Alex was moving before the cry abruptly broke off with a sob, the memory of the first time he had ever heard Liu Li’s bemused voice a heartfelt torment as his legs tore across the smooth stone passageway.

They were leaving the barracks area behind. The lighting was less frequent, the stench of infernal arts now tainting the air.

“Alex!” He understood Jidihu’s urgency but he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Not when the first person ever to show him kindness and friendship, a girl whose smile had once given him such hope, a girl who actually believed in him… was crying out in pain.

He might never fully forgive himself for ignoring the signs when Liu Li was being tortured by monsters in the bowels of the school that could so easily have been a sanctuary and the start of so many happy adventures, had things gone just a bit differently. Had spiteful gods not intervened. Had Alex rejected all doubt, second-guesses, and the desire to not come across as a paranoid idiot to what had been a new acquaintance. Had he just ACTED and trusted his gut, who knows how many lives might have been saved?

There was no going back, not in this reality any more than in the one he had left behind. There was only moving forward. Moving forward with such fury and momentum when he burst into a chamber and met the horrific sight of seeing not just one but multiple souls in terrible peril, including Prince Cui Long, a boy he had risked so much to save a decade ago who had blossomed into a man who would have been strikingly handsome, had his body had been savagely ruined, his dreams of marriage to Xian Hong now nothing but nightmare, gazing at the world in eyes glazed in pain as did a stick-thin young woman a horrified Alex realized must have been his younger sister, so close to death even not the girl looked ready to expire, both of them covered in hideous wounds upon slabs of basalt.

Then the prince began to thrash and scream, his exhausted body writhing as a red-eyed pale-faced wujen wearing blood-covered robes and a manic smile sliced into his entrails at that very moment. Crown Princess Cui Zhe, wrists and ankles oozing puss and blood from spikes anchoring them to inclined tables began to thrash and howl with panicked fury, crimson sigils seared into her flesh blistering with heat as she screamed and screamed her agony and despair.

“Please! I’ll do anything, anything! Just spare my son as you swore you would!”

The torturer paid no heed to the panicked plea of the crown princess, struggling desperately like a mindless panicked animal against her manacles, before being casually backhanded by the sneering cultivator the torturer now bowed before.

“The auguries are clear, master!” Said the pale-faced wujen spattered with the blood of a dying prince, holding up a piece of blue-grey entrails covered in the writhing man’s blood he had just torn free. “The hour is upon us! Prince Dongfang Hong’s greatest nemesis is on these grounds. The one responsible for the death of your kin is here as well! Our enemies are destined to fall before us, there can be no mistake!”

Alex also froze in stupefied disbelief, as for one endless agonizing moment he was frozen by a countenance forever burned onto his soul, the arrogant sneer speaking of overweening pride and twisted malice that Alex had thought gone from this realm for good.

The face of the headmaster Alex had taken such fierce relish in purging from the world, risen once more. Even after Alex had torn free his cultivator’s core.

Unthinkable.

Yet Alex’s moment of stunned disbelief turned to renewed outrage as he imagined laughter of his enemies high above, all too easily able to imagine cards being flipped over as he stumbled into absolute peril, just in time to hear words that could never be taken back. Words that guaranteed conflict that could so easily see him and everyone in this chamber dead as he caught a close look at the obvious ringleader of this vile operation, radiating the wild power of a Gold. A monster wearing Former Headmaster Sudong’s features who contemptuously covered Crown Princess Cui Zhe’s screaming mouth before slamming her skull against the hard stone slab she was strapped down upon.

“My brother’s executioner is in your palace, welcomed to nestle in your foul families’ twisted bosom! Yet your dying son’s own blood is a curse not even the gods can counter!” He flashed a hate-filled grin, delighting in Cui Zhe’s horrified shriek, the stately, powerful woman who had so awed Alex the first time he had ever seen her now reduced to a broken woman gazing upon the sight of her own dying son in unspeakable despair.

Before the Gold tiered wujen radiating wards crackling even brighter than former Headmaster Sudong’s slammed his fist into her ravaged stomach, the crown princess crumpling as much as her manacles would allow as she spit up blood and bile, her withered arms covered in crimson runes that pulsed with her every agonized sob.

Her monstrous tormentor mocked her with his laughter. “You think my clan forgot your ancestor’s treachery when they dared to claim Baidushiu’s city charter for themselves, so many years ago? Never! Your clan’s crime is one that can never be forgiven! I will see you all dead for daring to seize a treasure destined for our table alone!”

