188. An Almost Murder Mystery

Alistair immediately entered combat mode. His first thought was protecting his sister. While it pained him to be so cynical, he knew that the multiverse was a violent and treacherous place, so he didn’t trust the voice right away.

He tapped into the full power of [Reality Sense], becoming nigh-omniscient within the space of the chamber. Something greater and more profound than vision overlapped onto his mind as he understood every nook and cranny, detecting even the tiniest alien insects on the ground.

Alistair even reached into his pool of Karmic energy, making sure that he wasn’t being fooled by a Karmic temptress. His experience against Oracle informed his actions, and it would require a much greater Karmic cultivator than her to hoodwink him. His adaptations to the web she had placed him influenced the way in which he scanned the perturbations of the threads of Fate.

There was nothing amiss. Except the dying man lying twenty feet away, propped up against an enormous stalagmite.

Alistair rushed over, his sister moving in tow as she followed his lead. There was an understood working of things—since Alistair assessed the situation as safe, she trusted him.

It was indeed a man and not a variant humanoid. Despite the darkness, Alistair could tell he had the appearance of a thirty-year old. His strength was approximately Peak Foundation, and he was wearing the same heat-insulating robes they were.

There was a black stake going through his heart.

Alistair took a knee next to the man, with Evangeline a few feet back, just in case.

“What happened?” Alistair asked, as he assessed the state of injuries. There was some slight bruising and frostbite around the man’s face, but he was fine other than the stake piercing his heart. That the man wasn’t already dead likely meant he had a unique bloodline or Skill, but that was just par for the course. Already at Peak Foundation, cultivators were developing their specialties.

“Can you save me or should I say my last prayers?” the man asked with a look of resignation on his face.

Alistair looked at his sister. “You have any healing Skills?”

Evangeline nodded with a frown of disapproval, intimating, “you should have already known that,”—which was certainly true. “I’ve got [Healing Current].”

“Won’t work,” the man said, his breath growing weaker. “This stake is cursed.”

“I’m going to use a Skill to help figure things out,” Alistair said. “Watch out, it might get a bit bright.”

He activated [Lightning of Justice], using the lingering illumination to allow Evangeline to see. The lightning Skill gave him an idea for the cursed aspect. Alistair focused on the Mana of the stake, trying to ascertain its deeper properties.

Death. Outer darkness. Distortion of vitality. Distortion of natural desire into unnatural perversion. Fecund anti-growth.

Words and concepts became visualizations and colors and more as he strained the focusing of his [Reality Sense] to its utmost limits to understand the curse.

His experiences dealing with Oliver’s zombies assisted him greatly. As a Necromancer, Oliver could turn dead bodies into undead servants, but it didn’t take the form of a contagious pathogen.

There were certainly deviations in the contours of the cursed energy within the stake, but it wasn’t entirely different. Yet it also didn’t feel like a “virus,” even in an abstract sense.

If Alistair had to describe what he had seen in words, it would be a mix of predominantly death Mana with some chrome and sun. According to the affinity charts, that could be a mix of severance and rot Mana, two secondary affinities that were rarer at the lesser realms of cultivation.

But there wasn’t just Mana, there was a sinister Dao that was at its essence corruption and perversion, intent on taking natural life and twisting it into the curse of the undead. At least, that was Alistair’s innate reaction as a living being oriented towards life. Perhaps the undead would see a virus converting them to living creatures in the same way.

Philosophizing aside, this curse wasn’t zombifying. It carried similar characteristics, but it was attacking the man’s life force with the intent to kill, not subvert. For that, Alistair was the perfect man for the job.

“Evangeline, get ready. When I say so, activate [Healing Current].” Alistair made eye contact with the dying man. “This will hurt.”

Alistair summoned Materia of True Martial Clarity. His new wraps, replacing the shattered Devilsbane Gauntlets, were almost fully transparent, only a slight distortion and glimmer in direct light revealing their presence.

They were made of an unnamed substance that was tougher than anything Foundation realms normally had access to. They could also channel all his Mana types just as well as his old gauntlets could channel blood.

[Blood Hand] brought forth a mass of boiling crimson blood, suffusing and emanating from the materia. The eerie illumination would have looked sinister to an onlooker, but Alistair directed his Mana toward the dying man.

With his free hand, he hoisted the stake out of the man’s heart, Materia of True Martial Clarity protecting him from the curse within.

As expected, blood started pouring out of his chest. Alistair directed [Blood Hand] toward the incipient hole. Once upon a time, he had been able to stabilize Alexandra’s condition with that ability, but it wasn’t a healing Skill.

That changed with Dragon’s Blood Mastery. The blood essence he wielded so deftly was innately restorative, channeling the body’s own healing mechanisms to mend wounds. In Alistair’s case, he simply used it to keep the man’s life force active and his blood circulating while he dealt with the sinister darkness.

