Alex Bullrushed past countless winding corridors in a flickering blur as the distance between arena stables and underground kitchens passed by in just a handful of anxiety-inducing seconds. He only stopped to get his bearings when passing the root cellars, one of the many areas of the tunnels where particular attention was paid to both proper ventilation and lighting, assuring sufficient air flow that a preponderance of Earth Qi didn’t cause countless tons of food that would otherwise stay almost perfectly preserved for months in the air to suddenly rot within days.

Of course those windows also gave an excellent view of endless forests between snowcapped mountains marching off in the distance, and most prominent of all, a striking view of the city of Baidushi right below. Yet the dichotomy Alex normally felt at both being underground and hundreds of meters above the city was absolutely nothing compared to the horrific sight of what now loomed over Baidushi. A massive gate comprised of crackling spiritual energy that left the air tasting of ozone and peril, Alex glimpsing alien skies and a distant city of sparkling ice and cold grey stone as countless thousands of archers and shield men poured through that rift between realms which itself stretched at least a mile wide.

It was a horrific sight that froze Alex where he stood, humbled by the difference in might between his own Golden gates and the divine structures that only a god could forge.

“Alex!”

Yinzi’s anxious voice pulled Alex away from that awful vision, though the sight of hundreds of thousands of troops crowding against Baidushi’s gates filled him with sudden desperate fondness for those portcullises he had always hated having to race past had actually proven their worth. He could only hope that they might actually buy the city just a couple more hours time. Though he truly doubted it would be any longer than that, with the multiple siege engines he saw now being brought through the otherworldly gate. Realistically speaking, even if there were hundreds of thousands of basic cultivator levies being hastily organized by the city defenses, Baidushi would be lucky to last the night.

“Alex, I hear more screaming!”

Alex swallowed, jolted to the quick, because now there could be no doubt.

That was Liu Li. The first friend he had ever made in this world, now screaming like her life was in dire peril. And much his horror, Alex feared that it probably was.

“Catch up when you can!” He screamed, no longer daring to waste even a second, the pain that had burned through his gut gone at last.

Bullrush!

Bullrush!

You have chained Bullrush 27 times!

The corridors flashed by in an endless blur… until he was stopped cold by nothing at all.

Alex shook his head in confusion, wondering if he had somehow gotten turned around.

Because there was absolutely nothing here. Just one more stretch of meandering tunnel long since cleaned out and purified, the original denizens long gone. And while he was wasting his time here, glaring at the most innocuous wall imaginable that radiated absolutely no spiritual energy, malice, or promise of any sort, a city of ten million below was being put to the torch and sword.

He shook his head and sighed. Finally realizing that it was time to put foolish flights of fancy behind him and focus on what mattered.

Saving the people who needed him.

Rescuing the people that where actually alive to save.

“Alex, where are you going?”

Alex blinked, turning to a confused looking Yinzi and a panting Hao Chan.

“Think you can go any faster next time?” Chan quipped.

Alex forced an awkward laugh. “Yeah, I think I’m kind of playing the idiot here. There’s a city to save and all I’m doing is glaring at the same stupid wall Liqin and I once stared at for way too long before I finally got a clue and left. At least Jidihu was smart enough to immediately see it for the structural support that it is.”

Alex swallowed, words dying in his throat as Hao Chan and Yinzi gave him the strangest look.

Because the incredibly boring wall the whole school was no doubt depending upon for structural support had been anything but innocuous, the first time he had dared these halls with a speed cultivator with a flair for cooking by his side.

Right?

Alex rubbed his temples, frowning in confusion.

It was a boring structural support wall. He had deduced that the first time he had wandered these halls, hadn’t he? Hadn’t Jidihu assured him of just that fact, only days ago?

Yinzi frowned. “Alex, are you all right? You have the strangest look on your face!”

Hao Chan gave a worried nod. “I think you’re right, Alex. We should just leave.” Her gaze grew intent. “You wouldn’t believe all the praise Jidihu and Panheu were getting for forging a trio of champions the moment you fled out of sight, and all the remaining spectators who didn’t dare approach you were happy enough chatting up our supposed master. It wouldn’t take very much for Panheu to organize them all into a last ditch resistance.”

