I returned to my body with a deep, grounded breath. My spirit threads snapping cleanly back into place. I opened my eyes beneath the jagged overhang of my cliffside alcove. The wind howled around me, tugging at my cerulean-feathered mantle that now crowned my shoulders, an extension of the storm claw raptor's legacy. Talon-tipped fingers clenched, eager.
Then I stood.
With a single step, I launched myself from the precipice. The moment my boots left the stone, the air around me cracked—a sonic surge tore past as the feathers along my arms and shoulders ignited with flight essence. They shimmered, radiant with neon blue light, as my chakras flooded with compressed storm energy. The raptor feathers flared wide, flexing like wings not meant to fly, but to carve through wind like a blade.
I power glided.
Arcing above the low clouds and river-chiseled ridges, I became a streak of red and blue lightning weaving over the land. With the incredible strength of vestigium qi, I glided an impressive 289 miles or 465 kilometers in a single hour. Wind compressed beneath me, folding layers of wind essence into my feathers.
My vestigium qi surged, rhythmically syncing with every gust. Then the terrain shifted. At the edge of a twisted forest, the ground sloped sharply toward a massive war trench of blackened steel and glowing runes—the Red-Cap Forward War Forge, nestled beside the River of Blood, its cursed waters pulsing like a heartbeat through the battlefield below. I touched down in the shadow of a ruined hillock, skidding softly across the charred moss. The forge loomed ahead—an iron temple of war, its smokestacks belching crimson clouds, its architecture riddled with pulsing runes that bent natural qi into warped warcraft.
Massive demon beast chassis were being assembled into siege beasts. Black-cloaked overseers moved in disciplined silence. Wards flared and flickered like heartbeat monitors. I narrowed my eyes. I vanished into the underbrush, moving low and silent, I summoned the astral veil, for added stealth.
With a dancer's grace and a predator's focus, I slipped past patrols and perimeter guards—each one tainted by corruption, their qi patterns tangled with shadow-thorns. I didn't need a fight. Not yet. When I reached the forge walls, I scaled them with climbing talons engaged, slipping through a smoke vent like a wraith. Heat slammed into me and my second eyelids slid down, saving my eyes from the sting of smoke. it wasn't anything my ember coil bond couldn't endure. Sparks danced through the air.
Inside, rows of apprentices hammered corrupted alloys under the watch of towering demon forged golems. But I was focused.
My spirit senses reached outward—and found him. At the forge's heart, hunched over a forge-pit that glowed like magma and screamed in the language of tortured metal, it was the Master Blacksmith. A mountain of muscle fused with chain and plate, his arms branded with forge marks and his voice vibrating the very frame of the forge.
Every weapon he touched warped into a cursed relic, and I could sense that the forge's entire ecosystem flowed through this single point of command.
If I could end him…
It would tear the beating heart from Red-Cap's war machine. I ducked low, positioning myself within the gantry walkways above, watching the Blacksmith bellow orders and hurl tools across the fire-wreathed workspace.
This was not just a brut. This was a war engine in flesh. My eyes narrowed, Vorpal energy rippling along my arms. Target locked.
Mission clear: Assassinate the Master Blacksmith.
Wreck the forge beyond repair. Escape or burn trying. The strike was coming.
And I would bring the ruin with it.
I gripped the iron railing above the forge heart, my body coiled, spirit honed like a drawn blade. Below, the war engine brut barked commands, unaware of death perched above. My vestigium qi flared—compressed, silent, lethal. I whispered through clenched breath:
"Vorpal blade."
Even in my corporal body I could summon the purple spirit blade of subtraction.
The air bent around my hand into a blade. I dropped silently, cloak fluttering, Animus wrapped in razor-thin intent.
Just as I reached the blacksmith, I vanished, reappearing in a flash-flurry of violet energy behind the brut!
My blade struck clean—
CHSHHHNNKK!
A vicious slash tore across the Blacksmith's back, sending blood and molten sparks spraying! The blow staggered the beast and sent shockwaves through the gantry above.
Half a dozen forging limbs twitched and failed.
But it wasn't a kill.
The war engine brut roared—a sound not born of flesh but steel.
"WHO DARES DEFY THE WAR FLAME!?!"
The brut whirled. Massive clockwork mechanism gauntlets slammed together like thunder. Sparks rained as runes ignited across his skin, feeding off the ambient forge heat. Plates of stone and slag iron wove over his body, morphing him into a walking siege engine!
