Darkness

*Damn it...* Slan stared hard at Ji Jue's face, feeling that familiar chill... This little shit was dead serious. He didn't need Lou Feng to remind him; ever since they had entered this place, he had experienced the sheer power of Quicksilver's legacy firsthand. As wandering knights and stray dog mercenaries, they were all out here to make a buck. Even if they lived by licking blood from a blade's edge, you had to know whose blood you were dealing with. Some blood you couldn't touch at all—a single drop was fucking poison. He wasn't some anonymous assassin picking up bounties at the Wild Gathering who could just change his name and lie low outside until the heat blew over. Was he really going to offend a future master of Embers under his real name? Even if Slan had a thick skull, he had to look out for the rest of his squad. At the end of the day, everyone was just doing a job. As long as they could collect the final payment, who was going to spill their guts and bleed dry for the boss? He had held out, pushed back, and left behind evidence. It wasn't that the boys hadn't put in the effort, but the opposing side was running hacks too hard—they simply couldn't carry this match. Their kill record was out the window, but at the very least, he was saving the boss's head in the literal sense. And they had suffered heavy casualties to boot... Who wouldn't shed a couple of tears seeing that, and fork out several times the standard bereavement compensation? Besides, wouldn't the haul belong to the boss anyway? What the hell did that have to do with him? Slan sighed, turned around, and looked back once more. He gave a slight jerk of his chin. Two more trunks were tossed across the floor. One was packed with ruined alchemical creations—relics left behind by Quicksilver. In the other, amber-like vessels held dim, shimmering gleams of light, flickering like candles in the wind. Those were blessings retrieved from Quicksilver's Blessing Chamber. Four centuries later, deprived of maintenance and upkeep, the eleven remaining blessings had degraded back to their most rudimentary, original forms, yet they were still worth a fortune to any craftsman of the Embers path. "The goods are right here." Slan slowly eased the edge of his blade back a fraction and fixed his eyes on Ji Jue. "Prices only go up once, brother. You'd better think this through." Ji Jue looked at him quietly, remaining completely silent. The butt of the rifle abruptly rose and swung down, slamming into the back of Lou Feng's head and knocking him out cold. Only then did Ji Jue lower the gun. Before everyone's eyes, he ran his hands over Lou Feng's person. Glasses, buttons, rings, a wristwatch, a bracelet, a necklace... Every single item that gave off a flicker of spiritus was stripped clean and tossed into Little Niuma's cargo bed. Finally, beams of mercury gathered and wound around Lou Feng, binding him tightly like ropes. "Now, let's trade hostages." Without the slightest attempt to hide it, Ji Jue pulled a block of plastic explosive from his pocket and held it in his grip, making Slan's eyelids twitch violently. Yet Slan said nothing after all. With a swing of his blade, he sheared off the shaft of the spear impaling Xiao An, hoisted the quiet boy in his grip, and stepped toward Ji Jue. He walked until they stood inches apart. The two exchanged a silent gaze. For an instant, Slan seemed to want to say something, but in the end, he merely gave a self-deprecating smirk and silently set Xiao An down into the cargo bed. He reached a hand out toward Ji Jue. Just like that, taking custody of the half-dead Lou Feng, Slan stepped back slowly, turned, and walked toward his subordinates. From beginning to end, his men had been waiting for his signal. But in the end, Slan said nothing, giving no command or sign for an ambush. He simply let the little trike vanish into the darkness. "Gather the bodies. We're pulling out." He raised a hand and glanced at the pitch-black taint that still hadn't faded from the face of his ring—an unmistakable omen of disaster. "This place is cursed. God knows what sort of monstrosity will crawl out next..." He sighed and cast one last glance toward the far end of the hall, toward the shifting core within. He was never taking a tomb-raiding contract again. Pure bad luck! *** "Brother Ji Jue?" In the narrow, collapsed corridor, Xiao An obediently held up his arm, letting Ji Jue bandage his injuries. "Sorry. I dragged you down." "If you dragged me down, what does that make me? A dead weight?" Ji Jue rolled his eyes, wanting to smack the back of the boy's head, but seeing his pitiful look, he couldn't bring himself to do it. "What about you? Why do you have to be so stubborn? Why risk your life for a few hundred bucks? If we can't beat them, can't we just run?" "It's different," An Ran shook his head. "The White Stag is different from Embers." To be precise, this was what he had come into the Border Realm to do in the first place. To attain a blessing and advance further, a Celestial Chosen had to align with the Sovereign Virtue they followed. Unlike the creation and innovation of the Embers path, the Way of the White Stag represented savagery, primal instinct, freedom, and struggle. It meant stripping away all veneer of civilization, casting aside all false order, returning to the nature of living beings, and choosing one's own path and life however one pleased. It practiced the way of the wild, championing the naked law of the jungle. The strong took charge of everything, the strong ruled all, and the weak had only to bow and submit, endure devastation, or rise up and fight—either dying or winning. Turned toward a righteous path, such power was a dagger thrust into the hearts of oppressors; turned to evil, it became a tool to crush and torment the weaker still. Yet to followers of the White Stag, there was no such thing as good or evil. Right, wrong, kindness, and malice were all entirely meaningless concepts, and so-called morality was nothing more than hypocritical posturing. Quite the contrary: it was only because of strength that kindness held any