Yinzi nodded. “I think mother will try to form them into a resistance. With luck, we can at least get a fraction of all the people trapped inside Baidushi to safety.”

Alex grinned. “And my gates might just prove the key to saving at least some of them. I like it.”

“Good. Though you’re forgetting something very important, disciple,” cautioned none other than Jidihu, panting only slightly as the shadows coalesced into the always elegant kitsune. “Baidushi is a city of over ten million. There’s no way we can hope to get more than the tiniest fraction of the citizenry out of there before Seanchen invaders have completely overrun our position.”

“You’re right,” Alex conceded with a frustrated shake of his head. “There’s no way I can trump a divine card, is there? Not with a Gold tier artifact.”

Jidihu’s chuckle was free of all mirth. “A gate a full mile across, leading to the heart of an empire that, for all we know, might be an entire world away from our own. No, Alex, I seriously doubt even your portals would be capable of countering that monstrosity.”

Alex gazed at Jidihu, his heart racing for long moments.

“True,” he said in a whisper. “But what if it were a gift?”

Jidihu blinked, clearly nonplussed by his answer as a fiercely revitalized Alex raced for the same school entrance he had only dared once before, with Liqin by his side.

Before stopping in his tracks, a cold chill racing down his spine.

Slowly turning around, forcing his gaze past the confused looks of his friends, to glare at the far wall.

“No way.”

The utterly innocuous wall that had once hidden so many secrets.

“No fucking way!”

The wall he was going to ignore with the needs of an entire city now abundantly clear.

“Bullshit!”

Bullrush!

Bullrush!

Adderstrike!

Tier 2 Gold Strength & elite techniques effortlessly shatter Granite Wall!

Dark Qi gauntless shatter multiple infernal wards!

Confusion wards (which you totally failed to counter, by the way) have been successfully ruptured!

A stunned Alex gazed at a sight that filled him with horror and fury in equal measure, spotting a once more human looking Hao Zei overseeing the darkest of rituals, a pentagram written in the blood of a dozen nameless shriveled corpses tossed like so much garbage by the granite walls of the domed chamber Alex now found himself in. His horrified gaze was instantly drawn to his friend Cheng Lei, now very much a captive, frantically gesturing to Alex as best he could with so many cold steel spikes drilled into his body. That was when he caught sight of Liu Li, the first friend he had ever made, suddenly gazing Alex’s way in utter shock and desperate hope.

It horrified him to see how deathly pale his dear friends looked, so much blood having been drained from spikes biting cruelly into palms, feet, wrists, and ankles. The same as was the case for a gaunt-faced Xian Hong who could see nothing at all. Dongfang Hong’s niece, who had once been blessed with the most beautiful eyes of amber and gold, was now left with gaping bloody pits in their place.

“Alex, trap!” Cried out none other than Su Xiao, bound beside the Silver Giant Zha Shi at the foot of the pentagram a heartbeat before a steel-toed boot belonging to a robed priest slammed against the kitsune’s head. A priest even now holding a bloody serpentine dagger and a recently severed tongue as a furious Zha Shi struggled against infernal manacles, spitting blood from his savaged mouth and gargling his fury.

To his horror, Alex instantly understood why no one else had said a word.

Everyone else’s tongue had already been cut.

Including the Royal Inquisitor even now gurgling his last, his eyes locked in perpetual surprise utterly unlike the cool sangfroid Alex had first glimpsed in the inquisitor’s eyes. But that was long before Hao Zei tore free the man’s heart with howls of darkest mirth in the center of the pentagram as he did at that very moment, mocking Alex with his smile as the entire infernal structure shimmered underneath a crimson dome. “And now the Emperor will be forever blind to our acts, even as these Seanchan fools are forced to serve us forevermore!”

