Chapter 134: The Puppeteer's Strings
Kai knelt on the cold, blood-slicked concrete, his chest heaving. The colossal water arrow and the flurry of slashes that had followed had drained him more than he had anticipated. His essence reserves, usually a deep, reliable well, felt frighteningly shallow. The adrenaline that had fueled his rage against Shi was receding, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion that made his limbs feel like lead.
He couldn't afford to collapse. Not yet. With a trembling hand, he willed two small, glowing vials of healing potion from his storage ring. He downed one in a single, desperate gulp, a wave of cool, knitting energy washing through him, sealing the worst of his cuts and soothing his bruised muscles. The second vial, he carefully tipped into Daren's unconscious mouth, massaging his throat to make him swallow. Within seconds, the grievous wounds covering Daren's body began to close, the bleeding stemmed, though the grim, bloody history of the fight remained painted on his skin and clothes.
Kai slumped beside Daren's still form, his mind racing even as his body begged for rest. This wasn't hypnosis. This wasn't mind control. The precision, the cold efficiency, the sheer power—Shi Xiao had been in complete, conscious control of his actions. The betrayal was as calculated as it was absolute.
He was lost in these grim thoughts when a sound reached his ears. A soft, wet, grating noise. His heart leapt for a fleeting moment—Daren? He looked down, but his partner remained unconscious. The sound was coming from a few feet away.
His eyes snapped towards Shi Xiao's decapitated body.
What he saw froze the blood in his veins.
Thin, golden threads of light were becoming visible, shimmering into existence like ethereal spider silk. They were attached to every major joint of Shi's corpse—his shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. But the most horrifying thread, thick and pulsating with a faint light, emerged from the stump of his neck and connected directly to his severed head, which lay a short distance away.
As Kai watched, utterly paralyzed by the grotesque spectacle, the threads tensed. Shi's body jerked, then rose unsteadily to its feet in a series of unnatural, marionette-like movements. The head lifted from the ground, suspended by the golden thread, and floated back towards the body. With a sickening, squelching sound, it reattached itself to the neck, the golden light flaring brightly at the seam before fading, leaving no visible wound.
Every ounce of Kai's fatigue vanished, burned away by a fresh surge of pure, undiluted adrenaline. His mind, which had been moments from shutting down, snapped back into a state of hyper-focused clarity. He grabbed Daren by the collar of his shirt and dragged him backward, putting precious distance between them and the resurrected horror.
My God… was I wrong? Is he being controlled after all? Are those threads controlling him?
He didn't have time to ponder. He splashed a handful of conjured water onto Daren's face. "Daren! Wake up!" he barked, his eyes never leaving Shi.
As Daren began to sputter and groan, consciousness returning, Kai's gaze traveled up the golden threads. They extended high into the shadows of the tunnel ceiling, where they converged. There, hovering in the gloom, were two colossal, translucent black hands. They were semi-transparent, like shadows given form, and their long, elegant fingers moved with a pianist's delicate precision. And with every minute movement of those fingers, Shi Xiao's body moved in perfect, terrifying sync.
The easy-going smile was gone from Shi's face now. It was blank, expressionless, quiet. A perfect puppet.
BOOM!
Kai's instincts screamed. He brought Luminis Aquae up just in time, crossing it over his chest. A nunchaku moving faster than before, clashed into the flat of his blade with enough force to send shockwaves up his arms. He hadn't even seen Shi move; the puppet master had simply pulled the strings.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The pointed nunchaku were a blur, a storm of sharpened metal. The sound of them clashing against Kai's sword was a frantic, high-pitched staccato. This was no longer the Shi he had fought before. That had been a skilled, treacherous assassin. This was something else entirely—a fighting machine. Its movements were impossibly precise, stripped of all flair and wasted motion. If the previous fight was against a master on his first day, this was against the same master after a thousand days of perfect, relentless practice. Every dodge Kai made was by a hair's breadth; every block was a monumental effort.
