Savage Webs, page 5
part #2 of Apocalypse Cultivation Series
It would be awfully shitty if all of his plans came crashing down two days before his escape, especially due to negligence or impatience.
Jake hurried down the tunnel, keeping his senses peeled for danger. He had a few natural advantages over most of the other prisoners, but he was still under a lot of restrictions. In addition to most of his natural abilities not working and all of his gear being gone, he couldn’t access his storage ring. All of his possessions he’d had on hand had been shoved into his ring before he’d been dumped in the Web Burrows.
He usually stuffed the monster cores he found and the ore Slim mined into his pockets or made makeshift slings to hold them.
Most of the other prisoners thought they were just being used as slave labor to mine milk ore. After all, one of their guards took milk ore and monster cores in exchange for food, water, blood, or any other nourishment a prisoner could need. Most prisoners needed to mine or find ore if they wanted to live.
There were even prisoners-turned-prostitutes who accepted milk ore as payment.
But after years of exploring, Jake wasn’t so sure mining was the real purpose for this place, at least not all there was to it.
Suddenly, he stopped. He sensed a large group of demon beasts coming from ahead and judged it’d be a tough group to tackle alone, at least in a straight stretch of tunnel like the one he was in. There wasn’t enough time to waste with it anyway. Even after all these years, the frustration of not having access to his storage ring was palpable. With everything he had stored in there, at least he’d have more options.
Maybe that would change soon, though. Hopefully.
The approaching group were coming from a curve from a downward slope. Jake silently jumped up and used his finger and toe claws to cling to the ceiling. This was made slightly easier by the roots that had broken through the rock in a few places. He was in an older section of tunnel now and the root was omnipresent.
Then he minimized his presence. He hadn't even known this was possible before learning more about the Murim world from Slim. And Slim hadn’t known how to do it–hiding one’s presence.
But Jake had taken the story seriously, especially after being snuck up on so often by Master Zi. Then years of practice had paid off.
He pictured himself as a rock and stilled all the chi regularly circulating through his body to a standstill. His sense of self was condensed, then discarded. All that remained was his drifting consciousness.
Below him, a large group of demon beasts passed. Focusing too much on any of them would have dropped his concealment. Maybe after he was more advanced, he’d be able to focus on things more and stay hidden. What he was able to gather about the group was that it was large and dangerous, though. Hiding had been the right choice. He waited for another five minutes before dropping to the ground in a crouch.
This deep in the mines, he sometimes found evidence of other, doomed parties or individuals. Old pieces of bones or clothing or tools made of root wood. One thing he’d discovered for sure over time was that the Web Burrows, Lady Brima’s prison, was very old. Also, newer tunnel expansions by current prisoners focused on moving outward, but at one point in the distant past, prisoners had been digging down instead.
The coast was clear, so he moved quicker now, following a path he’d taken hundreds of times. At one tunnel intersection, he went down at almost a forty-five degree angle to what looked like a dead end.
When he’d been exploring in his third year as a prisoner, he’d almost missed what made this place special.
Bending down, he grabbed hold of two thin, almost invisible threads, probably woven together strands of the fine silk that laced the Web Burrows over time just like the mysterious roots did. After a sharp tug and some more pulling, he managed to remove the stone plug, a doorway.
The hidden room had been covered with a thick layer of dust when he’d first found it. He’d likely never know who constructed it hundreds or even thousands of years ago. There hadn’t been anything written on the walls other than a line of text in a language Jake didn’t know. He’d written it down on a piece or parchment several times and committed it to memory.
Maybe one day he’d have it translated if he could ever escape.
Jake wasn’t planning to spend much time in the hidden room, so he didn’t pull the plug in after himself. He just went inside the long, narrow space and put the monster cores against the far wall with all the others. Keeping them on the far wall like this actually placed them near a tunnel on the other side of the thick stone. Monsters sometimes congregated there, attracted to the cores. Jake usually avoided that tunnel unless he went to kill off stragglers nearby.
Saving all of his loot was a lot harder now without access to his storage ring, and ingesting monster cores didn’t do much anymore individually anymore. There was no point in using them for any evolution paths either; they would mess up all of his carefully laid plans. The only purpose he had for the cores was to improve his cultivation. But now he needed dozens and dozens at once to hopefully get past his next cultivation bottleneck.
Part of why he needed to escape this place so badly was the lack of any monster cores past the weak ones he was usually able to collect. The reality was that most of the demon beasts in the Web Burrows weren’t strong enough to have good cores. In fact, the place would be far less dangerous if not for the restrictions all of the prisoners were under.
Jake eyed his stash with a critical eye. He had seventy-three monster cores now, but he was pretty sure he needed over ninety for the last push into the sixth level of Body Refinement. That was okay; he knew where he could get some more within the next day and save himself time.
He left the hidden room, one of his luckiest finds during his entire imprisonment. Finding a safe place to stash things and cultivate in peace was one of the reasons he had been able to progress at all over the years. It was also how he’d helped keep his actual cultivation level secret from the other prisoners. That and his practice at minimizing his presence. He practiced the skill all the time now, hiding in plain sight, making his cultivation base seem smaller than it really was. At least he thought his cultivation level was a mystery to most prisoners. But he didn’t trust anyone enough to really talk about it, even Slim.
