The rest of his body complained of injuries too, yet he didn’t have the wherewithal to catalog them until the coughing ran down. Only then did he note his bruised jaw, dislocated shoulder, stinging sinuses and throat, blistered hand, and sore ankle.
Hong Fei stifled the laughter threatening to shake out of him. It would hurt too much, no matter how relieved he felt to be alive. Even better, all of these injuries would eventually heal on their own and relatively quickly too, with perhaps the exception of his lungs.
A moment later, as his awareness continued to sharpen, Hong Fei turned his attention outward to his surroundings: he lay on hard, uneven ground; the world was dark, even though his eyes were open; from a short distance to his right came the sound of steadily dripping water; the air was still and cool; and his arms and legs were both bound tight, his breathing constricted by the same length of rope. Testing his bindings, he found that they resisted being broken even by his cultivator’s strength.
Held captive in a cave, he thought. Then he sneezed, and his mind blanked as his lungs and sinuses flared in agony. He gritted his teeth and bore the pain as best he could. He felt tears squeeze from between his scrunched-up eyes.
Eventually, Hong Fei recovered, and he lay his head back on the ground to rest a moment. Enough time had passed since the encounter with Scarlet for qi to accumulate in his lower cauldron. Would a Lion on the Battlefield help me break free? he wondered.
He tested the rope around him once more in an attempt to gauge the difficulty, but they refused to give. These aren’t ordinary bindings, he decided. They’ve been enchanted. He sent a trickle of essence to his eyes and saw the dim outline of what appeared to be a cave wall that’d had a section of stone cut from it, a rectangle roughly half a zhang tall and a zhang long. Not much else was visible; he’d need light to see more.
If only… he began to think, then stopped himself when he realized he did have access to a source of magical light. I’m more disoriented than I realize.
Hong Fei recalled how it felt each of the times he’d touched his card with the intention of projecting it into the air. The deck had previously learned how to respond to his needs; this was just another step in it becoming more useful.
“Come on,” Hong Fei whispered, his voice raspy. “Do your duty as demanded of you.”
A pair of breaths letter, a soft glow spilled from the air above him. His card appeared, the light stretching to delicately touch the walls around him.
Hong Fei eagerly looked around and saw that he was indeed inside a cave, specifically a large hexagonal chamber about twenty times the size of his salon back at the estate. The walls were a pale stone and irregularly shaped, yet each appeared to have had sections chiseled from them, giving the chamber a decidedly geometric atmosphere. A massive block of the same pale stone blocked the only exit.
By his feet lay the empty scabbard of Fortune’s Favor. There was no sign of the hilt, however.
Scarlet had apparently tossed Hong Fei and the scabbard in here for temporary safe keeping. She’d mentioned wanting to keep Hong Fei’s capture a secret from her comrades. Hopefully, she’d do the same for the sword missing from Fortune’s Favor.
No doubt, finding the scabbard full of sand had confused her. She’d likely question him about it, assuming Hong Fei hadn’t found a way to escape by then.
He took a moment to look around the space to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then lay his head back to simply breathe for a count of ten, easing the tension running through him. I’m injured and trapped, but there are no immediate dangers.
The rope and the stone blocking the exit were clearly obstacles, but his situation was better than he’d feared it would be. I’ve certainly survived worse, he thought. Now, let’s focus on getting out of here.
With interest, he noted the three Fate Points currently in his possession. He’d gotten two from killing Rock Knife gangsters during the raid on their base in the middle city. The third must’ve come from elsewhere. From another of the raids? The fate might’ve been linked to one of the rescued captives.
Unfortunately, there weren’t enough points to redeem either the Ice Spear spell or the Ilchit Blood Priest, either of which were likely the best of use of his points for the foreseeable future.
Hong Fei replaced the intention to project his own card with a desire to see Sun Han’s. From the burden on his soul, he already knew that the scholar had survived Scarlet’s attack. Projecting the card was merely an effort to confirm that reality and ensure nothing new or unusual had happened.
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As expected, the card’s colors hadn’t faded and there was no timer indicating a forced retreat, which meant that Yu Yong had also likely survived.
“Good,” Hong Fei whispered.
A coughing jag took hold of him afterward, yet it didn’t dim the pride he felt. The scholar was proving to be a reliable ally.
Hong Fei shifted position in an attempt to ease the pressure on his shoulder. He grimaced after realizing he’d made the situation worse. Doing his best to put the discomfort out of his mind, he let Sun Han’s card dissipate and brought out Auntie Ling’s next.
In the dark, her colors painted his face, and there was no timer here, either. Nothing untoward had happened to her after Hong Fei’s capture. She’d survived, as well. Carefully, Hong Fei sighed. He resisted the urge to swallow for fear of the pain it’d bring.
“Can you hear me?” he whispered. “It’s safe to come out.”
