Chương 6: A Living Witness

The heavy crunch of boots on bone echoed down the gorge—sharp, irregular, like something brittle breaking underfoot. Each footfall reverberated off the narrow stone walls, bouncing back through layers of freezing fog until the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. The irritated squad leader turned and marched back around the massive stone pillar, his straw cloak dragging through the mud with a wet, rasping hiss.

Clumps of grave-soil clung to the frayed hemp fibers, leaving dark smears across weathered immortal script carved into the pillar's base.

"Old Chen, I swear to the Heavens—" He stepped into the dim, hazy crimson glow of the lantern light.

His mouth stayed open.

Old Chen was there—lying slack in the mud, head twisted at an angle no spine could support. The neck ended in a clean, glistening line, dark blood pooling beneath it in thick rivulets that seeped into the porous earth. His eyes bulged, frozen mid-terror, reflecting nothing but fog and darkness. The chisel lay abandoned beside skeletal fingers still wrapped around a tarnished jade ring.

And standing right beside the corpse, half-swallowed by the abyssal fog, was an unknown man.

The leader's jaw slackened. His pupils shrank to pinpricks. The air left his lungs in a thin, strangled rasp as his scarred face drained of color—weathered bronze turning to ash-pale in the space of a single heartbeat. The crimson lantern light caught the sheen of sudden sweat breaking across his forehead, tiny beads forming along the deep grooves carved by decades of wind and corpse-dust.

His chest heaved inward, ribs expanding hard and fast beneath the stained cloth of his tunic, drawing in a massive breath to scream a warning to the third man just out of sight— Zero.

At that exact moment, just as the leader spotted him, his internal countdown hit zero. The window for a silent kill had slammed shut.

Time to go loud.

His expression flattened. No tension. No rage. Just cold, mechanical focus. The kind of emptiness that came from training drills run a thousand times until hesitation became physically impossible.

[Activate: Black-Iron Body Art] The biological response was immediate.

Thick black veins erupted beneath his skin—iron-dark lines that coiled up his forearms like parasitic roots and wrapped around his throat in pulsing, writhing patterns. The contrast against his pale flesh was stark, almost obscene. Heat flooded his nervous system, a searing pulse that lit every nerve ending from fingertip to spine. His muscles locked tighter, denser, fiber compressing against bone until his arms felt like corded steel wrapped in human skin.

The sixty-second clock began ticking in his skull with the merciless precision of a countdown to detonation.

He launched himself forward.

A normal sprint across shifting bones meant a shattered ankle. But his mind had already mapped the terrain during the ambush—ribcages here, stone shards there, fragments of weathered armor plate half-buried in gravel that could bear weight. His enhanced perception processed it all in the fraction of a second before his first step landed.

He didn't run. He bounded, boots slamming down only on solid mass—a flat piece of skull, the edge of an intact femur, a chunk of broken statue base—vaulting over the unstable mud like it was a training course obstacle run. Each impact sent tremors through ancient bone, small fragments scattering in his wake. The fog swirled violently around his legs, eddies of freezing vapor curling in the vacuum left by his explosive movement.

Ten paces closed in two heartbeats.

The leader's hand shot toward the hilt of his rusted dao, fingers scrabbling at the leather-wrapped grip—pure panic, no technique, no cultivator's grace. Just animal survival reflex. His other hand came up defensively, palm out, as though the gesture alone could ward off what was coming.

He was too slow.

But He didn't use the edge—he needed this man alive.

He slipped inside the leader's guard, footwork tight and controlled despite the explosive speed. The chipped steel jian rotated in his grip with practiced fluidity, flipping upside-down mid-motion so the pommel led instead of the blade. He drove the heavy steel ball straight into the hollow of the leader's right temple—that vulnerable depression where bone thinned and the skull curved inward.

Crack.

The impact was clean. Brutal. Kinetic force—Tier-1 baseline strength, artificially doubled by the Black-Iron Body Art's muscular compression—translated directly into bone, fracturing the temporal plate with an audible snap that cut through the fog like breaking ice. A spiderweb of micro-fractures spread from the point of contact.

The leader's eyes rolled back, pupils disappearing beneath fluttering lids as his brain rattled inside the suddenly compromised skull. A thin line of blood trickled from his ear, dark and viscous. His knees buckled, ligaments going slack all at once. Brain function disrupted, motor control severed, he dropped face-first into the mud without a sound beyond the wet impact of flesh meeting earth.

The heavy thud of his armored body echoed through the fog, followed by the softer patter of disturbed pebbles cascading down from where his collapse had shifted the unstable ground.

Boots scrambled around the pillar.

The third scavenger rounded the corner in a graceless stumble, lantern swinging wildly in his fist. The crimson paper shell threw lurching shadows across the ravine walls, turning ancient carvings into dancing demons. He froze mid-step, one foot hovering over a crushed ribcage. His mouth opened, then closed. Opened again.

His gaze darted from Old Chen's twisted corpse—the glistening neck wound, the pooling blood—to the leader's crumpled form half-submerged in mud, then locked onto this unknown man standing between them both like a specter materialized from the grave-fog itself.