An attack slipped past his guard, a powerful kick to his side that sent him skidding backward. But Kai used the momentum, twisting in mid-air. He landed with one foot on the tunnel wall, pushed off with explosive force, and used the resulting velocity to deliver a devastating downward slash. The puppet—Shi—simply flowed around it, its body contorting in ways that should have been impossible, the golden threads glinting as they guided it.
I can't keep this up. Kai's mind raced, analyzing, calculating. He began to channel his energy, attempting to merge the principles of his Abyss Cannon Sutra with his sword, hoping to create a single, overwhelming blast of concentrated water and void energy. It was a desperate, untested technique, but it was the only card he had left to play.
For a single, fatal second, his focus wavered as he concentrated on the complex energy manipulation.
It was all the opening the puppeteer needed.
He felt, rather than saw, a psychic lance—a concentrated spike of mental energy—spearing directly towards his mind. It was an attack he couldn't block with his sword. His eyes widened in horror, his focus shattered completely.
But the attack never landed.
A blur of white and blue intercepted it. SNOW, his bonded beast, had materialized in his adult form—a magnificent, massive white tiger with piercing blue eyes and glowing azure markings. With a roar that shook the very tunnel, Snow swatted the psychic attack aside with a massive, clawed paw, the mental energy dissipating against his innate spiritual resistance. While Kai struggled to stabilize his own energy and regain his footing, Snow launched himself at the puppet, a tempest of fangs and claws, forcing it on the defensive.
Meanwhile, Daren's world swam back into focus. Pain was his first sensation, a deep, throbbing ache throughout his body. He pushed himself up on trembling arms, his vision blurry. The first thing he saw was a giant, blue-marked white tiger locked in a ferocious battle with Shi Xiao. He blinked, confused.
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
The sound, heavy and menacing, drew his gaze. His blood ran cold.
Lumbering towards him was a gorilla of monstrous proportions, its shoulders scraping the tunnel ceiling.
Daren swallowed hard, his throat dry. He tried to stand, but his legs buckled. Seizing the moment, the gorilla charged, a fist the size of a boulder swinging down to crush him. Daren, with no other option, roared and met the blow with his own flaming fist.
DHAAAM!
The impact was catastrophic. Daren felt the bones in his arm scream in protest. He was sure his entire skeleton would shatter. But he held. Gritting his teeth, he forced his Hale bloodline to ignite once more, fire erupting around him. As the gorilla drew back its other fist for a second blow, Daren used a swift, low kick to unbalance it, guiding the massive punch into the concrete floor, which cratered on impact.
Before the gorilla could recover, Daren launched his own onslaught. It was a desperate, brutal flurry born of survival instinct.
· A cross to the snout.
· A hook to the jaw.
· A slip under a wild swing.
· A right hook to the temple.
· An elbow to the throat.
· An uppercut elbow snapping its head back.
· A piercing kick to its knee.
· And finally, a flying knee that connected with its face with a sickening crunch.
The gorilla's face was a ruined, bloody mess. Its skull was visibly dented. But it wasn't finished. With a final, guttural roar of its own, it grabbed Daren and, with its last vestiges of strength, began to slam him repeatedly into the ground.
SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!
Each impact was agony. Daren felt ribs crack, his vision spotting with blackness. His consciousness began to slip away, the world narrowing to a tunnel of pain. But just as he was about to black out, the slamming stopped. The gorilla's grip loosened, and the massive creature collapsed, lifeless, on top of him.
No notification of a kill. No essence points awarded. It wasn't a real essence creature or an assassin.
It had been a pet. Probably Shi Xiao's bonded beast, now just another puppet in this macabre theater of war.
Daren lay trapped under the dead weight, gasping for air, the fight gone from him. He could only watch as Kai, now with Snow by his side, prepared to face the marionette that was once Shi Xiao, controlled by the unseen hands in the darkness.
To be continued…