Emerald Alchemist, Ch 26: Soul Talisman (Patreon)

“You poisoned yourself and kept the antidote on hand?” Verse asked as he looked at the branch manager and the effects of the pill he’d swallowed. His eyes brightened as the flames in them leapt higher.

“That means all of the nonsense about being forced to do this was a lie. The only question left is how deeply you’re tied into what the Crimson Shade Sect is doing.”

Renzer’s aura was pressing down on the room as he tried to clear the poison, but it only made Verse’s temper rise. He liked the simplicity of just fighting him and beating him into submission.

It was more satisfying than dealing with elaborate plans.

At the same time, he could already tell that even if Renzer hadn’t been poisoned, he was weaker than Corpsewind. There was only a small sense of pressure facing him, and his aura didn’t have the same killing intent.

Even a weak snake was dangerous, however, so Verse didn’t plan to underestimate him. There was no telling what talismans or other tricks he had up his sleeve.

He wanted to jump forward and smash Renzer into pulp, but he had to give Vesana a chance first. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to vent the anger that had been building up for months.

He could sense it rolling off her next to him, now that Renzer had finally shown his hand.

“I didn’t think you’d have a method to sense the history of a poison, or the dao of the alchemist,” Renzer laughed bitterly as he glared at Vesana. Then he sent another wave of his aura at them, trying to crush them against the wall.

“I underestimated you, girl...or really the strength of your background. No matter how good I am, I’m always fighting an uphill battle against people like you. The ones blessed from birth.”

“Idiot,” Vesana replied shortly. “Do you think you’re somehow noble for lying and betraying your way to power? You’re a traitor who deserves to die. Also, do you really think that was a pill sensing aura?”

She glared at Renzer as she shook her head in disgust.

“That type of pill sensing formation doesn’t exist. If it did, it would be more capable than half of the appraisers in the guild. It was just a minor healing spell on my guild badge.”
“So...that was all a bluff?” Renzer turned pale as he looked at Vesana. His hands shook and then he doubled over, coughing out a mouthful of blood as he lost control of his energy.

When he looked up again, his shoulders sagged as some of the wind left his sails. His aura weakened as well, before surging back as he focused on it.

“I should have killed you a long time ago,” he said bitterly. “The sect could have made it look like an accident. I thought about it, you know. I was sure you would cause trouble here. But that vaunted background of yours kept me from doing anything.”

“You’ve always thought you were smarter than you are,” Vesana replied, shaking her head. “And you wanted more from the guild than you deserved. It was only a matter of time until you ruined yourself. I just wish you hadn’t betrayed all of us at the same time. You spat in our faces.”

The energy in her voice rose with each word until it was like harsh ice cutting across the room.

“Do you think I didn’t look into your past?” Vesana asked angrily. “That I didn’t know about your connections to the Crimson Shade Sect and how you got this position? They funded your cultivation for the last fifty years and gave you the resources you needed to convince the guild you could handle it.

“That could have been allowed. You’re not the only one with political connections who also works in the guild. But you betrayed us by kidnapping those alchemists. And now you prove that you’re worth even less than a dog. You turned on your supporter as well as us, claiming that you have nothing to do with them and that they forced you. How can you call yourself a cultivator? You don’t even have a spine!”

She was standing directly across from him now. Her hands were tight on her defensive artifact and the guild badge that she was still holding. The blue barrier around her was more than powerful enough to stop his aura from hindering her, but it wasn’t clear if she had the ability to fight him as well.

“Fifteen months!” she said in an icy voice. “That’s how long you’ve been sending heritage alchemists to them. I missed the first ones, but I found out after looking around a little. I didn’t want to believe it, but I watched them visit you and Heten and then disappear before they could be registered, but I couldn’t do anything to you without proof.

“Now, you not only admit to doing it all, but you want to talk about fairness and opportunity? How are you still alive? Someone like you should have died from shame years ago! Even when I knew you were working against us, the guild regulations required that I have evidence before accusing you. That is what the guild is. We are honorable and fair, and while some families have more wealth than others, it is honor and fairness that keep us strong. Qualities that you spit on! You are the worst type of scum!”

