Yan, ran from the transportation array in a panic. It took an infuriatingly long time to get the necessary information from the young master, but they eventually got the gist of the situation.
The tier 3 beast that he, Luo Han, and Lin Siyuan wasn’t there. In its place was a tier 5 beast.
The sect immediately knew of the direness of the situation. A tier 5 beast had an aura just like any Aura Manifestation cultivator. It was well-known that Qi Manifestation cultivators were unable to use their pendants to teleport back to the sect when within an aura.
That meant Luo Han and Lin Siyuan were left to fight against a beast that matched the power of an Aura Manifestation cultivator. Luo Han might’ve been unusually powerful for somebody in the Qi Manifestation realm, but he was still in the Qi Manifestation realm in the end. There was no way that he could match against an entity two realms higher above him in cultivation. There was even less to say of Lin Siyuan. Siyuan wasn’t even a trained battle cultivator, he was a relic smith. The sect’s bounty office was quick to gather a strike force to salvage the two cultivators with reward of a plentiful bounty, even managing to get an Aura Manifestation realm cultivator to take on the job.
The Aura Manifestation cultivator looked to the four other Foundation Establishment cultivators behind him as they all affirmed that they were.
“Alright then, let’s go.”
The five of them stepped up to the array. Before he could bend down to make contact with the array however…
A shimmer of light came from the array. The upper reaches disciple looked up at it, though he didn’t pay it much heed. He began to recite the location he was given by the office, but then he stopped when the light from the array disappeared. He looked up, his eyes wide with shock.
Because the person who had appeared on the array was none other than their target, a very recognizable person in the sect and one he wouldn’t have missed even without the office’s individual profile. Luo Han.
The battle cultivator looked worse for wear. He was still standing on his own two feet at least, but his legs were shaking. His whole body was bloodied, especially one of his legs, which looked like a sizable chunk of his skin was cut from it. Despite that, he still apparently had the strength to move with another cultivator slung over his shoulder, supported with the adjacent hand. Gripped awkwardly in his free hand were two swords.
His appearance caused an uproar among the disciples standing in the courtyard. They would have mobbed him had the Aura Manifestation cultivator not commanded the four Foundation Establishment cultivators to set up a barrier around the transportation array.
The Aura Manifestation cultivator looked at him for a moment, inspecting his state. Then, he moved forward to take the unconscious cultivator slung over his shoulder. Luo Han didn’t provide any resistance, his eyes somewhat blank as they stared into the distance somewhere behind the upper reaches disciple. That was when he decided to ask the next essential question in his mind. A question that he suspected he already knew the answer to.
“Where is Lin Siyuan?”
Luo Han’s eyes dulled further. He simply closed his eyes, turning his head up to the sky.
The Aura Manifestation cultivator needed no other response.
He quickly led the injured cultivator to the clinic, wading him through the crowd of curious cultivators that had gathered in the courtyard.
----------------------------------------
It was in the clinic that everyone in the sect had learned of what happened on that hunting mission.
It was an unconventional hunting mission. Usually, when a cultivator accepted a bounty from the bounty office, they’d take it and kill whatever beast that was the target of the bounty. In exchange for introducing the bounty to the cultivator, the office would ask for 20% of the cultivator’s yields while the cultivator was allowed to keep the rest of the 80%. That wasn’t the case for this particular mission, though. In this particular mission, the office didn’t actually get anything. Rather, the yields of the beast that Ling Yan and Luo Han hunted were split solely between the two of them. Lin Siyuan was added in as a member of the trip a bit later in, but it wasn’t entitled to any of the yields of the trip.
The target was a tier 3 beast. A bit stronger than what Qi Manifestation cultivators were expected to take on, but not anywhere near impossible for the top two Qi Manifestation cultivators in the lower reaches.
Unexpectedly, however, there was no tier 3 beast at the site. Only a tier 5 beast.
Such a battle was impossible for the three of them to win.
A couple of agents from the bounty hunting office managed to work out what actually happened out in the field. They concluded that the tier 5 demon, based on Luo Han’s description of it being a snake that had an affinity for earth-element qi, was an Earth-Rupturing Viper, a demon that mainly hunted by lying under the ground in wait for its prey. It was also capable of moving under the ground at very fast speeds to close in on escaping prey.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
It was almost comical how ridiculous Luo Han’s initial plan of trying to run out of the demon’s aura sounded after they had made that conclusion. Especially considering that there was no way Siyuan could’ve moved fast enough to do so without Luo Han’s help, which would have subsequently slowed Luo Han down. However, they had more of a chance of pulling that off than fighting the Earth-Rupturing Viper head on and hoping to defeat it in battle. Had Ling Yan not used a teleportation pill to get out of there almost immediately after the demon’s appearance, he would’ve been stuck there just like those two.
In the end, Luo Han’s plan did succeed. They did manage to open a window of opportunity just big enough for Luo Han to slip through. But only because Siyuan paid the ultimate price.
When the battle cultivator reached the clinic, he almost immediately fell unconscious. The sect’s doctors scrambled to heal him. Fortunately for them, his injuries didn’t amount to much more than serious blood loss and severe qi deviation. His leg looked pretty bad, but it wasn’t anything that would leave a permanent wound.
Luo Han’s condition could only be described as miraculous. Being just a Qi Manifestation cultivator, it was expected that he would have lost a limb during the battle. Whatever Siyuan had done, his sacrifice couldn’t have been more beneficial.
This was, of course, cause for great relief to the Mystic River sect. Luo Han was a once-in-a-generation talent that the sect had never seen before. Just from seeing what he was able to accomplish at the beginning of his cultivation, it was easy to see that he would become a shining star in the cultivation world one day. He was a jewel of incomparable value to the sect, one that they couldn’t lose hold of no matter what.