A cleansing interdiction like [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment] would have ended the curse—and potentially the man’s life. Plus, Alistair couldn’t use that Skill and leave himself vulnerable with the 24-hour cooldown in an inhospitable world like Nuevo Invierno.

Instead, he made his best effort to replicate his finishing Skill in a smaller form. [Force Fist] wrapped around his hand as he coated it in a [Hand of Karma]. The stellar Karmic energy was similarly colored to the blood, but slightly lighter and far more radiant.

He formed his hand into a palm and thrust forward. A spectre of force affinity Mana, Dao energy, and Karmic energy billowed forth, but Alistair stopped it short of the man, not wanting to end him.

The mode of cleansing was the gong-like sound and wave of reverberation that spread forgiveness and serenity. Alistair’s conception of Justice, refined by Heroic Inheritor and Spirit of a True Hero, rooted out the sick Dao within the man’s body.

Alistair gave the signal to his sister, who activated her [Healing Current]. Hers was a different focus than Alexandra’s, a silver stream of energy spreading out of her mouth as her eyes glowed with an ethereal glint befit of her Class of Spiritualist.

The [Healing Current] mixed with the blood that was keeping the man alive, and his wound rapidly knitted back together, the foreign corruption rendered to dust.

The man spasmed, temporarily overwhelmed by the sheer amount of quintessence entering him, but this subsided after a few seconds. His eyes opened.

Alistair almost flinched as he made eye contact with the mysterious man. His eyes were inverted, with a white pupil against a black sclera, and no iris to speak of.

“Thank you,” the man said, ignoring the two Tan’s siblings’ reaction.

“What happened?” Evangeline asked. Alistair could hear the caution in her voice, and she unconsciously slipped behind him. He couldn’t blame her—besides the strange circumstances of their encounter, the inverse eyes set off chills down his spine.

The man stood up with far more grace than even Alistair could have mustered, as if his body commanded itself to rise. He was enormous, half-a-head taller than Alistair, his muscles showing through tight black robes. His head was shaven like a monk’s.

“We were betrayed. I was with a group of seven of my brothers. We were positioned a few miles north of this location, eliminating a threat, when a traitor revealed himself and killed the rest of my party. I only just managed to escape. This was only a couple hours ago. I had resigned myself to die in here, though I wasn’t going to go out easy. If I slipped beyond the veil, I would have reincarnated just to kill that man.”

The giant shook his head. “I owe you two a life debt. All I ask is that you help me find the bastard. Then, I will assist you in any endeavor.”

“That’s not necessary,” Alistair said. “We were just doing the right thing.”

As he said those words, he felt Dev’rox scream at him internally, and even Evangeline gave him a pointed look—[Reality Sense] capturing events happening behind him never got old.

More seriously, however, Alistair didn’t want to tie up his Karma at this juncture. While he got the sense that this man was powerful, he didn’t feel right about using him just because he healed him. In Alistair’s potentially naïve view, that was just what a person was supposed to do for another person.

“Well, I’ll still pay you handsomely if you help me find him. You don’t even need to help me with the fight—in a fair duel with no surprises, there’s no way I’d lose.” The man gave Alistair a careful look. “Then again, maybe I’ll hire you for help nonetheless. Who are you?”

“I’m Zhiyong, and this is my sister, Yaxin,” he said, gesturing behind him. “We come from a newly initiated planet.”

Alistair left it at that. He didn’t want to attract undue attention. The Grand Imperator did emphasize to Yarik that further transgressions were beneath the Portolon Clan stature… that didn’t reassure him too much. Better to lay low. That was why he gave out their Chinese names. It felt much better than lying outright.

“From Mai Atal, then? Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner. I am Jindor of the Black Star Sanctuary.”

“Dev’rox?” Alistair thought. The imp had graciously offered to read more about the politics of the Final Frontier Empire while Alistair underwent training.

“The Black Star Sanctuary is an ancient organization within the Final Frontier Empire. They practice a taboo form of ocular cultivation that is suppressed in the multiversal core.”

“Suppressed in the multiversal core? How did it turn up in the frontier then? I know that things are a bit lax here, but how taboo are we talking here?”

“For starters, the ocular bloodline they possess is a mere splinter of a splinter of the forbidden original. If they truly possessed the original eyes, the name of which I don’t even know, they would be an unorthodox force near the peak in and of itself. The corrupted version possessed by the Black Star Sanctuary is called the Reverse Eyes. I don’t know the exact origins of the Reverse Eyes, but Alistair, you must understand this—”

Dev’rox looked Alistair right in the eyes in a serious manner that he had seldomly seen from the imp. “Messing with any of the bloodlines suppressed in the core is bad news. Even out here, where Heaven’s eyes are lazy, there is inherent Karmic risk in interacting with this man. Especially if you one day want to get out of this backwoods universe.”

