“In all fairness, all I did was outbid you,” Cade said, wincing. He could already tell coming here wasn’t going to achieve much. It seemed Jade was stuck in a phase where he was the enemy, and without Var Du Long—whom she implicitly trusted—there was no way he’d be able to convince her otherwise. The best he could hope for was not to antagonize her further.

  In all fairness, the princess's motives were pure. It wasn't her fault that Griswold was a worthless dreg.

  “Hmph. I don’t know what kind of sleazy tricks you used to worm your way into my good graces, but let me tell you, Senior Brother—I’m back to my old self now, and I won’t be fooled so easily!” Jade declared, determination hardening her expression.

  “Sure. Anyway, I’m happy the Princess is awake and feeling very energetic. In that case I'll excuse myself,” Cade smiled, turning around to leave.

  A shadow of doubt flickered across Jade’s face as she glanced hesitantly at her cousin, who shook her head with resignation.

  “Wait!” Jade called, clearing her throat. “I need to understand what has happened to me. Elisa told me you’re the only person who knows the cause of my current predicament,” she grumbled, pouting and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Oh? How would some sleazy fellow know anything useful?” Cade asked in an innocent tone.

  “You! Despic— Ouch!” Jade was about to launch into another tirade, but Amelia’s hand squeezed hers, apparently with no small amount of force. The princess huffed, then took a deep breath to calm herself down. “Can you please elaborate on what happened to me, Senior Brother?”

  “Since you ask so nicely, I’ll consider it,” Cade said. “However…” he glanced meaningfully at Jade’s cousin. “It’s probably best if the Princess listens first before deciding what to share with others.”

  Amelia didn’t seem angry at all. “It’s only right for you to respect Jade’s privacy,” she nodded with understanding.

  Jade appeared undecided at first but soon realized this was really for the best. “Thank you, Amelia. I’ll visit you once Elisa releases me,” she said warmly, and her cousin’s expression brightened. She promptly left the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Where would you like me to start?” Cade asked, settling in the chair next to Jade’s bed without so much as a glance for approval.

  The princess's brow furrowed. She muttered something, undoubtedly offensive, before forcing a stiff smile. “Please describe all your interactions with me, Senior Brother. From the beginning.”

  “Alright, this will take some time,” Cade said and began the tale. He presented only the objective facts, carefully omitting his brutal fights with the Shadow Dao Palace assassins and Castien. She probably wouldn't have believed him anyway, considering there were no witnesses. In his version, the half-dead had escaped after being discovered during his dark ritual.

  By the time his story reached the point where he led Jade out from the underground cave beneath the Well of Ancients, three hours had passed. The princess’s entire body shook with anger.

  “I don’t know who or what that Castien fellow is, but Father will destroy him!” she gritted out, shaking her small fist.

  “Yes, well… He’s not coming back anytime soon, that’s for certain,” Cade said, recalling how Castien’s Master’s shockwave nearly killed him.

  “And what happened next?” Jade asked curiously.

  “Nothing of note. I brought you back to the citadel. That’s pretty much the whole story, except for some minor, irrelevant details,” Cade smiled faintly. There was no way he would share what happened to Darkheart and certainly not disclose anything about Arthur and Roland’s grim fate. In her current state, Jade was one step away from turning on him, and he already had enough problems on his plate. Maybe the recording he took would convince her, but she’d quite possibly doubt its veracity as well. Truthfully, he just couldn't be bothered.

  “Mhm. Well, this is quite a tale, and I’ll have to look into all of it myself. If what you said is true, then I’ll definitely repay you. But make no mistake—I will confirm every single word,” Jade stated.

  “Well, in case you need further clarification, my token is linked to yours,” Cade said, standing up.

  “Yes, I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Senior Brother,” the princess offered him a rather stiff smile, signaling their conversation was over.

  He nodded and left the chamber. Once outside, Cade headed toward the transportation formation, exhaling in relief.

  Well, that could have gone worse. For now, he decided to shelve the matter of Jade’s memory loss and her current attitude towards him, which felt a bit more hostile and unreasonable than he expected. In any case, he had his own matters to focus on.

  After jumping inside the coffin, Cade realized he felt a lot better. His mind was now more at ease. It seemed the princess’s brain wasn’t damaged, other than a few months of lost memories. As Elisa had said, this was really not a bad outcome at all, though he thought it unlikely their previous friendship would return. Still, Jade appeared healthy, and that was great news. Cade could feel his Dao Heart grow steady once again. He had gone out of his way to keep his word, and he hadn't failed.

