“Alex!”

Alex’s manic glee turned to desperate focus when seconds stretched to hours and Hao Chan buckled and writhed under a storm of potency no flawed cultivation base could hope to endure. Not even when her channels were so wide, her potential so unlimited that she might one day ascend as a Jade Queen upon the board of fate.

And Alex couldn’t help laugh in bittersweet triumph as his soul howled with the agony of potency he only let trickle into the girls he loved, even as his Oath of Enmity, so dark and bitter that Fate’s Nemesis card had automatically come into play, revealed all the secrets of his enemy. Every trick and trap and cloaked subterfuge Shalu had shoved his diseased bloated hands in over countless years.

Alex only now recognizing Shalu’s mark upon the scars of his beloved Hao Chan’s mind, thinking nothing of tearing free a Spirit Wujen’s deadly fog with the inconceivable potency they now fed upon, synergized with Hao Chan’s own growing mastery of a divine cultivation technique.

Eternal Fox has been successfully synergized with Jade tier Card of Fate. Your chosen mate has successfully pierced her enemy’s veil!

Hidden Affinity detected!

And in a single heartbeat, everything changed.

Changed as Hao Chan’s childhood memories of a larger than life figure bedecked in exotic ebony scaled armaments radiating a divine blessing Alex almost thought he recognized, certain only that the armor and countless magical treasures the imposing figure wore had no modern equal, sat upon a massive throne of Jade, glaring down at a trembling king who had dared to truck with the forbidden. A powerful Gold shaking before the might of Hao Chan’s father, kowtowing as if he were the lowest of servants as he shrieked for mercy when her sire’s cold logic pierced all the man’s prevarications and lies… before the desperately howling Gold was absolutely obliterated by a massive bolt of Lightning so violent and unforgiving that not even ash remained.

Lightning which now echoed through countless foot jabs, shin strikes and reverse roundhouse kicks, exploding off Hao Chan’s fists when she pummeled Alex with elbow bombs and spinning backfists, crackling from the edge of her blade when ko-naginata slammed against fangtian ji the instant before the air exploded in a storm of lightning.

Together in a realm as much transcendent reality as dream, Alex took on the roll Silver Fox had once taken with him, as he forged Hao Chan through countless mock battles into the cultivator, the warrior, she was always meant to be.

The Path of Pearlescence remained in perfect harmony with this, her third element, as countless layers of Water and Steel were formed, with endless Lighting crackling in waves between them, flashing like a pulsar through the endless reaches of her own infinite potential.

And even as Hao Chan embraced the sweet purity of the storm, Yinzi embraced the dark caress of Oblivion itself, limbs sheathed in Dark Qi, her deadly Black Swan strikes coming ever closer to kissing the forbidden as the pair of girls embraced the memories of countless hundreds of hours training together to channel the impossible storm of potential now flooding through their souls, their unique path all that allowed them to ascend from the faintest glimmer of bronze to the pristine durability of a hammer hardened blade in a single endless moment that lasted for months as a portion of the experience of half a thousand cultivators became their own, when any other path would have left them mindless husks by the overwhelming storm of potency flooding through their souls.

Congratulations! You have successfully channeled excess potency into skills!

Thunderstrike is now Rank 4.

Spiritual Teacher is now Rank 7.

White Crane kung fu is now Rank 8.

Golden Realms kung fu is now Rank 8.

White Crane, Golden Realms, and Silver Swan martial arts have been successfully unified as Eternal Fox kung fu. This art involving the mastery of movement, Qi flow, and battle is the cornerstone of the Path of Pearlescence.

Eternal Fox Unified Cultivation Manual has been automatically updated with Eternal Fox kung fu at Rank 8 proficiency.

Eternal Fox Unified Cultivation Manual has been automatically updated with the Path of Pearlescence.

This unorthodox cultivation Path allows for limited techniques outside its focus.

The potential of this path is presently limited to Gold Sheen.

Requirements of this path: (Water and / or 3 unified Dark Qi Elements) + (Wood and / or Metal.) Lightning optional.

