Chương 171: The Target

Li Yuan was paying attention to everything around him, the way the trees were getting less dense as they kept walking, and it made him think of the forests back near the Flowing Stream Sect where he trained for years before everything went wrong.

Thinking about his old sect again made this heavy sadness wash over him, he missed the place so much, the training grounds he used to walk every morning, the sounds of other disciples practicing their swordwork, even the instructors who used to yell at them for messing up the smallest details in their forms. It wasn't perfect back then, but it had been home to him, the only home he really knew.

Without really thinking about it, Li Yuan reached inside himself, touching the part of him where his inner world used to be, and the moment he touched it a sharp pain shot through his spiritual sense. Where there used to be an ocean that went on forever, there was nothing now, just emptyness.

He could still remember what his old inner world looked like, water stretching out in every direction as far as he could see, with currents moving in complicated ways that showed how much he understood the Ocean's Will Sword Dao, his life's work. Right in the middle of it all was his sword, pulling power up from below, it had been gorgeous in its own way, it represented everything he believed, that real strength came from not giving up, from grinding down whatever stood in your path no matter how long it took.

But now, his inner world was just empty, nothing there at all. The ocean was just gone, and in its place was this darkness that went on forever, and somehow it felt hungry, wanting something from him all the time. His sword was still there floating in all that black emptiness, but it felt different now, it wasn't the weapon that used to guarantee he'd win anymore, now it felt cold.

The Hollow Sword Dao fit who he was now he guessed, what else could he call himself but hollow, just a shell that moved because someone else's power was making it move, tied down by contracts that couldn't be broken no matter what.

"You're brooding again," Mo Qingyin's voice cut into his thoughts.

"Let me guess, you're thinking about your old sect, right? Your old life?"

"And you're not thinking about yours?" Li Yuan shot back, trying to push the memories away.

"Course I am, we all think about it." She shrugged like it was nothing.

"But I try to think about the good parts of where we are now instead, focus on that instead of what we lost."

"Good parts," Li Yuan raised his eyebrow at her.

"We're slaves for some crazy collector who treats us like we're just objects to him."

"We're strong though," she said back, "stronger than we ever would have been before all this. I would've died from my corrupted cultivation if none of this happened. And you, you would've stayed dead, whatever killed you in the first place would've erased you forever. But instead we have these new bodies, better abilities, and we get to keep existing." She smiled, and for once it actually looked real instead of fake.

"Is that really such a bad deal when you think about it?"

"Ask me that again after another hundred years standing as a statue in that void," Li Yuan told her.

"Fair enough," Mo Qingyin's smile dropped a little.

"Though I notice you haven't even tried running away yet, even though you obviously hate our master so much. Why's that exactly?"

"I'm not an idiot," Li Yuan said flatly.

"The contract is tied to our souls. Even if we somehow got away from him, where would we even go? These bodies, he made them, they'd just fall apart without his power keeping them together. And our souls..."

"Would just shatter into pieces," she finished for him.

"Yeah I know, I've thought about all of it too, believe me. But there has to be some way out of this. Somebody out there must know how to break these soul binding contracts..." Before Li Yuan could say anything back, the crystal in his hand pulsed suddenly. He lifted it up and saw how much brighter the light coming from it had gotten.

"We're getting close now." Mo Qingyin's attitude changed instantly, the playful look on her face disappearing as she switched into focus mode for their mission.

"You picking up anything yet?" Li Yuan pushed his spiritual sense outward, scanning the area in front of them carefully. After a few seconds he nodded his head.

"There's somebody up ahead, maybe half a li away, near where that hill starts. They're trying to hide themselves but..."

"But they don't even know what they're hiding from," Mo Qingyin finished with a predator smile.

"So should we go say hi?" Li Yuan checked the crystal one more time, it was practically glowing now, confirming they'd found the person they were looking for. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Another soul was about to be added to their master's collection, whether this person deserved that fate or not didn't matter. Another statue for the void, another person trapped serving forever.

But he didn't really have any choice in the matter, none of them did, not really.

"Let's just get this done," he said, and started walking toward the person who had no idea what was coming for them. When they found him, he was sitting cross legged at the bottom of the hill, meditating with a plain looking sword resting across his knees, facing out toward a lake.

"Wow, he's begging to be ambushed, isn't he?" Mo Qingyin whispered next to him.

"Sitting there with his eyes shut, back facing the trees and everything..." Li Yuan took a longer look at their target. He looked young, probably seventeen or eighteen years old at most. Nothing about his appearance stood out really, but there was something about how he carried himself, even just sitting there meditating, that hinted at something more underneath. The way he sat there, not moving an inch, this wasn't some normal cultivator they were dealing with here.

