The Broken Forest was a blur below them as the spirit vessel moved forward. Amon hadn’t spared a single word to Lya after he turned away from her, much less a glance. He was trying to get a hold of his emotions, for her words were indeed valid, despite what he felt about her. He needed to figure out what to do now, and for that he needed to be calm.
There was no coming back to the Abyss Sect. Not after killing a sect elder, much less after the death of his mother. He knew that even before his falling out with Lya she wouldn’t help him get immediate revenge. She had saved Lawrence’s life despite everything, and Amon still wasn’t sure if the reason she gave him was true. He had killed a person before he turned to Lawrence. He could still remember the feeling on his hands as Raven sliced through flesh and bone without difficulty. Yes, he had killed someone, and she hadn’t stopped him. If she didn’t have time to stop him due to her tending of Rebecca or if her intentions were to spare Lawrence alone, he wouldn’t know, and he wouldn’t ask.
A weird clinking sound disturbed his thoughts. He absent-mindedly lowered his gaze, and saw Raven’s curved blade trembling in his hand. It wasn’t only the blade, though. His hand was shaking nonstop, so much so that he wondered how he was still holding the sword in the first place. Amon strengthened his grip on the sword until his knuckles turned white, but the shaking didn’t stop.
Am I nervous?
He couldn’t tell. It was as if the shaking, slightly burned hand didn’t belong to him. He could see the cracked skin, the blisters and the reddened fingers of the hand that held Raven, but he couldn’t feel it shaking. He remembered the torrid heat that made it that way, and wondered how he was still alive and barely hurt in the first place.
The shaking hand puzzled him. He didn’t know what he was feeling anymore. It was like a very life-like dream where he could watch himself move around but had no real feedback from his limbs. A weird disconnect was forming between his body and mind, and he realized he didn’t dislike it. Like a warm blanket enveloping him in the coldest of nights, it made him feel comfortable.
At the same time, a surging unrest was growing in his chest, violently trying to fight its way out of him. Amon didn’t know where it came from either. His knees suddenly gave in and he puked on the floor of the spirit vessel. His body and even his emotions were at what looked like a breaking point, but his mind didn’t seem to be processing it at all.
He got up without feeling himself getting up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked outside the spirit vessel. The gaping chasm carved into the land by a sword strike, the Sword Abyss, was slowly making itself visible in the horizon in its full horrendous glory. Amon finally realized they were going north.
He closed his eyes, thinking. What he needed to do now was to hide. Like it or not, he was sure Lawrence Meyer wouldn’t let him do as he pleased around the world. He needed to lay low, and for that he couldn’t rely on his identity. What he wanted to do, however, was to hunt down Lawrence Meyer and everyone responsible for the tragedy that befell the Hellblaze Secret Trials. For that, he would need strength, he would need resources and he would need information. That meant he would have to make a name for himself in a place that could provide those for him, be it a sect or any other organization.
On that front, however, being a soul cultivator would be useless, at least on the surface. Stronger cultivators could sense someone’s cultivation base with their divine sense, so if he ever joined a cultivation organization, he would need to show results. He would have to undergo the normal steps of elemental cultivation to maintain appearances while he accumulated enough power and information to act.
If I am going down that path, then I better make the most of it.
If elemental cultivation was a must, even if it was just for show, he might as well try to infiltrate a famous sect and enjoy the best resources possible. That way he would grow faster, and it would certainly help him in the mastery of the element he chose to cultivate.
Yes, soul cultivation and elemental cultivation were not mutually exclusive. One focused on picturing Nature as a whole, and influence it accordingly, while the other was mostly limited to the aspect of Nature one would focus on, but that provided greater mastery over that aspect in turn.
Plus, he had seen with his own eyes an example of a cultivator that was treading both paths. The clinking of Raven turned louder again, and Amon made his mind.
“Turn east,” he broke the silence that had been going on for a while. He had a plan, at least for the immediate situation they were in.
Lya, that had been in what looked like a stasis, raised her eyes, meeting his. He could see the mixed emotions in her blue eyes, and what she wished to express. He refused to acknowledge it, though. Maybe a part of him regretted it, maybe a part of him wanted to accept what she wanted to convey. Maybe a part of him felt strangely satisfied seeing her like that, maybe a part of him was boiling with anger. He wasn’t sure what he felt looking at her, because nothing ever reached him.
“We are getting closer to the Olen Kingdom. The city of Abastra is not very far from here. Turn east and make an arc to the west, that way it will look like we are reaching the city from the east rather than the south,” he ordered her.
