His message delivered, the bloodied runner slumped chest-first onto the gravel, his fingers clawing weakly at the dirt.
Leaving his fallen ladle on the planks, Barnaby Holt lunged toward the hammock, his single eye wide with sheer terror.
“We have to run!” Barnaby yelled, grabbing Kaelen’s shoulder with his lone hand. “If Briggs splits that vault cage, Vane and our entire pill route are finished! Get up! Run!”
Kaelen did not move an inch. He remained lying flat on his back, letting the cool mint towel settle back over the bridge of his nose.
“Running is cardiovascular exercise,” Kaelen said in a calm, flat voice. “Rapid footwork circulates Qi through the heel gates. The moment my boots sprint across town, the slate registers combat movement and cashes out.”
Barnaby looked ready to tear his own hair out.
“You are four hours from the ten-day mark!” the old man screamed. “Who cares about your multiplier if the Iron-Hounds chop you into dog meat?”
“I care,” Kaelen replied. “A master doesn’t run when he has employees.”
He pointed toward the rear drying shed, where two long, sturdy bamboo scaffolding poles leaned against the cedar wall.
“Tie the hammock ropes to the poles,” Kaelen ordered. “Sera takes the front. Barnaby, you take the rear. Mina carries my tea jug and the cold water bucket. We take the back drainage gully straight into the market wine cellar.”
Barnaby stared at him in utter disbelief. “A stretcher? You want us to carry you into a gang war on a bed?”
“A bamboo litter,” Kaelen corrected him mildly. “It protects my True Fallow State and costs me zero calories. Hurry up, Barnaby. Your blood pressure is getting loud.”
Sera did not waste time arguing.
She set her spear against the porch post, grabbed the hemp ropes, and lashed the hammock netting to the bamboo poles with tight military knots.
“The weight is well distributed,” Sera reported, testing the tension with a firm tug. “A Rank 7 body can carry three hundred pounds without losing balance.”
“See?” Kaelen murmured. “Professional standards.”
Barnaby grumbled curses under his breath, but he hoisted the rear ends over his broad, scarred shoulder.
Mina quickly packed the earthenware tea jug, wrapping it in a dry cloth, and picked up the small wooden water bucket.
Sera lifted the front poles with effortless ease, her Mortal Pulse Rank 7 strength making the load feel light as feather-down.
They lifted Kaelen off the ground.
Kaelen tucked Book 3 of his romance serial onto his chest, pulled his straw hat over his brow, and settled into the swaying hemp.
Running two miles through rocky alleys would ruin my cloth slippers and trigger my footwork manual, Kaelen thought with deep satisfaction as the litter began to move. Being carried like a provincial magistrate protects ten days of hard slacking. This is the only civilized way to travel to an ambush.
***
They moved swiftly through the shadowed lanes behind the town wall.
Mina jogged beside the litter, holding the earthenware jug of Soul-Cooling Tea in both hands.
The dark drainage gully smelled of damp moss and old sewer brick.
Two blocks away, a town patrol sprinted past the main street intersection, their iron lanterns casting swinging shadows against the plaster walls.
The guards were shouting about canal blockades, paying no attention to the dark drainage ditch below.
Sera led them through the culvert with silent, gliding steps.
They slipped through a rusted iron grate behind the canal warehouse, descending a flight of slick stone steps into the subterranean cellars.
Sera kicked open a hidden brick panel, leading them into the private tea room behind the Black-Crow auction house.
They set the bamboo litter down gently upon the thick woolen carpet.
Boom! Clang! Boom!
The stone floor shuddered beneath their feet. Heavy iron impacts rattled the porcelain teacups on the side table.
Through the heavy red velvet curtains and iron security grilles, the main auction cavern was visible in the distance.
Torches cast flickering red light across thirty Iron-Hound thugs clad in wolf pelts and studded leather armor.
At their head stood a massive, scarred brute with arms as thick as tree trunks.
It was Lieutenant Horgan, Briggs’s chief enforcer, radiating the crushing aura of Mortal Pulse Rank 8.
