191. The Adept

Alistair, like virtually all who lived on the frontier, was completely unaware of the difference in strength between any realm above Exalted.

Even for Exalted and Visionary, he truly couldn’t understand the difference until he got stronger himself. He only had what others had told him, and that was that Exalted to Visionary was one of the largest divides in power between realms.

One of the other largest gaps was Adept to Foundation. The presence of a true Domain was felt not just in the Domain itself, but every aspect of cultivation.

So when the enemy Adept revealed their full power, it was as if the sun rose again during the dead of night. No Foundation, no matter how strong they were, could dream of challenging the weakest Adept. Or so he felt in that moment.

The ground floor of the heating cylinder was a silver-tinted ambrosic glass. The inside was so massive that even Alistair couldn’t see the end, as flying mechanical insects full of desiccation affinity Mana swerved around floating contraptions.

The contraptions reminded Alistair of one of those children’s pin art toys, except three-dimensional. Luminescent, deep orange desiccation Mana spread from spindly orb to orb, with alterations performed by the flying machines at will.

Over a thousand feet above was an ambrosic glass ceiling. With the tower itself being around two thousand feet tall, that left an unknown half. Based on his gut feeling, Alistair suspected that many of the weaker cultivators were hiding there.

Those observations flashed through a tiny portion of his mind as the greater whole was spent watching the Adept before him.

Dev’rox was a former Profound realm, though only at the Early stage. He had seen Visionaries clash with their Domains up close and in person.

However, in those instances, none of their ire had ever been directed at him. Not like this.

The Adept was a muscular woman wearing a simple white toga. She looked sculpted out of marble, her physical form containing an aesthetic flow that was alluring and deadly. She was blonde with pale blue eyes, and ten Peak Foundations charged her at once.

The Adept woman opened her mouth, her black-lined lips parting to reveal bloody fangs and dark crimson, partially chewed flesh.

She dodged all of her incoming attackers with ease, using minimal motion like Alistair would have in Tranquil Mind. Each step of hers was near perfection, each stride without waste.

“You don’t have an Adept with you,” she said calmly. “The first step of real cultivation, and you have none. Where in the name of the Jade Emperor are you doing?”

“Open your proto-Domains now!” screamed a bearded man in a full set of adorned plate armor. “If we—”

The Adept moved so fast that it felt like teleportation, spearhanding the man’s heart out of his chest through armor and all. As she bit into the still beating organ, she kicked his body into three of his allies so hard that it took their heads clean off, their bodies rocketing off beyond the range of Alistair’s [Reality Sense].

Alistair felt the atmosphere in the chamber shift. The sheer might of an Adept against Peak Foundations was a known fact, but seeing her display of power cowed even the bravest of the Empire’s explorers. They no longer dared to make eye contact with the Adept, freezing in place with sheer fright.

The woman let the full extent of her aura pulsate from her body.

It was cruel. It was cold. It was that of a woman of supreme confidence and martial ability, who had honed her path through countless slaughter and blood of the innocents.

It was evil.

“Cowards,” she spat, calmly walking toward what looked to be a teenage girl. “Cravens.” The girl shivered in fear as she shook the bearded man’s body. Now that he was paying attention to it, based on how similar they looked, he was probably her father.

He was just one of dozens of dead bodies. All with their hearts ripped out. [Ghost Whispers] churned with an immensity he had seldom felt, as the spiritual energy of the dead of Nuevo Invierno fueling his passive Skill to the zenith.

The Adept’s shadow extended further than it should have, as her aura flowed out in leaps and bounds. “Die then.”

Alistair hadn’t even entered Tranquil Mind, or any of the states of his Kai’tazake Mutra. Like the others, her aura had frozen his legs.

Yet as the woman’s hand prepared to stab the girl through the heart, he already had made his peace with death. It wasn’t that he was unafraid of passing through the veil, but there were things in this life that were more important than that.

With a [Mindshift], Alistair appeared before the Adept and the girl, his nue clone kicking the womaan in the face while he redirected her punch into a shoulder throw.

The Adept smirked. He knew—it was utterly obvious—that the woman could intercept his move, yet she allowed it anyway. His nue clone disappeared as the Adept landed flat on her back in a perfect Judo ippon.

To her credit, the teenage girl, along with the surviving Peak Foundations, scurried away before the woman stood up.

She took her time standing up, a gleeful smile resplendent on her ivory face. She didn’t seem to care at all as dozens of people fled for the exit.