meaning, and only because of strength that evil inspired dread. For the weak, right and wrong were nothing more than a joke. It was precisely because of this that a bizarre, sprawling, chaotic organization like the Wild Gathering had come to be, constantly embroiled in internal strife, impossible to unify, yet thriving in its own chaos. There was only one simplest path to earning a blessing from the White Stag: defeating the strong as the weak. Challenging a superior foe, wagering one's life and everything one had, proving the disparity between them, and using bloody hunts and death as stepping stones to climb higher. Of course, if one killed a Celestial Chosen of the Tianyuan lineage, that was all the better. The White Stag especially savored the death of Tianyuan followers, just as Tianyuan Chosen loved to take their blades to followers of the White Stag the moment they gained a bit of authority. "Pity. It was still a fraction short," An Ran sighed with regret. "I miscalculated a step. If I were just a little stronger, I might have won." "If you really wanted to win, you shouldn't have aimed that sword at Lou Feng, should you?" Ji Jue suddenly asked, plunging Xiao An into silence. If it had truly been to gain a blessing, that crucial strike shouldn't have been directed at Lou Feng. Taking on the Knights of Homecoming single-handedly, breaking through their defense and encirclement—if that life-staking thrust had been aimed at Slan... could Slan have blocked it? Xiao An had thrown his own life away for no other reason than to draw fire for Ji Jue and buy him the most precious window of opportunity. Without Xiao An, even if Ji Jue could have used the workshop's mechanisms to sneak beside Lou Feng, subduing him so cleanly with the puzzle ball wouldn't have been nearly so easy. "Did you ever consider what would happen if I hadn't reacted in time?" Ji Jue sighed. "You should at least talk these things over with me, shouldn't you? Don't go charging in like a reckless idiot every time. If something terrible really happened to you, how would I face Sister Wen?" Xiao An thought for a moment and answered earnestly, "I believed that if it were you, Brother Ji Jue, you would definitely seize the opening." *Smack!* Ji Jue couldn't hold back after all and gave the back of his head a rap. "Roll over," Ji Jue said. "I need to put medicine on the wounds on your back too." "Oh." Xiao An turned around obediently, revealing the lacerations across his back. Aside from the most perilous puncture through his waist and abdomen, countless cuts marked his arms, neck, face, and legs. Fortunately, Ji Jue hadn't forgotten what he had memorized while studying for his emergency first-responder certification, nor had he neglected his recent studies in anatomy and surgery. At the very least, basic emergency triage was well within his capabilities. What was more, with Non-Offensive, he didn't even need sutures. He used spiritus manipulation directly to reconnect torn muscles, seal bleeding points, and even stitch together blood vessels... The medicine Xiao An carried with him was terrifyingly effective as well. Once Ji Jue finished his treatment, aside from the abdominal puncture needing a bit more time, the rest of the wounds had already closed up almost entirely. However, when treating the injury on the boy's leg, Ji Jue was startled by the condition of his right knee... A nail as thick as his thumb had been driven straight into the kneecap. It was an alchemical creation, overflowing with the aura of a curse. Dark light swirled inside it, suppressing the wound's recovery, actively eroding newly grown flesh, and fusing with his bone. What sent a deeper chill down Ji Jue's spine was the malice etched into it. According to his reading and perception, the nail wasn't indestructible, but the moment it was dismantled, it would brand whoever removed it with an indelible spiritus imprint. It was a warning. Anyone who dared pull this nail from him would be declaring themselves an enemy of the House of An. "...Even for family discipline, isn't this going too far?" Ji Jue's brow furrowed. He reached out, intending to read and deconstruct the spiritus circuit upon it, but Xiao An stopped him. "Don't worry, Brother Ji Jue. This was Big Sister's kindness." Xiao An smiled faintly. "As long as Big Sister's nail stays in place, no one else in the family can meddle. But if someone else pulls the punishment nail out, I'll never be considered part of the family again." "..." Ji Jue fell silent, not knowing how to react to such bizarre family customs. Yet since Xiao An was against it, he had no right to act on his own authority. In that brief silence, however, he could feel the tremors from the workshop growing increasingly violent. It felt like sitting atop a volcano on the verge of erupting. This constantly shifting core was ceaselessly siphoning spiritus, giving rise to an unprecedented, terrifying transformation... Within the puzzle ball's spiritus world, countless intricate circuits were spreading violently like a colossal tree. It was as though they were about to fill everything, reach everywhere. To blanket the entire Border Realm once more. And at that very moment, he heard a shrill shriek unlike anything before. A mournful wail of terror straight from hell! It came from the deepest center of the core, from that sealed darkness... With a thunderous crash, the heavily barred gates shattered violently. Surging forth was a torrent of spiritual bodies so thoroughly dissolved that they could barely maintain their form and silhouette. Formless, the Shepherd of the Dragon Cult! Yet the once-arrogant Celestial Chosen, the Shepherd who pursued the path of draconification, had now completely lost his sanity, reduced to this utterly wretched state. Screams, wails, roars, curses. All of them were useless. It writhed and thrashed, weeping hysterically, frantically casting out vast numbers of vengeful wraiths in a desperate bid to tear free from the terrifying darkness clinging to it like maggots to bone. The darkness remained silent, as still as the grave. And now, the gates of hell swung wide open.