Silence returned to the forest, broken only by the ragged, panting breaths of four utterly exhausted disciples.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The battle was over, but their bodies hadn't gotten the message. Jay felt a sharp fire in his ribs with every ragged breath. Elara's arms trembled, her Qi a shallow puddle. Before them, the grotesque body of the Verdant Regent hung impaled on Jay's earthen spikes, a testament to the harrowing fight they had just survived.
Alex was the first to move. He pushed himself up from his hands and knees, his entire body screaming in protest. Every muscle fiber felt like it had been torn and re-fused, and the Qi in his dantian was a shallow, sputtering puddle. But his physical resilience and massive reserves had left him with just enough to function. He looked at his friends.
Jay was slumped against the base of a tree he'd crashed into, his sabre lying in the dirt beside him, his face pale under a layer of grime. Elara was on one knee, her cutlass planted in the ground like a crutch, her shoulders trembling from Qi exhaustion. Lily was sitting in the mud, her head in her hands, her whip a slack coil at her side.
He stumbled over to Lily first, his legs feeling like lead. He pulled out a mid-grade Recovery Pill from his storage ring, his fingers holding it clumsily.
"Lily," he said, his voice a hoarse rasp. "You alright?"
She looked up, her usual sharp gaze clouded with fatigue. She took the pill without a word, popping it into her mouth. "Define… alright," she managed to gasp out between breaths.
He didn't wait for a better answer. He moved to Jay next. "Jay, talk to me."
Jay looked up, forcing a weak grin that was more of a grimace. "I think… it cracked a rib," he wheezed. "Or… all of them." Alex pushed another pill into his hand.
He finally knelt beside Elara. Her face was ashen, her lips tinged with blue from pushing her ice abilities to their absolute limit. "Elara?"
She just gave a slow, tired nod, her eyes a dazed relief. He handed her another recovery pill.
They sat in silence for a long moment, the warm, pure energy of Alex's masterfully crafted pills flowing through their meridians. It was a potent, immediate relief, knitting together torn muscles and replenishing a significant chunk of their spent Qi. The trembling in Elara's shoulders subsided. Jay's ragged breaths evened out.
It was Lily who broke the quiet, a short, humorless laugh escaping her lips. "Well," she said, pushing herself to her feet and looking at the impaled monster. "That was more trouble than that, "'D-Rank' Marshlurker."
"That was a peak A-Rank, at least," Jay grunted, getting to his own feet with a groan. He looked at the mangled corpse, then back at his friends, a new, hard-won light in his eyes. "We shouldn't have won that."
"But we did," Elara said, her voice soft but firm. She met Jay's gaze, and a profound, unspoken understanding passed between them. "Because you held. When that thing charged, Jay, you held your ground."
Jay just nodded, a quiet pride cutting through his exhaustion. He looked over at Lily. "And your razors bought us the time we needed."
Lily just scoffed, though a faint blush touched her cheeks. "Someone had to. Alex was just standing there, thinking. Probably about what kind of soup he could make from its antlers."
Alex ignored her, his attention already on their prize. "Speaking of which…" He drew his utility knife. "We can't leave this here. The hide, the antlers… There could be a fortune sitting on those spikes."
Lily's fatigue vanished, replaced instantly by the instinct of a merchant who'd just found a gold mine. She drew her own sharp skinning knife. "Right. No time to waste. This thing is a walking treasury." She gestured to the grotesque, half-blighted body. "Alex, your blade work has gotten cleaner. Help me with this. Cut away any of the corrupted parts, the green veins, and the fungi. No merchant will touch anything tainted with that blight. It's worthless."
"Right," Alex agreed. "No point hauling rotten meat back to the sect."
He began to work alongside her with a practiced, efficient silence. As he carved away a chunk of the hide pulsing with sickly green light, he hesitated for a fraction of a second. This stuff… It feels wrong, but the energy signature is so unique. What if I could find a use for it? Or a way to purify it?
His alchemist's curiosity, the part of him that took joy in learning new things and pushing himself, overrode his caution. While Lily was focused on carving a clean piece of the scorched hide, he discreetly slipped the corrupted chunk of flesh and a piece of the petrified, claw-like antler into his storage ring leaving the private experiment for another day.
