Chapter 24

I scrambled over rock walls and crumbling edifices, falling with a thud to rubble strewn sand in my pursuit of the bird. Gravel from the shattered pieces of ruins dug into my hands as I stared at the bird hopping in the sand.

The sun cooked it beneath my hands, heating my palms.

“I must find a better name for you.” I said, looking at the bird as I rested in a brief bit of shade. This memory chamber was huge, and the walk through the burning hot desert was uncomfortable. It wasn’t like the deserts of Sandgrave — the air was wet and thin.

The bird chirped a warning, turning back toward the ruins.

There was a clean cut between the buildings, a line where they simply stopped existing and then continued inches past. I squinted at it, looking closer. The sand along the line collapsed in on itself, forming a trough in the sand.

I moved towards it, slow and careful in a crouch. If this was from a sword swipe from a Foundation Establishment Cultivator, the wind would’ve blown away the sand a long time ago. No plants grew in the crumbling stone face revealed by the cut.

I staggered back as the world flashed before my eyes, a wall of black severing through the ruin before racing all the way around the ruin. The bird chirped twice and shot through where it passed. Sand crumbled in the trough. I looked up at where the wall of black static flickered and disappeared, feeling at the qi in the air.

It felt like a defense formation just activated.

Now that I was paying attention, I could feel the soft hum in the air of it recharging. It didn’t seem like an offensive formation — it seemed like a barrier that had been broken by disrepair.

I leapt over the gouge anyway, then crouched and moved forward again. The little bird waited for me, grooming itself atop another ruined structure, before turning to lead me deeper in.

I moved under and over crumbling edifaces and stone faces of buildings, and occasionally through doorways that still stood. Something had destroyed this entire place, leaving almost nothing behind. There were signs of battle and other defensive formations — melted slag long since solified, craters and rubble where there were once buildings, and almost all of them were sunk into the sand.

I wondered what this place looked like today, how much of it had been reclaimed by the desert.

Even in this memory sand accumulated against the ruins, pushed by ancient winds. How long did it take for this bird to reach level three hundred?

This ruin could be long buried now, just like the one beneath Sandgrave.

The little bird chirped at me from atop a stone pillar to the side as I crept around it. The ruins grew denser as I headed toward the center, and the signs of battle grew more intense. Scars from sword fights long past left records of the fight carved into the ruins.

I rested my hand on a gouge in the stone.

“These look like sword slashes from a wind technique.” I said, speaking to the little bird. He was chirping with more intensity and frequency as I got closer. I moved slower, examining the environment.

“Were the precursors cultivators? Or this is an imitation using skills?” I looked to the bird. It flapped its wings at me, speaking louder and louder.

I frowned at it. The sand under me trembled, and I had to adjust my feet to hold my footing.

Earth-qi shifted beneath me.

I threw myself to the side.

Something half between a worm and a snake with a body of segmented black carapace ripped out of the ground, sending sand trailing behind it. There was a bird — an exact copy of the little bird — half trapped in its mouth, squeaking and chirping, flapping its wings as hard as it could.

[Sandshear Warrior, Level 19]

The bird flicked a claw, the strike cleaving a blade of bright white light downward. Burning green blood dripped from the worm as the bird freed itself from its grasp, flopping down to the sand and limping away. The worm writhed in the air, letting out a piercing screech.

One of the bird’s two wings was broken and deformed. It didn’t seem to acknowledge me.

“This is you, isn’t it?” I asked the little bird. “This is the copy of you from this memory.”

The bird hadn’t healed completely. It took off from the ground, flying in a constant spiral to land atop the stone, and cawed down at the worm.

The ground beneath me shook as the Sandshear stopped screaming and oriented on me.

I freed my sword and swung for the gap in the monster’s chitin.

My sword cut into chitin but not into flesh, carving a gouge in the chitin of the Sandshear, and the monster slammed into me. I bit back a scream as a mouth full of chitin fangs carved into my flesh, drawing blood before it ripped past me. The chitin burned my skin as it passed, nearly sending me to the ground.

I staggered forward on the shifting sand, looking around before jumping up onto a collapsed, sideways column.

It was just in time, too, as two more sand worms ripped up out of the sand, hissing wildly before diving back down. Black lightning crackled on my blade, burning up qi just as I tried to refill it by drinking the qi around me.

For the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to find air devoid of most qi. Earth qi overwhelmingly filled this space, void-qi coming in at a trickle. It was like I was trying to breathe underwater.

I inspected the wound on my arm.

Memory or not, these things hurt. I wasn’t befriending my way out of this.

I watched as the Sandshears rose up and down out of the sand, their search area slowly expanding. They seemed to lack the ability to see, relying on some other sense as they searched. Both the illusory memory copy of the bird that was guiding me through the dungeon and the one moving through its own memories chirped down at the sand.

[Sandshear Warrior, Level 21]

[Sandshear Striker, Level 16]

The striker had spikes on the outside of it’s body, hard chitin blades that stabbed outward to cut anything around it.

The memory of the bird dove down, spinning. It’s claws lit up as it dove, becoming a whirling drill that stabbed downward and carved into the chitin of the Sandshear Striker.

As the Sandshear drove itself up, the chitin was carved apart by the twin forces, acidic blood smoking where it hit the sand.

The monster fell limp to the sand as burning acid leaked out of it’s smoking side.

The memory of the bird chirped in pain as well, it’s one good wing now covered in acid. The top of it’s wing looked like a sharpened blade, glowing with power. It fought like a swordsman.

On the Bloodstone continent, spirit-beasts evolved out of animals that consumed vast quantities of homogenous qi. Here, the very animals themselves seemed to hunt and level, little different than the trailblazers.

I needed to fight to. I couldn’t let it have all the levels for itself.

When the Sandshear I had already cut shot up out of the sand, I dove forward, stabbing into the side of the chitin.

Enhanced by the sword technique of the Anti-Lightning Herald, I carved a line through it’s chitin, using it’s own force as it rose out of the sand against it, in a replication of the bird-memory’s technique.

[New Skill: Death Dive(+1 Str)]

“Huh.” I said, looking over at the memory bird. It still didn’t acknowledge me, instead slamming its wing into the sand before flapping it triumphantly. The smoke from the acid-blood on its wing stopped.

“I wonder what else I can learn from you.” I said, spinning the sword in my hand as the sand shifted again.

This time, when the Sandshear shot up, I was ready, pulling on the system like an instrument. [Death Dive] refused to activate, but [One Cut, One Kill] activated fine, carving a gouge in the monster’s chitin. The first of the Sandshears must have already been injured in its ongoing fight.

Only then did I read the full description of the skill.

[Death Dive — Do or die. Enhanced attack that can only be inflicted while falling.]

I hopped back on top of the column as the monster dove back beneath the sand.