Chương 18: Eradication mission

The Divine Dragon Sect became his spiritual home. A place ruthless beyond compare. Every step steeped in blood. — He who calls himself Chi You, The Completed Works by He Shulin, foremost scholar of the Outer Realms Jianyi had tried not to think too much about the demonic cultivators that had almost killed him for his Core Card on the day of the trial. He tried not to give his mind material for nightmares—and partly because he'd hoped they were gone after Elder Sun's intervention. He had probably been naïve.

The elder wrapped him up in his qi and sped through the city. When the elder had talked about a lair in the city, Jianyi had thought they would find them in the seediest parts of town. He could not have been further from the truth. They made their way to the noble district, situated on a low hill that overlooked even the Lord's palace and the central square. The buildings were large and ostentatious.

Unlike the sect elders' residences, these were not built around courtyards but surrounded by large gardens—hidden behind high fences, of course. Still, most had pagoda-style roofs, every stone, carving, and tile exuding age and wealth. The elder stopped in an alley between two massive mansions.

"Do you have your spear?" he asked, glancing around—seemingly angry yet unworried. In answer, Jianyi produced his spear from his storage ring and nodded, trying to match the elder's resolute demeanor. The elder tapped his chin, thinking.

"You've trained hard, but you're still exhausted from your meridian opening. You should probably sit this one out."

"Teacher, I would like to help. Those people have tried to kill me, after all!" Elder Sun looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

"Very well. Why don't you guard the main gate? I will… open it with my entry," he said with the same smile he had when entering the cave on their first day.

"I will then proceed into the house and deal with things there. You hold the gate and make sure nobody flees. Understood?" Jianyi nodded vigorously and tightened his grip on his spear with his left hand, bringing his right hand to bear was only possible by clenching his teeth and harnessing every bit of his will.

"Good. It is this one," he said, pointing at the house on the opposite side of the alley.

"Just follow me; my entrance will be quite noticeable." With that, the elder vanished. The next thing Jianyi heard was a crash—then another—and dust billowed out of the targeted compound. He hesitated just for the briefest of moments, then ran as fast as his exhausted muscles allowed toward the wall surrounding the mansion. The gate was gone. There was a small guard house to the left, but it had received the brunt of the stone and wood that had just moments ago filled the hole.

Jianyi approached the guard house carefully, finding only a dead man in a house-guard's uniform. He swallowed and looked away, returning to the center of the hole in the wall and assumed a rooted stance to be able to react flexibly to any danger that might arise. He heard shouting, the crash of movement, and saw the flicker of flames in an upstairs window. Then—movement. A man and a woman—both in expensive merchant robes, swords in hand—rounded the corner toward him.

Both hesitated only briefly upon seeing him but continued. Jianyi focused, trying to shake some life into his right arm while his thoughts raced on how to approach this. He had never fought anyone with a sword. Aside from the guards at Administrator Deng's house, he had never truly fought humans at all. He had to assume that they were mortals; otherwise, he did not stand a chance anyway. These were the people who collaborated with demons and would kill him for his Core Card. He would not let them pass.

His jaw clenched in determination, his thoughts moved to the tactics of the fight. He could not allow himself to be flanked. He had the reach advantage. His exhaustion and pain did not matter. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He twirled his spear once, watching the couple close in and not letting his pain show. The man was taller and looked stronger, but he seemed nervous, looking back and forth all the time.

The woman seemed focused on him, not letting herself be distracted by the ongoing noise from the house behind her. She had to be the first target. He had practiced for this. He could do it. He would do it. He lunged. Piercing Fang: Rise. Advance. Close. Retreat. He was back in the Rooted Stance—the only difference being the blood dripping from his spear. The woman looked at him, standing still, eyes wide. His calm threatened to shatter as she dropped to one knee, then two, then fell over.

The man beside her froze in shock. Jianyi took two steps forward and executed Blazing Arc—a diagonal slash that tore through the man's clothes and left a deep wound on his chest. The man shrieked in pain. A gasp behind Jianyi. He turned to see a maid on the other side of the street holding her hand before her mouth in shock. He turned back to the wounded man, saw him lying on the ground, blood pooling beneath him—and vomited beside the gate.

Cold sweat started to run down his back, his hands clammy, and his right arm shaking in pain. He had killed two people. Of course, he had known that was likely to happen. But in his head, when training, he had always fought against demonic beasts, not humans—bleeding red blood on the cobblestones in front of him. His breathing quickened, vision narrowing, but he forced deep breaths until he steadied. He checked, but the maid had left—what had she been thinking? —and he focused again on the house in front of him.