Note. Physical purity must be maintained until Silver Sheen is achieved.

Party Member: Yinzi has achieved Rank 6 Bronze Sheen.

Unified Martial Art incorporating Golden Realms, Silver Swan, and White Crane (Eternal Fox kung fu) is now Rank 8.

Black Swan is now Rank 5. Party Member: Yinzi is ready to learn Forbidden Techniques Under your Guidance!

Dark Qi Projection is now Rank 4.

Qi Deflection is now Rank 3

Piercing Strike (Spell Cleave) is now Rank 3

Shadow Jump is now Rank 3

Water Walking is now Rank 3

Eternal Fox is now Rank 6!

(Maximum non-perception based techniques reached until Gold sheen has been achieved.)

Congratulations!

Party Member: Hao Chan has achieved Rank 5 Bronze Sheen.

Unified Martial Art incorporating Golden Realms, Silver Swan, and White Crane (Eternal Fox kung fu) is now Rank 8.

Thunderstrike is now Rank 5.

Silver Wing is now Rank 5.

Black Swan is now Rank 3.

Qi Deflection is now Rank 3

Piercing Strike (Spell Cleave) is now Rank 3

Water Walking is now Rank 3

Storm Flight is now Rank 3

Eternal Fox is now Rank 6!

(Maximum non-perception based techniques reached until Gold sheen has been achieved.)

Congratulations!

Party Member: Tree of Wisdom has blossomed with +1 tier Divine Fruit!

“Alex, we did it!” warm throaty laughter filled with awe and wonder washed over Alex as he came back to himself, feeling as if countless weeks had passed in the blink of an eye.

And all the awful memories he had sought to push away with the madness of battle and losing himself in a cultivating trance with his disciples, suddenly came flooding back to him as he caught a whiff of air ripe with the stench of evergreens, blood, and ash. Struck anew by memories of Zhu Bi’s winsome smile, her playful laughter, how tightly she held the smiling merchant who had become her husband, the sweet happy ending she seemed all but fated for, cruelly and deliberately torn from her grasp and replaced by the killing flames of a spite-filled god Alex swore to himself he would one day destroy.

Because the girl he had loved as a little sister… no, as a granddaughter, for all that he himself was barely twenty… his little Zhu Bi, was dead.

Alex swallowed, fists clenched, doing his best to hold back the pain he felt from the girl he loved, focusing only on what mattered.

“You’re damn right we did!” he said, forcing a smile that became all the more genuine when he took a good look at the girls before him, awed by just how incredibly far they had come.

But not without terrible cost. Though fortunately, it had been paid in full by foes who had been eager for their deaths.

Alex looked at the kill zone where five hundred frenzied cultivators had charged forward, hungry for slaughter.

Now they were all just piles of superheated ash billowing in a hellish inferno trapped within the massive forcefield structure Alex had created. Caught in the inconcievably hot fires of the Gold Wujen Alex had taunted to a killing fury. The only survivor of that maelstrom, glaring at Alex with his serpentine eyes through the forcefield even now, completely unaffected by the whirling storm of fire and ash surrounding him.

Unquestionably the deadliest foe Alex had ever fought in the realm of the living, a man that had come so close to killing him that it didn’t bear thinking about. Alex held back a shiver as the blazing Gold glared back at him through the barrier, the man’s killing aura a crushing weight Alex forced himself to endure, for all that both legs and his right arm tingling with remembered flame even now.

Hao Chan shivered, chuckling softly. “I’ve never felt such power coursing through my limbs as I do now, my heart.” she swallowed nervously. “Nor have I ever felt such fear.”

Yinzi laughed. “Oh you are so right, sister! Look at that Gold Wujen’s hate! There he is, floating over the blazing remains of five hundred of his own men that we goaded him into killing, and you just know he wants nothing more than to watch us burn to ash, just like all our victims at his feet!”

Her mad gleeful gaze then caught sight of a shocked-looking handful of surviving soldiers holding dao and shields in trembling grips, just a short distance away. The very few invaders cautious enough not to charge headlong into a trap, for all that Alex had no doubt those heavily armored men would have happily butchered every last one of Alex’s people, if they had thought they could get away with it.

