The forest was silent, save for the wet sound of the apple peel hitting the dirt.
Rylan stood at the edge of the clearing, his heart hammering against his ribs—not from fear, but from the violent instability of his own Dantian. Every breath felt like inhaling glass.
High above, Elara twisted slowly in the wind, suspended by shimmering threads of energy. Blood dripped from her hand, tapping rhythmically onto the leaves below.
"Who are you?" Rylan asked, his voice rasping.
The man in grey leathers didn't look up from his apple. "Does it matter? I'm the man holding the string. You're the man who wants the puppet back."
He gestured with his dagger toward the invisible distortion in the air between them.
"This is a Rejection Array," the man explained casually, slicing a piece of fruit. "Standard mercenary kit. It detects active spiritual energy. If you try to flash-step in here, or fire one of those fancy wind claws I heard about... snap." He mimicked a cutting motion. "The threads tighten. Your little bird loses her head."
Rylan kept his Qi contained. The sensing threads began at the clearing's edge, and Elara's suspension line ran through an exposed iron lever at the mercenary's tree. If he crossed that boundary with his aura active, she would die before he reached her. He memorized the lever's position, then looked back at the man's knife.
Combat: Impossible. Any use of Qi triggers the trap and kills Elara.
System: Blocked.
Allies: Lyra is still on the approach. If he waits, the mercenary might get bored—or desperate.
"What do you want?" Rylan asked.
"The manual," the mercenary said, pointing the knife at Rylan. "The Azure Dragon's Breath. I know you took it from Lin. Toss it over. Then I cut the girl down."
Rylan hesitated. The manual was his path to power. Without it, his Foundation Establishment was hollow. But Elara...
She had slept beside a door because she had not trusted him. Yesterday she had taken an order from him and gone into this forest. He could not let the thought of the manual push that responsibility aside.
"If I give it to you," Rylan said coldly, "you will kill us both anyway."
The mercenary shrugged. "Maybe. But right now, you have zero percent chance. If you toss the book, you get maybe... ten percent? I'm a gambling man."
He stood up, walking over to the tree trunk where the array's anchor line was tied. He placed the blade against the rope holding Elara.
"Three seconds," the mercenary said. "One."
Rylan didn't think. He didn't consult the System.
He reached into his inventory, pulled out the azure scroll, and threw it.
The scroll sailed through the air, landing in the dirt inside the array.
The mercenary grinned. "Good dog."
He stepped away from the tree to pick up the scroll.
Rylan moved.
He didn't use Qi. He didn't use a skill. He simply ran.
Without spiritual enhancement, he wasn't a blur of motion. He was just a fit, athletic man sprinting across uneven ground. The pain in his internal organs was blinding; his unstable Dantian throbbed with every footfall, demanding to be released, demanding he use power.
Hold it in, Rylan screamed internally. Don't leak a drop.
He burst into the array. The atmospheric pressure inside was immense, designed to weigh down intruders. It felt like walking underwater.
The mercenary looked up, scroll in hand, surprised by Rylan's speed without spiritual aid. He sneered and lashed out with his dagger.
"Stupid!"
Rylan didn't dodge. Dodging took too much time.
He took the blade.
The jagged dagger punched through Rylan's left shoulder, grinding against the bone.
The pain was absolute. It turned Rylan's vision white. But it also anchored him.
Rylan didn't scream. He didn't stop. He used the momentum of the stab to slam his body into the mercenary, driving them both into the dirt.
His right hand went past the man's shoulder to the iron lever. He drove it down and tore the thin copper control tongue out of its notch. The taut loop at Elara's neck slackened; the line above her still held. Rylan looked up to make certain before he reached for the mercenary again. The man pulled at the dagger and ripped the wound wider.
"You..." the mercenary gasped, trying to pull the knife out for a second strike.
Rylan's right hand—his dominant hand—clamped onto the mercenary's throat.
Now.
The lethal linkage was broken. Rylan could release Qi now, though the support array would still react.
"Release," Rylan whispered.
He vented his unstable, chaotic Qi directly through his palm.
It wasn't a technique. It was an explosion. The pent-up, boiling energy that had been destroying Rylan's insides found an exit. It surged into the mercenary's neck like a bolt of lightning.
CRUNCH.
The mercenary's eyes burst. The blast destroyed his throat and the base of his skull. His grip fell from the dagger.
[Ding! Target Eliminated.]
[Combat Style: Brutal.]
Above them, the array shrieked as the spiritual energy hit it. The threads tightened instantly.
SNAP.
The rope holding Elara was severed. She fell twenty feet.
Rylan rolled off the corpse, ignoring the dagger still sticking out of his shoulder, and threw himself forward. He caught her—awkwardly, painfully—his body taking the brunt of the impact against the hard earth.
He lay there, gasping, blood soaking his tunic from the shoulder wound, bile rising in his throat.
Elara groaned, her eyes fluttering open. She looked at him, then at the dagger in his shoulder.
"Master..." she whimpered, tears streaking the dirt on her face. She tried to reach for him, but her hand—her scouting hand—was a mangled mess of purple and blue. "I... I failed."
Rylan gritted his teeth and sat up, ripping the hem of his robe to bind his shoulder around the blade. He didn't pull it out; that would cause him to bleed out.
"You didn't fail," Rylan said, his voice devoid of warmth, replaced by a cold, terrifying possessiveness.
He looked at her broken fingers. Three of them were bent at unnatural angles.
Rylan looked at the dead mercenary, then back to Elara. He reached out with his good hand, wiping the tears from her face, smearing blood on her cheek in the process.
"You're alive," he said. "That's what matters now." He could not make the words undo the condition of her hand, and she did not stop shaking when he said them.
It wasn't the comfort she wanted. It was the truth of their world.
Rustling from the bushes. Lyra burst into the clearing, followed by two village scouts.
She stopped dead when she saw the scene. The disintegrated corpse. The hanging trap. Rylan, pale as a sheet, with a dagger handle protruding from his shoulder.
She didn't scream. She didn't rush to hug him.
Lyra walked over, her face a mask of professional calm, though her eyes were tight. She knelt beside him, opening her herbalist kit.
"Hold him," Lyra ordered the scouts. "This is going to hurt."
"Don't touch it," Rylan ordered, pushing the scouts away. He looked at Lyra. "Check Elara first. Her hands."
Lyra paused, looking between Rylan's life-threatening wound and Elara's crippled fingers.
"Your shoulder is—"
"Keep her warm and check the fingers," he said. "Then help me with the shoulder."
Lyra had already called one scout to hold the dressing. "She needs weeks," she told him. "You need to stop moving before you make this worse."
Rylan looked from the wound to Elara and sat where she pointed.
He stood up, swaying dangerously. He walked over to the corpse and kicked it over. He bent down and pried the Azure Dragon's Breath manual from the dead man's grip. It was stained with blood.
He put it back in his inventory.
"Burn the body," Rylan commanded the scouts. "Mark the place. Leave no part of him hanging where someone can use it to track us. Let the Jade Empire see what happens to their bounty hunters."
He turned to walk back to the village, refusing help, trailing blood with every step.
The interface offered a combat assessment. He closed it before reading the grade. His arm hung uselessly, Elara could not stand without help, and the walk home would take longer than the journey out.
Rylan read the notification and swiped it away.
He wasn't a hero. He was a man holding onto power by his fingernails, and today, he had almost lost his grip.