The infernal merchant then locked gazes with Alex, eyes twinkling with absolute malice as he plodded across the pentagram to a now wildly struggling Xian Hong, once beautiful features warped by exhaustion, terror, and monstrous abuse, now howling like a wounded beast as the bloated chortling monster tore her free of the spike pinning her before plunging his knife into her abdomen.

Then he paused, turning to gloat Alex’s way. “Ah, my favorite piece of pustulent filth. How very good of you to join us, you vile piece of excrement. Just seconds too late but do anything but watch while I tear free the heart of yet another one of your— ”

Hao Zei’s eyes bulged. “No, you can’t break through these wards, it’s impossible!”

But that didn’t stop Alex’s Dark Qi covered body from slipping right through the ward, his heart pounding with a fury greater than any storm.

Hao Zei’s beedy eyes glimmered with the first traces of genuine fear Alex had ever seen on the man. But it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, even when he stumbled back, glaring at his three yellow-eyed robed henchmen. “Bring me his head, bring me his head! He must not be allowed to interrupt the—”

Bullrush!

Adderstrike!

Alex refused to hold back any longer, channeling his incandescent fury in punches that didn’t just stun his opponents. His fist hit their skulls with the force and fury of a cannon ball, and the results were just as messy as one could imagine, the air filling with a bloody mist of brain and bone as the wujen that had so enjoyed kicking Alex’s friend kissed oblivion, just a heartbeat before his two now headless companions in death also crashed to the ground, spurting their arterial gifts upon the now glowing pentagram.

Hao Zei stumbled back in horrified dismay as his crimson ward sputtered out at last, eyes now alight with genuine fear as a maimed Xian Hong screamed and fought in his arms, despite the now open wounds on hands and feet. “No! Impossible! You don’t have that strength! What dark acts did you embrace to gain such foul power? My wujen should have taken your—“

Whatever words he was going to say next was lost along with his balance, as a fiery-eyed Hao Chan sweep-kicked him right off his feet as Yinzi darted through the shadow and claimed the maimed princess an eyeblink later, inky darkness hiding them both until Alex sensed them wrapped safely in Jidihu’s arms.

Alex saw nothing but red as he launched forward, snarling his hate as his stumbling foe.

“Alex!”

Yet that one word froze him solid, Hao Chan’s desperate gaze locking with his own.

“Please, hero of my heart. Let me.”

Alex swallowed the caustic lump of fury in his throat before nodding his head. “Of course, Hao Chan. No one has more reason to hate him than you.”

“Foolish child!” Roared a suddenly incensed Hao Zei, erupting with a howl from the stumbled heap he had fallen into, now growing vast and bloated as he embraced his demonic form with wild abandon, face twisting into a horrid caricature of an ape’s as his limbs lengthened and bulged with fur-covered muscle, now flourishing a pair of obsidian axes radiating infernal killing intent. “You think you can dismiss me as if I were nothing, after raising you from nothing? You owe me, daughter! And by the demon’s eye, I will see your debt paid in full with every last drop of your cursed blood!”

“Alex, free the others so I can fight freely!”

Alex didn’t dare let himself be distracted by the panic in Hao Chan’s voice as their corrupted foe let loose a blood-curdling roar like the monster he truly was. Instead, Alex darted to the captives closest to their battle as the demonic cultivator’s stomping hooves smashed ceramic tiles to powder. Alex forwent any nicety or grace as he flooded tainted binding pins with ward-rupturing Dark Qi before ripping his friends free of their vile constraints, no matter how they shrieked with pain as infected wounds were ripped open and darkest curse strands were torn free of souls flayed by torments and tainted karma both.

“Alex!”

He spared only an instant to gaze into the strikingly beautiful eyes of the first girl he could so easily have fallen in love with, had life taken a different turn. A once strikingly beautiful 17 year old had blossomed into a true beauty despite the injuries she had suffered in the ten years since he had last seen her, time that for him had passed in just a handful of seasons, asking so many questions with her haunted eyes.

He was shocked to hear her mind echoing inside his own when her tongue had been torn from her mouth and they had never even formed a party. Of course, he already knew what it meant.

There were so many questions in her eyes.