“Don’t you feel it, Hao Chan? A thousand boring black and white lessons suddenly blooming into brilliant color in your soul? Come, sister! I do believe I see a fresh canvas upon which we can paint a masterwork for our beloved mentor!”

Alex couldn’t help chuckling, grateful that his Yinzi, at least, hadn’t been broken by the horror of the battlefield and by what they had endured. And he didn’t blame her for an instant, turning what could have been panic into a furious, manic glee. He was surprised, however, to see an equally hungry smile upon Hao Chan’s features, now holding her ko-naginata as if it were an extension of herself, as she arched one elegant eyebrow Alex’s way.

“Husband?”

He flushed and smiled at that word, before glaring at the double handful of reds, not a one of whom had broke through to Silver. “Go for it,” was all he said, happy to watch when a giggling Yinzi began sprinting in the wrong direction... before leaping into the shadow of a nearby tree as their opponents gazed on with furrowed brows. Such that they didn’t see her spring forth from the inky darkness by the forest’s edge, right behind the wide-eyed reds who began hooting and hollering and banging swords against shields, as if they thought Alex and the girls’ nerves were breaking, and they could cow the three of them into a retreat.

Before shouting with surprise that turned into screams of fear, then the choking gurgles of death, as Yinzi’s ko-naginata flickered and weaved between her foes, effortlessly leveraging aside desperately parrying daos before darting forth like a snake to slip over the rim of tightly gripped shields, caressing the invaders in showers of crimson as they stumbled back and crashed to the ground.

But it was only seconds before a handful of what had once been highly trained soldiers broke away and began circling around Yinzi, getting ready to strike her in tandem from the rear. Jack tingled with the pent up power of a half dozen Bullrushes he’d unleash in a moment if he had to… before smiling wide and easing the grip on his power as his beloved dancer raced through the air as fast as a hawk could fly, shouting an imperial war cry as her naginata cleaved through the air, her target’s head exploding in lightning and gore.

In less than a minute it was over, Hao Chan and Yinzi moving like graceful ballerinas before a sea of stumbling drunkards, all of their foes crashing to the ground by the time their armor had turned from the mahogany sheen of copper plated steel to the bright arterial red of freshly spilled blood.

Alex smiled with pride for them both when they raced back to his side, Yinzi leaping through the shadows, and Hao Chan sprinting through the air, or what he suspected was the moisture through the air, with an ease and grace already beyond his own abilities, no matter that she was just Rank 3 in her movement skills, integral as they were to her cultivation path.

Yinzi was positively bubbly. “Mother always says a technique isn’t proven until it’s been forged in the crucible of battle, but after all those months we spent training together, it felt like those soldiers were tumbling over themselves like drunken fools!”

Hao Chan winced, having the grace to pale when she caught sight of her own handiwork… before her beautiful gaze hardened with renewed resolve. “Those monsters would have happily violated both of us, if they had had the chance. Two had the gall to threaten just that, before I relieved them of their heads.” She flashed a bitter smile. “I might hate myself by tomorrow morning, but all I feel now is triumph!” She raised her blood-covered naginata high. “We defended our people and killed every one of those bastards! We’re heroes!”

Yinzi laughed aloud. “Heroes covered in our enemies’ blood. The best kind of heroes!” She then frowned down at the impossibly blue tiles of her armor. “Of course I guess it helps if you’re wearing armor that even a princess would envy.”

Hao Chan nodded, admiring the seafoam green triangle tiles of her own magical treasure. “And the blood just flows right off. But I think we’ll have to clean our naginatas the hard way.” She shivered, shaking her head in sudden chagrin. “And it shouldn’t be so easy for me to make comments like that.”

But Yinzi was happily humming away as she carefully wiped her naginata head with a cloth soaked in strong spirits, whistling with admiration. “What I can’t believe is how ridiculously well-honed this blade is, and not a single nick in its micro-serrated edge. I mean, look at this, Chan!”