However, although they had managed to keep this precious gem in their hands by some miracle, they couldn’t keep hold of the other.
Lin Siyuan was as competent as a relic smith as Luo Han was as a battle cultivator, if not more. He even had, just recently, joined the sect’s upper reaches relic smithing class, a class meant for Aura Manifestation cultivators, as a mere Qi Manifestation cultivator. Just a mere half a year into his cultivation, the same time that Luo Han had started his cultivation. His progress was absolutely astounding. It was truly hard to believe that all a background check yielded was that he came from some village out in the middle of nowhere.
It was to the sect’s terrible misfortune that he had been killed. However, it was understandable that that would be the cost for the preservation of Luo Han’s life. Besides there was no use in dwelling over his death.
They could only move forward from there.
A feat that would be easier for some than most.
----------------------------------------
“Hello? Luo Han? May I come in?”
A handsome, middle-aged man, dressed in the Mystic River sect’s robes, lightly knocked his fist against a door. A somewhat quiet tap rang through the hallway of the infirmary he was in.
This man was one of the teachers of the Mystic River sect’s lower reaches relic smithing class. More precisely, Siyuan’s teacher.
He was, of course, grief-stricken over the news of Siyuan’s death. Over the half a year that he had him as a student, he had grown to like Siyuan. There was a genuine student-teacher bond between the two that anybody could see.
He remembered what he told Siyuan after that last assignment before he was moved to the upper reaches relic smithing class when Siyuan told him that he wanted to open a relic smithery. How he thought Siyuan would need to work even harder than he already had if he wanted to achieve his dream. Despite how bitey his words may have sounded then, he had no doubt in his mind that Siyuan could have made it happen. He was looking forward to watching that ambitious boy chase after that momentous dream, ready to do what he needed to do to give Siyuan even the slightest push forward should he need it.
But now, that was no more. That bright future had been snuffed out when the boy who bore it lost his life.
“...yes, come in.”
Hearing Luo Han’s affirmation, the man opened the door.
Inside was a single cot next to an open window. On that cot was Luo Han, sitting up on the cot, dressed in the sect’s infirmary robes rather than the sect’s disciple uniform. He was staring forward, a listless look in his eyes with two sheathed swords sitting on his stretched out legs.
The teacher looked him over, grateful to see that his wounds had almost fully healed. Then he looked down at the swords in Luo Han’s hands.
He almost immediately recognized both blades.
The first was the sword relic that he had lended Luo Han. The project that he had submitted to qualify getting into the relic smithing school. A four-fold enhanced sword relic that was famous for nearly getting its creator killed.
The second…was Siyuan’s personal sword. A relic that served the simple purpose of enhancing the user’s flow of qi. A simple, yet effective purpose.
Luo Han caught him staring at the blade. He simply smiled.
The man simply walked up to the cot. He pulled up a nearby chair and sat beside the bed-ridden cultivator. The two were in complete silence, yet it was an amicable silence. One that neither were willing to break.
He had an important question to ask however. So after a while, he looked up at the battle cultivator.
Luo Han had his eyes closed. The teacher observed as his chest gently lifted and dropped. At some point, he had descended into peaceful slumber.
The teacher stared at him for a moment. He considered waking Luo Han, but then shook his head and stood up from the chair he was on, gently moving it back to its original spot.
“I don’t know what you think of Ling Yan, but please, don’t do anything stupid,” he quietly says. He crouches next to the bed and gently lays a warm hand on the boy’s forehead. “Getting revenge on him isn’t worth staking your life for.”
He stared at the slumbering cultivator for a moment. Then, quietly laughed as he removed his hand from the boy’s forehead.
“This isn’t like me,” he said to himself. “Talking to an unconscious person. I really am starting to get old.”
He stood back up. He stared at the swords in Luo Han’s hands one last look before turning around and leaving the room. The door opened and closed with a quiet click.
Several seconds of silence passed.
Then, Luo Han’s eyes opened.
He stared at the two sheathed swords sitting on his lap. His grip around them tightened.
If anyone were to really observe him, they would have seen his eyes practically shine as a fire was stoked within him.
----------------------------------------
Two weeks passed.
Luo Han’s recovery was quick thanks to the relatively low amount of damage that he had suffered during his encounter with the tier 5 beast. In just a few days, he was once again ready to continue his training.
His name had become a household one within the sect’s boundaries. He practically became a legend. A practically brand new cultivator, surviving in a head-on fight against a tier 5 beast? Almost completely fantastical had there not been too much evidence to suggest otherwise.
As Luo Han’s name rose to stardom within the sect, Ling Yan’s sunk in the exact opposite direction.
It wasn’t explicitly said, but it didn’t take a particularly perceptive person to see that the lower reaches’, and the sect overall’s, view of him had diminished significantly. The coward of a man who bailed the moment things got feisty and left his two fellow disciples to certain death. People still feared the status that his family had, but more words were being said behind his back.
Well, it wasn’t like he was very popular to begin with.
As for Lin Siyuan, he had become a martyr to the sect. Nobody was completely sure about what had happened during his and Luo Han’s battle against the tier 5 beast, but one certain fact was that had it not been for his sacrifice, Luo Han wouldn’t have come back alive. Seeing that there was little reason to not believe that this was what had happened, the other disciples ate it up, although how he had managed to do it was still a mystery while still being in just the Qi Manifestation realm.
Life carried on for everyone in the sect. For almost everyone, the moment came and went as the sect settled back into its usual daily rhythm, as memorable as it was.
For one however, the once dull flames of passion have been ignited, set ablaze by the desire for revenge.
----------------------------------------
Meanwhile, somewhere far, far away, another boy opened his eyes for the first time in months, a ghost emerging from the underworld.