Questions he dared not spend even a second answering, instead Bullrushing by Jidihu’s side only long enough to deposite Liu Li before catching sight of Cheng Lei gazing up in fatalistic despair as a roaring Hao Zei lifted his cloven hoof to stomp the Blue Prince’s skull to paste.

Before lurching back with a choked off gurgle when a roaring Hao Chan’s ko-naginata blasted into the bastard’s fanged mouth, forcing him back. Before a dozen black and crimson protective wards suddenly snapped into place. The twisted creature that was arguably more demon than merchant cultivator looked furious that Hao Chan had actually dared to strike at him, more than anything else.

“You would dare? Foul get of a puffed up slattern? Dare to strike the man who took you wretches under his roof, made you so much more than you would ever have been begging for scraps, before enticing you with the sweetest of all dooms any harlot could desire!? You will pay for that, little Jezabelle, foul slattern, twisted toy of despised gods and deviant men! You will pay for that with your life. You will pay for that with your soul!”

Hao Zei roared and charged, axes whirling in a bersker’s frenzy. But Alex sure as hell wasn’t so foolish as to waste any more time than he already had, or take his beloved’s victory as at all certain when there were countless innocent bodies she would hesitate to maneuver around, that her monster of a stepfather would gladly pound with cloven feet til they writhed in death, just for the look of horror he hoped it would bring to his stepdaughter’s face.

Alex darted under a cleaving swing of an axe delivered by a monster eager for their deaths while racing to Cheng Lei’s side and pulling him free of infernal bindings with Dark Qi and Gold Tier strength both. Bone and steel both snapped, As Cheng Lei twisted and screamed, Alex having absolutely no time for finesse as he Bullrushed back a heartbeat before a snarling Hao Zei’s axe shattered the bloody pentagram tiles upon which Alex’s kung fu brother had been trapped. Alex’s quick save earned him both cries of agony and a sob of relief as the Blue Prince, never mind shattered arms spraying blood, soon found himself beside Liu Li, who took him in her arms and wept.

And how dismayed Cheng Lei looked, so desperate to speak to Alex but clearly unable to.

“Don’t worry!” Alex assured, wincing under Jidihu’s glare as she placed crimson potion vile to the desperate prince’s lips. “You haven’t failed at healing or anything like that. Your wounds have an infernal origin, thanks to Hao Zei, and you haven’t progressed enough to heal infernal injuries. But rest assured, it’s just a bit further along in my cultivation manual!”

Even as he said the words, he was darting across the room once more, freeing the remaining pair of survivors before darting back, earning a tear-filled look of gratitude from the massive Zha Shi, at that moment as vulnerable as a shaking child as Su Xiao outright sobbed.

“Thank you, grandfather. I had prayed you would come. Prayed that you would somehow come to our rescue!”

Alex grinned and winked. “No problem, little cub,” he teased, patting the shoulder of the shaking inspector who’s haunted eyes were now so vulnerable, nothing at all like the cocky glare with which he had first judged the strange blond-haired, blue-eyed youth who had somehow ended up being his clan’s revered ancestor.

With a reassuring squeeze of Cheng Lei’s shoulders, and a warm smile for Liu Li and Xian Hong both, he turned his full focus to the desperate struggle between monster and angel, stepfather and daughter, the pair now trading blows at a blitzkrieg pace.

Alex was chilled by the power Hao Zei showcased, his fearsome axe swings blasting through granite like the loosest clods of earth with every swing that didn’t quite connect. Radiating an infernal heat and power like a furnace, protected by countless black wards comprised of incalculable suffering, it was hideously clear that his mercantile foe had profited monstrously from all the souls he had gathered, even since the last time Alex and his companions had fought for their lives against this monster.

Yet somehow it didn’t matter, as ko-naginata shaft blocked obsidian blades that could have cleaved effortlessly through steel and bone, and dark wards that would have made an absolute mockery over a thousand legion archers steadily collapsed under Hao Chan’s own merciless barrage of retributive strikes.

