The Hunt (Qiguai Secret Realm) - 1
It rained in the Qiguai Secret Realm.
It came down in great, sleeting sheets, each droplet a stone whipped through the dark. Even as Keiros watched, a tree fell, broken, to the ground, with a leaden
crack, leaves and bark torn asunder.
To a cultivator – even a mere qi condensation cultivator of the sixth step – it was just water, falling from the sky.
Keiros had never seen rain before – Arin Lux was a desert city fed by underground aquifers – he had read about the phenomenon, of course, but it was still a challenge to not stick his tongue out like a child and taste that ever-used, and for desert-folk, ever-curious phrase: '
It was a dark and stormy night'. Jagged forks of lightning split a trembling sky, and every now and then, when the howling winds quieted, he could make out the rough, coiling forms of titanic sky serpents, the shadows they cast from behind the clouds hideously and soberingly huge.
Beneath his feet, water puddled and ran in strange, liquid lines, reminiscent of arrays. The ground was odd – in places, almost springy, and verdant with life, in others soggy, and noisy as it sucked at his boots. There were two swords on his back; fine, workmanlike tools, the scabbards more blood than leather at this point. At his chest, where the leather straps crisscrossed was another harness: this one for a book. It looked perfectly ordinary, but was one of the two truly heavenly treasures at his disposal. The Book of Ten Thousand Eyes, possessing within its oft-rewritten pages the wisdom of the Earth. No mere rain would harm it.
He was pretty sure, anyway. Normal water did little to it: he had checked.
At his side, on a chain, hung a small brass box: he opened it, and a needle, half-gold, half-silver, suspended over an obsidian interior, spun furiously beneath a clear glass dome, before settling on a direction. He snapped the case closed, nodding to himself.
A Compass of Fated Fortune. It would save his life once, he had been told, so long as he could open it before he died. It would do so, so The Book of Ten Thousand Eyes had claimed, under a very specific condition: he had to be following its directions.
Well, that direction was a good a direction as any to start his search.
Keiros began walking.
His shadow stalked the ground, appearing in fits and starts as the lightning continued to fall. Red eyed gazes peered out from behind the foliage, and disappeared just as quickly. Taking their example, Keiros broke out into a light run, air qi and physical conditioning lending speed to his steps before he leapt, without a sound, onto a low-hanging branch. It creaked, unexpectedly at his weight. He paused, his dark eyes thoughtful, before selecting his next branch.
This one made no sound, save for the tiny splash of moving water, masked by the rain.
Then he began moving, sharp and silent as a blade wielded in the dark. Minutes in, a pair of red-eyed shadow, shaped like eagles, but bristling with thorns, crossed his path, diving in from opposite angles. A flash of light later and it was over, a sword sliding back into its scabbard with a
sh-nikt, and two bodies falling wetly to the ground, neatly quartered. He gestured. A pair of beast cores leapt, still sticky with blood, to his hand.
His jaw unhinged itself. He tossed them in -
And wrinkled his nose, not quite choking, but not quite
not not choking.
Somehow, they tasted like flowers smelled.
Bah, whatever.
He swallowed, neck distending. It took a long, uncomfortable moment for the cores to reach his Beast Tempering Stomach.
And then it was like a bomb going off. He could feel his heartbeat thunder in his head, and the world became sharper,
louder. Pain smacked him with a vicious, fishhook blow that pulled his stomach out through his nose and tried to shove his spine through a different orifice. He lost control of his sword aura – something he had not done in nearly a decade, his qi coloring the air around him gold, rain suddenly glancing off it, not him, before he got a grip on it and re-sheathed it in his body. Even so, steam rose in whisps from anywhere his skin was exposed as his blood boiled in his veins, and his heart threatened to explode.
Then it was over.
The rain washing over him sizzled quietly. When he opened his mouth, steam escaped as it would a kettle.
Ai ya, he could almost here Mistress Xu say, clucking her tongue.
So smart, and yet so stupid.
He took a deep breath – and nearly choked at the feeling. It had been like breathing ice.
