Path of the Berserker

With my core wound pretty much healed, I hoped to get in a bit of physical training after breakfast, but not surprisingly Shen Ju had other plans for me. After arriving in the downstairs training area where most of the sect had gathered for morning exercises, he immediately called me over to him and then led me through the iron doors and towards the basement downstairs.

“You can pay penance for your sins by cleaning Yin Chu’s blood,” he said, pointing to the rust-brown stains on the concrete floor. He then handed me a scrubbing brush and bucket. “Make sure it’s spotless before I return.”

After his endless slave driving yesterday, I was starting to have enough of his shit.

It was time to push back a little.

I took the brush and bucket with a stoic grimace of [Indifference]. “No problem. I’ll make sure to rub out every last trace of your sword brother’s existence for you, Brother Shen Ju.”

The look of shock on his face was rivaled only by the sudden spike of anger in his soul. I fed on it with [Your Rage is my Strength] and then dumped it full blast into my [Fear the Flame] technique. The sudden shift in dynamics between us caught him off guard and I used the opportunity let him know exactly who held the true advantage over whom in our little battle of power. His mouth hung open for a moment, not knowing how to respond, but he eventually choked back his fear and then waved his hand dismissively.

“I do not have time for this. Just get it done.”

With that he left.

I expected Shen Ju to leave via the stairs heading back to the ground floor, but strangely he went down the stairs and to the bottom of the basement instead. Curious, I watched to see where he was going and saw him disappear inside one of the large tunnels protruding through the back wall of the basement.

Where the hell is he going? I wondered.

As I descended the stairs to get a better look, several more cultivators arrived at the top of the stairs and pushed their way past me, heading down to the basement as well. There were about five of them in all and strangely they weren’t dressed in their normal red and orange robes.

Thinking back, Shen Ju wasn’t wearing his normal robes either—all of them instead wore plain brown attire, the same as when Hong Feng came to see me alone. And then, just like Shen Ju they disappeared down the tunnel.

What the hell?

Were they heading to another part of the headquarters perhaps?

I was about to follow after them, just to see what was down there, when a troop full of cultivators arrived, dressed in their red and orange robes, clearly not part of whatever Shen Ju was up to. It was just as well. Now wasn’t the right time to go snooping around. Maybe it was something I could investigate later on—perhaps at night when I was studying alone.

The two dozen or so Fire Birds who had just entered began practicing forms while I got to scrubbing the floor. As I kept my body busy with the shit work, I observed the free lesson. Most practiced with the sword, the straight jian blade, but a few used spears as well. It seemed to be a pure martial arts practice, with no use of Qi as far as I could tell.

Not that I could sense Qi anyway, but I should have been able to detect their Dark Frenzy if they used any. That immediately made me think of the meridian sequence I had already committed to memory, compliments of Hong Feng.

The sequence was made of common enough points and I could access them well enough, but there definitely wasn’t enough information to pull off an actual technique.

After about an hour of scrubbing and lapping up the free Frenzy from all the condescending glares and snickers I got, I finally saw my opportunity to piece together the rest of the technique.

Du Mak entered the basement looking for someone to relay a message it seemed, and when he turned to leave, I made a bee line for him, heading him off at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey,” I called to him. “Got a moment?”

“Ah, Brother Chun,” he said, observing the brush and bucket in my hands with a smile. “Has Brother Shen Ju found more ways to punish you already?”

I smirked. “Something like that. Hey look, Master Hong Feng shared the [Devil’s Shadow] technique with me.”

“He did?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure if I wrote everything down correctly when he recited it to me. Could you have a quick look to see if I missed anything?” Glancing over my shoulder to make sure the other cultivators couldn’t see, I quickly slipped the paper with Hong Feng’s scribbles to Du Mak.

He snatched it from me and frowned as he studied the characters. “Nine hells! You must be a worse student than even me. You missed out more than half of it!”

I feigned shock. “I did? I was real sleepy at the time. Maybe I passed out in the middle of it.”

“You must have, you oaf!” He then pointed to a section of the script. “See here, you missed the transition to Tai Yang meridian.”

“I did?”

“Yes…and also—”

“Hey just fill them in for me,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of Master Hong Feng to have to go and ask him to recite it to me twice.”

“Yes, you would be an idiot to do that.” Du Mak reached into his robes and withdrew a pencil. “This one first not that one, and then this one here…” he said, scribbling down the information.

I smiled inwardly, thrilled at how easy it was to manipulate him.

All of them really, even Hong Feng.

Perhaps the Fire Bird Sect wasn’t known for their wits.

