Chương 13: Blackscale Cove

Rowan A vulture circled in the bright blue sky above. The heat distorted the dust on the road. It danced up in little motes. Rowan lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the blinding sun, glaring at the irritating creature. He sat in the driver's seat of the carriage. Two days on the road and he'd seen more horrors than he had in his lifetime. Drought, indeed.

On the way to Deepwhale Pier, inside the comfort of the carriage, he had missed all the dead, rotting bodies on the sides of the road, and all the villages which had burnt to ashes. Now he was witnessing it all. He had also been attacked by bandits several times, but they were barely worth mentioning. They were practically skeletons hoping for a last ditch meal. If not something he was carrying, then his own flesh. Being so close to the river, Rowan wouldn't have expected this level of starvation in the land.

Was there something wrong with the fish? Fish was always plentiful between Righteous Mountain and Deepwhale Pier, on both sides of the peninsula. However, if the fish were gone for the season, it wouldn't have necessarily been something he'd paid attention to either. With a tired sigh, he pulled out the map Blaise had given him. He was nearing this Blackscale Cove. Unfortunately, he hadn't seen her in the city or on the road so far.

He could make a short detour to check the area - if she was scouting, then he could warn her. And if she was still behind him, he could leave a message there for her. Rowan folded the map, using it as a fan to cool the sweat on his face. The heat really was brutal. He should've paid for a driver - or at least a hat. Before leaving Deepwhale Pier, he had made the heartbreaking decision to use his last two spirit stones to refill his Qi Sea. Since his fight with his retinue, his qi hadn't replenished at all.

Rowan knew, on the road, it was better to be safe than sorry. What really hurt was knowing that because of his lack of a decent breathing technique, he didn't absorb the qi efficiently. He had likely wasted a lot of the spirit energy in the stones. It took only a few more minutes of walking before he saw a figure with a wide-brim straw hat pointed at a dainty angle in front of a cave entrance. She was surrounded by the tatters of protective talismans Rowan assumed had been set up by Deepwhale Pier.

"Wait!" he shouted. He scrambled to a stop beside her, kicking up a cloud of dust. The girl turned to face him. There was a flash of violet-black hair, glinting silver eyes.

"Don't you know what happens to cute little cultivators who follow dastardly demons into the wilderness?" Rowan rolled his eyes, trying to mask the heat rising to his face.

"Don't go into the cave. The beast inside is still alive." Blaise gave him a once over, examining Rowan closely.

"I don't think there's a beast inside." Rowan folded his arms.

"I meant in the cave."

"There's nothing alive left in the cave," she said, suddenly all business.

"I'm a fairly talented sensor. There are two primary ways you do a reading - tracking the movement of qi, and divination. I've done both. It's empty." She smiled.

"Trust me."

"If you're so sure, then go ahead. Just don't cry for help if you're wrong. I'm not going in. My cousin says the beast has killed nearly twenty Qi Refiners. Ten of them in a single pitched battle."

"Fine," Blaise sang.

"I will fight the deadly already-dead beast and you can clap and stare at me in admiration while I tally up all the loot. I adore an audience." Without a backwards glance, she strolled into the dark mouth of the cave.

"Wow, someone just left their storage bag here," Blaise's voice called out from the darkness, echoing.

"Let's see what's inside… oh, three Sifting Yang Qi Pills? These would be perfect for a man in the early stage of Qi Condensation. Since I'm not a man, nor in the early stage of Qi Condensation, I guess I'll just have to sell these… Such a shame. Wouldn't it be so useful for someone if they just had the courage to enter the cave?" Rowan wouldn't let Blaise goad him into doing something stupid.

"Wow, is this a rare lightning scripture?" Rowan clenched his fists. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Rowan thought he saw a flicker in the dirt as Blaise stepped over a certain point.

"Um… Blaise?"

"What?" A roar shook the air, small rocks from the cavern shaking loose. The sound of water crashing echoed violently.