The air shimmered, sweeping the rock dust clear to make space for a line drawn. One of the white blazes on Auntie Ling’s face appeared, then a second line was drawn next to it. A pair of dark eyes soon followed, and the brushstrokes quickly multiplied afterward as the giant badger took shape, colors seeping into the spaces between the lines.
A moment later, her weight settled onto the ground. A relieved sigh moved through her when she saw Hong Fei, and she rushed forward to sniff him and assure herself that he was all right.
He wanted to laugh, but coughed twice instead, managing to resist falling into another jag. “Easy now,” he forced out. “Don’t poke.”
Auntie Ling stepped back to take in her surroundings, and she saw there were no immediate threats. A soft growl sounded from deep within her chest.
“A Qi-Blossoming warrior aligned with fire qi,” Hong Fei told her. “I’m calling her Scarlet until we find out her real name. She’s intending to turn me into a resource for enhancing her fate or cultivation or both. Which is just as well, since it’s led to me being here rather than dead.” He gestured with his good hand toward the rope. “Get this off me, if you will. It’s magical, so you may need to use your qi.”
Auntie Ling leaned closer to examine his bindings.
“Just to confirm, Yu Yong is well?” he asked.
The giant badger huffed an affirmative in reply, and the tension within Hong Fei eased another notch. He’d believed he was right in his earlier assumption, but nothing beat actual confirmation.
That worry settled, he turned his attention to Auntie Ling’s examination of the ropes. She sniffed along the woven strands until finally deciding to cut through a spot between his left arm and torso. A hint of her qi wafted into the air.
“Tighter control,” he instructed. “Keep every drop within your grasp.”
Auntie Ling nodded, then her tongue stuck out as she concentrated and the scent of her qi faded. She worked one of her claws into the space between his arm and side, then drew it back and forth like a saw.
Hong Fei mobilized his own qi to empower his muscles and push against the rope, steadily increasing the pressure, until ten breaths later the rope gave way with a metallic ping! The binding suddenly loosened.
He gasped with relief, closing his eyes to inhale slowly but deeply. He coughed in response, bending at the waist as it turned into another jag.
Hong Fei lay spent for a time afterward, then decided that enough was enough. He needed to get away from the rock dust surrounding him, the first step of which was to get at least one arm working again.
“Hold still,” he told Auntie Ling, then placed his fist against her side so that he could push the bone of his dislocated arm back into its socket.
That done, he reached out for the scabbard laying nearby and, with great familiarity, used it like a cane to help him stand up. His ankle felt weak, but it held his weight. A glance down showed deep black and purple bruising where he’d been gripped by Scarlet.
He was also barefoot. Hong Fei hadn’t had the space to consider it previously, but the shoes he’d taken from Andrew, the ones with the swooshes on the sides, were gone. They’d no doubt been looted by his captor.
Hong Fei sent his essence to reinforce his ankle and keep the injury from worsening. When he felt satisfied that it would continue to hold, he walked toward the chamber’s exit with Auntie Ling beside him.
Pushing against the stone did nothing to shift it. “The two of us together,” he commanded.
Auntie Ling got into position, her shoulder against the block.
“Don’t let the task distract you from your control,” Hong Fei reminded her, then he focused on his own magics—sending essence through his body and casting a Lion on the Battlefield. “Now,” he growled.
His muscles strained, and so did Auntie Ling’s. The ground beneath them cracked from the pressure; the stone block shifted a hair, which was enough to prove it was possible. They continued to press, digging deep for the strength to continue. One hair turned into two and two into three.
The stone block moved more quickly afterward, swinging steadily outward nearly a chi’s distance. Underneath was section of rubble that had acted like small wheels under the great weight.
“Pause, pause,” Hong Fei whispered, then leaned against the stone to rest.
Auntie Ling panted, yet couldn’t keep from examining the gap they’d worked together to create. Her paw could fit through it, so she tried scraping the edge to expand it even more. In the time it would take one to drink a cup of tea, she managed to increase the space by about a fist’s width. Then, she found a weak seam in the grain, and a whole section of the stone suddenly gave way. She grabbed a hold of it before it could crash onto the ground, however.
Hong Fei helped her with easing it down. The gap left behind should now wide enough for him to slip through sideways.
He patted her with his good hand. “Excellent work,” he praised.
Hong Fei carefully fit himself into the gap to contort his way through it. At one point, he did get stuck, but a gentle nudge from Auntie Ling pushed him the rest of the way.
He found himself in a tunnel wide enough for five wagons to drive alongside each other, and the ceiling here could fit a two-story building under it. Hong Fei shone the Uncommon Badger card all around him and saw that sections of stone had also been chiseled free from the walls here.
One side of the tunnel terminated in a dead end. The other extended past what the light from the card could illuminate. There seemed to be only the one way out.
Auntie Ling disappeared from inside the chamber and reappeared beside him a moment later.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Monday, February 23. Unfortunately, because of the exclusivity agreement with Amazon, that means the first book will need to stub here on Royal Road. I plan to do that in the next week or so.
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