It was time to move on.
This time, when Lindon revealed the hand, all the uncontrolled power in the room flowed toward him immediately as the hunger devoured it. The hand twisted in his grip as it fed, and a howl echoed through the room.
Instead of ghouls rising through the floor, this time strands of Forged madra—like Mercy’s Strings of Shadow technique—shot from each wall and webbed up the entire room.
In the first instant, they were all on their guard. Each of them dodged or blocked strands shooting out from the walls, and they ended up separated by webs of hunger madra.
For a breath or two afterwards, they all waited for the next part of the trap.
Finally, Eithan cleared his throat. “I guess this one is free.”
The borrowed authority of Subject One pulled Lindon toward the door on the left wall, so he sealed the hand back in its metal case before unleashing a Hollow Domain with a wisp of soulfire.
The blue-white sphere filled the room, wiping out all the hunger madra. Each strand resisted a little, holding a small amount of will behind it, but the entire room was clear in a moment.
“Ten scales if somebody can tell me what the point to that technique was,” Yerin said.
“I don’t think that was a conscious attack,” Lindon responded. It was just a gut feeling, but he thought he was probably right.
Orthos grunted. “It feels like something stirring in its sleep. I don’t like it.”
Little Blue shuddered as she made a tinkling sound in agreement, snuggling closer to Lindon’s neck.
“I suspect these are indeed instinctive defensive reactions,” Eithan said. “Like scratching at an itch while you sleep. But attacks of this level would never trouble someone like the Sword Sage, even taking the suppression field into account.”
Ziel pushed himself up from the ground, rolling up a tiny scroll. He had copied some of the runes himself. “It’s definitely going to get stronger. Let’s get deeper while we’re still fresh.”
“Thank you!” Mercy cried. “Whatever we do, we need to move.”
Lindon nodded and led the way to the tunnel the hand had indicated.
Until the tunnel vanished.
He sensed something, and it felt similar to the substance he pushed through to create a portal. Like he was feeling the fabric of space itself.
Now there was only a blank stretch of wall where a tunnel had been a moment before.
Everyone except Lindon and Eithan put their guard up at the sudden shift, including Little Blue. Lindon looked around for the entrances; if they had all vanished, they were going to need to find a way to break through this stone before they died here.
There were still two entrances left. The hall they’d come from had vanished, just like the one they had been headed into. Now there was one entrance against the right wall, and one in the ceiling.
The ceiling tunnel was marked with the image of a coiled, serpentine dragon, and the entrance in the right wall bore another symbol of the Arelius Patriarch.
Ziel leaned against his hammer and sighed. “They can manipulate space. Great. I should have known.”
“Think of it this way,” Eithan said. “We have so much to learn!”
Once more, Lindon brought out the hand.
In the headquarters of the Twin Star Sect, on the edge of Serpent’s Grave, Jai Long completed his morning cycling. This aura chamber was perfect for him, having once belonged to the Jai clan; it was filled with glowing blades that saturated the air with the power of light and swords.
He couldn’t replenish the animating force of the snake that brought all his techniques to life, but that resource seemed inexhaustible. Jai Long only wished it would one day leave his madra, no matter that his entire fighting style was now based around it.
He wrapped the bands of scripted red cloth around his face with practiced motions before he unlocked the chamber door, and found Wei Shi Kelsa waiting for him on the other side.
Just like the rest of her family, she was tall and intense, but where Lindon tended to look like he was contemplating a murder, Kelsa gave off the impression that she was always giving you one hundred percent of her attention. No matter what was happening.
“Kelsa. Is something wrong?”
“I thought you might want to train together,” she said. A fox’s tail of purple-white foxfire lashed behind her. Her Goldsign.
She saw him glance at it, and her gaze darkened. “I still hate it.”
“It could be worse,” Jai Long said.
“It’s not practical, even if it can burn people. Snowfoxes have claws and teeth. I could have gotten those.”