Alex arrived at the Western Orchards as the sun began to set, painting the sky in shades of reds and orange. The air, which should have been sweet with the scent of ripe fruit, was thick with the smell of decay. The neat rows of plum and pear trees were a scene of carnage. Branches were stripped bare, and half-eaten, pecked-apart fruit littered the ground in a sticky, rotting mess.
Above it all was a sound that was not the gentle chirping of songbirds, but a cacophony of sharp, metallic calls, like a thousand tiny bells being struck discordantly. He looked up. In the glow of the setting sun, he could see dozens of shimmering, iridescent forms flitting between the branches, their wings glinting in the fading light. The Glimmerwing Finches.
He stood at the edge of the orchard and took a deep breath. 'Alright,' he thought, a confident smirk touching his lips. 'A giant, immovable tortoise was one kind of problem. A flock of angry pigeons should be good target practice.'
He remembered the power of his newly developed technique, the spiraling cone of elemental energy that had cracked the tortoise's impenetrable shell. Against the fragile bodies of these small birds, it would be devastating. This would be easy.
He strode into the orchard, the squelch of ruined fruit under his boots the only sound that could cut through the incessant chirping. A finch, no bigger than his hand, swooped down from a branch, its beak sharp as a needle. Alex simply swatted it out of the air. It was fast, but its attack was negligible against his Ironbone-forged skin.
Finding a clear line of sight, he raised his hand and began to gather Qi. He didn't bother with the intricate four-element weave from before; this was a simple test of firepower. He called upon the wind, compressing it into a shimmering, unstable ball at his fingertip. He took aim at a particularly noisy finch perched on a high branch.
He fired.
The wind bullet shot forward with a sharp hiss and missed by a good three feet, exploding against the tree trunk behind it. The branch didn't just shake; it detonated, sending a shower of splinters and leaves into the air. The finch, startled, simply flitted to another tree.
'Okay, a little to the left,' he thought, his confidence unshaken. He took aim again, this time at a cluster of three birds squabbling over a half-eaten plum. He poured more Qi into the attack, making it larger, creating more of a shotgun blast than a bullet.
The resulting explosion was impressive. It obliterated the entire section of the tree, leaving a gaping, smoking hole where the branches had been. The three finches, however, had scattered a split second before the impact, their metallic cries now sounding almost mocking.
Frustration began to prick at him. He fired again, and again, and again. Each shot was powerful, and each shot was a spectacular failure. The finches were simply too small and too fast. They would dart and weave between the trees, using the dense foliage as cover. He was a man with a cannon trying to shoot flies in a forest. With every missed shot, another part of the orchard was ravaged. It wasn't an extermination; it was wanton destruction.
After what felt like an eternity of wasted effort, he paused, panting, leaning against a heavily scarred tree trunk. He checked his internal status. A cold knot formed in his stomach. He had burned through nearly two-thirds of his massive Qi reserves.
'This is stupid,' he snarled internally, his frustration boiling over. 'I have all this power, and I can't hit a single damn bird!' He was so focused on the failure of his new weapon that he had forgotten the most important rule of a hunter: know your prey.
He took a deep breath, forcing the anger down. Panicking would only drain his Qi faster. He sat down, pulled one of his mid-grade recovery pills from his ring, and popped it into his mouth. A cool, pure stream of energy flowed through him, steadily refilling his depleted reserves. As the Qi returned, clarity followed.
'Think, Alex. What am I doing wrong? Brute force didn't work with the tortoise until I refined it. And it definitely isn't working now. What about the Shadowcat?'
The answer hit him with the force of a revelation. With the Shadowcat, he couldn't see it, so he had been forced to sense it. He had used his spirit sense not as a blunt probe, but as a delicate net, riding the currents of the wind to map his surroundings. He had found his target not with his eyes, but with his mind.
'Right. The Immortal Eyes see the energy, but the spirit sense feels an unseen presence. I've been aiming with my eyes, like a shooter. I need to aim with more than that, I need to remember I'm not home anymore.'
