Hunter woke to the sound of sothing collapsing.
His eyes snapped open. Foundation Realm instincts kicked in before his brain fully processed consciousness. Spiritual sense extended automatically, searching for threats in the pre-dawn darkness.
Found none. Just old buildings giving up on structural integrity.
He relaxed slightly. His ribs imdiately reminded him that relaxing was a mistake. Sharp pain radiated through his chest. His shoulder throbbed with each heartbeat. Every muscle in his body felt like it had argued with a mountain and lost spectacularly.
Around him, the Shadow Legion stirred from their own exhausted sleep. They’d collapsed around the fire soti past midnight, too drained to do more than exist.
Morning light filtered through gaps in the waystation’s main hall roof. Gaps that definitely shouldn’t be there but absolutely were because everything here was falling apart.
"Did sothing fall?" Tao asked groggily, voice rough from sleep and yesterday’s screaming.
"Storage building on the northeast side." Han appeared in the doorway like he’d been awake for hours. Probably had been. The man operated on discipline and spite. "Roof collapsed. Structure’s compromised. We should avoid it."
Great. Add it to the growing list of problems.
Hunter sat up carefully, moving like his bones were made of glass that might shatter. His Foundation Realm healing was working, just slowly. Very slowly. Apparently destroying soone’s cultivation base and nearly dying yourself took ti to recover from. Who knew?
"Where’s Iron Zhou?" Hunter asked, noticing the old guard’s absence.
Han’s expression flickered. Just slightly. "He ca back an hour ago. He’s sleeping in the west corner."
Sothing in his tone made Hunter’s stomach drop. "And the survivors?"
"They didn’t make it through the night." Han’s voice was flat, professional, but his eyes held sothing darker. "The three we tried to save. Two died within the first few hours. Spiritual contamination was too deep. The third..." He paused. "She asked Iron Zhou to make it stop. The pain, the corruption eating her from inside. What those cultivators did, it wasn’t just physical. It poisoned their souls."
Hunter felt his chest tighten. "She asked him to kill her."
"She begged." Han corrected quietly. "Like the child begged you. The Blood Path doesn’t just take lives. It destroys them first. Makes death feel like rcy. Iron Zhou gave her that rcy. Then he and I buried them properly, said what prayers we knew, and ca back."
The weight of it settled heavy. Three more graves. Three more people the Iron Wolves had destroyed beyond any hope of saving. Even rescue had co too late.
"Is he okay?" Hunter asked.
"No." Han’s honesty was brutal. "But he’s functional. That’s all any of us can be right now."
Fair enough. Hunter pushed himself to standing, biting back a groan. Leadership ant pretending you weren’t falling apart even when everything hurt.
Luna’s voice chid in his head, bright and cheerful like she hadn’t witnessed executions yesterday.
[LUNA] Good morning! (◕‿◕✿)
[LUNA] You survived the night!
[LUNA] Congratulations on continued existence! ♥
He was definitely losing his mind. Talking systems. Cultivation worlds. Bandit factions. His life had beco a fever dream that just kept getting weirder.
Around him, the Shadow Legion was waking properly. Mingzhu folded her blanket with military precision despite obvious exhaustion. The twins were already bickering in whispers about sothing. Chen Lao stretched with old man groans that Hunter felt in his soul. Teacher Bai looked haunted, still processing horrors that books and philosophy hadn’t prepared him for.
Qiu sat against a wall with his ledger open because apparently rchants never stopped working. Even traumatized ones. Especially traumatized ones. Numbers probably felt safer than mories.
Wei Suyin held her son Wei Lin close, the ten-year-old genius already calculating sothing with sharp eyes. Little Sparrow was whispering to a rock. i appeared beside Hunter with Gerald clutched in both hands, her hair defying physics in seven different directions.
"You look terrible," she observed with seven-year-old bluntness.
"Thanks. Very helpful observation."
"Gerald agrees."
Hunter almost laughed. Regretted it imdiately when his ribs reminded him that laughter was strictly forbidden. "Tell Gerald I’ll try to look less terrible tomorrow."
"He says you should stop getting hit."
"Gerald’s a smart rock."
"The smartest," i confird with absolute seriousness.
Wei Lin appeared on Hunter’s other side, sharp mind already analyzing. "Your recovery rate suggests Foundation Realm healing is functioning at approximately sixty-five percent efficiency. Suboptimal but within acceptable paraters given the severity of yesterday’s injuries."
"Did you just diagnose with math?"
