The short man's jaw shattered under Gen's uppercut, but the force of the blow did not knock him out. It hurled him backwards through the air. He tumbled end over end for a dozen meters before a surge of dense, reinforced Qi—a crude but powerful **Jingdao**—flared around him, arresting his spin. He righted himself, hovering unsteadily. Blood and spit flecked his chin. He coughed, a wet, violent sound.
"Good attempt," he rasped, his words slurred by broken teeth and swelling flesh. His eyes, full of hate and confusion, scanned the hooded figure. "Who are you? Why do this?"
Gen took a quick look left and right. The remaining Bliss Palace disciples were not fleeing. They were tightening their circle, moving with grim purpose. More alarming was the air itself. The formation he'd disrupted with the explosions was *repairing itself*. The sickly glow in the cobblestones was returning, threads of dark light stitching the broken pattern back together at a visible, rapid pace.
*Not the type of clash to extend*, Gen told himself. *Need to be fast.*
"Why hide your face?" the leader spat, a bloody grin spreading. "Afraid of being recognized? Let's see what's hiding there."
He clapped his hands together. From the swirling dark matter of his corrupted Qi, a new form took shape. Not a single wolf, but a pack. Six smaller, sharper constructs of hungry shadow burst forth, howling with silent malice. They charged not in a line, but a fan, seeking to surround and harry.
Gen unleashed the **Eternal Body**. His skin absorbed the ambient light, turning his form into a silhouetted beam against the grey sky. He shot forward, a clean line of motion to evade the closing pincers.
But the wolves were relentless. They didn't just chase; they herded. One leapt from below, forcing Gen to twist up. Another materialized from a patch of congealed shadow to his right, snapping at his flank. He sideswiped it with a **Jingdao**-hardened forearm, feeling the impact shiver up his arm. He jumped back, kicking a third in its smoky head, dispersing it for a second before it reformed. They were everywhere, biting, charging, forcing him into constant, small evasions—a storm of teeth and shadow designed to trap, not kill.
At the same moment, a group of five Bliss Palace cultivators gathered below. They raised their hands in unison, their auras merging into a single, harmonized pulse. One of them, a woman with a scar across her cheek, lifted her palm. Above it, a searing beam of white light coalesced. She rotated her wrist, and the beam *curved* in the air, not firing straight but carving a wide, burning arc that sealed off the space above and behind Gen, herding him further into the pack of wolves.
Gen frowned, dodging a wolf's lunge by a hair's breadth. *They're amplifying each other. Fighting as one unit. Need to break the group first.*
His priority shifted instantly. As he spun away from another wolf, the burning edge of the curved light beam caught his tattered travel cloak. It ignited, burning away to ashes in a heartbeat, revealing the plain tunic beneath and his face—youthful, sharp, smeared with soot and sweat.
He didn't care.
He turned the dodge into an attack vector. Pushing off a pocket of **Shidow**-compressed air, he became a beam of light again, but this time aimed *downward*, straight at the group of five.
They scattered, alarmed. The scarred woman's control on the curved beam faltered, and it snapped out of existence. Their leader, a bald man with thick forearms, roared and stepped forward to meet Gen's charge. His fists began to glow, not with light, but with a deep, bruised purple. He condensed all his **Jingdao**, all his stolen reinforcement, into the single point of his knuckles.
Gen didn't back down. He activated the **Second Door of the Eternal Body**. The light didn't flare out. It sank inward. His bones took on a faint, pearlescent sheen. The air just above his skin shimmered with a heat-haze of white energy.
The two fists connected.
***KA-BOOM!***
The clash was not a punch, but a localized detonation. A visible sphere of conflicting force—purple against white—burst outward. The shockwave hit the ground like a physical hammer, kicking up a ring of snow, mud, and shattered cobblestones. The onlookers and freed captives below cried out, shielding their faces, stumbling back. The very air trembled.
Gen wasn't done. The force of the blow pushed him sideways. He used the momentum, stepping quickly to the bald man's flank. With the back of his left hand, he tapped the man's shoulder—not a strike, but a touch.
He applied the new principle of **Fendow**.