“A child like you should know when to watch her mouth.” Renzer stared back at her, his eyes darkening. His face turned even more pale, but it was combined with his own venomous anger.

“How dare you raise your voice to me. I am a Rank 4 alchemist, and your senior as a cultivator. What do you know of honor and fairness in life?”

The ashen color from the poison moved toward his cheeks and the hollows of his eyes as his hands curled into fists. His knuckles were so bony they looked like short claws. His cultivation was cycling faster as the poison cleared, but it was still unstable.

Otherwise, he probably would have leapt across the room at her.

For all of Renzer’s ego, however, he underestimated Vesana. She had no intention of backing down.

“Do you know the families of the people you kidnapped and who might be dead or mindless now?” Vesana seethed as she ignored him and kept going. “I sent letters to their clans, to get confirmation that they never returned there. They were the hopes of their generation. Hope that you destroyed for your own profit.”

Renzer’s face was turning dark, but with each moment that he couldn’t deny it, the weight of her accusations against him increased. His breathing became erratic as he began to gasp for air.

Silence was an admission of guilt.

“As soon as the guild enforcers arrive, you’ll be stripped of your position,” Vesana said fiercely as she laid it out for him. “If you’re not executed directly, you’ll rot in a guild prison where your only entertainment will be making pills to pay off your debt to us and all those you’ve betrayed.”

She waved her hand at the walls filled with treasures.

“You’ll never see this trash you love so much again. Do you tell yourself that if it shines enough, it will cover up the poison in your heart? All it does is hide that there is nothing human about you.”

“Never!” Renzer gasped out the word as if she’d stabbed him in the chest. Then he gathered his strength and a strange dagger-shaped talisman appeared in his hand.

It was a bright and translucent blue that shone with an interior light, making it look like ocean water and sunlight trapped inside of a blade.

There was a dangerous aura around it that made it feel like the blue light was stabbing into Verse’s spirit.

Renzer looked down at the talisman with a trace of pain, but he activated it and pointed it at Vesana.

“When the sect said they wouldn’t act against you,” he said as his energy filled the talisman, making it shine more brightly, “I made my own plans, just in case I had to deal with you. This is a Soul Blade talisman from a sect outside the empire. It cost more than you’ll ever know to get it here.

“You have no idea how many times I thought about using it on you. Now, at least I’ll finally get the chance. It will slice your soul into shards until there’s nothing left to put back together, but it won’t leave a mark on your skin.

“The best part is that when you’re dead, there won’t be a trace of my aura to connect it to me. I’ll tell the guild that an assassin found you and I tried to stop them. Your friend there will work for that. An assassin masquerading as an Imperial Knight! Imagine the drama. After that, it’s just a matter of creating the right story about how he was invading the guild, attacked you, and I killed him.”

Renzer’s voice was flat and almost lifeless. The only thing that gave a spark of energy to his threat were the ashen shadows that covered his face.  They made his eyes look hollow, and combined with the raging heat of his aura, it seemed like his body had been burnt to charcoal.

He was like a corpse that didn’t know he’d already burned to death.

Verse shook his head as he began cycling his bloodline energy in a new pattern, but he didn’t say anything as he continued standing next to Vesana.

It wasn’t a surprise that Renzer had a couple of tricks up his sleeve. Soul attacks were notoriously difficult to defend against, and depending on the technique, they could do anything from instantly killing a person to driving them insane.

There were a number of sects in the empire that practiced soul cultivation, and he’d seen a few soul talismans in the Azurewind Guard badge for sale at high prices, but it looked like Renzer had gone out of his way to acquire one that was harder to trace.

That meant it was probably one of the most dangerous types.

It had to be a Primal Spirit talisman or even higher.

Verse wasn’t sure what type of protection Vesana had from her artifacts, but if the talisman hit her, it might be strong enough to kill her.