"He already knows we're here," Li Yuan said, keeping his voice down, noticing the mist around the target curling in strange patterns.

"That's not natural. He's using the mist to feel out everything around him." Mo Qingyin's eyes went narrow when she noticed the same thing Li Yuan had spotted.

"Smart kid. Won't do him much good though." She pulled out a tiny black seed from inside her sleeve.

"You want me to start off easy, or should we just go straight to crushing him with everything we've got?" Li Yuan thought it over for a second. Whoever this guy was, he'd caught the attention of the Masked One, which meant if they underestimated him, it could go really badly for them. But they did have numbers on their side, plus the element of surprise, even if he already knew they were nearby, he couldn't possibly know where they'd come from or why.

"You take the left side," Li Yuan decided.

"I'll go from the right. Just make me an opening to work with."

"Oh, I've got just the thing," Mo Qingyin's smile turned nasty as she pushed qi into the seed, making it grow instantly into a twisted black flower.

"My babies never let me down."

"Remember, we need him alive," Li Yuan reminded her, though honestly he doubted their master would even care one way or the other. The Masked One's whole thing with "protagonists" seemed to be more about collecting souls than worrying about what condition the body was in afterward. Still, better to do exactly what they were told, the punishment for messing up was already bad enough without making it worse by disobeying on top of it. They split apart, moving through the trees quiet as anything.

Li Yuan kept his spiritual sense stretched out the whole time, keeping track of where Mo Qingyin was and watching their target at the same time. The guy hadn't moved an inch, his breathing still slow and even, nothing about him seemed off at all. If he really did know they were coming, he was hiding it incredibly well. Li Yuan got into the spot they'd agreed on, close enough that he could cross the gap to their target in one quick burst if he needed to.

He glanced across the clearing toward where Mo Qingyin was hiding in the shadows, her black flower fully open now and ready to release its poisonous pollen into the air. She looked back at him and nodded once. Li Yuan held up three fingers, then two, then one... Mo Qingyin's flower burst open into a cloud of black spores that shot toward the young man, moving fast and aggressive.

At the exact same moment Li Yuan came out from his hiding spot, his sword appearing in his hand as he covered the distance between them in barely a second. What happened after that would've been beautiful if it wasn't also terrifying. Without even opening his eyes or shifting from his meditation pose at all, their target's sword lifted itself up off his lap and started moving on its own.

There's really no other way to put it, the blade cut through the air in smooth, flowing movements, almost following along to something only the sword itself could hear. Wherever the blade passed through, Mo Qingyin's pollen just stopped existing entirely, gone, like it had never even been there in the first place. Li Yuan's attack, which he'd aimed at a nerve cluster that should've locked up their target's sword arm completely, hit nothing but empty air as the young man's body shifted slightly to one side.

The movement was so small, so perfectly timed, that Li Yuan's blade missed by barely anything at all, without their target even looking like he'd moved.

"Interesting," the young man said, finally opening his eyes.

"You two aren't who I was expecting at all. Your spiritual signatures are off somehow, hollow I guess is the word for it. Though I suppose that makes sense considering what you both are." Li Yuan took a step backward, reassessing the situation. That casual skill he'd just shown...

"Our master sent us to bring you in. Come with us willingly and this doesn't have to turn violent." The words sounded empty even as Li Yuan said them out loud. Nobody ever just surrendered to the Masked One's servants, why would they? Best case you ended up as a statue in the void for eternity, waiting around to be used as a puppet. Worst case, well, Li Yuan tried not to think too much about what happened to souls that weren't good enough for their master's collection.

"Bring me in?" Wu Kangming raised an eyebrow at that.

"That's an interesting way to phrase it. And what happens if I say no to this collection?"

"Then we take you by force," Mo Qingyin said, her voice dripping with pleasure as she spun her dagger around. Dark flowers started blooming in the air all around her, the petals razor sharp and dripping with something that made the grass underneath them wither and die.

"Though honestly, I'm hoping you fight back. It's much more fun for me." Wu Kangming looked back and forth between the two of them, frowning slightly.

"I'll give you both one chance to go back to your master. Alive." His sword rose up into a guard stance that Li Yuan had never seen before, the blade held perfectly straight up, pointing toward the sky.

"I don't know what level of control he has over you two, but I have my own path I'm walking. I'm not interested in being anybody's collection piece."

"We don't get a say in this, not anymore," Li Yuan let out a hollow laugh.

"Our souls already belong to him." His sword shifted into the opening stance for the Hollow Sword Dao.

"And pretty soon, yours will too."

"We'll see about that."

"You're awfully confident for someone who's outnumbered two against one," Mo Qingyin laughed.

"I'm Wu Kangming," he said simply, like that was supposed to explain everything. Maybe it did. The words had barely left their target's mouth before the real battle began.