It was a faint, precise application. He didn't try to sever the man's arm. He targeted the flow of Qi *linking* him to the other four cultivators in their amplification circle.
The bald man gasped. He felt it—a cold, clean cut in the stream of shared power. The harmonized aura of the group flickered and died, leaving five separate, weaker individuals.
The man pivoted, rage contorting his face. His left hand clasped, and a dagger of dazzling, jagged lightning—a crude **Zhidow** creation—formed in his grip. He thrust it toward Gen's ribs.
But Gen was already gone.
He'd pushed off the air above their heads. Now he hung above the scattered group. He tapped his foot on the void.
From the point of contact, a complex, luminous diagram—the pattern of the **Sword of Infinity**—spread across the sky like a glowing spiderweb. It didn't form one sword. It outlined *dozens* of points of light.
The cultivators below frowned, their confusion turning to dread.
"He can use formations too?!" the scarred woman hissed.
"Hold him! Just a little longer!" the short man screamed from across the plaza, still wrestling control from his reforming wolves. "Let me show him the **Generous Mortality**!"
Gen ignored him. He was focused on the group below. He waved his hand down.
From every point in the glowing diagram, a needle-thin beam of light lanced downward. It was not one attack, but a simultaneous hail from every conceivable angle, aimed not to kill, but to cripple—to pierce shoulders, knees, and the hands that held weapons.
The five cultivators broke apart, their unity shattered. They tried to shield, to dodge, but the attack was everywhere. *Puff. Puff. Thud.* One cried out as a beam tore through his calf. Another dropped her sword, clutching a pierced wrist. Within three seconds, they were all on the ground, writhing, their combat strength dissolved.
Gen smiled thinly. He dropped from the web of light, turning his fall into another attack. He became a beam again, but this time he moved *between* the fallen cultivators. He didn't strike them. He was the ball, and they were the walls. He used his **Jingdao**-reinforced body and the elastic resistance of **Shidow**-cushioned impacts to bounce from one to another—a blur of motion delivering a final, concussive tap to each temple with his foot or elbow.
***Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.***
In a matter of seconds, they all lay still, unconscious.
The short man was already howling. His form shifted, shuddering violently. A sound like wailing souls, distant and tormented, began to echo from within him. The other Bliss Palace members saw this and their faces changed—not to anger, but to stark, primal fear. They broke ranks entirely, retreating backward, then turning to flee through the alleys of Hu. The cultivators who had been trying to flee the town earlier saw their chance and also ran, a disorganized stampede away from the plaza.
From the short man, *souls* began to appear.
They were faint, red-tinged shapes, clawing at the air around him as if trying to escape. Dozens of them. Men, women, young and old, their features blurred by agony. They swirled in a vortex of silent screams. This was the **Generous Mortality** pushed to its limit. He was summoning the very essences—the stolen understanding and life-force—of those he had consumed to fuel his rapid, corrupted ascent. The number was horrifying.
Gen felt a churn in his stomach. Among the swirling faces, he saw a young man who looked like the captive from the room. He saw a woman with kind eyes. Lives, not just power, had been the fuel.
The short man, trembling violently under the strain, clasped his hands forward. Using his stolen **Zhidow**, he created a blade—not of shadow, but of a dazzling, sickly bardiche-sword, a massive polearm of condensed soul-energy. Then, with **Shidow**, he commanded it.
The massive blade swept downward in a black arc of annihilating light, too wide, too fast to simply dodge.
Gen tensed to use his speed, but he felt the space around him thicken, grow heavy. The man was using **Jingdao**—reinforcement turned outward—to create a zone of crushing pressure, sealing him in place. *How did he develop such deep Jingdao so fast?* The answer was in the wailing souls around him. The **Generous Mortality**.
Gen bit his lip. He had one shot before that blade of condensed suffering cut him in two.
He unleashed all his Qi, not outward, but inward, toward his own consciousness. He shot it forward, a spear of pure will, targeting the short man's turbulent mind. He needed the **God Asylum**. He needed to seal the source before the effect reached him.