It was already too late to stop Renzer from activating it. The man sent a dark glare at Vesana, but he didn’t say anything else as he raised the talisman and threw it at her.

The talisman turned into a streak of intense blue light as it shot across the room. It moved so quickly that it was hard to see, like a translucent blade.

It felt like a giant storm shook the room around it, making everything tremble under its force. Although it was small, the sheer amount of power trapped inside that little dagger was more than Renzer had in his entire body.

Vesana’s face was pale as she raised the medallion in her hand and let out a shout, making the barrier around her shine brightly and become thicker, but it presented no obstacle to the talisman.

The talisman flew straight toward the center of her forehead, aiming for the weak point between her eyebrows that was a direct conduit to the soul.

Vesana’s eyes widened and she tried to reach for something else in her spatial ring, but there was no time for her to get it.

The talisman was just about to touch her skin when it slammed into a hand covered in silver scales and emerald flame.

Verse let out a hiss of pain as part of the talisman’s energy shattered on his skin, but the majority of it pierced through. The translucent blue blade disappeared into his hand.

Behind him, Vesana stared at Verse’s back, her eyes glistening as tears began to form. From her perspective, he’d suddenly appeared in front of her at the last moment, and she hadn’t even seen him move.

“Why?” she asked softly. Her voice was filled with emotion, but it wasn’t clear if she was speaking to him or to the world at large.

Her mood turned furious in an instant as she hurled something at Renzer, and then she pulled out another item from her spatial ring and focused on it, but Verse didn’t have time to pay attention to what it was.

Nor did he have time to explain.

He had promised to deal with Renzer, so there was no way he was going to let her die on his watch.

The talisman was strange. It felt almost like it had entered his meridians. He didn’t normally think of his soul being in his hand. He imagined it either at the center of his body, or sometimes as a figure sleeping in his mind or dantian, but in reality, it was in all of those places at once.

It existed on a level that was only partially in the physical world.

Now that it had made contact with him, however, the talisman didn’t have any trouble orienting itself. It was created by a master of soul cultivation, and it immediately curved toward the center of his spirit, moving at a blinding speed as it locked onto him.

It felt like the world was whistling around it as he watched it close in. The perspective of time within his soul meant everything was moving at a glacial pace compared to the outside world, so he had plenty of time to study it.

It still looked like a tiny blue dagger, but it was much more ornate than he’d been able to tell before. Small inscriptions and runes ran across its surface, covering it in a mystical formation.

Now that it was touching him, he could feel the danger of it even better.

It was deadly.

If it reached the soul of a normal cultivator, it would pierce straight through, shredding everything in its wake.

Fortunately, he wasn’t a normal cultivator.

His soul was like a burning sun at the center of his being, surrounding an image of himself, which slowly changed its appearance from dragon to human, and then back again.

Without hesitation he began layering barriers to slow the talisman down. Each of them was a layer of flames made of multi-colored light, from gold to crimson, silver to emerald.

One by one, the dagger stabbed through them and continued onward, but each time it did, it lost a tiny fraction of its size.

Verse let out a roar that echoed across the horizon of his inner world as he drew on his Jade Foundation and dao, and focused all of his attention on stopping it.

Ever since he’d arrived in this world, he’d been training his soul in one way or another. First by fighting against Old Yuan, that ghost that had tried to possess him, and then by integrating his memories of past lives and finding his dao.

The creation of Dusk to Dawn was part of that, and as the dagger continued trying to approach him, it suddenly shivered as it was swept up by a ripple of energy, one that temporarily locked it in place.

An edge of crimson flames drew energy from the dagger, melting it at the edges, followed by a rising sun that pushed it back, away from the center of his soul.

It was like a day passed before the dagger could move onward, and when it did, it was slightly farther back than it had been before.

From the center of the sun, Verse opened his eyes and stared at it. He took in a deep breath of energy from the world and then his hand rose, pointing directly at the dagger, as an even stronger cycle of Dusk to Dawn struck it again.