He closed his eyes, ignoring the distracting flit of iridescent wings. He took a deep breath and released a single, delicate thread of his spirit sense, joining it with the cool night wind that rustled through the orchard. His awareness expanded, no longer limited by what he could see. He didn't just feel the trees; he felt the spaces between them. He felt the frantic, chaotic energy of the finches. They were no longer just blurs of light; they were individual sparks of life, each with a distinct presence.
He focused on a single spark, a finch flitting from one branch to another twenty meters away. He tracked its movement in his mind's eye, his spirit sense following its erratic flight path as if tied to it by an invisible string. He could feel where it was going before it even got there.
He raised his hand, his eyes still closed. He gathered the wind Qi, but this time, he didn't form a cannonball. He shaped it into a smaller, denser, and more stable projectile, no bigger than his thumb. A needle of pure force.
He didn't aim at where the finch was. He aimed where his spirit sense told him it would be.
He fired.
There was no explosion, just a single, sharp zip that cut through the night air, followed by a faint, almost inaudible thump. He opened his eyes. The incessant metallic chirping had faltered, a single note now missing from the cacophony.
A slow, satisfied grin spread across his face.
The rest was no longer a battle; it was a harvest. Alex entered a state of profound focus. Track. Aim. Fire. Repeat. He moved through the orchard like a ghost, his eyes closed, his hand occasionally raised. One by one, the metallic calls were silenced. A single zip would cut through the air, followed by the soft sound of a small body dropping through the leaves to the ground below. He was now a silent, efficient marksman, his new abilities finally working in perfect, deadly harmony.
When the last finch fell, a profound silence returned to the Western Orchards, broken only by the gentle rustling of the wind through the leaves.
He spent the next hour gathering the small, iridescent corpses. Their feathers, he noted, still seemed to hum with a faint wind Qi, and their tiny hearts contained minuscule, low-quality beast cores. They were valuable, and he had a lot of them. As he made his final sweep around the base of one of the largest plum trees, his foot nudged something soft.
Nestled in a hollow between two thick roots, cushioned by a bed of moss, was a nest. And in that nest, a single, perfectly smooth, pale blue egg pulsed with a faint, warm light. It was the only survivor.
He picked it up gently. It was warm to the touch, and he could feel the faint, thrumming heartbeat of the life within. On impulse, he tried to place it in his storage ring for safekeeping. He felt a strange, immediate resistance from the ring, as if he were trying to push two same-poled magnets together. It simply wouldn't go.
'Of course,' he remembered reading a line in an obscure scroll about artifacts. 'Storage devices create a pocket of stasis. You can't store living things inside.'
He looked from the warm, living egg in his hand to his ring, filled with the cold, dead bodies of its kin. A strange, melancholic feeling washed over him. He wasn't a monster. He was a survivor. There was a difference.
He carefully wrapped the egg in a soft cloth and placed it in the small, regular pouch at his waist. He gathered the last of the finches and stood, looking out over the now-quiet orchard. A sliver of the moon had begun its ascent, casting a pale, silver light that mingled with the last, deep violet glow of the departed sun on the western horizon.
He looked at the branches he had shattered, the smoking holes in the tree trunks, the craters of upturned earth left by his clumsy, explosive attacks. The finches were gone, but the orchard had paid a heavy price for his target practice. A familiar, wry thought surfaced. 'Well, I solved the pest problem. Now they have a deforestation problem. I'm sure Uncle Fen would have some choice words for me.'
The thought of the grizzled old farmer brought a small smile to his face, but it was tinged with a genuine pang of guilt. He had won, but his victory was messy. He had a long way to go before he could call himself an expert in anything.
'No time for that now,' he thought, shaking his head to clear it. His work here was done. He had completed all four quests.
He needed to report back to the guild hall. He needed to get paid. And he needed to make sure this egg stayed warm.
With a final glance at the ravaged but peaceful orchard, he turned and began the long walk back to the heart of the sect, his steps lighter than when he had arrived, his pouch a little heavier, and his mind already turning to the next challenge on the horizon.