He sneered down at her shrieking form. “And now, in the final hour, I find it fitting to give you one more reason to weep with despair! Who do you think smoothed the way for Dongfang Hong to infiltrate the palace, take over the guard, kidnap and enslave your precious daughters and effectively claim this city in just a few short years? That’s right, you foul harlot, it was us! The Sudong Clan will rise to greatness, just as your own will crumble to dust!”

The monster turned to gaze upon the dying prince, frothing at the mouth as the sadist of a wujen continued pulling out the boy’s intestines, one inch at a time. “Your sons death will be quick or slow. The choice is yours. Either way, your clan falls tonight, and the true inheritors of Lord Justice’s gifts will rise ascendant once more!”

Alex’s ears rang with outrage, fury, and the mocking laughter of the gods above. He wanted so badly to strike his enemy down with all his fury and hate, needed to extinguish this vile threat just as he had his twin, just months ago, and claim this monster’s greatest prize for all time. A fitting end for a monster so foul.

The only thing that held his furious limbs in check was the awful certainty that this too, was a trap of sorts. Because all he had to do was remember what had happened to Sudong when he had cleaved his soul and claimed his prize. Washing the entire massive library in lightning, lightning that would have spelled Alex’s end, were in not for the barriers he had put in place.

Barriers he now didn’t dare get so close to touching, with no way at all to safely channel his powers through them. And even if he did survive retributive madness, he was all but certain that at least some of the victims in this chamber, weakened to the point of emaciation, several on the verge of wheezing their final breaths, would not. And then their deaths would be on his head, a guilt he’d have to live with for the rest of his life, and he imagined that would please his foes to no end.

It was everything he could do to unclench the hilt of his dao and choose another path… but choose he did.

Yet even that movement was enough to alert his foe.

Just the slightest twitch of cloaking shadows perhaps thicker than they should have been in the brownstone corridor leading to the chamber. The slightest shift air currents through the room, or perhaps sensing simple killing intent. More than enough for Alex’s paranoid foe to summon forth a shimmering rainbow ward it chilled Alex to see, reminding him that there was no way he could have been the first to deduce all the ways to break and refract spiritual energy so like the powers he had once thought of as magic, a lifetime ago.

A single act that turned the tables in the blink of an eye.

“Intruders!” Former Headmaster Sudong’s vile twin screamed, eyes wild with furious anticipation. “He is here. My clan’s hated nemesis is here!”

Alex sensed Jidihu’s sudden awful tension, knew she was signaling for him to retreat at that very moment, facing as they did a paranoid Gold that was all but expecting them. If he had had any doubts before, now his fears were nothing less than the truth. They faced a Gold now radiating a retributive ward that would annihilate everyone in that chamber, should Alex dare to strike the man dead.

Which meant that triggering that ward was the last thing he would ever do.

“I know you’re here!” The Gold tier cultivator declared, the air suddenly alive with crackling malice. “You will surrender to me, worm! Surrender to me, or by my oath, I will slay every bloodsucking royal in this chamber and their deaths will be laid squarely at the feet of the fox! Dongfang Hong will glory in the opportunity to purge this province of your vile kind, eager to embrace the teachings of my master!”

Sudong’s twin flashed a malicious grin as his hair whipped violently in the sudden breeze coming from behind him. “Do you understand, you mongrel bastard? You have lost—“

Bullrush!

Adderstrike!

Dark Qi Covered Gauntlets Pierce all standard wards!

Spell Cleave pierces Unorthodox Barrier!

You defer killing blow.

You have struck target with double palm strike!

Target fails strength check.

Target has been sent flying back!

Quickness check made: You have successfully closed your rift in time!

For an endless second Alex locked gazes with the shocked Wujen who he had effectively slammed out of the chamber, sending him hurtling through his portal and down into the Sea of Ghosts, perhaps a mile or so up and countless miles away from shore.

It was hollow victory at best.

Because if the man was capable of flight… then Alex had done no worse than disorient him and crack a rib or two at best. But that bastard wasn’t what mattered. Vengeance right then wasn’t what mattered.

The battered and broken royals sobbing in surprise, agony, and despair were the only things that mattered.

He refused to flinch from the battered and broken countenance of Cui Zhe, instantly understanding the desperate plea in her gaze. Because of course, they were not alone.