In his calloused hands, Horgan gripped a massive, two-handed spiked warhammer. The black steel head was smeared with dried blood and grease.
Across the cavern floor, behind a heavy bronze-and-iron cage array, Deacon Vane knelt on the cold flags.
Beside Vane stood two surviving vault guards, their tunics soaked in sweat and blood.
They had consumed their Supreme pills earlier, and their bolstered pulse gates had allowed them to kill eight bandits before falling back into the cage.
Horgan stepped forward, swung his spiked warhammer in a wide arc, and smashed it against the iron cage door.
Clang!
Sparks showered across the flagstones. The iron bars dented inward, the heavy locking pins screeching under the strain.
“Weasel Vane!” Horgan roared, his yellow teeth bared in a savage snarl. “Open the cage! Give us Master Ash’s pill formulas and the thirty thousand silver in your vault! Tell us who Master Ash is, and I might only chop off your hands!”
Deacon Vane clutched his leather ledger to his ribs, his thin mustache twitching with terror.
“Master Ash is a hidden immortal!” Vane squeaked, his voice cracking. “Touch this vault, and he will melt your bones into puddle water!”
“He is not here to save you, rat!” Horgan bellowed, raising his warhammer for another crushing strike.
***
Before the hammer could fall, a commotion broke out at the main subterranean archway across the hall.
Heavy footsteps pounded down the stone stairs.
A dozen clan torches illuminated the foyer as Cassian Vance marched into the cavern, flanked by six elite Vance guards with silver-crested sabres.
Cassian had tracked the commotion from the canal, seeking any sign of his third brother.
His eyes were bloodshot, his face flushed with the toxic heat of Rank 8 Crack-Pills.
“Iron-Hound filth!” Cassian shouted, his green wind-qi flaring around his boots as he drew his Raging-Gale Broadsword. “You dare cause chaos in Vance territory on the eve of the Barony Tournament?”
Lieutenant Horgan paused, resting his heavy warhammer against the stone floor. He turned his scarred face toward Cassian, his lips curling into a mocking sneer.
“Vance whelps?” Horgan spat into the dirt. “Good. We will crack your skull too after we empty this vault.”
Cassian pointed his broadsword toward the back corridor.
“I am looking for Kaelen Vance!” Cassian demanded, his voice ringing against the stone ceiling. “The coward fled the tournament grounds! Bring him out to sign the forfeiture scroll, or I will purge this rat nest myself!”
Deacon Vane peeked through the iron bars, blinking in confusion. “The Third Young Master? What does he have to do with this?”
Cassian sneered, raising his blade. “He signed the challenge and vanished into the lower quarter! A Vance scion who flees before the elders is a traitor!”
A tense, violent standoff locked the main hall in frozen anticipation.
***
Inside the private tea room, Kaelen checked his internal clock.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 239h 30m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!] [Status: Mortal Pulse Rank 6 (Clean)] [Vessel Capacity: 240h (Stage 1 Cap)]
Exactly thirty minutes remained.
Eighteen hundred seconds until the absolute ceiling of Stage 1.
The Fallow Distension in his skull had reached an unbearable throb.
It felt as though two molten iron needles were pressing against the bone behind his ears, humming with the force of nine days and twenty-three hours of unspent potential.
Thirty minutes, Kaelen thought, his eyes half-closed beneath his straw hat. Cassian is screaming about clan honor, Horgan is swinging a sledgehammer, and Deacon Vane is weeping into his robes. If someone ruins my timer in the final thirty minutes, I will feed them their own teeth.
Out in the hall, a squad of eight Iron-Hound thugs broke away from Horgan’s line.
They spotted the narrow corridor leading toward the private vaults and the rear tea room.
“Check the back rooms!” a thug yelled, raising a poisoned broadsword. “Grab the ledgers!”
“Sera,” Kaelen murmured from his hammock. “Hold the bottleneck for thirty minutes.”
Sera’s hand closed around the wrapped shaft of her broken Storm-Pike.
Her Rank 7 spear aura flared silently beneath her skin.
“No one steps past me,” Sera said.