To the surprise of no one, she was able to lift herself from the ground like she was levitating, remaining straight as an arrow the entire time.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I let you live,” she said. “You know as well as I do that I could have killed you at any time.”

Alistair didn’t respond, slipping into Tranquil Mind as he met the woman’s eyes.

“My name is Fara. What is yours, warrior?”

“Alistair,” he replied.

She stretched her long arms, giving him a flirtatious smile. “I haven’t been entertained in quite some time. Despite not even reaching Peak Foundation yet, I suspect you’ll be a little bit fun.”

Fara made the first move, moving with blinding speed, though Alistair could immediately tell it was not even a third of her full power.

Alistair drew upon all of his resources. He activated [Eyes of Truth], seeing into the near future. [Monk Motionlessness] and Tranquil Mind optimized his body’s movement and reaction time.

Yet all of it was futile. Her first strike, a long-reaching jab in which she dislocated her own shoulder to gain more distance, was just too fast.

Almost futile. With his prognostication, his brain fired the tiniest of impulses down to his feet. It was all he could manage in the infinitesimal stretch of time before her fist connected with his face. He shifted his body back while tensing his neck muscles with [Steel Body], diverting 80% of the damage.

That was just the first in a volley that Alistair had trouble imagining how it was possible. It was as if he Fara had twelve arms, not two. There was no respite, no time for a counterattack. All he could do was block, parry, and slip. Fully dodging a blow was out of the question.

Her fists crossed his nose, his cheek, his chest, his liver. She was unorthodox perfection. He had never seen anyone strike as creatively as her before. If he thought he was tricky, she was unreal, maneuvering her limbs in unnatural ways.

Fara would jab with her dislocated shoulder technique, and then pop it back in only to use the rebound force to pop it back out as a double jab. Yet despite her creativity, through the dual usage of [Eyes of Truth] and his swift reflexes, he was able to avoid a knockout blow.

In a way Alistair did not fully understand, all her punches were partial fajins, meaning his [Steel Body] was less effective. After ten seconds of weathering her assault, he could feel himself slow down. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth, and his organs were swelling up.

As she missed an arcing hook, she used her shoulder joint to rebound it into a spinning backfist.

Yet it was such that it in Alistair’s vision, her fist directly covered up her leg. That shouldn’t have mattered, considering how [Reality Sense] and his Karmic sight worked, yet it somehow did.

Something funky with the Dao of the Fist allowed her kick to be unknown to Alistair until the last second.

A foot caught him in the chest out of nowhere. He wasn’t able to tense with [Steel Body], the force of the kick sending him tumbling several dozen feet.

There were too many variables, he realized. She was so versatile and talented that he had not seen enough of her arsenal to form countermeasures.

Alistair stood up, raising his guard as she sauntered to him at a leisurely jog which morphed into flying side kick. Using the murky future mirages of his Karmic sight, he ducked out of the way, but he was betrayed.

A hard elbow lodged into his trapezius muscle as Fara changed her trajectory midair, in defiance of his future sight. All of a sudden, her body appeared as null and void, lacking threads of Fate entirely, visibly manifesting as a slight amber glow surrounding her body.

Tranquil Mind moved his body autonomously to avoid the full damage of the elbow, but he was knocked into the ground.

Alistair didn’t waste any time, pushing up out of this prone position. He used purely his arm strength to jump off the ground entirely, dodging a sweeping leg kick by a hair and returned to standing.

Fara only sped up her assault, unleashing a bit more of her true speed. He could only rely on his instincts and reactions now that she sealed herself off from Fate. Each blow landed harder and faster and more outside his perception.

Each time that his prodigious talent allowed him to adapt slightly to her attack patterns, she changed it up. And every time that he thought he could anticipate how she was changing it up, she unveiled a new note in her symphony. Alistair was lost in a sea of discordant instruments. His body couldn’t find that sublime tune to dance to.

Alistair raised his guard as she elevated her hips in a roundhouse kick. It was too fast for him to dodge, so he tensed his arms, knowing that his bones would have to take the punishment.

His instincts saved him at the last second—perhaps it was the odd movement of her hip or the slight difference in the shadow of her leg. Whatever he noticed, Alistair shifted his weight back and leaned away.

Her dislocated leg swerved around his guard and clocked him on the chin, sending him reeling.

Fara didn’t follow up, only looking down on him, as Alistair perceived it with [Reality Sense].

“You’re quite talented,” she said. “I’m not lying. You’re adapting to my moves even as I change them.”