Four additional monsters were also here in this spacious domed-ceiling chamber of horrors. Monsters that needed to be put down like the rabid dogs they were.

Wasting no time, he spun about, Qi Perception already mapping out the locations of the four wujen seers and enforcers that had been caught utterly flatfooted with the abrupt disappearance of the larger-than-life monster whose presence and malice had virtually swallowed the chamber.

Yet now he was gone, and death was in his place.

Artificer skillcheck made. No artifacts of retribution detected!

After bearing witness to the horrors of that nightmare chamber, even if for only a handful of seconds, Alex knew there could be no mercy. No forgiveness. Heart burning with horror and outrage for the monstrous acts that had been committed in this room, only one response would he give foes now snarling curses and foul twisted magics his way.

Magics that slipped past him as space itself redirected the flow of their spiritual energy, just a heartbeat before he redirected theirs.

Forever.

Silver Wing has successfully diverted Wujen Strike!

Bullrush!

Adderstrike!

Adderstrike!

Alex’s Dark Qi covered fist effortlessly disrupted Silver Tier wujen wards as he struck with the monstrous power of a Gold. Yet it wasn’t head or chest he aimed for, but their hips. Because when Gold Tier Strength got behind a technique that could rupture bronze armor with just a mortal’s strength? The results at his current ascension were beyond the pale.

Yet his foes still lived. Wild eyed, mouths locked in silent screams, unable even to move as their pelvis literally exploded under the force of Alex’s blow, they still lived. And would live, as Silver tier cultivators for hours or minutes at the very least as Alex obliterated so many internal organs with his blows, even if they were utterly doomed without a healer. Though it was highly unlikely that they would ever see one considering their ultimate destination, all of them in such extremis that they could do nothing but choke back screams for the seconds it took for Alex to hoist their shattered bodies up and toss them through the howling portal giving a bird’s eye view of the now wildly stormy Sea of Ghosts, the frigid winds doing wonders to clear the horrid stench of sickness, pain, blood, and despair out of the air, instantly replaced by the salty brine of the ocean far below as the fallen Gold was joined by one dying Silver after another.

“Please, great warrior! Don’t kill me. I can be of great use to you… Oh gods, please, mercy master, the pain!”

Alex found himself holding the arms of a man lost in a sea of pain, internal organs not so badly ruptured that he couldn’t whisper at least a few final words, imploring eyes locking with his own. It was all Alex could do not to rip the bastard in half. Instead, he turned the Wujen’s twisted body to gaze prince Cui Long’s way. “I saw your expression when you performed your ‘auguries’ for Sudong’s brother. I guess you were too distracted by your work to ask the only question that matters to you.”

“What question would that be, great one?”

Alex’s smile was all teeth. “How long will it take you to hit the ocean floor?”

“Wait!” A desperate royal plea washed over Alex. It didn’t change his course in the least.

Before the man could even finish inhaling his scream, Alex had tossed him through and sealed the wind-filled portal.

Now, there was only the sound of rapid breathing and the distant sounds of the five hundred plus Silvers that could easily take over any city on the map further down the corridor. No doubt it was thanks to Jidihu, whom Alex could sense focusing so intently at cloaking them all, that no alarm had yet been raised. Not even he could sense her at this point. So Alex did his best to calm his frantically racing heart.

Knowing what he’d see.

Terrified by what he’d see.

Before making himself look at the man who had been so brutally sliced open on slabs of granite scarred with twisted runes and endless agony now radiating from the stone.

“Please, hero! Please, rescue my children!” Crown Princess Cui Zhe begged, so much promised with her desperate plea.

Alex’s heart twisted with agonized pity to see Cui Long’s plight. The youth had the thousand yard stare of a man looking at his own death as he panted and groaned as slimy grey loops of his own entrails continued to ooze forth from the horrific maiming the he had been forced to endure.

Alex immediately turned to the Crown Princess and began working on her restraints, unable to bear the pain in her gaze after the horror he had witnessed.

Her eyes widened when inky darkness flowed from Alex’s palm, hissed when it covered her manacle… and then it popped free.

Congratulations! Lock Picking is now Rank 4!

Cui Zhe stumbled, face tearing up in agony, Alex sensing the infections her flesh and bone no matter her Gold tier Qi Pool, and other things besides, as he caught her before she could collapse. Her attempts at stately demeanor instantly crumpled. Instead it was the imploring plea of a mother. That rang against Alex’s ears.