"Boss? What the f—" His voice cracked halfway through, breaking into a higher register. Spittle flew from his lips.

"You! Who the hell are you?!" The words came out strangled, desperate, thick with the accent of the outer grave-scavenging clans who spoke the common tongue with rough, provincial cadence.

He yanked the rusted dao from his belt, the corroded blade scraping against the scabbard with a tooth-aching screech. He gripped the hilt with both shaking hands, knuckles going white as bloodless bone. The tremor in his arms made the blade wobble, catching fragmented reflections of lantern light. He didn't run—no room to. The ravine walls boxed him in on both sides, sheer stone faces slick with moisture and carpeted in luminescent moss that provided no handholds.

Behind him, only deeper darkness and the unknown terrors that lurked in the lower graves.

Cornered. Trapped.

Cornered rats always fought.

With a feral, throat-shredding scream—raw and primal, the kind of sound that came from a man watching his own death approach—he charged. The dao arced wide in a clumsy, desperate swing aimed at splitting ribs and spine in one stroke. His straw cloak billowed behind him. His boots splashed through shallow pools of stagnant water mixed with ancient bone-dust, kicking up sprays of filth.

Thirty-two seconds.

His internal clock ticked coldly, each passing second marked with the precision of a digital display. He ignored the shouting. His eyes tracked the blade's trajectory—angle of approach, rotational speed, the way the scavenger's shoulder committed fully to the swing with no reserve for recovery.

"Gahaa!"

Sloppy. Over-extended. Driven entirely by fear masquerading as courage. But it still carried the raw physical weight of a Tier-1 Cinder-Blood cultivator behind it—enhanced bone density, spiritually-tempered muscle fiber, the kind of strength that could cleave through an ordinary mortal's torso like a butcher's knife through pork.

Dodging backward meant unstable footing. Bones would shift beneath his boots. He'd sink ankle-deep into mud. He'd be open for a follow-up slash, however wild.

Then... never retreat from a wild swing. Own the space.

He stepped forward—directly into the path of the falling blade.

The scavenger's eyes flared wide, confusion breaking through the panic. The whites showed all around his irises. His mouth twisted into something between a snarl and a grimace of disbelief. What kind of madman walks into a dao strike?

The rusted dao came down with all the desperate strength of a dying man's final gambit.

He raised his left arm.

CLANG!

Sparks exploded into the damp air in a brilliant shower of orange-white light, hissing as they died against the fog's moisture. The rusted dao crashed into the iron vambrace with a metallic shriek that rang out across the ravine like a temple bell struck with a sledgehammer. The impact rattled up through bone—sharp, violent, a shockwave that traveled from wrist to shoulder socket—but his densified Tier-1 muscles absorbed it. Held the line.

The vambrace's surface showed a fresh gouge, bright metal exposed beneath old rust-stains and grave-grime. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He didn't stop.

Using the point of contact as a pivot, he swept his blocked arm outward in a brutal arc, muscles flexing beneath the black-veined skin. The dao flew wide, torn from the scavenger's weakened grip by sheer leverage and rotational force. The scavenger's stance broke apart—arms flung open like a bird trying to catch balance on a breaking branch, chest exposed, center line completely undefended, balance gone as his weight shifted too far forward onto his leading foot.

Twenty-five seconds.

He stepped deep into the man's center line, closing the distance until their bodies were barely a hand's breadth apart. He could smell the other man's terror—acrid sweat mixing with the stench of old blood and grave-soil that clung to his clothes.

No wide slash. No wasted motion.

He reversed his grip on the jian with a smooth rotation of his wrist and drove it upward—short, tight, brutal. An uppercut with steel instead of knuckles, the entire movement compressed into less than six inches of travel distance but loaded with all the momentum of his forward step and rotating hips.

The tip punched clean through the soft tissue beneath the jaw, parting flesh and muscle like rotten silk. It slid between mandible bone and hard palate with barely any resistance, straight up into the brain cavity where it shredded through the medulla oblongata and lower cerebrum. Warm blood gushed over his hand, slick and hot, soaking into the leather wrapping of his grip.

The scavenger's scream died in his throat, choked off as his vocal cords severed.

A wet, gurgling wheeze escaped instead—blood bubbling up through the punctured soft palate and flooding his mouth. His eyes rolled back, nothing but whites and broken capillaries visible beneath the flickering lids. Blood poured from his mouth in a thick, dark stream, spilling over his cloth mask and soaking the fabric until it clung to his chin. His nose leaked red in twin rivulets that merged with the mouth-blood.

His body went rigid—muscles locking in full tetanic spasm, fingers twitching in random patterns as dying neurons fired their last signals.

He kicked out hard, boot slamming into the man's knee with targeted precision. The joint buckled with a sickening crunch of cartilage and ligament. He yanked the blade free with a brutal downward jerk. The steel pulled out with a sick, wet schlik, trailing strings of brain matter and dark blood. The corpse collapsed in a heavy heap among the ancient bones, landing on its side with one arm twisted beneath it at an unnatural angle.