An evil grin formed. “Don’t think that’ll spare you or anything. This is just for fun. A cultivator that leaves their rivals alive so that they can face them again when they are more powerful is an idiot.”

Alistair spat out a tooth and some blood and looked up at his opponent, one who outclassed him physically and skill-wise. He said nothing.

What had all his lessons with Pike and Master Ko Pao taught him? What did he hold his fists up for? The fundamentals of martial arts were the same, whether you were Adept or Foundation. An idea bore fruit within his mind.

Fara dashed at him at a medium pace, faster than her previous jog. The two of them still used no Mana or non-martial Skills. Alistair knew this was to his advantage. An Adept’s Skills involving Mana would utterly demolish him, and yet the woman refused, choosing the fist.

In return, he would give her all his might.

A jab from a southpaw stance came whirling toward Alistair’s face. This too, was a notch faster than her previous attacks, far exceeding his own speed.

Alistair fired his own punch, a right straight aimed at her face. He turned his head to roll with her punch.

You cannot strike without being in range of your opponent’s strike.

He copied her shoulder dislocation technique as her fist dug into his cheek. His right arm extended forward, almost meeting the Adept’s face.

A look of shock crossed her face, but even that was not enough. An inch before he made contact, she parried him with her left hand, sending his arm bouncing back. Alistair refused to use Spiritual Fighter’s Echo, which he had enough control of by that point that he could turn it off.

Alistair’s head snapped to the right and back as the weight of the blow rocked his brain. As his brain bounced around in his skull, he used the momentum caused from when she parried his punch to chop down just above the elbow of Fara’s right arm, the one she just had punched with.

All the while, his right knee was elevating, which he had disguised as merely stepping forward for the straight. His knee collided with Fara’s forearm, his own forearm above serving as a wedge to keep her arm in place.

Alistair put all his Strength, all his Agility into that attack. For a moment, he heard a majestic melody that combined with Tranquil Mind, rendered all unto consummate serenity.

Something gave in Fara’s radius bone. He didn’t have time to understand what, as a chilling black aura released.

Alistair “looked” down in his omnidirectional vision to see four deep gashes in his chest. Fara’s fingertips glowed with an unknown black Mana affinity. She had moved so fast that he hadn’t realized she raked her nails across his chest.

He breathed heavily as he used Dragon’s Blood Mastery to heal his wounds, noticing that Fara wasn’t moving to attack him.

She looked at him in a new light. They were not equals in any sense, but a tiny rat could still bite its exterminator if they weren’t careful. And what if the rat were cunning beyond measure with the skills to back it up?

“I’ll have to apologize for that one,” she said, motioning to his healing chest. “It was instinct. It won’t happen again.”

The Adept shook the right arm that Alistair had damaged, resetting the bone like nothing had ever happened. She assumed a solid, all-rounder’s MMA stance.

This time, Alistair was the one to make the first move. He launched a flying side kick, which she sidestepped with ease. She aimed an elbow at his back.

You cannot strike without being in range of your opponent’s strike. You cannot strike without giving an opportunity for your opponent to strike.

Alistair spun with the direction of the elbow, spinning himself into an elbow at her head. She stopped her blow at the last second, stepping back to avoid his elbow. Alistair followed up with a leaping roundhouse kick for her head, which she ducked under.

They continued like this for several exchanges. Alistair accepted any and all damage, as long as it wasn’t lethal, just to land a single blow.

Of course, Fara could have acquiesced to such a trade, taking one of Alistair’s weaker blows to deal far, far more damage to him.

Her pride prevented her from going down such a path.

They exchanged blows at multiple ranges, swapping between ultra-close and then long distance, where because of her freakishly long arms, they had exactly the same reach despite his height advantage.

Fara sped up perhaps 5% more, reaching half her full power, but she didn’t add any more tricks, any more shading or accouterments to the background music.

Despite barely employing any of the Dao energy within his Fist Node, it felt closer than ever.

Discordant notes that used to create dissonance now resonated, each instrument playing its part. The music merged with Tranquil Mind, forming a harmonic sea of repose that was both fully submerged within the beat and tune and perfectly calm and monk-like.

Fara out-statted Alistair in every compartment, but she eschewed any opportunity if it would lead to even the tiniest blow to herself. Because of her self-imposed limitations, they somehow fought as equals.

He could see plain on her face that she would not stop until she could land an uncountered blow. She became a whirlwind of nine limbs—both legs, arms, knees, elbows, and finally the skull itself, like the human martial art of Lethwei.