"Aw. A little Golden Pearl Flood Dragon. I can harvest your organs for a Turbulent Water Elixir, and your scales for mid-tier armour. Or do you want to be my pet—I mean, honored spirit beast?" Underneath the sugar-sweet tone of her voice was a terse and tinny undercurrent.

"Oh aren't you quite large and beauti-" She screeched and there was the sound of splashing.

"What are you doing? Come back out!" called Rowan. Blaise ran back toward the entrance of the cave, but she ran into an invisible wall. Intricate markings in the dirt by her feet flared with lava. It was a ward. Meant to keep the Flood Dragon from getting out - but also any trespassers. She mouthed a few surprised words. Her fist glowed blood red and slammed into the shifting barrier. Behind her, a pair of golden eyes appeared, then the massive serpentine body of the beast. It coiled and rammed forward.

It was like a living sea current. Each scale was made of water, droplets rushing and dripping as it moved. Blaise leaped out of the way just in time, the beast's open maw crashing into the barrier. Each fang was the size of her body. She formed a sign with her hands. A black shadowy coffin manifested, and the lid opened. It seemed to be draining the life force of the beast into it - or trying to, at least. The beast barely noticed it. This book was originally published on Royal Road.

Check it out there for the real experience. Rowan jerked back, his mouth agape. She was a demonic cultivator. There was no doubt about it.

"What are you looking at?" she said, scowling. The Flood Dragon roared, rallying as it swept a pair of claws at her. It missed her by a hairsbreadth as she twisted out of the way. Her straw hat fell off her head.

"This is completely under control!" Was he about to watch a demonic cultivator die? But she didn't seem like a demonic cultivator to him. There were no rivers of blood. Just a beautiful girl who smiled at him when he interrupted her lunch, and paid too much for a hairpin. A girl who gave him a gift when she heard that he'd formed his Qi Sea despite not knowing him. There had to be more to this story. There was a loud schick as a claw pierced her upper arm, and the conch-shaped hairpin flew free.

She was now impaled on the Flood Dragon's claw. What could he do? Rowan shuffled into the cove, step by step, careful not to pass the formation on the ground. He couldn't fight a Flood Dragon, but maybe there was a way for him to disable the formation. Blaise had a chance if she could escape. The only thing was that his knowledge of formations was entirely theoretical. If he closed his eyes, he could see the pages of diagrams from the Helsing archives he had been forced to memorize.

He knew that formations took an insane amount of discipline and Divine Sense to craft - that was why he never bothered with them. It was by far the hardest discipline in cultivation. Despite his lack of interest, as a direct descendant of the clan, he'd been forced to learn. He knew hundreds of sigils.

He knew basic formations had between one and five arrays, and if you needed one with more arrays than that, then to slap your hands over your ears and run away because the formations master would be charging you enough to bankrupt your nine generations. Rowan stared at the complex arrays of lava making up the formation. Their shapes came to rest in long, thin, black glass that glowed red hot as it converted kinetic force into qi when Blaise banged against the barrier.

It was like nothing he'd ever seen in his books. None of the sigils repeated either. It almost felt like a totally different language. I don't have to understand it perfectly to break it, he thought. This was a lesson in every single formation book he'd ever read on the topic. He just had to figure out what parts of it were weak. And what parts of it were dangerous.

"That's a Nascent Soul-level Earth Formation called the Twin Earth Cage Formation and it uses Nefarious Obsidian Stone Chalk. The only reason the girl was able to get through was because it's degraded over the thousands of years, and the formations master made a few errors in his working. There's no way you will be able to break it," the senior in the stone transmitted to him." Isn't it so impressive?"

"More impressive than a spirit trapped inside of a rock, for sure," Rowan muttered. The stone grew hot, as if it were displeased.

"Then help me," Rowan hissed.

"You must know how!"

"Knowledge isn't the barrier, competency is. Even if I tell you, you'll just perish in the attempt. Chin up. I'm saving your life here. Let's go."

"I'm not going to let her die without trying."