Coming straight from the south would make his origins clear straight away. When the Abyss Sect started to move after him, leaving obvious traces wouldn’t be one any help. With that in mind, Amon decided to make their pursuit as confusing as possible. It was no different than combat, having to use what you have at hand to outsmart your opponent and snatch the victory. This was a fight for his life, after all.
With a swipe of his divine sense, he located his bottomless pouch on the floor. A considerable portion of it was burnt being recognition, but since nothing had spilled out it looked like it had survived the fire. With a flick of his fingers a thread of qi wrapped around it, pulling the pouch back to him.
Amon stuck his hand into it, putting Raven away and recovering a fresh set of clothes. Grey trousers, some undergarments, a white undershirt, spare boots, and black robes. A slight frown showed on his face as he stared at the clothes. Robes were what sect cultivators used. His original plan had been to ditch the spirit vessel somewhere and just enter the city through the east as a common mortal. As the Olen Kingdom had no real cultivators, wearing robes might have been suspicious.
Whatever, I’ll just leave the robe out and put some dirt on the rest.
The spirit vessel started tilting right as Lya made it turn and Amon changed. He stuck the bottomless pouch inside his trousers, sat down and closed his eyes.
How long had it been? A few hours at most, he knew. Yet, it felt like years. It was like a distant dream, one from which he would wake up at any moment.
What had been the last words he had spoken to Daniel? He didn’t remember. He couldn’t remember almost anything of what happened after he had received the Vermillion Token from the guardian. Even that felt very dream-like.
Maybe he was still stuck in the Hellblaze Secret World, being tormented by illusions of his own making, suffering in a hell made by him, for him. It certainly would have been better.
The spirit vessel suddenly tilted left, and Amon snapped his eyes open. He would see a tiny dot of light in the distance, growing at each passing moment. The trees below him had turned sparse, transitioning to what looked like a plain ahead.
“If we point this thing to the heart of the forest and let it fly by itself, how far will this make it?” he asked, thinking of something.
“With the number of wind crystals this spirit vessel has stored, possibly up to the Sword Abyss again,” Lya answered carefully as if she was afraid of each word that came out of her mouth.
It was actually a surprising amount, given that this spirit vessel had originally been taken out just to pick him and Daniel up in the Outer Ring and to keep the Abyss Sect’s face in front of the other cardinal sects. At this point, he believed Lya was already proving it qi by herself, and not relying on any wind crystal.
“Retrieve half of the crystals, I want this to land near the territory of the more powerful spirit beasts,” Amon decided. The Abyss Sect probably had a way to track the spirit vessel, so he would make sure they had to work hard to retrieve it. If he was lucky maybe it would land in the territory of a class seven spirit beast, demanding the involvement of the sect’s protectors if they wanted it back.
Lya gave him a worried glance, hesitating. He didn’t expect him to act normal given the circumstances, especially since it hadn’t been even a day since it happened, but she couldn’t help but feel something was wrong with him. He was acting too calm… too apathetic.
“Are you listening to me?” his monotone voice reached her, and she saw him giving her a blank look.
She pursed his lips tightly, deciding to hold back for now, and with a wave of her hand a compartment behind the golden circle drawn in the spirit vessel opened up, from which three green crystals flew out. They were translucent, oval-shaped, and evenly cut.
Amon extended his hands and caught them, feeling their weight. Each perfectly fit the center of his palm, being smaller than he thought. They gave off a weak, teal glow. It was a strange feeling, holding an elemental crystal in his hands. It was probably the first time he did so, at least that he could remember. Focusing his divine sense in them, he could feel the qi they emitted. Under his divine sense, the qi he felt was still gray, despite being on the lighter side.
So I still can’t feel the individual elements even if they are this pure, huh?
Without paying too much mind to it, he pressed the crystals to the rusty ring in his left hand. They promptly disappeared as Lya brought them inside the pocket dimension connected to the interspatial ring.
The spirit vessel started slowing down as the city of Abastra looked to be no more than a few kilometers away. Amon jumped down, landing on the ground without much trouble as Lya turned the vessel south. As the vessel started to wobble forward, clearly slower than before, Brightmoon shot out of it, making an arc to Amon’s direction. Before it could reach the ring, though, he grabbed it by the hilt midair.
“Sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to help me get rid of my hair first,” he said, looking at the red soulstone embedded in the iron sword. “And, if possible, to mask my eye color.”
It was the same blank gaze as before, in the same monotone voice. Sensing him through her divine sense, Lya winced. For a moment, she doubted if there was someone behind that expression anymore.
