Unseen Cultivator

"Well, this is disappointing," Deng Sheng looked up from deep within the drainage channel and smirked. He was a man of similar age to Qing Liao, somewhere in his mid-thirties, but with a frightfully slender and elongated build. Once, clearly, he was a terribly handsome young man, but the years of angry resentment had faded his countenance and stripped away appealing vitality. Only an eroded, skeletal visage was left behind. "I had hoped, if my doom came and it was time to cross blades with the sect, the one sent to claim me would be a pretty young thing. That would be a reward worthy of all I have done for them. You, you are just a bland little hunting dog. It seems I am doomed to an unsatisfying fate."

Liao looked down at the killer and discovered a man still smiling. Seeing this, he pulled his daggers free. He had not expected this reaction, and the presence of cold steel in his hands for once served to settle his doubts. Blade to blade, however mismatched, was a fight; a simple thing, easily understood and accepted.

But Liao was not, unlike his quarry, a murderer, and that demanded the observance of certain protocols. "Deng Sheng, you are accused of theft and murder," he declared this in a loud voice, knowing those in the nearby houses would overhear. The streets might be clear, but the city would still know the truth. There would be no escape for this man now, declared by the words of the sect as an animal rather than a human. "If you surrender now, I am certain the grand elders will grant you a quick death." Liao imagined that Itinay would strike a blow of such force that nothing but dust was left behind. Better than this monster deserved, but suitably swift and final.

To his amazement, Deng Sheng laughed in his face.

"Death comes to us all, cultivator dog!" The killer mocked freely. "Even your precious immortals will face it, one day soon. I've been dead for years, nothing more than an agent of fate, claiming for the next world those who choose to embrace doom. This is not the ending I foresaw, but if it is to be mine, so be it! You want to take me in?" He raised the orange blade, clasped in long fingers. "Come down then, grab me if you can. But know this, you only get one chance. If I make it to the city wall, well, that will be quite the lesson for the world, won't it?"

The vicious grin on the pale face left no doubt in Liao's mind as to the hideous horrors this man would unleash if freed. The blade in his hand could ignite any ordinary substance, burning even stone. He could set a whole town ablaze, killing hundreds, before finally overcome.

"You think you can escape?" It sounded ludicrous. Though he might hold a weapon infused with potent qi, Deng Sheng was merely an ordinary man. A single blow, faster than he could see, would end it instantly.

The pale mask of a face never ceased to unleash its mockery. Lodged deep in the hole, slithering further down and away with each word, the killer remained undaunted. "If it was so easy, you would have done it already. Up there, under the stars, you stand beside the goddess. But down in the hole, she can't see anything. Come down and play little hound. Let us see which us us reaches the end first. It will be a glorious final game, and fate smiles upon those."

"This is a trap," Sayaana's voice whispered through the bones of Liao's skull, revealing the obvious. "Those channels go far, and he must know them. There is great danger in letting the enemy choose the ground, no matter how weak they might be."

Liao knew that. The scheme could not have been set forth with greater clarity, but it made no difference. Deng Sheng could not be allowed to escape. More than the lives in the balance, there could be no choice of refusal. He was a cultivator in the vitality annealing realm. A mortal murderer could not evade his pursuit, his dao demanded this man be brought down. He was the hunter this night. Retreat, abandonment, they were not to be contemplated.

"You do not know me," Liao whispered softly, doubting that Deng Sheng could even hear the words. "Or you would know better. The prize does not bait the trapper." Resolve gathered, he stepped out of his robes and slid down through the grate into the hole in pursuit.

Deng Sheng, naked save for the dagger in his hand, slithered into the labyrinth of drainage tunnels, moving with slick speed and perfect orientation. The chase began in earnest.

The drainage channels extended far below Starwall City, hundreds of kilometers of tunnels carved beneath the earth to carry away water that fell from the sky and flowed through the streets south to the river where it could safely descend below the Killing Fields and out beyond the bounds of the hidden land. Carved out during the city's founding by cultivators, bricked into place and maintained carefully ever since, they were a critical component of the local infrastructure, if one with an unpleasant scent. Not designed for human access, there were few places within their boundaries where a man could stand upright. Instead, the cleaners who scoured away mud and dragged out refuse from those depths worked on hand and knee and carried buckets, brooms, and brushes with great care. Miserable work, though the city paid them well enough to make certain it was done. Each spring, if things failed to remain properly cleansed, the river was used to flush all waste from the realm below.