It was true what they said about the Secret Realm. Five minutes in and he had probably done more for his cultivation than the past five weeks. And he didn't need to consult the Book of Ten Thousand Eyes to know that those had been mere First or Second Step creatures: worthy prey would no doubt save him ten, no, twenty years of ceaseless, tireless cultivation.
Tempting. Oh, so
very tempting.
And therein lay the trap. The power offered by the Secret Realm came at a price. He was thirty-six now, and of the Sixth Heavenstage – old enough and strong enough to know better. One did not enter the Qiguai Secret Realm on a whim. Not at the Sixth Step, not with one mere life-saving treasure, not for mere cultivation.
As the saying went: Three enter a Secret Realm; one returns. Two enter a Secret Realm, one might return. One enters a Secret Realm; none returns.
This was, by far, the stupidest thing he had ever done. And he had been a very, very stupid child.
Not his idea, this.
A… better person would not dwell on the events that had led him here. A better person would not feel resentment at the lost once-in-a-century opportunity that was the Yuan's Man-as-Mountain-Array, the Trials therein – not safe, but
safer than those of the Qiguai Secret Realm. A better person would seethe at the fact he had spent the past fifteen years accumulating both the necessary wealth, experience, power and backing to purchase a slot that would see him take part. The Book of Ten Thousand Eyes would have made him a valuable companion to any group of Golden Devils partaking in the trials and he himself had planned on taking full advantage of it.
A better person. Sure, he was trying to be a 'better' person.
But, by the lords above and below, by all the ancestors that had come before him, could it be
hard.
Yet, here he was. In the dark. In the rain. Risking death for a bunch of reckless, feckless,
idiot children who were seeking death anyway.
Such was the price paid for a palace of power.
He understood. To an extent.
You could not tell children to sacrifice themselves for you, if they had never seen anyone sacrifice themselves for
them. And they had not. They had but heard the rumors that their generation, was the Generation of Sacrifice, a youth led to the chopping block for a future that they would never get to see. There would be no life-saving Treasures, no pills, no reinforcements, no formations made to protect only them. No saviors. No heroes.
Just a Palace of Techniques for them to hone their craft.
And they were scared. So, they had come here. Come here, like children mimicking their parents, doing the same desperate gamble that the Archegetes had done when purchasing the Technique Palace and leaving little in the way of resources for the rest of the Clan. Either they would come out of the crucible that was this Secret Realm stronger – or they would not come out at all.
And they were not ready. First and Second Heavenstages without lifesaving treasures? Raw recruits, barely capable of holding a spear, let alone fighting in formation? One in ten might survive, if that. And that one in ten would be horribly maimed.
The Secret Realm itself was dangerous, but moreso than that –
He turned.
Already, he could feel them: other cultivators, attracted by his Sword Aura, making their way towards him. A gaggle of First and Second Heavenstage Golden Devils – of
course, the others Sects and Clans partaking in the Qiguai Secret Realm would be hunting them down for sport. Cracking his neck, Keiros flexed his hands, rolled his toes, firmed his will, and then with a muffled boom that sent him soaring up towards the canopy of the forest, he leapt, landing on a branch perhaps fifty or sixty feet upwards. He reached into the pocket of his duster and took out a simple spyglass. Hard to use, especially in this weather, but he would only need to catch a glim-
There, maybe three li out, sword aura out like a raging white bonfire, was a Seven Saber Palace barbarian, riding a white stag, black hair whipping behind her like a pennant, sword already unsheathed, water curling about her in worrying streamers, riding like the wind itself.
She'd be here in less than a minute, Keiros estimated. There would be no outrunning her.
Flicking the latch open, Keiros took out The Book of Ten Thousand Eyes and flipped it open. Before his eyes, the pages began to ink themselves, details forming with unsurprising swiftness and precision.
One.
He turned, eye roving. He'd made the spyglass himself, carving arrays that would allow him to see through heat haze and solid rock: he'd have to add water, later. Ah, there, skulking against the night in black, an archer with an absurdly huge bow, clan or sect affiliation and even gender unclear, darting amongst the foliage in his general direction.
