River of Fate: Emerald Alchemist, page 44
He held up a hand to get Vesana and Elamrin to wait for a moment, since they were looking at him curiously. Then he closed his eyes and tried to get a better sense of where the energy was the densest.
After a moment, he found it.
The thread of draconic blood was as obvious to him as his own breath. It seemed to be a trait of his race that he could sense where draconic blood had been spilled.
The energy wasn’t coming from the surface where the sect’s cultivators were moving around, but rather from deep below the earth.
In fact, both the dragon and demon energies were buried there. He could sense the demonic energy twining around the more familiar one and faintly suppressing it. Without his bloodline, he wouldn't have found it.
He wondered if the sect knew about what was buried below these ruins, and that was why they had placed their operation here. Perhaps the sect’s master heritage was strong enough that he could sense something familiar.
Verse rubbed his chin as he studied everything in front of him.
Whatever the energy really was, it was quiet for now. The sect’s activity didn’t seem to be affecting it. He wanted to leap down there and seize it to find out what it was and how it was tied into the Emerald Halls, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
It could wait until they’d dealt with the sect.
He turned to Vesana and Elamrin, who were watching him curiously. Then he checked his guard badge, which at that moment began to flash, indicating that the other team was in place.
“When you’re ready,” he said. “They’re waiting for our signal.”
He received nods in return and then he pulled out the two Primal Spirit escape talismans he’d bought from the guard. He handed one of them to Vesana, just to be safe.
“We should be able to escape if it comes down to it,” he said. “Unless their sect master is defending the location himself, these should be enough.”
The sect master was the only one at the Inspired Aura realm, as far as he knew. It was unlikely that the sect was hiding anyone else at the same level. If they had more people like that, they wouldn’t need secret methods to seize power around Boreas.
“Thank you.” Vesana gave him a smile as she took the talisman. She probably had some of her own, but she didn’t refuse.
“Alright,” he said as he sent the answering pulse back through the badge. “Then let’s take care of this.”
Instantly, the three of them leapt into the air, heading straight for the sect ruins. The air whistled around them in shades of emerald flame, ocean blue, and Elamrin’s brilliant white aura, which erupted into the sky like a volcano.
Chapter thirty-one
Attacking the Sect
The three of them flew toward the ruins like comets heading for the earth. Their auras raged outward at full power and surrounded them in flames, promising destruction when they landed.
There was an enormous grin on Elamrin’s face as they approached. A loud and wild laughter rang out from him as he let loose for the first time in ages.
“This is what cultivating is all about!” he roared as he flew to the front. Torrents of white flame condensed into roiling spheres in his hands. “I hate politics!”
The spheres he’d created burned like miniature stars and it felt like the world was falling inward toward them. There was a massive amount of energy in an Inspired Aura cultivator’s attack.
By contrast, Vesana’s expression was hard as she stared at the ruins.
“Uncle, be careful of the kidnapped alchemists!” she shouted back. “You can’t just blow everything up!”
“Watch me!” Elamrin laughed more loudly as he flew faster, outdistancing his niece and Verse. “You two go rescue those guys! The rest are mine!”
His figure turned into a streak of blazing white light as he accelerated. A mighty boom of compressed flame exploded out around him as he reappeared above the sect.
“Get out here and die, you filthy dogs!” he roared, still laughing like a madman.
“This is why mother stuck him in a political position,” Vesana said in a pained voice as she covered her eyes with her hand. “He’s a battle maniac. I should have warned you.
“He’s completely unbribable, which is how he ended up as an enforcer. Whenever he sees someone breaking the guild rules, all he wants to do is beat them into a pulp.”
“I like him,” Verse said with a laugh as he reached out and grabbed Vesana’s hand, pulling her along with him as he flew faster. “But we should hurry up before he really lets loose.”
As they approached the ruins, emerald flames surged across his skin, reacting to the energy that was growing stronger below. The pull to find out what happened was growing stronger.
It came with a demand for justice, like the ancient dragon whose blood had spilled here was roaring for him to finish what he’d started.
Suppressing that desire wasn’t going to help, so he channeled it instead, letting it accelerate his mind and fill him with wrath as he scanned across the ruins.
“There are only two buildings intact enough for a group of alchemists to work together,” he said as he pointed at them. “Let’s search one and then the other.”
One of the buildings was to the right side of the ruins, and the other was on the far side from where they were approaching.
Altogether, the ruins sprawled over an area about two kilometers across, with most of the buildings little more than tumbled stone. It was a small area for cultivators at their level, so they should be able to search it quickly.
Some of the defenders were beginning to stir as they noticed their approach. A few flew up into the air to attack Elamrin, but a moment later they were hurled back down like broken debris, their bodies blazing with white flame.
They crashed into the ruined buildings in explosions of stone, sending a rain of rocks across the sky.
More joined them, but they were much too weak to stop the wild enforcer. Elamrin seized one of them in each hand and slammed them together. Then he hurled them across the sky at another pair that had just started to fly toward him.