I clicked my tongue.
"Guess we're doing this the hard way."
I struck first—flashes of Vorpal energy carving through the forge. My double spirit strike skill activating! My speed overwhelmed the brut at first, slicing deep gashes along the war-engine's arm joints.
But the Blacksmith was an earth qi cultivator granting him an immense defensive foundation! Earth qi began repairing the minor damage and hardening exposed qi nodes with geo-armor plating!
The brut grabbed a chunk of raw blood iron ore and hurled it at me! I flipped midair, narrowly avoiding impact. It smashed through an anvil row, then crashed into a molten crucible—
KA-BOOOOOOM!
the resulting explosion ripped through the forge like thunder, setting off a chain-reaction that shook the entire base! The forge began to shudder around us.
I wove purple lightning arcs between my palms, releasing a dual-pulse of storm essence—
KRAK-THOOM!
The Blacksmith ate the strike, shrugging off the burst.
Earth grounded out lightning.
Worse, the fire in my ember coil threads barely made the brute flinch. A massive boulder-fist strike knocked me into a smelter wall—bricks shattered and steam vented violently.
My ribs were cracked. This drastically reduced my ability to breath efficiently, lowering my qi flow.
I gasped in agony, "Okay… no lightning. No fire. Got it."
I darted between pillars at reduced speed struggling through the pain of trying to breath with a near broken rib cage.
The brute smashed through wall after wall, chasing me around like a mountain given leg. Every missed blow tore apart the forge, shattering kilns, ripping through beams, collapsing scaffolding. I dragged my vorpal edge through the ground as I ran, infusing the floor with soul-cutting intent.
I turned.
If only I had conscious access to my blood line power, the ancient battle aura of a god of war.
"Cloud Step double rise"
I leapt and twisted through the air, the falling feather glyph forming for my double rise.
The brute countered, grabbing me mid-flip and throwing me through three stone pillars.
The impact ruptured my vestiigum flow. The beast's gauntlet surged with geomantic spikes—ready to crush my skull. I focused and blinked through the pain and released every thread of vestigium qi I had left. My vorpal blade extended into a hellish glowing arc of spiritual force.
"Vorpal Lance!"
I moved, and the enhanced and extended Vorpal Lance cleaved through the brut like a hot blade through butter.
The Blacksmith froze—sliced from neck to gut—"You…low ruin-born rabble...I'll… take...you...with me!"
The war engine brutes core lit up—a self-detonation sequence igniting.
My eyes widened.
"Sh—"
Detonation. A sun bloomed inside the forge.
BOOOOOOM!!!
In the great distance one thousand three hundred miles away, Torren, Lira, Kaelin Taryn and Soren were all cultivating on a high hill in the Iron fang clan territory.
The five were in a deep meditative trance together from the sacred fruits Ash had gifted to Torren.
Torren was guiding the group and they were just finishing up weaving their qi into animus when they felt the disturbance and exited their meditative trance.
Then the qi shockwave hit!
THOOOOOOM!
A bright brilliant sphere grew on the horizon, and night became day.
"Is-is that the sun?" Said Taryn.
"It can't be! the Sun rises in the east!" Said Lira.
"No, it's Ash." Said Torren.
A storm of flame and pulverized metal exploded outward, launching me like a ragdoll into the sky. My body crashed through ruined towers, pulverizing my bones into powder. Then over the ravine's edge—falling, trailing smoke and blood.
The war engine blacksmith had burned its soul flame for a post-mortem victory attempt. The atomic qi explosion radiated outward above me, my body already flung into the ravine. Below, the River of Blood awaited—its cursed current writhing with soul-thorns and memory leeches.
I hit the plasma like a comet—then vanished beneath its surface, spiraling into the crimson void. Everything became intensely bright, then darkness swept in on the edges of my vision, and then everything faded to black.
The forge lay in ruins—smoldering, collapsing inward.
Red-Cap's advance had just suffered a critical wound.
But so had Ash.
He had sustained a Soul wound.
His cultivation could be permanently crippled as a result.
His body drifted down the cursed blood river, unconscious and wounded at the soul-level, his vestigium qi flickered like a lantern in storm winds.
He had struck a blow for the clans.
But the river wanted something in return.