  Now was time to get back to his work. He swapped into his mind avatar and restarted the process of inscribing the diagram for the oppressive aura. Cade calculated that in order for the aura to work, he had to stack disabling pulses at very short intervals. However, the main issue was that the disabling pulse had a recharge period, likely due to how the spherules operated. It wasn’t too bad—around half a minute—but for his purposes, it was way too long.

  By lowering the pulse’s intensity, he managed to greatly reduce the ability’s recharge period, eventually arriving at a point where the pulses could finally start overlapping. He then inscribed them into a looping diagram, and his mind avatar glided backward, admiring his invention with no small amount of satisfaction.

  It should work! There are only two questions: how fast is the adaptation, and what’s the effective range. I need to test it on someone with decent cultivation. Even if it’s not very useful now, as long as I increase the number of spherules, the aura should proportionally grow in strength.

  As he was putting the finishing touches on the diagram, he sensed a message arriving on his monastery token. It was Aien, letting him know he had finished the translations for both death arts.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Cade’s face lit up—this was exactly what he’d been waiting for. After taking a quick bath—he didn’t want to smell like a butcher’s block—he headed straight for the training chambers, waving at Aien from a distance.

  “To be truthful, none of this makes any sense to me. I’m afraid you won’t be able to do much with it,” the young elf said after they greeted each other. “Still, I did as you asked. To be fair, your notes have really helped me improve my comprehension of this ancient Common dialect; the text is very clear and scholarly—perfect for dissection. I think I’ve got a grasp on it, so any future translations should go much faster,” he pulled a stack of pages from his storage ring and passed them over.

  “Perfect. Thank you,” Cade smiled with gratitude, swiping Aien’s translated work into the red band on his index finger.

  “Hey, it’s not like I did it free of charge. I wouldn’t really mind working on more, since you’re being so generous and all,” Aien grinned, prompting a short chuckle from Cade. Everyone liked a heavy purse full of beautiful, chiming crystals.

  They continued to chat for a few more minutes before the elven clerk was forced to return to work, as a small queue had already started forming behind them, and several disciples were growing impatient. Cade returned to his cultivation chamber, eager to read the elf’s translation. Sitting down at the heavy wooden desk, he immersed himself in Aien’s work, first focusing on the defensive art.

  It immediately became obvious why the elven scholar considered it nonsensical—the laws the death art used were antithetical to those typically used in a defensive battle art, and even after reversing them, they’d still be nigh-impossible to use for a spiritual qi cultivator, as the energy required to operate many of the life laws was ridiculously high. The arts were meant to be used with some type of life qi, like blood qi, which was roughly ten times as dense as spiritual qi.

  Once Cade understood what he was looking at, he began making changes to the main death art diagram—the one he had originally inscribed into his realm of consciousness while recovering in the Well of the Ancients. He then included all the minor diagrams, naturally reversing them first, eventually creating a complex web of interwoven diagrams. Even with his notable blood qi reserves, it became very obvious this was going to be an energy-intensive art.

  Nearly two days later—which felt like weeks inside his realm of consciousness—Cade finished the work on his new blood art. After some thought, he decided to name it Life Armor, as in essence it was exactly that—a full-body armor formed with life energy. Cade had originally planned to use pure blood qi, but then changed his mind, curious to see if the art would work with the crimson mist. He used his memories of Lao Ren’s armor to create the shell—he reasoned the form probably didn’t matter, but in some way it was his creation, and he wanted it to look impressive. He was briefly stuck, considering what to do with the helmet—as Lao Ren’s wisp didn’t wear one—when something dawned on him. Grinning, Cade started embedding the final shape into the diagram, and a couple of hours later finalized the art. After triple-checking everything, he moved away from the desk and triggered Life Armor’s diagram sequence.

  Half the energy in his voracious heart was instantly drained, and his spherules began to spin, releasing waves of prismatic dust. Swirls of red mist wrapped around his form, rapidly solidifying into a familiar shape.

  It works!

  After his two weeks of non-stop cultivation, the mist had already become slightly more corporeal. With the terror effect detached, using it no longer had any downsides. In fact, the end result was better thanks to the presence of prismatic dust, and without increasing the art’s already substantial activation cost. The dust could be easily reclaimed by the spherules after the red mist was called back into his body.