"Obviously. Mathematics is the universal language of objective assessnt."
Little Sparrow bounced over with concerning energy for soone who’d witnessed multiple horrors yesterday. "Gerald says the building that fell was structurally unsound anyway and we’re lucky it didn’t collapse on soone while they were sleeping!"
"Gerald said all that?" Hunter asked.
"He’s very articulate when you know how to listen."
"He’s a rock," Wei Lin stated flatly.
"A WISE rock with IMPORTANT OPINIONS."
"Rocks don’t have neural networks or conscious thought processes."
"GERALD IS SPECIAL AND YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS."
"eting," Hunter interrupted before this escalated into philosophical warfare. "Everyone. Five minutes. We need to figure out what we’re dealing with."
Groans echoed through the hall. People stumbled toward various states of functionality. The morning routine of exhausted survivors pretending to be competent humans.
Hunter stood carefully, every movent costing him sothing. Foundation Realm healing was working but slowly. He’d taken serious damage fighting Feng. The kind that killed normal people. The kind that even cultivators needed substantial ti to recover from.
But he was the leader. Leaders didn’t get to stay in bed nursing injuries while everyone else worked. Even when their entire body scread for rest.
"You look like death ward over," Lex observed with the helpfulness of soone who clearly didn’t understand social filters.
"You look worse," Xuan added.
"You both look stupid," Tao concluded. "Stop making it worse by talking."
The panic trio. Sohow still functional despite yesterday’s trauma. Hunter felt sothing that might have been pride or might have been concern. Hard to tell anymore.
Five minutes later, the Shadow Legion gathered in the main hall. Fifteen people total, looking at him with varying degrees of exhaustion and expectation. Waiting for leadership. For answers. For plans that would sohow make this work.
No pressure at all.
"Okay." Hunter tried to inject confidence he absolutely didn’t feel. "Situation assessnt. Han?"
The tactical genius stepped forward, professional mode fully activated. "Waystation status is poor but salvageable. Main hall is structurally sound but needs repairs. Three storage buildings existed. One collapsed this morning. One is severely unstable. One might be salvageable with work. The barracks building is completely destroyed, just rubble and mories. Walls are crumbling in multiple sections. Gate is broken, hanging at an angle that offends geotry. Well is functional but needs serious cleaning."
He paused, let the information settle like falling stones.
"Overall assessnt: we have shelter. Barely. We have walls. Technically. We have water. Eventually. We have work. Extensively."
"How much to fix it properly?" Qiu asked, rchant brain already calculating costs and resources and probability of survival.
"Materials, labor, ti?" Han considered the question with tactical precision. "Two hundred silver minimum for basic functionality. That’s assuming we do all the labor ourselves and nobody dies from falling debris. Proper repairs would cost significantly more."
"We have one hundred fifty silver from the Iron Wolves loot." Qiu’s ledger was already open, notes covering every available surface. "So we’re fifty silver short. And that’s assuming we provide all the labor, which ans ti and risk and exhaustion on top of everything else."
"We can work," Tao volunteered quickly. "We’re not completely useless."
"You’re mostly useless," Han corrected without malice. Just stating observable facts. "But you can carry materials and follow simple instructions. That helps."
"I can calculate optimal load distribution," Wei Lin announced with the enthusiasm of soone who genuinely loved mathematics. "And structural stress points. And material efficiency ratios. And probability of catastrophic failure across multiple variables."
"Gerald can sense geological instability," Little Sparrow added, completely serious despite holding a rock.
"Gerald is a rock," Wei Lin said with the patience of soone explaining gravity to a particularly slow student.
"A WISE rock with GEOLOGICAL EXPERTISE."
"Rocks don’t have neural networks or sensory capabilities."
"GERALD IS SPECIAL AND YOU LACK VISION."
"Children." Hunter interrupted before this beca a full debate about rock consciousness and the nature of wisdom. "Focus. Wei Lin, your calculations would genuinely help. Little Sparrow, keep Gerald safe and try not to cause disasters."
"That’s what I said," Wei Lin muttered.
"You said it an," Little Sparrow protested.
i took both their hands with seven-year-old diplomatic authority. "We help together. Stop fighting."
They stopped fighting imdiately.
Hunter made a ntal note that i was effectively running the junior division now. This was probably fine. Maybe. Hopefully.
"Food situation." He dreaded this part more than structural assessnts. "Qiu?"
The rchant’s expression said everything before his mouth opened. Grim. Calculated. Completely honest in the worst possible way
Reviews
All reviews (0)