His dao was strong and the Jade Scripture was a comprehensive art, one that touched on all layers of cultivation, including the soul. He hadn’t trained in the higher soul arts, since they were one of the paths that had only opened to him now at the Aligned realm, but he was still strengthened by his Jade Foundation.

Most importantly, and the real reason he had the confidence to jump in front of Vesana, was that his soul had survived traveling through the heavens and falling into the River of Fate.

If those things hadn’t destroyed him, this talisman wouldn’t be able to either.

But it could still hurt.

He worked to trap the dagger in a wave of endless Solar Cycles, working to drain its energy as quickly as possible. The soul was closer to the dao than spiritual or physical cultivation, and there was also a home territory advantage.

As long as he could delay the talisman until its energy dissipated, he was confident in defeating it.

***

Vesana looked at Verse’s broad back in front of her as her eyes stung with tears. She hadn’t expected he would jump in front of her at the last instant and block the talisman.

Ever since she’d met him, she’d seen him as a mysterious and shining figure. The childhood stories of Imperial Knights conquering evil and their very real presence at key moments throughout history had made her believe that he was capable of almost anything.

His incredible cultivation speed and the story about how he’d come from the Outer Heavens just made that more intense, especially when he seemed to have an answer for every question, even if it was in a strange way, like he was searching his memories for it.

He’d protected her when she was threatened, just like the legends of the Knights always said, but she’d forgotten about the cost that came with it, and the reason there were so few Knights.

Their titles were earned through battle and sacrifice.

She’d heard that the Knight’s Seal itself rejected those who tried to gain it other ways. In a world like the empire, with cultivators plotting at every corner, that type of person was always surrounded by enemies.

They almost always met their end in battle, when they chose to face something that was stronger than them.

They were the empire’s shield. That was why they were granted so much authority, even here in Boreas, a tiny city in the middle provinces that had no real claim to fame except its foundation in alchemy.

She’d been too naive about Renzer.  She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Her father had always told her to be careful of people who would do anything for power. She should have seen this coming a long time ago and prepared for every possibility, but she’d trusted too much in the Ocean Barrier artifact he’d given her.

It could block attacks up to the Inspired Aura realm, so there was a reason she’d placed her faith in it, but that was only for regular attacks. In front of the soul talisman, it was like a cloud trying to stop a sword.

Soul attacks were dangerous and rare, even in the capital. It didn’t surprise her that Renzer had needed to acquire the talisman from outside the empire. The major sects that she knew of with a focus on the soul were more interested in healing the soul than destroying it.

A couple of them were staunch supporters of the alchemists’ guild.

The ghost cultivator sects, who claimed to have some ability with soul magic and controlling ghosts, weren’t pure soul cultivators. Their abilities were in curses and blood magic, as well as controlling puppets, not direct soul damage like that talisman.

She had one protective item that might have worked against it, but she hadn’t been able to get to it in time. Now, she pulled it out of her spatial ring.

A circlet of leaves that had been woven together in an interlocking band appeared in her hand. It was about the size of her hand, just large enough to be worn on her head. The leaves shone with a deep green and peaceful energy, bringing a breath of mint and spring to the room that was filled with Renzer’s fiery aura.

It was too small for Verse’s head, so she quickly slipped it onto his wrist instead, where it settled like a bracelet. His eyes were open, looking fiercely across the room at Renzer, and his hand was still raised where he’d blocked the talisman, but he was unmoving.

A wave of relaxing energy began to emanate from the circlet and swiftly covered him, but there was no immediate effect.

An instant later, she hardened her will and blinked the tears away.

Then she stepped to the side around Verse and turned her attention to Renzer, who was still trying to cycle his cultivation to clear out the poison he’d inflicted on himself. Her expression blazed with fury.

Only a moment had passed since he threw the talisman, and he was looking at Verse with a dark smirk like he’d won, which he transferred to her as soon as she stepped into view.

“I suppose that’ll have to do,” he said with a bitter laugh. “There aren’t a lot of people who can say they’ve killed an Imperial Knight.”