How and why Deng Sheng had come to learn these tunnels, Liao did not know. There was surely a strange story behind it, but he intended it should die with the killer, untold. Unfortunately, it became instantly apparent that bringing about that end would be far from a simple task.

There was no light in those water-logged channels, and neither killer nor cultivator carried a lamp. Enhanced night vision could not provide sight in total darkness, leaving both to scramble about blind. Liao retained his qi sense, of course, and tracked the spark of Deng Sheng with ease. Unfortunately, differentiating between braided channels and surrounding soil was far more challenging. Following a proper path without any knowledge of the way was nearly impossible, especially at speed.

Sound was, if anything, worse. Enhanced hearing only served to belt his ears with a wash of countless echoes and reverberations. The cacophony that resulted was worse than useless for tracking.

The enemy knew the way and retreated into the heart of these dark depths with an ambush planned. Unarmored, and facing a blade whose slightest touch could inflict terrible burns, Liao felt more vulnerable than he had been since being buried in the midst of the demon horde. This man, unthinkable as it might sound, could kill him. Deng Sheng, in this place, at this moment, was as deadly as any demon.

And just as foul.

But Qing Liao did not fear the darkness. Grand Elder Itinay had placed him at the bottom of a hole beneath an endless tide of demon qi and he had survived. The mere absence of light was incomparable to that.

However, while the dark might not move him, confinement and entrapment triggered deeper fears. The narrow spaces of the channels, with bricks brushing against his hair and knees at every creeping step, induced frigid hesitation. He seized up at the first intersection, allowing Deng Sheng to increase his lead and descend further.

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Water spared him. It moved. Dirty and sluggish the flow might be, but it progressed continually. The liquid soaked him to the bone in seconds, but the motion, the progress of the qi that linked to a distant underground river, that was not stagnant. These tunnels were not a prison, they were a carrier. Knowing that, he found himself at home within their bounds.

Scrambling about with blades in hand, headless of the shredding impact this motion had upon his dark trousers and shirt, Liao pursued. He was faster than his quarry, and able to endlessly track. Twists, turns, and false ends might slow him, but he would not lose the chase. Nor would he tire before his prey. No mortal could outlast a cultivator in a race.

Slick and swift, aided by nakedness that reduced all drag, Deng Sheng advanced, but he did not seek escape. There were pathways out, both through the grates to the city above and spillways that fed the surrounding fields. He surely knew such ways, but with the cultivator behind him, knew they would lead only to swift oblivion. Twenty years spent in the dagger hall could not help but teach a man how the sect wielded such weapons. To gain advantage against them, a mortal required a place, a moment, where the Nine Spheres Arsenal offered no guide.

Slipping through the tunnels, he took advantage of a looped link tied to an unseen rise in the ground. Worming upward, he passed over a hole, a small gap sufficient to allow him to bend his torso down and stab through.

Lacking all knowledge of the tunnel contours, Liao could not anticipate this maneuver. The deceptive splashes continually triggered by the motion of the water within only further confused his senses. Against any ordinary opponent the killer would have dropped down from above completely undetected. Able to plunge his blade downward to pierce the throat, observed only as a flash of orange before it plunged into the veins of the neck.

But qi sense told no lies. Deng Sheng might have lived among cultivators, but he was not one, he could not truly understand what it meant to feel your surroundings at the level of fundamental essence; to perceive an entirely different sense of life and matter through the resonance of the dao. His mind, limited in this way, could never properly incorporate anticipation of a power he'd been told existed but would never grasp himself.

Qing Liao felt his target double back and slowed in response. Tense and coiled, awaiting the ambush he could not see.

Even that might not have been enough. His awareness of air and motion lacked three-dimensional comprehension, failed to account for an enemy directly above his head when the deadly threat descended.

But his was not the only soul making use of a cultivator's senses.

"Above!" Sayaana screamed the desperate warning out through his skull as Deng Sheng's arm shot down.

Liao jerked backward and thrust his arms upward in a single motion. Steel clashed with qi-infused orange metal. Sparks flared, a flicker of light in darkness swiftly swallowed up by the waters below. Pushing hard to hold back the burning blade with the dagger in his right hand, Liao lashed out and upward with the blade in his left. A series of swift thrusts backed by qi-strengthened muscles snapped upwards.

Dagger points struck only air. The killer lurched back at the moment his first strike failed, unwilling to properly cross blades. Instead, he slid backward and to the side, disappearing into the darkness once more.