That worried him sometimes, the lack of anyone to confide in. He wondered if anyone could see through his ruse. But so far, the prisoners all treated him like he was an average level cultivator among their number, but mean as a shithouse rat. Perfect.
In fact, the first day he’d come to the Web Burrows, some of the lower level, scavenger-like prisoners had tried to rough him up or maybe kill him for his flesh. Some of the prisoners were always ravenous, like Slim, but were aggressive, not cowardly. They’d had weapons. Jake had his long claw on both hands and he’d ripped two of them apart before the stone, statue-like guards had intervened.
So many shitty years. Jake shook his head. He was close now. So close to leaving this hellhole.
He moved even deeper down the mines, far past the point any other prisoners had gone in hundreds of years judging by the dust and bones he’d found. Even most of the demon beasts didn’t come down this far.
Finally, he slipped through the crack he’d discovered, barely wide enough to jam himself through, and found himself in a carved stone chamber with rows of stone benches and a lectern to one side. On the wall to the other side of the room stood two different groups of softly glowing lines of text and diagrams.
It was the soft glow, a different color than any glowing moss, that had helped him find this room in the first place.
Jake reverently went to the far side of the room from the glowing script and sat down with his chin propped up on a fist. He would not have recognized what this place was before seeing skill scrolls back on Earth. But this place was not a scroll. The script was carved directly into the wall. It was permanent, but it also didn’t completely transfer a technique into his mind the same way skill scrolls had.
Every time Jake came to study the wall, he understood a little bit more of what it was trying to tell him. Now he knew there were two techniques on the wall, Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes and Phoenix Piercing Talon.
He was close to completely understanding these two skills, and now that he knew what they were, he didn’t think the fact they were here in the Web Burrows was a complete coincidence. The Web Burrows might be a prison, but that was not all it was, or least it was not what it always had been.
Some of his plans hinged on successfully mastering these two techniques.
Jake settled in to learn. He stilled his spirit, suppressing the excitement of being so close to mastering the Veil Piercing Phoenix eyes and Phoenix Piercing Talon after over five years of study.
Chapter 8
Light exploded in his mind, but then there was just stillness.
Enlightenment felt different than Jake had expected. He’d thought that he would feel physically different, something like when he achieved another level of cultivation–becoming something more, stronger. Instead, one moment, there were still holes in his knowledge, and the next, he just understood.
Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes and Phoenix Piercing Talon. They weren’t only techniques, they were pieces of a great Dao. Jake took a while to reflect on what he’d discovered. All of his plans and haste were temporarily put on hold, forgotten as his mind began to rise, observing the truths he’d discovered.
His plans might change now, but he wasn’t ready to think about that yet. Instead, he meditated, assimilating what he’d learned.
Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes was not really a technique. It was a…state of truth, of seeking truth. Now that he understood this fragment of Dao, Jake already had access to a tiny part of it, but it was unlike anything he’d ever heard of before. If he incorporated Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes into his normal cultivation, it would become part of it, getting stronger.
Now that he had the Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes, the entire world looked different, even himself. After observing himself, turning his vision inward, he could truly see how his own cultivation up to this point was mostly draconic. These new Phoenix-derived mysteries did not perfectly mix, but were also not directly opposed. With some practice, he could juggle the two.
Phoenix Piercing Talon, what he’d originally understood to be some sort of piercing technique–per its name–that might bypass the restrictions he’d been under, was actually so much more than that. What he’d believed before was part of the truth, but not all of it.
Jake sat back for a while, his newly freed mind expanding, growing, settling. He continued to meditate, holding his spirit together as the enlightenment shifted and integrated itself in his spirit.
The mental glow from his enlightenment began to fade.
Finally, he was ready to move again and think about more than what he’d just discovered. He knew his to-do list definitely had to change a little now, even though, thankfully, his senses told him he’d only been meditating for about two hours.
Before, his plan for the next day or two had been to use the Phoenix Piercing Talon to get through the locked door to Lady Brima’s home one way or another, hopefully, and escape past her suppression field. His Clay Bat would be able to teleport him again very soon, in one more day, so all he needed to do was get it out of his storage ring and ride the thing to freedom.
But now he might have other options.
In all the time Jake had been in the Web Burrows, he hadn’t told anyone that he’d met Lady Brima. Her warning hadn’t been necessary. Jake wasn’t dumb enough to volunteer any information to the prisoners when the first thing that happened to him in the Web Burrows was getting attacked.
And he’d since learned that if anyone else had met her, they were lying about it. The only reason most of the prisoners knew of Lady Brima’s name at all was because of the automaton-style guards. They proclaimed her magnificence every day during food-selling time.
Some of his plans had changed now, but not for this day. He still needed to get all the way across the Web Burrows to his next destination. However, now he had a much higher chance of accomplishing the next item on his list. Phoenix Piercing Talon was both more limited, and far more powerful than he’d assumed. There’d been a low chance of success for what he was going to attempt next. Now he was much more optimistic.