"Then you can throw me to her," said the stone, the voice becoming suddenly mellifluous and encouraging.

"You're a smart boy, and you must realize that I'm meant to be the tool of a great cultivator. Doesn't she look like a great cultivator? I'm sure she'll reward you greatly."

"I'm not giving you away," said Rowan. The stone went silent and inert. He had only one idea - one extremely stupid and foolish idea. Without the stone, whenever he tried to cultivate, the qi he absorbed quickly dissipated as though it was being grinded away inside of him. He had always been perplexed by this. However, the stone had informed him just the other day of a problem he'd been born with. A Forgegod Spirit Root in the same body as a Bloodwood lineage.

Two gifts, warring against each other, neutralizing each other. Fire and Metal against Wood. From his childhood lessons, he knew the best way to remove a formation safely was to siphon away its power until it was inert. Recklessly breaking a formation, especially one as complicated and esoteric as this, could trigger a defense clause. If he siphoned the qi of this great formation into him, could his body grind it away? The stone grew intensely hot.

"What an interesting idea."

"I thought we were no longer on speaking terms," murmured Rowan.

"What are the chances that this will work out?"

"It most certainly will not. When your body's looted by the nearby sect, I'll be passed along," the stone said. Blaise's fingernails elongated as they clashed against the thick bone of the Flood Dragon's jaw and when its teeth hit the points of her nails, there was a keening wail. She gave another short scream as the dragon's tail slammed into her chest knocking her back against the barrier, which gave a glass-like thunk as she slid down the translucent wall.

She was doing admirably against a beast which had killed over ten Qi Refiners in one battle. The fact that she was still alive was a shock. After all, by any estimation, this was a Flood Dragon that was at least the equal of a Foundation Establishment master. Rowan crouched down and placed his hands on the formation. The sigils of lava didn't burn, but instead felt like warm glass. Then, just like with a spirit stone, he began absorbing the Earth qi into his body. Immediately, he felt the urge to vomit.

His Qi Sea spun wildly as foreign Earth qi flooded his system. He gritted his teeth. Slower. Rowan modulated his intake of the earth qi, trying to pull in less of it. The qi felt like a thick, roiling sludge in his system at first, damp and thick and packed. As he let it draw away, there was suddenly a taste to it - bitter, gritty and loose, like dirt. And there was more. The feeling of containment. Entrapment. Water flowing, but constrained by the banks of the ravine.

The dao in the formation was too vast for Rowan to comprehend, but this small taste almost knocked him flat. The suffocation, the crush of it. Roots couldn't grow in hard earth, water couldn't soak in, fire couldn't cross it, and metal couldn't break it apart. This wasn't the steadiness of earth. This was its unrelenting nature. The domineering aspect. This wall that refused to bend. Inside his Qi Sea, a strange Dao Mark formed.

Rowan took in more and more of the words as he felt the formation break apart at his fingertips. It's working. The Earth qi inside him was continuously breaking down, only to be replaced by more. It wasn't a perfect solution. He could feel remnants. The incomprehensible essence of the formation's dao lingering. He knew, instinctively, that all he needed was one more of those carved letters that flitted here and there frantically in the formation, that he didn't truly understand. All he needed was- There.

He drew it in, the obsidian glass word that he could not read, and then the lava roiled around him and surged from the openings of his body. He screamed, and the formation gave an almighty pull, flinging him straight past the entrance and into the cave. Even as he soared through the air, his body thrummed in agony. His system tried to grind away the foreign Earth qi, but he'd siphoned too much. It couldn't contend with the profound nature of the qi. His limbs grew stiff and heavy.

Slowly, a second new Dao Mark formed within his Qi Sea. Two Earth symbols - the two primary symbols of the Twin Earth Cage Formation - branded him. Rowan skidded on the ground, body stiff as a statue. He could only move his eyes, looking upward, to see a giant pit of darkness lined with human-sized fangs and a sharp, serpentine tongue descend upon him.