Four days had passed for Yuanchen as well since he got to Sunderfall and merged with Shengyuan.
During his rests, Yuanchen would constantly be assaulted by a dream of a man standing at the peak of the world. He knew from memory that the person there was not him but the thing he had merged with. Sometimes he would wake up with a fragmented dream that caused him headaches.
Yuanchen sat on the creaking porch, listening to the sound of the trash machines grinding trash. In his line of sight were the struggling people of the Abyssal, a region within Sunderfall. The impoverished lands riddled with waste and unwanted things from Heaven's Feel garnered sympathy from him.
In his hand, he held a blue sphere with a red button and he watched it intently. For the longest time, he did not have a way to cultivate, but he was thankful to have picked up forging and encrypting what he forged with a core much similar to trash beasts.
Thinking about trash beasts.
Yuanchen reached into his robe and took out the core pulsating with Qi — his eyes observed the core and the intricate designs. Researchers of their time had classified it as an anomaly that created itself, but Yuanchen knew otherwise.
Got an idea? He projected his thoughts in his mind.
He was met with a brief silence and was about to discard ever asking when Shengyuan's deep voice hummed in his mind.
Shengyuan observed the core through Yuanchen's eyes. "From what I can feel, this is similar to alchemy in my world, but diluted."
Yuanchen placed a hand on his chin.
Alchemy huh? He mused. Alchemy in this modern age was a lost practice that a few still clung to because the world had moved away from dependency on alchemy.
"I can't say for sure, it feels familiar," Shengyuan expressed.
How so?
"I am unsure. Also, your female friend is here. Best hide that."
Yuanchen's body, which had slumped when he engaged in conversation with Shengyuan, straightened and his eyes gained their light — he quickly shoved the core into his robes and got up to meet Lia as she was about to return any moment.
He was about to turn and face the gate when he was startled by Lia.
Lia gazed at him and smiled a bit before falling face first to the ground. Blood pooled around her and Yuanchen quickly jumped into action. In a blink, he was by her side and he gazed at her.
She was pale, a sign of her losing a significant amount of blood.
Without thinking twice, he scooped Lia into his arms and ran into the leaning house.
Yuanchen placed her on the mattress and rolled up the sleeve of his robe — he looked at her chest and saw the culprit: the bloodstain on her stomach. Without worry of seeing her exposed, Yuanchen tore open her jacket and his lips thinned.
There was a gaping hole in her stomach and blood was leaking like a river.
"Damon! Get me water and bandages!" he yelled to Lia's little brother, who was in the kitchen.
---
Yuanchen sighed as he slumped into the chair, the growing wood almost giving out underneath his weight. His hands and robes were stained with blood — he wiped the sweat off his forehead and watched the sleeping woman.
A lone thought crossed his mind.
Why?
Yuanchen, as much as he tried to comprehend why, found his reasoning in that moment insufficient — like he had no reason as to why he had stuck his neck out and saved her. He settled on one thought: it was just repayment for her allowing him to stay in their little house free of charge.
But the pressing matter was, who could've wounded her this badly and for what reason?
His eyes wandered to the woman and then to her bag. He reached for the bag and something fell out of it — something heavy. Yuanchen leaned down and grabbed the item only to drop it again, clutching his cybernetic hand.
The item he grabbed caused a disturbance within his arm, cutting the connection between the arm's technology and his brain, reducing the hand to being a lump of steel attached to him.
Yuanchen observed the object. "An electromagnetic emitter. Wonder what she was doing with this." His eyes returned to the sleeping woman.
The silence within the house was disrupted by a loud crash and the snapping of wood against something heavy — the sounds did not end there as Damon shot past the door to Lia's room and his body hit the other side of the house with a loud thud, followed by his cry of pain.
Yuanchen immediately got up and went into the living area of the house — his eyes slightly widened. The entire front of the house was in ruins, the wood from the roof hung too low, the door was missing and the entire wall section was now an open space before him. Standing at the entrance of the masterpiece were three men dressed in red armor covering them from head to toe. In their hands they held weapons that even Yuanchen was unfamiliar with.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" Yuanchen asked while he made his way to Damon to check on him.
"We are members of the Red Clad, and we are looking for Ciaxin. Do you know where we can find her?" one of the men clad in red announced in a deep voice.
Yuanchen's expression soured, his eyes momentarily flickering to the room across from him where the woman rested — he looked at the unconscious Damon and held the young boy in his hands while he got up. "No, I don't know anything."
The man who had answered his question shook his head. "Pity. But word of caution — my eyes can see through... LIES!" the man declared as he crossed the distance between him and Yuanchen in a heartbeat, swinging his sword downward.
Yuanchen raised his hand and grabbed the blade — the clang of steel against steel echoed through the house and he felt the pressure of the attack as his knees slightly buckled.
Martial arts! he cursed in his mind while he pushed away the attacker, shielding Damon from the strike.
The leader of the Red Clad landed next to his platoon and they looked at each other before charging at Yuanchen, swords blazing and poised to kill.
Yuanchen sidestepped the first attack by an inch — the sword cut through his robes as a testament to his narrow sidestep. He could barely get breathing room as another came swinging from the side and he preemptively blocked with his cybernetic hand, wincing at the force behind the attack.
Yuanchen couldn't recover in time to parry the third attacker, giving the man a clear hit on him — he winced when he felt the sharp tip of the sword carve a path across his back and he was forced to jump to gain some separation between him and the men in red armor.
He knew that he could not afford to fight with Damon in his arms.
Yuanchen disappeared into Lia's room and placed the unconscious boy on the bed alongside his sister.
"I'll be back in a moment."
One of the men clad in red chased after him, only for his body to come flying out of the bedroom and slam into the opposite wall, much to the shock of the other two who looked at the entrance to the bedroom Yuanchen had disappeared into — what they saw made them quake in their boots.
Yuanchen took slow steps out of the bedroom, Qi radiating from his body in waves. His eyes morphed into another set of pigment, having lost their baby blue color, replaced by blood crimson almost as if he stared into their souls. His look made him appear like a demon from fables to the attackers.
"You have ten seconds to leave," Yuanchen said, his voice a double of him and Shengyuan.
"A Neuro-Qi cultivator!" the leader cursed under his breath loud enough for Yuanchen to hear — they were chasing after a lowly girl who had stolen something from them, and he had never anticipated meeting someone with such an overwhelming force.
"Not quite."
The leader blinked and the next thing he knew, his ears were stinging from the wind rushing and pushing against him. His eyes focused on his surroundings and he saw the man they had attacked beneath him. He looked to his sides and saw his men flying through the air.
What happened?
How did he get there?
The leader's assessment went further as he took a look at himself — his specially created armor had some of its plates destroyed and on his stomach, a palm print drew itself. But how? He still couldn't comprehend what had happened to him and his team.
And he might never will.
Yuanchen watched as the men crashed into the pile of metal, the sharp struts of the scaffolding piercing through them, ending their lives. He collapsed to his knees and vomited after he witnessed the gruesome way they died. He had only cast the palm strike again and his aim was to repel the attackers, not kill them.
A moment lapsed and Yuanchen got to his feet.
With their deaths, he knew that they would be wanted and as such—
They needed to move.