She stepped through the velvet curtain into the narrow, stone-walled corridor.
She reached up to the wall, found the thin hemp cord Kaelen had told her to rig, and yanked it with a sharp jerk.
Snap.
Three heavy clay jars perched upon the high stone ledge tipped over, crashing down onto the eight charging thugs.
Thick, black pig-grease fire-oil splashed over their helmets, chests, and leather vests.
Before they could curse, Sera kicked a burning oil lamp from the wall bracket straight into the greasy puddle.
Fwoosh!
A roaring wall of orange flame erupted across the corridor. The sticky pig grease caught with explosive fury, clinging to armor and flesh.
The eight thugs shrieked in agony, rolling on the stones, beating at their burning cloaks.
Through the roaring curtain of fire, four armored Iron-Hound enforcers charged forward, their broadswords slashing blindly through the smoke.
Sera did not retreat half an inch.
She stepped into her stance, planted her rear heel firmly into the dirt, and sank her hip two inches.
She thrust her broken spear.
Crack!
The iron point tore through the smoke like a silver lightning bolt.
Using the Mountain-Splitting Point, she struck the lead thug’s iron breastplate.
The shockwave blew the armor inward, cracking ribs and hurling the man backward ten feet into his burning comrades.
She withdrew the spear with a clean snap and thrust again.
Snap! Crack!
A second thug dropped with a shattered shoulder. A third fell with a pierced thigh.
Her Mortal Pulse Rank 7 spear-aura hissed through the six-foot stone hallway, creating an impassable barrier of whistling iron and fire.
The remaining Iron-Hounds recoiled in terror, unable to push past the burning choke point.
***
Inside the tea room, Mina knelt beside the hammock, holding the icy mint towel firmly against Kaelen’s forehead.
Barnaby stood near the entrance, holding his heavy wooden ladle, his knuckles white as he listened to the screams in the corridor.
“Hold steady, boy,” Barnaby muttered under his breath, his voice shaking. “Sera is fighting like a demon out there. Do not let your head burst.”
The slate chimed softly in Kaelen’s mind.
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 40m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Twenty minutes left.
Outside in the main cavern, Cassian’s clan guards had engaged the Iron-Hound crossbowmen.
Steel bolts sparked off stone pillars, and green wind-qi clashed with crude iron blades as the foyer erupted into a chaotic melee.
The Pre-Paid Shield was working.
Sera held the narrow corridor alone, the grease-fire blazed, and the thirty bandits were stalled in absolute chaos.
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 45m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Fifteen minutes left.
The pressure inside Kaelen’s head felt like a trapped cyclone. The dense sphere of Qi in his lower dantian burned with blinding, compressed white light.
Almost there, Kaelen thought, feeling the seconds tick like falling raindrops. Hold the line.
***
Suddenly, a deafening, thunderous roar ripped through the smoke.
“Get out of the way, useless curs!” Lieutenant Horgan bellowed.
The massive Rank 8 enforcer charged down the corridor, his heavy iron boots stomping through the burning grease without slowing.
His two-handed spiked warhammer was raised high, surrounded by a violent, crackling aura of brown earth-qi.
He saw Sera holding the choke point.
With a savage snarl, Horgan swung his warhammer sideways with terrifying momentum.
Sera raised the shaft of her broken Storm-Pike to parry.
The collision thundered through the tunnel, blowing the grease flames outward in all directions.
The wooden spear shaft held, but the sheer, crushing weight of Rank 8 earth-qi drove Sera backward across the flagstones, her boots leaving scorched skid marks in the soot.
Her heels slammed against the threshold of the inner passage, her palms stinging from the bone-rattling blow.
Horgan didn’t pause.
He swung his spiked warhammer straight into the heavy iron security grate guarding the inner tea room.
With a deafening metallic shriek, the iron grate tore free from its stone moorings and flew inward across the hallway.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 239h 50m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Only ten minutes remained until the cap.
Covered in soot, grease, and spattered blood, Lieutenant Horgan raised his spiked warhammer high above his shoulder.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto the velvet curtain, and he charged straight toward the tea-room doorway.