The Blade of Earth 7 (Patreon)

The car drove into the forest, and I followed, ignoring the temptation to intervene immediately. 

I was good at many things, but the interrogation was not one of them, not even when targeting the mortals. Watching them to see exactly what they wanted to do was the better idea. 

I did not doubt his ultimate goal. The immediacy of the bloodlust that was tainting his aura left no doubt about that. Not only he was planning to kill Sophie, but he was looking forward to it. What I didn’t know was whether his bloodlust was a coincidence, or linked to the presence of the demonic cultivators.  

I leaned toward the second option. A man like that, responsible for maintaining some kind of order between the ordinary citizens and the shadow world — as the locals called it — right where a nest of demonic cultivators seemed to grow. 

No, it was not a coincidence. 

I followed the car with the hopes that he was directly linked to them, and would drive me to their nest. Those hopes were dashed when he suddenly stopped when he arrived at a particularly thick part of the forest. It was a beautiful little corner, untouched by any kind of human presence, the trees tall and majestic, the ground covered with thick foliage. 

I had a feeling that they weren’t here to admire the view. 

The engine stopped, and I was finally able to hear them once more. 

“… you should have learned your lesson when you were in the FBI and stay put, you stupid bitch. That way, you would have stayed alive,” he said as he opened the door.  

“What, let serial killers do as they wish? How many people had to die because you’re too much of a coward to do your job? Twenty, thirty? How many lives are more important than your convenience?” 

“Thirty,” he replied even as he reached inside the car, but he hadn’t reached his gun yet, so I stayed away, hoping that he would spill more. “You think we would be bothered with just thirty. Try thousands —” he continued. 

His words were cut short when a combat boot slammed right into his nose, breaking it loudly. “Bitch!” he shouted as he tumbled back, and Sophie darted out of the car, trying to follow up for her advantage. Unfortunately, with her arms cuffed behind her back, there was little she could do. 

She managed to kick him again before he swept her legs, and reached for his gun. 

I moved forward. I wasn’t faster than a bullet which meantI  still had a ways to go before I could match to my favorite childhood character, but I was still faster than an annoyed secret agent more interested in cursing than pulling his gun, confident in his victory. 

He froze when I appeared behind him, my grip tight around his arm. “Not so fast, buddy,” I said. 

“Blake,” Sophie gasped in shock, her eyes wide. Unsurprising, considering she was able to see my approach from her position, and saw my speed. Not the fastest I could move, not even with the seal in place, but enough to impress a mortal. 

“Hello, beautiful. Long time no see,” I said even as I put my hand on the neck of the agent, and put him to sleep. 

I rather have a plan to interrogate him.  

“I-is he dead?” she asked, with less compassion and fear, and more curiosity. It seemed her sense of justice wasn’t as linked to mercy as I expected. That, or she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable after he had declared he was planning to execute him just to cover up for demonic cultivators. 

“No, we still need to interrogate him. But I rather not do it without a plan,” I said. 

“Good,” she said as she shifted to a sitting position, and I reached for her cuffs, breaking them easily without hurting her, displaying another aspect of my power to her. It was calculated, and not to impress her — which was just a side benefit — but to make sure she treated me as a reliable ally rather than a potential hindrance. 

The absentminded words of the agent had been illuminating, particularly the casual mention of thousands of deaths. It was far from what someone could do alone, meaning the organization itself was corrupt. And, as much as I was tempted to go in the usual manner of sect-born and kill everyone in a corrupt organization, it wasn’t just the desire not to kill innocents that kept me back.

I didn’t want to alert the sect to what was going on, not before I could truly assess what was going on, and it wasn’t just to maintain my exile. 

I didn’t want to alert the sect, because what was going on here was a clear failure for whoever was responsible for Earth … the kind of failure that a cultivator might destroy a whole town to keep it covered. I had seen it many times during my missions. Never from my sect, and I always punished the responsible party. 

But, I wasn’t naive. Just because I never seen a cultivator of Heavenly Sword Sect doing such a thing didn’t mean it never happened. I might be an unpopular, marginalized inner disciple, but I was still an inner disciple. Anyone guilty of such crimes would hide from me.  

I didn’t have a method to communicate with the sect, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have dared to use it before understanding both the true extent of the demonic incursion and the identity — and the connections — of the outer disciple responsible for Earth. 

A troubling situation. I needed Sophie. 

Sophie stayed silent for a while as she rubbed her wrists, her gaze settled on me instead of the man who was about to execute her. “You are stronger than you have led me to believe,” she finally said. 

“Really?” I said, curling my arms to display my muscles. “You think so?” 

My sense of humor didn’t work as well as I hoped. “Yes,” she said, her tone flat. “Explain.” 

“Short version. I had been taken to a secret enclave to be trained because I had the potential for their particular brand of power, lived there for a while, had an argument, and now I’m temporarily kicked out while they decide what to do with me,” I said. 

She paused for a moment, trying to process the dense pile of information I had just dumped on her. I didn’t say anything, letting her process it calmly. “Where’s this enclave?” she asked. 

“Not in America,” I answered, not wanting to go too deep into the issue. 

She caught the message in my tone. I expected the next question to be about my powers. To my surprise, she skipped it. “Why do you care about what’s going on?” 

“Let’s just say those people are not supposed to be here, and I take their presence around my childhood home offensive,” I said, not willing to explain to her what cultivation was, and the kind of danger the demonic variants had created. 

She sighed, no doubt with many questions in mind, but she was a practical woman. With a sigh, she looked down at the unconscious man under us. “What are we going to do with him?” she asked. 

I responded with a sigh of my own. “That, I have no idea,” I said, which earned a surprised expression. “I told you I have been in an enclave for a long while. I don’t know enough about the situation. I don’t even know what to ask.” 

“Can’t you do something with your powers?” 

“Unfortunately, that’s not my particular expertise,” I said. “I can help you if you want, but I’m reluctant to show myself unless you plan to just kill him,” I said. 

Her warning glare was enough to show exactly what she thought about it. “That would be wrong,” she declared, her aura bright as she declared it. 

“As you wish?” I said. I wasn’t particularly torn up about the idea of killing him. He didn’t know anything about me — I approached from his blind spot to make sure — to make his survival sensitive. And I wasn’t in a particular hurry to administer his punishment. “What do you plan to do with him, then? We can try to question him, but it wouldn’t work.” 

“I have a better idea,” she said as she pulled two phones from his pocket, and pressed his finger to the screen to activate both. “How long it would take you to return to the town?” she asked. 

“If I push myself, a few minutes, half an hour if I need to avoid attention,” I said. 

“Good, make sure it doesn’t lock down, and bring it to my friend,” she said, then gave me an address and a description. “Tell her that it’s about the case, and it’s far bigger than we thought. She can extract far more information than we can from interrogating him,” she said. 

“Do you want me to carry you as well?” I said. 

“No, I’m going to stay here and see if I can get anything from him,” she said, then looked at his car. “I doubt that they expect him to return quickly considering…” she said, leaving her words lingering instead of mentioning her potential assassination.

“Do you want me to fake a car crash? It might give you some more time?” I offered. 

“I don’t want you to risk your life any more than —” she started before she stopped, remembering that I was not exactly normal. “A car crash wouldn’t threaten you, would it?” she asked. 

”Certainly not, but it’s irrelevant for this case anyway,” I said as I moved behind the car. A stiff push later, it slammed against the nearby tree, its front wrecked. “Here. It should keep them from understanding what’s going on even more,” I said. “Now, do you want me to bring you to a nice hidden spot before they discover your presence?”