Two.
And – yes.
Yes, that would be perfect.
Within the eyeglass, he saw a huge, lumbering creature, made of wood and stone, shambling forth, carrying a club the size of buildings, less like a giant and more like a tree that happened to be able to move.
Three.
In the ten years with which he had had access to the jade-carved scrolls and technique slips, Keiros had picked out two arts from the Gemstone Justice Technique library: a sensory technique, one which gave up all specificity in favor of range and efficiency. Diamond Skin Sense provided a minor defensive boost, hardening one's epidermis, but could also allow the user to pick out the minutest vibrations made through the air as well as the earth. Useless, for the most part. Who would bother studying and memorizing the vibrational frequencies of hundreds, or even thousands of living things and then have the leftover brainpower to analyze that torrent of information in real-time and make extrapolations based on that prior information?
Well, other than him, that was.
It wasn't a perfect art. There were far better arts for a swordsman: ones that reacted to hostile intent, read the path and patterns of blade and qi, could see into the future by mere fractions of a second, provide total awareness within a certain sphereically bounded field, or infere experience, technique and skill through mere, momentary observation.
However, for someone like him, it was perfect.
What he needed was not immediate combat power, it was time to prepare. And the range of Diamond Skin Sense was truly second to none, a superlative technique if not for its downsides. He put away his spyglass and looked down, fingers swiping from left to right, eyes drinking in the information on the page in the time it took him to flip through them. He returned his book to its holster and latched it securely.
Below, the woman riding the white stag was already standing on the saddle, her eyes intent on his figure, one hand pointed at him, the other holding her sword up, at eye height, elbow drawn back, sword qi thrumming through her blade.
Keiros unsheathed both his blades, and running his thumbs across the a thorn stuck there for that very purpose, and felt his blood run along the hilts. Delicate arrays sprang to scarlet life beneath, while gold mandala-like patterns appeared across the blades of his swords before vanishing away, leaving but a faint golden glow. From both his sleeves, little bands of metal on ant-like legs crawled up his blades, before latching themselves securely to both, making them appear like they'd been covered in metal bandages.
An arrow flickered at him, covered in glowing, poisonous qi.
He batted it aside, contemptuous. A mere Third Heavenstage from a provincial little town no one had heard of, trying to get the drop on
him?
Pathetic.
He leapt. Behind him, the tree exploded into splinters, the swordswoman's qi finally unleashed in a glowing, lambent arc of energy. Sword qi was not like other qi though: it had weight and presence, and had barely dispersed by the four foot thick trunk of wood. In that queer, queasy way the world sometimes went when in battle, things slowed, the tree and splinters moving so slowly you could count the raindrops as they splashed down onto them, see the crackle of heavenly energy behind it, threatening to take his head. He flipped in mid-air, and brought both his swords down against the Sword Technique and felt his arms tremble before the world righted itself in a tremendous clash of power which sent him hurtling away, hands stinging, new cuts opening up along his sleeves and gloves.
Right towards the Xiu clan's archer.
There were two ways to protect the young trainees. Find them and hide them, as a bodyguard might. Or hunt down everything which threatened them, tearing it out, root and branch. It was the conundrum faced by those much older, and much more powerful than himself.
How did one protect the Clan?
Keiros was well aware of his abilities - as well as the limits, of those abilities. He was not some hero out of a fairytale, able to single-handedly take on armies. He was, here, in this place, barely able to protect himself.
He corkscrewed in the air, rain falling off him in a spiral pattern, swords held before him.
But...
The Xiu archer had only a moment of surprise before he lost his head, the blood arcing against a tree trunk, the body toppling a moment after his head hit the ground, bow and arrow and other knick-knacks falling from nerveless fingers.
Keiros had fallen too, gracelessly, to the ground, mud smeared against his clothes and face. A half heartbeat later, she was there, lightning flickering at her feet, eyes wide and intense, lips curled into a snarl, her white, shining blade crashing into his, the streamers of water transformed into whips.
Keiros found his lips forming an answering snarl.
There was no 'but'.
It was time to get to work.