I then noticed Du Mak wrote a character similar to the one I’d found in the lightning manual. The one I needed Mu Lin’s help to interpret––Jing. It was similar but not quite. I pointed to it. “This one means spiritual root essence, right?”

“No,” he said. “What the hells is that? It just means your elemental core, like your Dantian.”

“How’s that work?”

“Didn’t Hong Feng explain it?”

“I was asleep, remember?”

He shook his head, simultaneously disgusted but at the same time prideful for being able to show off his superior knowledge over mine. “It works like a perfume,” he said. “You tap a little of your pure core elemental and then spray it onto your Qi. A little goes a long way. When you master it, you can just leave it on all the time.”

I looked at the fully described technique—Du Mak’s chicken-scratch pencil marks in between Hong Feng’s ink. It indeed looked simple enough. Far simpler than most techniques I’d learned thus far. How it took Du Mak eight months to master it was beyond me, but I was thankful to the guy for helping me out.

“Thanks, Du Mak,” I said. “I’ll have to come find you to practice it lat—”

My words were cut off by a loud bang coming from behind me. When I turned about, I saw Shen Ju had returned riding atop a skiff which he had just slammed to the floor, in a rapid landing. The other cultivators were with him and when they all hopped off the skiff, I saw something that cause my blood to freeze.

There, lying bloodied on the deck of the skiff, were at least a half dozen bodies. I couldn’t tell who they were, but something caught my eye immediately. The uniforms. Two of them were handlers. Small, darker skinned. The same build and complexion as the twins Ren and Rho.

Please no, I thought as I edged closer, my heart pumping in my throat.

The Fire Birds all paused in their training to move towards the skiff as I was, a small rally of cheers going up from them as Shen Ju placed his foot on the stack of bodies like a proud hunter returning with his spoils.

The sight sickened me and made me all the more desperate to see just who it was he’d killed, my Flame already beginning to ignite. When I finally got close enough, however, I didn’t recognize the faces of the two dead boys in the skiff. They were from a different gate perhaps, but they were Terran for sure.

I couldn’t contain my anger as I glared up at Shen Ju.

The bastard looked down at me with a leer. “What? Did you know them or something?”

“How’d you get out into the wild?”

It wasn’t the question I wanted to ask, but I had to say something to keep from just killing him. It wasn’t Ren or Rho, but it easily could have been. Or Lee, or Mu Lin. Still, I had too much riding on all this now to blow it on a cheap outburst of revenge. With a measure of focus, I trimmed my Flame and finally put the Struggler back in control.

Shen Ju looked more than eager to answer my question. “How did we get past the Imperial Guards you mean? I hear we can thank you for that.”

I squinted at him. “Thank me?”

What the hell was he talking about?

Eventually he continued. “Master Hong Feng said it was from a botched job at your gate that the empire changed the rules. So we found this place and made our own way past the barrier,” he said, jerking a thumb towards the huge tunnels. “We should probably thank you. It took a hell of a lot of work, but it’s a whole lot easier this way. Less messy than showing up at the gate to leave a trail.”

Shit, I thought.

All this time I was thinking that maybe there was no more killing going on since I hadn’t gotten a job and no Fire Birds had come for an excursion, but I didn’t give thought that the Fire Birds could have more Guard Keepers on their payroll besides Sumatra. Or that they had found a new way past the gates themselves. There was a gate for each cardinal direction, eight in all.

How many of them did they control? Most? All of them?

How many people were being killed like this now? Whole excursion parties simply lost and assumed to have been killed by monsters. Although being killed by monsters wasn’t too far from the truth.

I looked down at the dead bodies again. Aside from the two Terran handlers, all of them looked from off world. Their throats were slit along with their bellies and from the small wooden box in Shen Ju’s hand, it was clear he’d already harvested their cores.

I fought down the disgust and bile rising in my throat, the anger and rage that came with it.

“What do you do with the bodies?” I asked.

“Dump them back in the wild before the moonrise,” he said. “Less chance of another group running into them beforehand.” He then grinned. “Why? Do you want to pay some respects to your fallen countrymen or something?”

He began to laugh and a few of his disgusting followers laughed with him. I had to use an elephant-sized dose of Frenzy to mask my contempt with [Struggler’s Resolve] as I replied.

“No,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure you’re doing things right. We don’t need the empire making any more rules.”

With that I turned to walk away but Shen Ju called out after me.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Your gate is on the roster next. I’ll ensure that you’ll be there in person…” He then paused to give me another sickening leer. “…to make sure we do it right.”

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