Her mastery made the greatest mortal fighters look like beginners. Alistair merely followed the melody. Throwing a low kick as she tried to take his face off with a high roundhouse. She checked his kick with her plant food as he blocked her foot with a high guard, turning with the blow into a spinning back kick.

The world was his oyster. All the possibilities of all the moves he had ever learned laid out before him like the different instruments within an orchestra.

You cannot strike without being in range of your opponent’s strike. You cannot strike without giving an opportunity for your opponent to strike. Alistair added a new thought. When your opponent is hard, become soft. When your opponent is soft, become hard.

At the end of the day, Alistair’s specialty were throws. A throw used the weight of the earth to strike. When she tried her signature shoulder dislocation jab, he feinted an ippon seio nage.

Fara mounted him from the back, a vulnerability of the throw when used on an expert. Yet Alistair was already a step ahead, moving where the beat instructed. He fell onto his back, Fara slipping under and away immediately, but Alistair already had his foot out waiting to trip her.

No matter what you could about the Adept, she was beyond skillful at hand-to-hand combat. She contorted her body with perfect bodily control, sliding over his outstretched foot.

There was the smallest of sounds as fingertips smacked into flesh. Fara spun around horizontally on the ground with two revolutions before righting herself with immaculate grace.

While Alistair had been falling onto his back, by the closest of margins he had extended his left hand, dislocating his shoulder and elbow and wrist in one movement to give Fara a slap on the butt.

It did no damage to her whatsoever—that was obvious from the start. Alistair kipped up to his feet and snapped his joints back in place, as his lips held the largest grin. Something had fundamentally changed. Even as he stared his death in the face, he could take to his grave that he had outwitted and outskilled a bona fide Adept martial artist.

“Are you a reincarnated master?” Fara laughed, her evil face contorting with genuine mirth. “Will I have to beg for mercy when you unveil your true power? How is it possible to be so skilled as a Foundation?”

“I’ve had great teachers,” Alistair replied back for the first time. “You couldn’t hold a candle to them once they reach their true potential.”

Fara cocked her head. To any outsider, his previous statement made little sense. She squinted and shook her head. “What I said before rings true even more now. I could never let a talent of your magnitude live. It was fun to see someone with true potential soar, even if for a moment. The multiverse is such a vast place.”

Alistair could only think of Red Harmonia when he heard the words “true potential.” Even now, he wondered if he could beat the suppressed form of the man he had faced so long ago with just his own martial arts.

The tune of the fight reached its climax, blazing so loud he almost felt it burst into reality, as the liminal space between his mind and the Physical Plane blossomed.

This was his last stand. He couldn’t help but feel it was a bit unceremonious that he was about to die to some random Adept after having just become a planetary lord. It was only his first time exploring the outside world. There were so many things he wanted to do, so many things he wanted to see.

His spirit swelled as his mind’s eye filled with the Spirit of a True Hero, the widening of his Ghost Node that connected to the Justice Node. This time, it gravitated toward his Heroic Inheritor concept, where he was but one chainlink in an unbroken line of those who worked toward a better future. One that would continue on after him.

But he kept the golden and silver light within. Even now, he would not violate the honor of their duel by using anything but his fists.

Fara undid her restraints. Alistair focused his entire willpower on circulating Mana throughout his meridians, resisting the sudden explosion of aura from the woman. Wispy darkness and shadows beamed out of Fara’s body, suffocating the atmosphere.

She dashed toward him so fast that his eyes almost failed to register her movement. The tune became far too fast to play along to, and [Monk Motionlessness] and Tranquil Mind couldn’t cut it.

Alistair felt knuckles connect with his forehead, then his nose, then his mouth in quick succession. He felt the force of a thousand strikes in one as an uppercut to his gut squeezed the air out of his lungs, followed up by an elbow to the ribs.

Master Ko Pao told had told him that in dire circumstances, the ultimate technique of the Steel Body—clenching your muscles until they became as hard as steel—could be used for an extended period of time. The reason it was reserved for such times was because if you held on too long, you would crush your own organs and bones.

That was irrelevant for now. Alistair clenched harder than he had ever done before, his muscles becoming harder than steel.

Those blows were still harder than any he had ever felt. They were the blows of a true martial artist, and they struck true.

The joy on Fara’s pale face couldn’t be more plain. Her black lips were open, showing a toothy smile. But her moves were calm and collected, delivering another series of strikes, this time with all her limbs.

Alistair continued to weather the blow with [Steel Body], his organs bleeding and knitting back together with Dragon’s Blood Mastery, but in order to do so, he had to drain his own nue pool.