With those words she carefully rested her cleaning rag upon the edge of the blade. And with the tiniest jerk of her shaft, so gentle it was more a shiver than anything else, the cloth was effortlessly sheered in twain by its own weight.

“I mean, this isn’t just sharp, this is absurdly so! Frankly, a blade this sharp shouldn’t survive more than a single swing at the chopping block, but we were happily plunging our naginatas through steel plates, which itself should be impossible without Qi attacks before we hit Bronze tier Strength and Speed… but of course, we have! And how exciting is that?”

Alex smiled. “That’s because I hardened those weapons to indestructibility by plunging them into spirit beasts, not that long ago.”

Yinzi blinked. “You can do that? And wouldn’t that itself damage the blade?”

Alex nodded. “If it’s a greater spirit beast, or you have the artificer skill and can directly absorb a lesser beast core into the forging, then it’s all good. And the temporary invulnerability Adderstrike or Silver Swan gives our weapons with a successful skill check means that the edge stays intact through the spiritual tempering. But um...you also have to be, well, a virgin when you do it.”

Yinzi blinked. “Really.”

Alex blushed. “Well, yeah. Sort of a closed looped potential kind of thing. And why they hell are you smirking? All three of us are walking the path of the ridiculously chaste, and will be until we all reach Silver.”

“Which you already have,” said Yinzi, biting her lip with a particularly wicked grin.

Alex laughed, “Indeed I have,” he admitted. “And the incredible rush of possessing a body with strength beyond your wildest dreams, so quick you can move before a slower cultivator can even blink, graceful enough to leap and flip through the air just as you can visualize it, is a rush that almost makes everything that happened worth it.” Alex swallowed the sudden bitter bile in his throat. “Almost.”

Yinzi happily nodded in agreement, though a perceptive Hao Chan’s armored hand gently squeezed his own. “Alex, when you say almost… what’s wrong, my heart?”

Alex took a deep, trembling breath. He knew it was time to tell them. Though as they were currently unprotected by any force-field or shelter, he was prudent enough to give his surroundings a quick once-over, smelling both the crisp scents of pine and wildflowers as well as the sickly sweet stench of charred flesh and, in the distance, burning wood. The lush green grass of the clearing had been trampled, fallen bodies strewn haphazardly, and in the center of it all was the massive pyramidal capped cube of forcefields, filled with flame and a furious-looking fire cultivator.

His forest sense and Qi Perception also pinged no hostiles in the area, save for the one glaring so intently at him, and he knew he was delaying. Because he didn’t know how to say it, how to convey the sharp pain in his heart, whenever his mind flashed upon the bright eyes and mischievous smile of the cheerful girl who had so touched his soul. So he said the only thing he could.

“Zhu Bi was part of the second trading party heading to Erjizhen.”

Alex couldn’t bear the sudden silence. Even Yinzi had stopped her humming, gazing at Alex with horrified disbelief.

Before stumbling back, shaking her head furiously. “No. No! Your granddaughter is kitsune, Alex. Kitsune! And… and she’s my friend.” Yinzi swallowed, suddenly glaring at him. “My friends aren’t allowed to die, Alex! Why do you think I have so few of them? So Zhu Bi must have hidden in Shadow. She must have escaped. She must have!”

“Yinzi...” Alex’s voice was heavy with the grief he had tried so furiously to push away. He knew exactly how Yinzi felt. But the beautiful kitsune before him wasn’t having it. With flashing ruby eyes and an angry shake of her head, she began racing for the original gate, swerving unerringly for the charred patch of ground where the original ambush had taken place.

Alex gave a sympathetic looking Hao Chan a pained look. She gently squeezed his hand, tears running freely down her own cheeks. “Let her do this, Alex. She needs closure. I think… we all do.”

It was true. And nothing Alex could say or do would deter Yinzi as she raced ahead, Alex and Hao Chan keeping stride, for all that Alex’s belly roiled with anxiety that only grew as they approached the sight Alex knew they had been ambushed at… and it was just as bad as he had feared.