The lantern fell from slack fingers, rolling twice before coming to rest against a fractured skull. Its crimson light guttered but held.

[Target Slain. +75 Embers.] The notification flickered across his vision in translucent amber text, overlaying his view of the still-twitching corpse. He didn't look at it. Didn't need to.

Targets neutralized.

[Sever Connection: Black-Iron Body Art] He dropped the technique.

"Ugh—!"

A muffled, ragged groan tore out of his throat, raw and involuntary. His jaw clenched so hard his molars ground together with enough force to crack enamel. He fell hard onto one knee, boot sinking into mud and bone with a wet squelch that sent cold filth soaking through the worn leather.

His eyes bulged. Pupils dilated wide, swallowing the irises until only thin rings of color remained.

The recoil hit like a sledgehammer to the chest.

The black veins retreated beneath his pale skin—vanishing like drowning worms pulled back into deep water, leaving only faint shadows where they'd writhed moments before—but the heat stayed. Boiling water trapped in his veins, scorching him from the inside. His skin flushed red across his neck and face, fever-hot to the touch.

His muscles spasmed, uncontrollable tremors rippling through his forearms and thighs in visible waves beneath the skin. The jian nearly slipped from his grip. His lungs burned, each breath scraping like sandpaper dragged across raw tissue, like he'd just sprinted uphill through a blizzard with no air left to pull and ice crystals forming in his throat.

Forty-two seconds.

He confirmed the count through the haze of pain, mental discipline cutting through physical distress like a blade through fog. Then let out a long, deliberate sigh. Freezing air—thick with sulfur and damp rot, tasting of old death and mineral decay—dragged into his burning chest. It scraped going down, cold and raw, a sharp contrast to the furnace-heat still radiating from his core.

A massive toll on his Daoless body. But nowhere near the catastrophic failure of a full sixty-second drain. No lockup. No total muscular collapse. No permanent damage.

It's... tolerable limits.

Only after the aftereffects subsided—tremors fading to occasional twitches, breathing evening out, the crimson flush draining from his face—did his shoulders drop. The tension bled out of his neck vertebra by vertebra. He stayed on one knee for several long seconds, forcing his heart rate down with controlled breaths—slow in through the nose, hold for three counts, slow out through the mouth. Steam curled from his cracked lips, wisping away into the fog.

His pulse hammered in his ears, gradually slowing from combat-speed to something approaching normal.

Once his breathing settled into a steady rhythm, a faint, cold smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Not triumph. Not satisfaction. Just the grim acknowledgment of a successful operation.

He looked around the kill box with tactical assessment eyes.

Two corpses—one with a severed neck, one with a blade-wound through the jaw into the brain cavity—already cooling in the freezing air. One unconscious hostage—skull fractured but viable, breathing shallow but steady. Zero fatal injuries to himself. Complete control of the engagement's pace and outcome against three hostile Tier-1 cultivators operating in coordinated formation.

Perfect.

The tactics held. The math worked. The training translated across worlds and cultivation systems without failure.

Grimacing as lactic acid seared through his thighs—the price of explosive movement on an uncultivated body—he forced himself back to his feet. His legs protested with sharp, burning complaints. He ignored them with the ease of long practice. Pain was just information. Not a command.

No time to rest. Most of the time, blood attracted the local beast population. Scavenger insects. Carrion-feeders. Worse things that dwelled in the deeper layers of the grave-fields.

He moved efficiently, each action economical and purposeful. Crouched beside the first corpse—Old Chen, still staring at nothing with those bulging eyes. Unhooked the spatial pouches from their belts—canvas material, stained with old blood and grave-soil, still warm from body heat—and clipped them onto his own belt beside the toxin pouch. The weight was negligible but the potential value significant.

Then he grabbed a length of rotting rope coiled around one of the dead men's waists, hemp fibers rough and slightly damp, and approached the unconscious squad leader.

He didn't tie the man's hands in front.

He used a tight, professional military bind—wrists lashed securely behind the back with the rope looped twice through itself for structural integrity, excess rope looped around the throat in a controlled choke-hold configuration with exactly three fingers' width of slack. If the leader woke and tried to pull his hands free, the basic mechanics would work against him—every backward pull would tighten the throat loop. He'd only strangle himself. Panic would accelerate the process.

Simple physics. Predictable outcome. No cultivation technique required.

He squinted at his work through the dim crimson light, eyebrows narrowing in professional assessment. Tugged the knot once with firm pressure. Twice. The rope held without slipping, fibers gripping properly despite the dampness. The leader's breathing remained steady—no immediate airway obstruction, but any resistance would change that instantly.

Looks like it'll hold firm.

Satisfied, he grabbed the leader by the collar of his heavy straw cloak and began dragging him backward through the dark, fog-choked abyss. The man's armored weight scraped across mud and bone with a grinding, uneven rasp, leaving a long trail of disturbed earth and displaced skeletal fragments. His boots carved twin furrows through the muck. The fog closed in behind them like a living thing, swallowing their path within seconds.

The hunt was complete.

Now, it was time for the interrogation.