“My son and daughter are dying! Please, hero. Tell me the legends are true, and you can heal as well as you can trick your enemies?”

Alex smiled sadly, shaking his head, cringing with the despair he saw in her gaze. “No, I’m sorry. I can teach any cultivator the secrets to healing themselves, but I can’t heal them myself. Don’t worry, though, I know someone who can.”

Cui Zhe’s gaze became desperate. “There are hundreds of Dongfang Hong’s elite troops between ourselves and the nearest exit out of here. Unless you have solution worthy of the fox… I fear my boy is doomed.”

Her eyes widened when a golden portal formed before her eyes, Alex carefully bracing himself as he opened a portal to his greatest treasure.

The young girl chained beside her brother gazed up at that moment, her hollow eyes widening with disbelief. Alex was surprised to see her even awake, considering the state of her emaciated body. And though her red-rimmed eyes were wild with fever, still, she saw, her reedy words coming out in a soft whisper. “A palace of jade and gold… and fields full of silverbells! So many that the air is alive with their song.” her eyes filled with tears. “Just like a faerie tale.”

“Hardly that,” Alex declared, heart racing with desperate hope, even as he raced to her side, gently freeing her stick-thin body of the vicious manacles, horrified to see she too was suffering from a vicious incision her entrails were slowly oozing free from, even if not quite so horrific as the hideous wound suffered by her brother.

With more panic than he wanted to admit, he summoned his seneschal.

“Dong Xiao! I have multiple people in critical condition who need a hero immediately! Please bring several students who took the oath with you at once!”

Instantly the golden portal entrance filled with the powerful presence of Alex’s seneschal who solemnly bowed, his topknot hat and silk robes spotless as always, a wide-eyed Dineng and BiBi by his side.

“We are here, Child of the Heavens.”

“Excellent! Do you have the stretcher?” He turned the crown princess, covered in burns, missing several fingers, with a foundation cracked by foulness he shuddered to think about, but still she was physically intact and fully mobile. “So long as you swear to keep my secrets close and do no malicious harm to my guests or home, you and your family are welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

The pair exchanged desperate looks before Liu Li’s gaze locked with his own. “It looks like Xian Hong’s stories were true,” she whispered, gazing sadly at the girl who had collapsed from her torments, Alex feeling renewed fury for any monster that would do this to his own flesh and blood.

“We would be grateful to enter and swear to your oath.” Cui Zhe broke down in sobs. “With all our hearts!”

“Excellent!” He turned to a stunned looking BiBi. “Well, come on! We got a prince and princess in critical condition and you two need to take them through via the stretcher. Our seneschal and chief healer can handle it from there!”

“That is correct,” Dong Xiao said with a reassuring smile, his gentle gaze meeting BiBi and Dineng’s gaze. “You two still wish to become healers? Consider this your first test.”

BiBi gulped and quickly darted inside, blanching in horror at the sight of so much horror and pain. But at least the stench of ruptured entrails, blood, and despair had been washed clean by the ocean breeze that had flooded this stuffy chamber before Alex had closed that rift just moments ago. Had it been otherwise, he was certain that BiBi, even now helping Dineng gently place Cui Zhe’s youngest into the stretcher, would have lost her lunch.

Dineng’s shaken countenance met Alex’s own as he gently lifted his end of the stretcher.

“Alex...”

“No time. They can share what they want with you, once they are safely back home.”

The boy blanched but immediately nodded. “Of course you are right… Your Grace.”

Alex winced but wasted no time correcting his friend as he raced to a panicked Cui Zhe’s side, frantically sobbing over her son who was shuddering and spasming his last, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Alex wasted no time, he didn’t dare to, ripping off the manacles with Gold tier strength, and placing the broken prince’s dying body in his mother’s trembling arms. Arms that still possessed the strength of Bronze. “No time to waste, don’t worry about his entrails! If you would save your sun, run for the portal and hand him to my seneschal. Do it now! Now! Now!”

The sobbing woman held her dying son close as she raced for the portal and jumped through.

She crumpled to her knees and sobbed on the other side before Dong Xiao’s gentle smile as he took the boy in his arms as the warm summer day just beyond the portal transformed to brilliant Gold, and Alex was just as awed as a gratefully sobbing Cui Zhe’s entrails slither back inside his abdomen where they belonged as the boy arched back and howled, face locked in a rictus of agony and relief as his injuries healed before their very eyes.