The noise had stopped, but the flames on the upper floor had intensified. For a few minutes, nothing happened. Enough time for Jianyi to regain control of himself, though he did not look at the bodies lying to the side. His vomiting in public not being dignified swirled through his mind. Eventually, Elder Sun came walking out of the house, hands clasped behind his back as though on a casual stroll. But Jianyi had seen the elder often enough to notice that he did not seem as carefree as usual.

Small lines around his eyes hinted at a tension that was not normal. The elder stopped at the two bodies, looking at the bloody spear that Jianyi had not cleaned yet. He nodded, patted the bodies down, extracted two coin purses, and after a brief inspection tossed them to Jianyi.

"Well done, my young friend. Let's go home." Jianyi looked hesitantly at the destruction around them.

"Do we not need to inform the guard?"

"This is concerning, very concerning—and the guard is not going to help." With that, the elder whisked them away and did not stop until they reached their home. The fact that he ignored the paifang worried Jianyi—deeply.

Jianyi had not slept well. Whether by accident or because his soul was still in turmoil after the previous day's events, the purple eyes had returned. The familiar sense of being hunted made him shiver. He arrived early at the training circle, waiting for Minghao. The older man took one look at him—likely noticing the dark circles under his eyes—and motioned for him to sit.

"Tell me about it." Jianyi recounted the events in the city, not omitting the part where he'd thrown up after the fight. Minghao nodded slowly.

"I am sorry that you had to go through this so early in your life. I am proud of you for doing what had to be done, and do not believe for a moment that throwing up is a sign of weakness. It was a sign of humanity. Killing other humans should never feel normal. Keeping that in mind as you move through the realms of cultivation and as years—even centuries—pass you by will become ever more difficult, so don't be embarrassed—be content that your humanity calls out to you." Minghao's words resonated with Jianyi.

He had done his duty. Wishing it hadn't been necessary was natural. Knowing that he had fought against those collaborating with his father's killers soothed his feelings somewhat. Except for the time where they had to focus on footwork because of his arm, that week's training focused on Flowing Current, and it felt different now that he had used his techniques in earnest.

The form—a horizontal sweep that looked simple and resembled those he'd practiced alone—initially felt comfortable, yet when broken into parts proved surprisingly complex. It had several variants, but the full form consisted of Turn, Sink, Advance, Turn, and Retreat. It offered great flexibility against multiple opponents, and few forms relied as heavily on momentum. Whenever he truly flowed with the motions, the feeling was exhilarating.

It took quite a while for Jianyi to recover from his first meridian clearing attempt with the Martial Meridian Art. That didn't stop him from making progress on a number of other dimensions. On the first day he had met Elder Sun, he had resolved to read up more about his enemies—demons and demonic beasts. He spent many hours at a reading desk in the library of the outer sect, trying to understand the phenomenon better.

He proudly wore one of the plain robes his mother had made for him on each excursion beyond the inner sect. He learned that, as everything in cultivation, it came down to Wuxing—the balance of the elements, the never-ending cycle of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. If Dao was the unreachable truth and the Heavens the order born from it, then Wuxing was the tangible reflection of that order in the world. If Wuxing was out of balance, the world around it became… twisted.

With enough exposure, it twisted the very beings that interacted with it. Those beings were what people called demons, the twisted version of enlightened races, and demonic beasts, spirit beasts that had been touched by the imbalance. Were they evil? Maybe. Were they insane? Mostly. At least the weaker ones. The weaker ones—still powerful enough to be insurmountable for mortals—were those that streamed from the gates to the Outer Realms.

The Outer Realms were the amalgamation of material planes that had fallen to the twisted Wuxing, and there, supposedly, civilizations still ruled. Unfortunately, the books Jianyi had access to did not go into more detail, but it was a somewhat shocking realization that the demons he wanted to fight so desperately were, to some extent, victims of their circumstances. It did not absolve them of their deeds, though. They had still taken his father away from him.

It took twelve days—two longer than he'd hoped—to recover enough for his next attempt. He had again informed Minghao and Huang Jingyi in the inner-sect kitchen that he would likely be out for a day. According to the Martial Meridian Art, he had to focus on the gates in his left arm—the palm and the biceps. He carefully prepared everything, visualized the pathways he had to follow, made a few practice runs, and then started his next attempt.

The two slivers of qi flowed through his body faster than ever before; he knew exactly where to move to hit the two gates simultaneously, and… it worked. He knew right away as he felt the impurities being swept through his body. Happily, he dealt with the physical consequences and lay down with a smile to sleep the exhaustion off.