Finally, he moved to extract the beast's core. As he carved into its chest, he felt a powerful, pure energy, completely unlike the tainted core of the Marshlurker. This energy felt ancient and full of vibrant life.
Using his Immortal Eyes, he saw it. The core was not just a crystallized mass of Qi like what he had seen before. It was a shimmering, emerald-green orb, and at its very center, a tiny, sleeping silhouette of the stag was visible. He immediately recognized it from the scrolls he had read.
He pulled the core free. It was warm to the touch and seemed to thrum with a life of its own.
"Guys…" he said, his voice quiet with awe. "I think this is it. It's a Beast Will."
The emerald core rested in Alex's palm, pulsing with a gentle warmth and a life force so potent it seemed to push back against the grim stench of the battlefield. At its heart, the tiny stag silhouette slept, a legendary treasure in a world where power was everything.
Jay, Elara, and Lily gathered around, their gazes locked on the orb, their ragged breaths forgotten. For a long, heavy moment, the only sound was the soft, almost imperceivable thrumming of the core itself.
It was Lily who broke the spell, her voice a low, pragmatic hiss that cut through their collective awe. "A Beast Will… Do you have any idea how much something like this is worth? We could buy our own inner sect pavilion with the spirit stones from this." She tore her gaze away from the core and looked at them, her expression sharp and calculating. "But that's a fool's trade. The real value is in the power. So, the question is… who takes it?"
The question hung in the air, a test heavier than any physical blow they had just endured.
Jay shook his head immediately, taking a half-step back as if the core were a hot coal. "Not me," he said, his voice firm with a conviction he hadn't possessed a month ago. "I'm still working on my foundation. I'm just now learning to infuse metal essence into my Qi. A raw power like that… it would shatter my control. My path should be forged with patience, not gifted." His gaze shifted to Elara. "You should take it. Your control is the best among us. You should be able to tame its wildness."
Elara's eyes widened, and she, too, shook her head, a look of profound certainty on her face. "My cultivation is about achieving stillness, Jay. A deep, quiet strength. A beast's will… its rage, its primal instinct… It's the opposite of my Dao. It would poison the very waters I'm trying to calm." She looked at Lily, a smile touching her lips. "You should have it, Lily. You have a warrior's spirit. That kind of wild, untamed power… it might suit you. It would make your Silent Gale Razor unstoppable."
Lily's breathing stammered for a beat. She looked from the core to her friends, a storm of conflict in her eyes. The offer was a straight path to the power she so desperately craved, a way to ensure she would never be left behind. The temptation was a physical ache in her chest. But then she looked at Alex. She remembered the spar with Kai Jin. She remembered the fight with Gao. She remembered the effortless way he had punched a monster's face into paste.
She let out a long, frustrated sigh that seemed to carry all of her ambition away with it. "Don't be an idiot," she snapped, though her voice lacked its usual bite. She gestured at Alex with her chin. "All three of us combined are barely a match for him. Giving me the Beast Will would be like handing a perfectly good spirit sword to a toddler when a grandmaster is standing right there." She crossed her arms, her decision made. "It's his. He landed the final blow, and he's probably the only one who might actually survive absorbing the damn thing. End of discussion."
Three pairs of eyes settled on Alex. He was their unofficial leader, their ever-strange anomaly. The decision, arrived at not through greed but through a selfless, logical assessment of their strengths, was unanimous. The prize was his.
Alex looked down at the core in his hand, then at the exhausted but trusting faces of his friends. He saw their sacrifice, their immediate willingness to put his strength ahead of their own. He thought of Lumen's insatiable appetite, the constant, grinding need for more spirit stones to fuel his growth. He thought of the pills they would all need, the better weapons, the stronger armor, as they continued to survive in this world.
An immediate, personal power-up was tempting. But a shared fortune was a foundation
Alex looked down at the core in his hand, then at the exhausted but trusting faces of his friends. An immediate, personal power-up was tempting. But a shared fortune was a foundation.