He wasn’t even bothering with complex techniques. He was just letting loose. It was tempting to join him, but it could wait until they rescued the alchemists, and right now, he was providing a good distraction to let them do exactly that.
There were flares of energy from broken wards and spiritual waves as various barriers tried to form, but under Elamrin’s attack, nothing was successful. A rain of blazing meteors shot from his hands now, targeting every stone building in the area and anything that could hide a ward.
Explosions rocked the area.
As Verse flew toward the first intact building, the silent pulse of a formation washed over his skin, but the defense was lacking.
His eyes narrowed as a spear of emerald flames formed in his hand. He pulled back his arm and hurled it ahead of him at a ward he could sense, one of half a dozen on this approach. Elamrin was getting a lot of them, but not everything.
The wards seemed to be focused on privacy and a little bit of defense rather than attacking, which made sense with a hidden location, but they still needed to be destroyed. It was a bad idea to let an enemy have a formation.
The formation node was embedded into the base of a wall and as his emerald spear struck it, the entire wall exploded into a hurricane of debris that shot across the area, joining the cloud of destruction that was already there.
Elamrin’s wild laughter rang out in the air where some of the sect cultivators were still trying to fight him, but a lot had already gotten the message. The enforcer’s intimidation was fearsome and quite a few were running away instead of even trying to fight.
They were escaping from the ruins like rats exploding from a sinking ship, heading in wild arcs away in every direction.
At that moment, however, a wave of cold, blood-red energy swept across the sky like a ghastly breeze and slammed into Elamrin, sending him staggering back a few steps. The enforcer’s expression became more serious as he turned toward the source of it.
Quickly, a figure resolved in the sky opposite him, forming like a ghost out of the wave of blood-red energy. His body looked skeletal and white, and his hair was in wild disarray.
Two bloody wounds cut across his chest, showing that he’d already been in a fight, but despite that, the energy radiating from him was sharp and overwhelming.
He could only be the sect master.
Based on his appearance, he’d also already been forced to reveal his demonic bloodline.
As he appeared, a cold wind howled down across the ruins and the sky turned darker as it was covered by grey clouds. His voice roared across the sky in a furious thunder.
“Scum! You dare to launch a sneak attack on me? To try and take what is mine?” There was no reason in his words, only unbridled arrogance and fury.
All of his previous composure and coldness from when he’d spoken through the communication was gone, and replaced by rage, but despite that, there was a measure of dark confidence in his voice.
He must have tangled with the four Inspired Realm cultivators attacking the main sect and then decided to abandon it before running here to try and salvage his plan.
His injuries said that initial meeting hadn’t gone well for him, but despite that, he was sure of himself, as if he didn’t believe he would lose.
“I am in the process of ascension,” he growled, his voice caring easily across the area. “A few more days and it will be complete. There is nothing you can do now.”
He shouted a phrase in a language that sounded like it tore his throat to speak it.
The words scratched at Verse’s mind, just on the verge of understanding. It felt like he’d heard them before, but he wasn’t sure where. The language was clearly demonic.
“It means ‘Purify the world with sacred blood,’” the shrine’s voice echoed in Verse’s mind as it translated. “Be careful of this one. That language shouldn’t come from a human throat. It’s the language of the Netherblood Demons, a variant of the main language spoken by the Elder Races. His heritage is much stronger than Corpsewind’s. He must have awoken an ancestral memory buried in his bloodline, perhaps because of the energy here.”
A bone-white wind began to spiral through the air around the sect master, slicing across the bloody light that was already there like bones exploding from a corpse. It brought with it a freezing cold that felt like it was from the underworld.
Here and there, flashes of skulls and tumbling bones were visible, slowly churning in the air as it formed a massive river of blood that stretched through the sky from one side to the other.
The weight of his presence crushed down on the ruins, making it hard to breathe. Even the sect cultivators trying to fly upward suddenly found themselves plummeting back toward the ground, where they slammed into the dirt.
Verse and Vesana were far enough away that the aura brushed past them, just touching them with an edge of that presence, but it still felt to Verse like he’d been kicked in the chest.
He tracked the sect master’s movements, watching the river of blood and bone as it swept toward Elamrin. He wasn’t sure if the enforcer would be able to handle it.
But Vesana’s uncle was no pushover. As soon as he caught himself, he flew forward to the same spot again. His aura blazed more brightly, rising twice as high as before.
He had been knocked back mostly by surprise.
The energy coming from him was just as heavy as the sect master’s. It pressed down on the ruins like a burning mountain as an ocean of brilliant white flame swept out from him.
The flames collided with the river of blood and bone, making swathes of it explode into white steam as it was pushed backward.
The two forces raged across the sky, covering the ruins like two storm fronts were battling in the heavens.
“Heras Gosaren, Sect Master of the Crimson Shade Sect,” Elamrin shouted harshly. “You are accused of the assassination of an Alchemist Guild branch manager, kidnapping registered alchemists, and of attempting to manufacture demonic pills. The evidence is sufficient that you will have no trial. If you stand down now and accept my judgment, your life may be spared. If not, you will die where you stand.”