He was already resigning himself to the fact that how he traveled there was going to be different, though.
Originally, he’d been planning to go the long way to the other side of the current center of the Web Burrows to avoid Jailtown. If he were a more patient man, he might have just written off the day entirely, just gone back to town, slept, and gone on with life like usual for a few days.
However, freedom was so close, he could taste it, and more importantly, he didn’t trust the world not to throw him a curveball. Every once in a while, the guards would move Jailtown to a new location, probably just to fuck with people who were trying to store things like Jake was, or who were getting too comfortable or knowledgeable with the tunnels they’d explored.
For the most part, it worked. Assholes.
It didn’t take Jake long to get back to Jailtown, especially with so much on his mind. Time was moving too fast now. As he got closer to Jailtown, the walls had more light lichen and the light level rose.
The entrance to Jailtown was blocked by two prisoners. One was in mid-silver and one in the late-bronze stage of Body Refinement. They were paid just enough food per day by the guards to keep living. Some chose stable servitude like this instead of braving the mines.
Both of them swallowed when they saw Jake. His reputation for being dangerous was well-earned. He felt no loyalty to the other prisoners, not anymore. At first, he’d been naive, optimistic, hoping at least some of them could work together. He’d been roughly disabused of that notion, and now he wouldn’t hesitate to kill one of them if he had to.
It’d been a rough nine years. Hopefully, in the next couple days after it was a full ten, he would be gone.
Both guards hastily moved to the sides. Jake idly wondered how they’d act if they knew what his real power level was, but then he squashed that feeling. When he’d first come to the Web Burrows, he’d made a promise to himself not to let this place break him, to change him too much. He knew some change was unavoidable, but his moral core was still mostly intact. And unnecessarily acting like a bully was against his morals.
Not only that, revealing his real abilities just to scare people would be extremely stupid. These guards were both spineless nobodies. He gave them a measured nod as he moved past and they sagged in relief.
Once inside Jailtown, he eyed his surroundings. It was important that he pass without creating too much suspicion, so he kept his walk casual and his mannerisms normal, which meant he was ready to move at a split second’s notice. He had an errand to run in town anyway, so doing that before leaving would probably be a good idea.
Jailtown was formed sort of like a giant circle with a ten-foot-tall ceiling, two entrances, and over twenty stone partitions that extended from the edge of the circle to the middle. They didn’t join, but ended about twenty-five feet out, creating a fifty-foot open circle in the middle with a water fountain at its center. The fountain was surrounded by three pillars, and each pillar had two automaton guards. They looked sort of like pale golems.
If anything, Jailtown sort of looked like a wagon wheel.
The town could randomly change locations. There were at least ten different locations in the Web Burrows shaped like Jailtown. Every time it moved, the prisoners followed. Wherever the automaton guards went was the location of Jailtown. The prisoners depended on them to buy food.
Two partitions of every Jailtown were set up as male and female latrines.
The entire area was lit by glowing stones that were set in the ceiling, giving the place a sort of illumination that reminded Jake of warehouses on Earth.
There were three main gangs that ran Jailtown. The Enlightened Jail Army had a stupid name, and they were mostly orthodox cultivators and a handful of unorthodox human cultivators that didn’t dabble too deeply into dark techniques. This was the largest group in Jailtown.
Peyate race people, who were something like lizardmen, made up most members of the Stinging Earth Guild gang. There weren’t very many humans in this gang.
The last gang was simply called Han Ten’s Group. This group had most of the demonic cultivators in Jailtown and a few creatures Jake wasn’t even sure were completely sentient. They were the most brutal group in the Web Burrows. Han Ten, a dark, lion-maned man, was their leader. He was a full Reforged Body cultivator and was one of the most powerful prisoners in Jailtown.
Jake always gave him a wide berth.
The days when Jake hadn’t completely understood cultivation advancement stages past Body Refinement were long gone. He’d had plenty of time to study. Now he knew every stage all the way up to the end of Seeking Enlightenment.
More importantly, he knew what the next steps would be if he was ever able attain a Reforged Body: Foundation Pillars.
That was a long time off, though, and he definitely needed to escape this prison first. He’d been preparing to escape for a long time. If he fucked everything up by daydreaming or being careless, he wasn’t sure he’d feel sorry for himself.
One the last two groups in Jailtown were the crafters and traders. This group was small, only about seven people, and three of them were the town’s prostitutes. One of the prostitutes, “Miss Sweet Orchid,” was probably one of the craziest people Jake had ever met. He avoided being anywhere near her. She was as likely to try knifing someone as randomly begin singing a song on her weird bootleg instrument she’d made out of roots and braided hair.
Jake was part of the last group, the outcasts. He had some trading to do now, but not in the trading section of Jailtown. Instead, he headed near where he theoretically slept, near where Slim also slept. As usual, Nag Geru was squatting against the wall, playing with sticks. The mysterious cultivator was an oddity in the Web Burrows, which were already odd.