He closed his hand over the core, the warmth of it seeping into his skin, and with a thought, sent it into his storage ring. "No one's taking it."
His friends stared, their expressions a mixture of shock and confusion.
"What do you mean, no one?" Lily demanded, her voice incredulous. "We just agreed it was yours!"
"And I'm saying we sell it," Alex countered, his voice calm and firm. "Lily's right. This thing is a mountain of spirit stones waiting to happen. Absorbing it now is a huge risk. Jay, you're right, your foundation isn't ready. Elara, it would clash with your Dao. And me..." He shrugged, a weary but practical smile on his face. "I just had a breakthrough. I need to stabilize what I have. A sudden surge like this could do more harm than good."
He looked at each of them in turn, his gaze holding the quiet authority he had earned in the crucible of their battles. "We'll sell it when we get back to the sect. And we can split the profits four ways. Equally. No arguments."
Lily, Jay, and Elara looked at each other. They saw no greed in his eyes, only a simple, unshakable will that prioritized the group's long-term survival over his own immediate gain.
Lily let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "You're turning down a Beast Will… for money?" She shook her head. "You really are from another world." But there was a deep, new respect in her voice. They all nodded in agreement.
A quiet, shared understanding settled over the group. The argument was over before it had even truly begun. With the priceless core now safely stowed, they focused on the grim reality of their own battered bodies. Alex passed around another round of his recovery pills. They sat in a tight, defensive circle amidst the carnage, the warm, pure energy of the medicine a welcome contrast to the cold stench of death that hung in the air. An hour passed in near silence, the only sounds the rustle of leaves and the slow, steady return of their strength as their bodies knit themselves back together. Lumen, who had been watching silently from a high branch, glided down and dropped a non-corrupted berry at Elara's feet, a strange, intelligent gesture of comfort.
It was then that they noticed the silence. The distant sounds of battle, the roars, the explosions of Qi, had completely vanished.
"What's going on?" Elara asked, her voice laced with a renewed urgency. "It's too quiet. We should be able to hear something from here."
Lily's eyes narrowed, her hand gripping her whip. "Quiet is worse. Quiet means the fight is over. The only question is… who won?"
Spurred by a cold dread, they abandoned all caution and broke into a frantic, dead sprint through the corpse-strewn forest, their hearts pounding with a terrible uncertainty. They burst through the final treeline onto a high ridge overlooking the main contingent's camp. The sight that greeted them was not one of a desperate, ongoing battle, but of its devastating conclusion.
The Grand Azure Ward was gone. In its place were the shattered remnants of the white purification flags and the scorch marks of the Radiant Sun Array—a massive, hollow ring of cleansed earth. The sea of undead had been reduced to scattered, twitching body parts and dissipating clouds of black vapor.
In the center of it all, Kai Jin's vanguard unit stood amidst the wreckage. They were not fighting. They were waiting. Talia leaned on her greatsword, breathing heavily. Ren was wiping black ichor from his daggers. Kira calmly inspected one of her sais. They looked battered and exhausted, but they were victorious.
Alex's group skidded to a halt on the ridge, taking in the scene with a mixture of relief and profound inadequacy. They had just fought the single hardest battle of their lives against one monster. Kai Jin's team, in the same amount of time, had helped stop an entire army.
Kai Jin spotted them. His usual boisterous grin was absent, replaced by a weary but satisfied expression.
Talia saw them and let out a short, rough laugh. She walked over to Kai Jin and gave him a solid slap on the back that would have sent a lesser man tumbling. "See? Told you the kids would be fine," she grunted, a new, grudging respect in her eyes.
Kai Jin chuckled, his gaze finally settling on the four juniors. "Glad you could finally join us," he called out, his voice a low rumble that carried across the clearing. He gestured with his chin towards the few remaining undead stragglers that were now being efficiently dispatched by Feng's Silver-Winged team in the distance. "Now, get to work. The cleanup crew has arrived."
Alex looked down at the field of carnage, then at his friends. The battle was over. They were safe. But as he watched the distant, effortless flashes of Feng's firestorms incinerating the last of the enemy, he understood. They weren't late for the fight. They just hadn't been invited to the real one.