“Demonic pills?” Heras gave an ugly laugh, his voice carrying easily across the area, but he didn’t deny that he was making them. “Is that all you think this is? Much less that you will be able to carry out your idiotic form of justice? Power is what matters, and here it is in my hands.
“This place is sacred to my ancestors. It is the doorway to truth, the foundation that will lead to a greater world! I won’t let you disrupt all the effort I’ve put into it over the years. Die, you fool, before you interfere with something you don’t understand!”
The blood river howled as it formed into an ocean of roiling blood and tumbling bones, expanding even more than before. It was so large that it merged with the horizon and blotted out the sun, making it feel like it was unending.
Corpsewind’s aura had filled the cavern when he fought Verse, but this was on another level completely. It was like a sea from the underworld had appeared.
The sect master had to be at the middle of the Inspired Aura realm to have an aura like that. His bloodline was also augmenting his strength. It was no surprise that he had become so arrogant.
The cultivators around Boreas weren’t on this level.
If Verse hadn’t called in the Azurewind Guard, it was unlikely that the sect master would have ever found himself in this situation. No one would have been able to push him this far.
Verse frowned as he looked into the sky, and Vesana was pale beside him.
If they were up there, just surviving a casual blow from that power would have been difficult, not to mention defeating the sect master.
Elamrin, however, looked excited.
The only area not covered by the ocean of blood was filled with his flaming aura, which was just as strong. The two energies divided the sky evenly between them.
Whatever advantages the sect master believed he had, they apparently weren’t enough to force Elamrin back. He had to be at the middle or even the late stage of the Inspired Aura realm himself, or that wouldn’t have been possible.
And not only that, but he was backed by the full weight of the Alchemists’ Guild and all the wealth they had access to.
As Verse looked up, he saw Elamrin pull out a row of something that looked like a string of crystal prayer beads that glowed with a bright aura like the sun in one hand and a fiery talisman in the other.
The prayer beads weren’t even active yet, but as soon as they appeared, the blood around them began to smoke and melt backward like it couldn’t stand their presence.
“Demons, is it?” Elamrin laughed out in response as he raised the beads higher. His mood wasn’t even dented by the sect master’s strength. In fact, he was shaking his head like he’d just seen something foolish.
“You think you’re the first one to dig up some old demon bone that’s been buried in the dirt since before the empire’s founding? And that only you will be able to inherit the mantle of power they left behind?” Elamrin laughed again, his voice echoing out like a booming tide.
“Those artifacts are a plague, and they tell the same lies to everyone. It’s a good thing I brought these Sun Crystal Spheres along. They’ve always been good at suppressing demonic energy. Let me show you just how much your arrogance is worth in front of the guild!”
He raised the crystal beads higher, making them blaze even more intensely. An ocean of white flame surged outward, driving back the blood near him, and then he shot forward like a meteor, with his fist leading the way.
As he flew forward, the flames around him formed into an expanding rain of fiery spears that tore into the blood ocean and the bone-white wind above it, ripping massive gashes through them both.
An instant later, the wave of flames slammed into the sect master and hurled him back through the air. The two of them tumbled away, the force of their techniques moving them out of sight in an instant.
The sect master’s techniques were large and impressive, but Vesana’s uncle didn’t lose out. He was cleanly pushing him back. At that moment, the guild enforcer’s voice rang in Verse’s mind.
“You two go get the alchemists,” Elamrin sent through a thread of spiritual energy. His tone was calm, much more than Verse had expected. “This won’t be the first guy who’s gone mad after he got exposed to a demon artifact. These things pop up sometimes, but fortunately not too often. The empire has been studying them for thousands of years and the conclusion is always the same. They’re a calamity waiting to happen. Try not to touch anything weird down there. I’ll tell the guild to come clean it up once we settle this.”
Verse had to hold back a smile at the words. His opinion of the enforcer was increasing by the moment. He was honest, and he was trying to look after them even when he was in a difficult fight.
Now he was dragging the sect master away for a private battle, trying to give them an opportunity to rescue the kidnapped alchemists here.
For all of his battle lust, he hadn’t lost sight of the big picture.
Despite that, his perspective of the situation was based on the empire’s knowledge, which was limited. He seemed to think the sect master had found a demonic artifact that was from an era preceding the empire.
That wasn’t exactly wrong, but it was far from the full picture. He didn’t seem to be aware of the sect master’s bloodline or how it was interacting with this location. He probably thought the man was being transformed by a demonic artifact.
Verse could have tried to help him, but it wasn’t necessary. The enforcer could clearly hold his own, and even if it was tempting to fly up and test himself against a powerful enemy, he didn’t have any plans to do it right now.
As soon as he’d noticed the energy here, he’d completely lost interest in the sect.
As long as they were destroyed, he was satisfied. He’d arranged for the Azurewind Guard and he’d personally dealt with Renzer at the Alchemist Guild. He had done enough to satisfy his anger.