His aura filled the room, making it feel like she was surrounded by towering oaks that were ready to crash down on her head at any moment, but she stepped forward, letting her Ocean Barrier take the weight of it.

“We’ll count this as my win,” he said with a smirk as his confidence returned. His complexion was also clearing up, making it obvious that the antidote was working. “I also know the extent of that artifact you have. I might not be able to kill you through it, but you can’t do a thing to me either. In another minute or two, my cultivation will recover and I’ll be gone.”

Vesana ran through the items she had, but nearly all of them were for defense. Her family had been willing to protect her, but not to give her weapons to attack others.

Nonetheless, she pulled out a shining white gemstone and held it in her fist as she glared at Renzer. A brilliant white flame began to burn along the surface, which quickly flowed across her entire body, making it look like she was surrounded by starlight.

Her cultivation technique was called the White Star Horizon, and was one of the best that her family had access to. It was capable of taking her all the way to the Dao Echo realm. Like most alchemist techniques, it was Fire based, but it had a strong affinity for other elements as well.

Even in the capital, it was a rare technique, and at least a grade higher than the one Renzer was so proud of.

Unlike most techniques, which used blades or other weapons, the White Star Horizon needed a spherical object to act as a Fire focus. The aura it created around her was an intense layer of flames, one that could burn through most other techniques.

To complement that, she focused on mobility and martial techniques that used her hands and feet, as well as long distance spells. It was a strange fighting style for an alchemist, who rarely got so physical, but she had long ago become comfortable with it.

As soon as the aura blazed to life around her, she darted forward, her leg flashing out as she kicked at Renzer. The air ignited in an arc of burning white light and tiny pinpricks of light like stars appeared in its wake.

Renzer snorted as he waved his hand. The image of a giant oak with burning branches appeared in front of him, directly in the path of her attack. Her kick exploded against the side of the tree.

The burning points of light flew in every direction as a sharp pain stabbed through her foot and shin. Crackling heat from the tree swept down toward her as a twisting column of smoke flew toward her head.

It held a heat that was at least three times greater than hers, and it was accompanied by the same crushing weight that was part of the rest of Renzer’s aura. Vesana staggered backwards as Renzer’s technique shattered on the blue shield above her head.

Streaks of white fire began to swirl around her and then gathered into a star in her hand.

Without hesitating, she hurled it at him.

Renzer waved his hand at her like he was dismissing a fly, and a wave of smoky heat shattered her technique into shards of loose energy, which were crushed by the weight of his aura in the room.

“Now you know the real difference between us,” he said mockingly as he continued to cycle the antidote.. “Without your family to protect you, you’re nothing special. At least you’ll learn one lesson today.”

Instead of paying any more attention to her, he turned to look at the strange talisman seal that Verse had used on the walls.

“I don’t know what technique he used to seal the room,” he added, “but it’s barely at the Primal Spirit level. It won’t take me long to break through it. And you have no way to stop me.”

He was pleased with himself and his mood was improving by the moment. Watching the satisfaction on his face made Vesana curl her hands into fists.

Renzer turned toward the wall closest to him as he began studying the seal, but he was still watching her out of the corner of his eye, making sure she didn’t do anything else.

He reached out with a hand that was still partially frozen from the poison, which had three fingers twisted and dark. It didn’t stop him as he sent a streak of smoky flame into the sigil on the wall, which shuddered under the attack.

Tiny cracks appeared on the green symbol.

He smiled as he raised his hand and attacked it again, making the cracks bigger. Just as he was raising his hand for a third blow, however, a strange green reflection swept across his hand.

Then a massive claw covered in green flames swept through the air and slammed into his chest, hurling him backward across the room to slam into the far wall.

“She might not be able to stop you, but I can.” Verse’s voice rang out as he stepped forward.

His voice was angry and emerald flames surged around him like armor, highlighting the appearance of strange silver scars all across his body that almost looked like scales.

Vesana felt his hand on her shoulder as he stepped around her. The circlet she’d placed on his wrist glowed against her white aura, shining with such brilliance that it felt like an entire forest had come to life.