You cannot strike without being in range of your opponent’s strike. You cannot strike without giving an opportunity for your opponent to strike. When your opponent is hard, become soft. When your opponent is soft, become hard.

When he returned to his previous mantra, he added one last addition.

There is no such thing as a style that cannot be adapted to. All creatures have patterns, all movements obey causality.

Despite his neck muscles bulging out like a bulldog, a knee to the head and then a roundhouse kick to the face had him seeing double.

His vision blurred, and he felt his bones shatter and blood spurt from his nose and mouth. Dragon’s Blood Mastery couldn’t handle the damage of his organs and bones being crushed while also healing the injuries he received from her attacks.

Alistair’s mind was elsewhere. He was in the fight one hundred percent, but he was also a hundred percent in another world entirely.

A world of sound and song. Of rhythm and melody.

It’s so beautiful, Alistair thought. Now what if I try my own thing?

Achievement: Dao Node (III) (Dao of the Fist) — Third Deepening. You have heard The Tune of the Fight. The musical tapestry underlying combat itself, of unknown origin and pedigree. Your creativity has no bounds and your adaptation has no ceiling. Reward: +150 Agility, +65 Wisdom.

Alistair loosened his hardened muscles, becoming like water. Fara started with a piercing kick, her toes aimed for his chest.

The air parted ways for his fist. The Tune of the Fight corrected the tiniest imperfections in his stance. Mistakes he didn’t realize could even exist. With the extra Agility, Fara was surprised, her leg reeling sideways.

Alistair took the opportunity, launching a jab with the same hand. Once again, he utilized Fara’s own joint dislocation technique against her. However, he took it to a whole new level. Dragon’s Blood Mastery granted him a certain degree of control over his bodily functions, which he used to separate his bones and joints to where his muscles were barely holding anything together.

In other words, he became water.

While Fara still was adjusting to his new speed, his fist connected with her nose.

Then he became stone. Alistair snapped all his joints and bones back in place, which propelled him forward, along with his previous momentum.

There was a slight rebound in his fist, amplified by a renewed clenching of his muscles, so that he struck the Adept twice in less than a hundredth of a second, the second blow being the best fajin he had ever thrown.

Alistair legs wrapped around Fara’s torso. The music swelled as he brought down an elbow on her forehead.

BOOM!

Alistair’s vision gave way, darkness invading all corners. [Reality Sense] stopped functioning properly as his senses became discombobulated. In one moment he was clinging onto Fara, and in the next, face down on the ground.

His body felt numb. There was a hole in his stomach where his opponent had delivered an uppercut with all her might. A hole going straight through to his back, ripping out his spinal cord.

I’m not dead?thought, Alistair thought as he returned from the frenzy of the tune. A dragon’s vitality is pretty crazy.

Even as he thought, Dragon’s Blood Mastery began converting nue and then Mana once he ran out of the former. Blood essence turned into bone cells and muscle and connective tissue as his wound slowly but surely began to close. It would take hours for it to fully heal, however, so for the moment, he was paralyzed.

He managed to turn his head up and see what had happened.

“I don’t know how in the name of the Eight Princes you were able to pull that off,” Dev’rox said. “Look.”

Alistair focused his attention on the Adept. She was hunched over, snarling in pain. She had a hand over her left eye, blood dripping down her cheek.

“I took out her eye?” Alistair asked Dev’rox. “As she punched me? I don’t even remember what happened.”

“You’re making my red face green with jealousy,” Dev’rox said, manifesting before him and shaking his head. “Injuring an Adept as a Foundation. Aiming for the eye was a good idea, for sure. The rest of her body is too tough for you to do any real damage.”

“I only got this far because of her pride,” Alistair replied. “She refused to let herself take even the tiniest blow from a Foundation.”

Dev’rox snorted. “That may be true, but you know you’re being humble on purpose with me, brat.”

Alistair smiled through the pain. The imp did have him clocked there.

“You’re awfully chipper for a ghost that’s about to lose his master,” Alistair thought. “I’m sorry we never got to accomplish your goals.”

Dev’rox smirked, though Alistair was in no position to understand as he still couldn’t think straight.

It seemed Fara had gotten over the shock of her injury, as she stood up straight and glared at Alistair. Her left eye was swollen and closed shut, blood still leaking out.

As he readied himself to die once more, a new presence joined the two of them.

“My friend is done,” Jindor said, standing in the open doorway. “Perhaps you’ll dance with me instead?”