“Thank you, great healer. Thank you!” Cui Zhe sobbed, holding her child close and rocking him in her arms as Dong Xiao proceeded to heal her emaciated daughter, who’s own less serious but still devastating wounds also healed before their eyes in less than a minute while BiBi and Dineng gazed with awed disbelief at Alex and the crown princess both, as uncomfortable looking as Alex felt when the women kneeled before the healer and swore her gratitude.

She then turned to Alex, smiling through her tears as she tenderly held her now sleeping and once more whole daughter. “I can never repay you for what you’ve done, hero. Never! Even if my core was cracked by that monster, even if I don’t dare return until I can heal… You will always be revered by my clan and my city.” Her eyes flashed with sudden heat. “And I will let no one ever disparage the fox, his champion, or his people within my duchy ever again!”

Alex locked gazes with the crown princess. "Liu Li... I mean Cui Li's cry led me here. Do you know where she is?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered, slowly shaking her head. "She was forced to watch us, helpless, for a time. I think that broke her almost as much as the torments we were forced to suffer. Then that bastard Dongfang Hong took her away."

Alex choked back a furious cry, fists shaking with a white hot fury that had everyone present stepping back. He took a deep, calming breath, meeting Cui Zhe's gaze once more, pretending he hadn't seen her flinch.

“Do I have your permission to remove the infestation haunting your duchy?”

Cui Zhe flashed a bleak, bitter smile, revealing so many teeth shattered by tyrants and mad men. “Strike as you will, Disciple of the Fox. For my fallen family’s sake, I pray that you prove the darker tales of the fox’s vengeance are every bit as true as all the ones that paint you as playful jester, fool, and hero.”

Alex’s bleak smile matched her own. “It’s all fun and games until they fuck with the people I care about. Once they cross that line, things get messy.” Alex gazed at the teary-eyed countenance of the fallen queen for long moments, before catching sight of something that brought a smile even to his bitter features. “Fair warning. Your palace might or might not be intact when I’m done here.”

Her look became one of dismay.

“On the plus side, someone you really want to see is right behind you.”

“Mother?”

Cui Zhe spun around, giving a low cry at the sight of her eldest daughter, Cui Chan’s wan features now showing only the faintest of scars, glowing with health and inner beauty despite the wounds she had suffered to body and soul.

“Cui Chan!” her mother sobbed, wrapping her in a sudden, fierce embrace. “My eldest daughter, my beloved child. I had thought your perished. I had feared you gone forever!”

Alex swallowed the lump in his throat when the pair began to cry in each-other's arms, rocking the youngest child between them before Cui Chan’s attention went to her brother, still in a pain-filled daze, but with the worst of his wounds healed, thanks to Alex’s miraculous seneschal.

Alex turned to Jidihu, who he could once more make out, despite the look of exhaustion on her features.

“I have cloaked as well as I could, but our enemies are no fools. Two have pierced my shadow. Alex, we have to leave.”

Alex bowed his head. “Thank you. I’ll take it from here.”

Jidihu blinked. “Alex?”

Alex grinned. “Step through the gate, and be welcome. There are a handful of royals who owe you at least as much as they do me, and it never hurts for a JiangHu head to make strong connections.”

Jidihu flashed a wan smile as the corridor rang with sudden cries of alarm. “I know what you’re doing, Alex. But there are five hundred of them, and we scouted out no less than three main exit points when we did our reconnaissance, two leading to warehouses. There could be more!”

Alex nodded. “I know.” He closed his eyes, giving his queens the subtlest of warnings, sensing them wrapped in a warm post-performance glow. “Now go, Jidihu. I’ll handle things from here.”

The JiangHu head gazed at him for long seconds. “If I didn’t know what you could do...” she shook her head. “Just keep my daughters safe. And you can only do that if you keep yourself safe!” Her voice grew urgent. “I know of your Bullrush abilities. The closest exit is in the first chamber at the end of this corridor. If you hurry, you just might have a chance!”

Alex just smiled, pointing at the gate. “Now or never.”

Jidihu muttered an angry curse before jumping through the portal as Alex waved to them all and closed the gateway before Jidihu’s widened eyes could translate to the warning he sensed on the tip of her lips.

But that was okay.

He had already seen the half dozen wild-eyed Silvers racing down the corridor toward this chamber of horrors in her reflected gaze.