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Ten Thousand Eyes Compendium
Name: Ye Li
Species: Human
Cultivation: Eighth Heavenstage.
Details: A devout justicar, Little Ye comes from a well-to-do family of the Seven Saber Palace and has shown extreme promise, taking well to the Style of the Divine Lightning Dragon and the Divine Water Dragon. Her swordblows are flexible, quick, and penetrating; while she lacks little in the way of personal power, she is too young and too inexperienced to have built up a properly tactical frame of mind, being only twenty-three. A quirk of her mixed blood has made many otherwise wary beasts loyal to her, and though her gift only applies to beasts of a non-carnivorous lineage, it is still a formidable enough gift to have her given many cultivation aids to help her along her journey. She possesses an especially potent hatred for the Devil Bees and their allies and will sometimes lose reason when confronted with them. Hails from the Westernmost Province of the Seven Saber Palace, from the city of Cheng Jing.
She is currently intent on slaying Keiros Cole Emendator.
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Name: Snow
Species: North Wind Stag
Cultivation: Sixth Heavenstage.
Details: Snow was gifted to Ye Li when both were mere mortals. Possessing the rare 'air' attribute, the North Wind Stag is much lighter and weaker than it first appears - but also much faster too. Few creatures can match the dizzying pace it sets, and in the Forests of Shattered Spears from which it hails, Snow is accounted fast even among the other North Wind Stags. Snow adores Ye Li and has even taken blows for her in the past. However, like all North Wind Stags, Snow cannot stand the clans of South Wind Bears that occasionally stumble into the Forests of Shattered Spears: they are its natural enemy. Any scent of any bear is liable to either panic Snow, or incite Snow into an incredible rage.
It is currently intent on helping its master, Ye Li.
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Name: Xiu Ba Guang
Species: Human
Cultivation: Third Heavenstage
Details: A somewhat talented poison user, Xiu Ba Guang recently lost much of his cultivation due to debt, his qi siphoned away to pay for it. While he is an able archer, he is not especially formidable at Archery Arts, lacking both the qi and sensory arts that would make him a proper archer, capable of sniping other cultivators from afar, and instead relies on poisonous mists and other such gambits to bring down his foes when they try to close the range. Ironically, he is thus an archer weak against other archers, and strong at close range combat. A gambling addict, Xiu has decided to try his luck at the fabled riches of the Secret Realm, enticed to do so having seen many first and second heavenstage cultivators enter, not long ago. Hails from the Turtle Tailbone Village, a village in the Turtlebone Mountains.
He is currently deceased, having been separated from his head.
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Name: Moss That Falls into the Lotus Blossom
Species: Redbark Tree Tyrant
Cultivation: Ninth Heavenstage.
Details: Tree Tyrants are notorious for their strength and durability, each taking on the characteristics of the trees and forests that spawned them. A Redbark Tree Tyrant towers above even the mighty Oak Tyrants, and at its full height and age may even contest the supremacy of the Ancient Fire Giants, their natural foe. This specimen is young yet, having reached the equivalent of Ninth Heavenstage, and no more than fifty feet tall. Its bark will ward off even the sharpest of axes, and while it possesses little skill, its sheer mass gives it a power all of its own. Only Qi-infused blows or heavenly treasures will be able to inflict damage upon it. Being a Tree Tyrant, it is blind, using the rootsense it shares with other plants to understand where its foes are. Any who step upon the roots buried beneath loose soil, or the boughs or branches of trees in its vicinity are detectable – but those capable of flight, or standing upon 'dead' places are invisible to its senses.
It is currently angered by the presence of sword qi, considering it equivalent to a declaration of war.
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Author's Note:
@occipitallobe, Life-saving Treasure, as described in the omake, a Compass of Fated Fortune. If the life-saving treasure has to be used up for the Trials, can I just... pretend the omake did happen, and get no rewards from it? His goal is to rescue the stupid teenagers who are trying to power up in time for the Trials, the actual rewards from the Qiguai Secret Realm are incidental to that goal.
That Namedrop! I'm so Grateful that Manuel knows him!