Never had the once vulnerable and always strikingly beautiful dancer ever looked so magnificent or move with such fluid grace as she did while mastering the battlefield, Alex thought, watching her effortlessly dodge blows that would have sent knights kitted in the thickest steel crashing to the ground to their deaths before delivering rebuttals that ruthlessly tore into the countless black wards protecting their foe before Alex finally felt the last of them sputter out.

And it was clear from the way the demonic monster was looking at his one-time stepdaughter that he was aware of the last of his enchantments fading out as well.

“No. You cannot have a Gold tier’s strength. Such is impossible for any mortal cultivator who refuses my master’s path!”

Hao Zei’s demonic eyes lit with sudden desperate hope. “And that’s the truth, is it not, daughter? You have seen the error of your foolish ways. You have learned to embrace the sweetest of sins, savoring power for it’s own sake, have you not? Of course you have!” Hao Zei gave a relieved chortle. “And now you seek to best me, to claim dominion over me. To learn my techniques for forcing the unworthy to bear the weight your karmic burdens, leaving you to free to savor life’s most sybaritic delights without paying any price at all!”

Yellow eyes flashed in sudden vindication when a horrified Hao Chan flinched despite herself, so shocked by his words. Paused, when Alex knew she should be fighting for his life.

“Yes, that’s right!” Hao Zei chortled. “Did you think me blind? Do you truly think others like us won’t recognize one of the very few with karma so cracked that you emanate absolutely no trace of spiritual merit whatsoever? Ha! It’s obvious the crooked path you weave, daughter. Yet only now do you feel the bite of the demonic pact you swore. Fear not, child. There are ways to slip free of its noose, without losing your soul. But if you wish to learn the true art of avoiding karma’s comeuppance for more than a handful of seasons, then best you heed my words and obey my will!”

That was when Alex felt it. A pulse of furious outrage so intense that even he stepped back, when a blast of raw spiritual energy tore through the room.

Hao Chan’s eyes glowed as her hair began to float from the potency her furiously spinning core was giving off. Shrieking like a pulsar, radiating spiritual energy that would have instantly fried any mortal.

Master Panheu, now by Jidihu’s side, chuckled softly, eyes wild with a fierce admiration for all that his features betrayed only the tiniest of smiles as he tilted his head Alex’s way.

“Well done, disciple. I believe your own student is ready to ascend.”

“No… impossible! You are no ascendant master!” Hao Zei snarled even as he stumbled back, slammed against the wall by a pulse of power unlike anything Alex had ever felt before.

“You knew who I was.” Hao Chan’s outraged whisper caused even Alex’s silver tier friends to flinch, Hao Zei’s ears now trickling blood. “You tried to enslave me to the Purple Path, doomed to die with my Dantian tied to a twisted configuration. The pleasure slave of any noble who would spill their seed upon me, even knowing that I was the Emperor’s daughter!”

Hao Zie’s anxious smile and attempts at placation transformed to demonic rage all his own. “That’s right, little harlot! You’re the worthless get of a worthless emperor, and there would have been no greater prize than for me to break his chosen heir after corrupting his whole damned court, tainting countless auguries with the most delicious of lies!”

“Alex, Ward us!”

Jidihu’s panicked voice broke Alex’s stupor. Yet he too felt the cold wave of promised oblivion before tightly gripping an awe-struck Yinzi’s hand and clawing the stone floor to anchor himself as he summoned a slanted trio of gates far too close to himself for comfort.

“Seneschal!” Alex cried out to the shimmering forcefields offering glimpses of his faerie-tale palace surrounded by lush verdant forest and fields. The iron tang of blood and the horrid stench of death and decay was instantly replaced by the cool silver-bell scented breeze of a perfect spring day as the domed ceiling of the sarifical chamber abruptly exploded, sending tons of granite shrapnel that would have instantly crushed any basic or Bronze cultivator spraying absolutely everywhere, pattering off of Alex’s pyramid of gates like rain as a now monstrous fifteen foot tall Hao Zei embraced the burning embers of his very core to lash out at the ascendant Silver he had once called daughter.