  He pulled out the square, polished steel plate he used as a mirror and examined the final result. From the inside, the armor was barely visible, like a faint red shroud draped over his body. From the outside, however, it looked as solid as steel—formed of vivid scarlet and pulsing with a faint, blood-red glow.

  Cade, who was fond of red, instantly loved it. He chuckled, imagining how furious Castien must have been after losing his storage ring. Death Dao had spent who knew how many centuries perfecting their death arts, and now they were in his hands. Not only did he effectively rob them, but those arts were now being repurposed and would be used to directly oppose the undead in the future. He felt great.

  Now was the time to see if the armor actually worked. Cade took out the shortsword and swiped at his head holding nothing back. The sword bounced harmlessly off the crimson surface with a muffled clang, as if it had struck something heavy and dense.

  I barely felt a thing. This art is amazing!

  Cade’s idea for the helmet passed the test, confirming his understanding was correct—the shape didn’t matter, as long as it contained the correct law threads. He released a satisfied grunt. It was too perfect. The armor made him appear huge, adding a lot of width to his already wide shoulders and plenty of mass to his limbs and torso. It also made him a couple of inches taller. Although he was now a bigger target, cultivators generally had inhuman levels of precision and coordination, so a few inches more or less made little difference in battle. The armor looked impressive and even a little intimidating. He made some tweaks to the diagram, like adding short claws to the gauntlets, so he could use all Feral Path abilities he had learned so far.

  Now I know how Gorgo feels all the time, Cade chuckled internally, recalling the mist and observing with satisfaction how it was drawn back into his body. Since he barely used the armor’s protection, his heart had recovered nearly all of its initial cost.

  Extremely happy with his progress, the Asura returned to the desk and focused on the second death art, whistling a random tune. While it was immediately obvious this wasn’t the dark beam Castien had hurt him with, the art had huge potential, at least for someone like him—if it worked. He could barely contain his excitement—he’d have two new powerful blood arts!

  If things went well, in a few days he should be able to return to cultivation. After all, the peak of the early stage of Flesh Fortification was only a few weeks away.

  A mere few hundred miles away, someone else was in similarly high spirits.

  “Junior! Come, sit. Spare this old man a few breaths of your time,” said an elderly cultivator in a pure white robe as he waved over a gray-robed disciple, smiling kindly while stroking his long, gray beard.

  The young, short-haired man was shocked by this unexpected interaction. He then smiled stiffly, bowing and cupping his fist.

  “Greetings, Senior. Do you have any requests that a junior can help with?” the disciple inquired politely, forcing a smile. Inwardly, he was cursing his bad luck. All he wanted was to grab a quick bite at the “Golden Duck,” a small restaurant tucked into a corner of a side alley, located in the trade ring. It was one of his favorite places, and many Sword Dao disciples ate there while attending to their matters in Tower Oasis. The “Golden Duck” was one of the city’s hundreds of restaurants with “golden” in its name and was well known for its delicious roasted duck, with crispy skin that melted in your mouth.

  One of the young elven waitresses passed by the old man’s table. He smacked his lips and cast her a lustful glance before turning his attention back to the disciple.

  “Sit, Junior, sit. Give your legs a rest. I’ve heard you outer disciples are being worked like mules. A true shame, to treat such geniuses like commoners,” the old man shook his head with a compassionate expression, his words reflecting nearly every outer disciple’s thoughts. They did work a lot; it was a fact. “I have a small favor to ask. Naturally, I won't let you lose out,” the elderly man smiled, shaking a sizable bag sitting in his hand and pointing at a chair in front of him with the other. The unmistakable chime made the disciple’s ears instantly perk up. He sat down opposite the elder, now beaming with genuine interest.

  Despite his old age bowing the man’s back a little, the elder appeared healthy, with a rounded waist, ruddy skin, and barely any liver spots. What was special about him though wasn’t his perceptible vitality, but his high cultivation—the peak of early True Core.

  “How may I assist the esteemed Elder?” the disciple asked, casting a sidelong glance at the bag, which seemed to be nearly bursting at the seams.

  “It’s a very simple request,” the old man chuckled affably. “Do you know of a youngster named Cade Ward, an inner court disciple of your Sword Dao monastery?”

  “Ward…? Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him. An interesting fellow,” the disciple replied after taking a moment to think, grinning inwardly as he considered what to purchase first. “What would Senior like to know?”