Alistair took Dev’rox’s words to heart, but he shook his head. “I can’t just abandon this guy. He’ll die without our help. He’s still injured. If I take on some far-future Karmic toll from being a good person, then so be it.”

“Have it your way,” Dev’rox said, perhaps with more force than he intended. Their whole conversation took place in the span of a few seconds, accelerated by their tight bond that verged into a mind meld when both parties acquiesced.

“Yes, from Mai Atal,” Alistair quickly replied. “Plain Expanse Duchy.” He still remembered every moment of meeting the gorgeous and talented Gu Fuhao from the Cosmic Blood trial, so mentioning her homeland came naturally.

“Well met, Zhiyong and Yaxin of Plain Expanse, I noticed a glimmer of hesitation in your eyes. Is it mine eyes that bother you so?”

He’s perceptive to notice that, Alistair thought. His control of his own emotions was almost flawless.

“I’ve heard stories,” Alistair admitted, leaving it open-ended.

“They’re exaggerated,” Jindor said. “The Reverse Eyes are like glyphs of the First Script. We don’t have access to the originals, but copies passed along for generations. You don’t have anything to fear, despite the stories.”

Jindor stumbled, his enormous frame collapsing to the floor. With preternatural balance, he managed to catch himself into a one-armed pushup, but he seemed strained. He touched his chest gingerly, the hole in his robe revealing a blackened scar where the stake used to be.

“I need to rest. This ordeal has taken more out of me than I realized.” Jindor looked up at the Tan siblings. “The cold outside is so extreme right now that even a Peak Foundation fire cultivator would be hard pressed to survive. The blizzards are an even greater hazard than the zombies sometimes. Let’s wait out the storm, and you’ll have a third fighter.”

Alistair looked at Evangeline, and nodded. “Sounds good. We can keep watch.”

“Don’t kill me,” Jindor joked. The Black Star Sanctuary disciple closed his eyes and fell asleep at once.

Jindor slept for almost two days straight. After the first twenty-four hours, they grew worried, but Alistair could sense his life force was slowly recovering, so they let the man recover in peace.

Alistair used the time to meditate and cultivate. The density of Mana in the air was quite thick on Nuevo Invierno. The ice affinity spoke to his own reserves of ice affinity, making the process easier as he cycled it through his spiritual pathways.

With each level in the Late Foundation stage, more meridians opened up. Each meridian opened meant a more efficacious use of the Mana within his soulcore—each Skill that used Mana grew stronger by a small percentage.

Dev’rox told him that those from prestigious clans and empires had special methods to bias certain aspects of their cultivation. For example, a fire cultivator could shape their pathways to be more conducive to the fire affinity. Such things were beyond Alistair’s current station, though, while he chipped away at the natal blockages in his meridians, he felt his subconscious guiding him in certain directions.

It wasn’t as good as proper direction, but it would have to do. Dev’rox told Alistair that there wasn’t much he could help with—demon and human meridians were far too different, and even within species, they could vary to the point of discontinuity.

After forty-four hours on the dot, Jindor opened his eyes. Alistair felt his stirring in advance, as his life force pulsed with increasing vigor before his awakening.

Alistair felt a chill run down his spine as the large monk met his gaze. There was something inherently unnerving about the Reverse Eyes. It was more than just their odd appearance, it was something innate down to his soul.

I wouldn’t want to fight him, Alistair assessed. Which also led him to a dark thought—how powerful was the traitor to leave Jindor in a near-dead state? The man claimed to be able to win in a fair right, but Alistair wondered.

“How’s the blizzard?” The first statement out of Jindor’s mouth was all action. He did not seem like a man to dally.

“It’s subsided significantly,” Alistair said. “I discussed things with my sister and we’ve decided to help you catch the traitor. But we do have a question. If he defeated six of you, you think we can win now with just the three of us?”

“He caught us by surprise,” Jindor spat, his jaw muscles tensing. “I believe he used some sort of Fate-warding treasure to hide his deviant intentions. That will not be an issue now. Do you have the stake still?”

Evangeline used her freehand manipulation of force affinity Mana to telekinetically lift the stake and fly it toward Jindor. Although Alistair had started practicing freehand Mana usage, that is, using Mana without directly activating a Skill, he was nowhere near his sister’s talent in that regard. Plus, as a mostly melee Class, he was disadvantaged by the system.

Jindor swiped the stake with a meaty paw, squeezing it like it was the neck of the traitor. “My eyes will lead the way. Let’s go.”