Time seemed to stretch. Gen's consciousness flew across the plaza. The black arc of the soul-blade descended, closer, its cold fury biting at the edges of his light.
Contact.
The short man's furious expression vanished. It turned somber, distant, as if plunged into a waking nightmare. The wailing souls around him flickered and dimmed. The descending blade of energy lost cohesion, dissolving into harmless motes of grey light.
To the onlookers, they saw Gen get hit by the blast of dissolving energy. They saw the short man's aura shrivel as he fell from the sky like a puppet with cut strings, landing hard on the cobbles.
Gen's body was also blasted backward by the residual force. He hit the ground twenty feet away, skidding through the slush and muck before coming to a heavy stop. He returned to his body feeling an intense, cold burn across his chest.
He forced himself to a half-kneel, spitting a mouthful of coppery blood onto the trampled snow. A deep, searing scar ran from his collarbone down across his chest, bleeding heavily through his torn tunic. He clamped his left hand over it, the warmth of his own blood seeping between his fingers.
He looked up. The remaining Bliss Palace members—the weakest, the stragglers—stared at him, then at their fallen leader. Panic and pure terror flashed in their eyes. They turned and fled, some pursued by a few vengeful townsfolk with farming tools, others vanishing into the alleys.
Hu was safe. The formation's glow died completely, its power broken with its master's will.
Gen stumbled forward a few steps, then his knees buckled. He caught himself against a broken cart, his vision swimming.
The little boy ran to him, small hands grabbing his arm, trying to hold him up. "Sir! Hey, sir! You can't die now! I found it! The Lost Triangle location! It's found!"
Before Gen could reply, his senses, dulled by pain, screamed a warning. His right arm snapped up, **Jingdao** flaring along his forearm.
A beam of dark Qi, meant for the back of his head, connected with his raised block.
***CRACK!***
The impact was solid, malicious. Gen's arm went numb to the elbow. He was driven sideways into the cart, splintering the wood.
A figure stepped from the dispersing crowd. He wore simple, unmarked black robes. , a man with a thin face and cold eyes, smiled. "It's him. Gen Jiang."
The little boy paled, stepping in front of Gen. "Can't you see?! He saved Hu! All of us! How can you be this cruel?!"
The thin-faced man kept walking forward, his group fanning out in a practiced, dangerous formation. "Cruelty is the definition of who we are," he said, his voice calm and reasonable. "When Jiang eradicated the old Bliss Palace, was that not cruel to them? When he killed all those who opposed him to forge his 'peace,' was that not cruel? Cruelty has always been here. It just depends on which lens you look through."
The boy flushed with anger. "You bastards! If I was strong, I'd beat all of you and show you what real cruelty looks like!"
Gen placed a heavy, bloodied hand on the boy's shoulder, pulling himself upright. The pain was a fire in his chest, but he couldn't deny the cold logic in the man's words. Had his father not been cruel, in his own right, to achieve his ends? He smiled, a bitter twist of his lips, as he rose to his feet, putting himself between the boy and the five newcomers.
"Where is it?" he asked the boy, his voice a rough scrape.
The boy hesitated, then whispered, "The Middle Desert. Follow the Damocles in the opposite direction."
Gen nodded. He tapped the boy's shoulder once—a gesture of thanks and dismissal—and stepped fully in front of him.
The captives had fled. The last of the Bliss Palace were gone. The handful of cultivators still in the plaza looked at the scene—the wounded youth, the threatening man—and one by one, they turned and walked away. They slipped into side streets, exited the broken town gate. No one stayed to watch. No one spoke up.
Hu had its peace. Why bother with the rest?
Gen watched them go, the departing backs of people who would not lift a finger. The bitter smile never left his lips.
The thin-faced man stopped ten paces away. "What now, son of Jiang? No one is watching. No one cares."
Gen raised his bloodied hands, the white shimmer of the Eternal Body's Second Door flickering weakly beneath the gore. He said nothing. He just settled into a stance, his breath a ragged plume in the cold air.
*What do I have in mind?* he thought, the faces of Lorel, Liang, Chubbs flashing before his eyes. *I have to live. I have people to find.*