No threats followed, only the drip and splash of eager motion as the wet body slipped over the smooth bricks. Deng Sheng, a seasoned killer, knew the power of silence to isolate and unnerve.

Before following, Liao sucked in a deep breath and looked to his blades. A chip, still glowing deep red, had been cut into the edge of his right dagger from the impact. A weakness, but one he judged insignificant. He needed his blades to last only long enough for one critical strike.

Hauling his body up and over the gap, he resumed pursuit at once. He refused to let the murderer escape him in this maze. Too much rode upon it. He had, using his own voice, proclaimed this man's death the will of the sect. He must make a truth of that declaration. Should this killer take another life before being brought to bear, he did not think the guilt would be something he could endure.

Again and again, in those soaking and murky tunnels with the air scented of mold and decay, cultivator and killer lunged at one another. Deng Sheng laid ambushes and pouncing thrusts one after another. Often, he abandoned them without ever striking, deciding he'd lost the essential element of surprise. Other times he struck once only to be blocked, blades scraping against each other to bring a moment's flare to the dark surround. Twice, Liao countered swiftly enough to draw blood, but neither would had the depth to defeat or even truly impede his enemy.

No strike came as close to the first to ending the cultivator. Liao held his senses open to all the angles after the first attempt, and he remained prepared before the blows could fall. As time passed and they circled each other through the wet maze, experience sharpened his qi sense and he gained a growing intuition of its contours. Deng Sheng's gap in flight narrowed, and he soon ceased entirely in counterattacks as escape demanded the totality of his strength.

Shortly thereafter even that effort began to flag.

The water was cold. The air was still, thick, and rank. The brickwork was hard and uneven. Liao felt the damage these things imparted as it accumulated across his own flesh. A litany of bruises and scrapes wrote their way across every part of his skin. Fatigue piled up throughout each limb, a brutal weight, though one he could banish through drawing upon his qi reserves. Even with such aid, the exertion told, and he knew he would face exhaustion for many days to come, and much effort would be needed to heal properly.

Qing Liao was a cultivator in excellent health, with endurance strengthened by life unaided in the wild. He knew these things, and also that Deng Sheng lacked them. Whatever the servant's fitness, he could not possibly match those advantages. His body could not endure the chase forever.

The distance between them shrank, one step at a time. In order to escape the pursuing hunter, the killer was shortly reduced to desperate lunges around corners and down sliding spillways. Time was running out.

The final moment crept forward with steady inevitability. Everyone could sense it, and the air grew heavy with the scents of sweat and blood. "The cornered fox lunges at the wolf," Sayaana whispered when the qi spark of Deng Sheng suddenly ceased motion.

A critical warning. Though Liao knew that truth well and had seen in during many hunts, in his fury he had forgotten. Without the remnant soul's aid he would have dashed ahead heedlessly rather than approaching the final confrontation with calm and ready blades.

But Deng Sheng knew the dance of stalk and kill just as well. In the moment that Liao's splashing pursuit halted he read the signal and countered.

Crouched low, he turned about, rotated back around the nearest corner, and lunged. Springing to full extension in a single motion, the orange blade led out from his extended arm. Blinding brightness pierced the dark; carried death in its red light.

No time to think, to plan. Liao reacted through pure instinct, techniques beaten into his muscles through endless hours of instruction under Sayaana's harsh demands.

He did not block or parry. Watching his enemy overextended, he dropped the left hand dagger completely. Snapping his arm forward with all the strength and speed his qi could supply, Liao opened his hand, pushed under the oncoming thrust, and wrapped his fingers around his enemy's wrist.

With all his strength, the inhuman power of cultivation, he clenched those digits and squeezed.

Bones crunched. A sickening sound cracked the dark tableau.

The orange burning blade fell from a numb hand.

"Burn!" Deng Sheng did not stop.

The killer twisted in that grip, shattering the imprisoned limp. Contorting his body, he spun in space and flailed with his left arm to grasp fingers about the fallen weapon.

Liao's body took over. Swift certainty moved his limbs, countered this escape. His right arm thrust forward. The dagger there, strengthened by qi, parted the killer's neck as if the skin wasn't even there. Steel pierced through the throat effortlessly, in and out, ripping a massive gash that laid the neck open from front to back down to the spine.

Deng Sheng gurgled once, wordlessly, and then collapsed to the water below, dead.