The world was a roar of red violence. The impact slammed the air from Li Tian's lungs, and the churning current seized him like a monstrous hand. Icy, acidic water filled his mouth, burning his throat. The ring on his finger flared with a sudden, protective heat before settling into a steady, warning pulse. His vision blurred with crimson spray. He kicked wildly, his hands scrambling for purchase, finding it on a broken slab of dark stone that spun in the torrent. He hauled himself onto it, clinging as the river knifed him down the subterranean chute.
The ceiling was a nightmare of stone fangs, dripping with corrosive moisture. He wrapped a strip of his already-tattered robe around his mouth and nose, the cloth instantly soaking through but offering a thin barrier against the acidic haze. The walls flashed past, pitted and sharp. He was a leaf in a millrace.
Ahead, the current slammed directly into a jagged protrusion. There was no dodging. Bracing on the slab, he formed a coin-sized devour vortex at his leading shoulder a moment before impact.
The shock was brutal. It wasn't just force; it was the river's own chaotic, acidic Qi hammering into him. His lungs seized in a sudden cramp. He coughed, spitting red-tinged water that tasted of metal. But the technique worked—instead of being impaled, he was spun violently along the wall, scraping but not shattering. Gasping, he pressed his palms and soles against the wet stone of his makeshift raft, spiral-bleeding the hostile energy even as the current dragged him onward. The pain subsided from a scream to a deep, aching throb.
A new threat emerged from the bloody water. A sinuous, finned shape, more leech than eel, latched onto his calf. Its bite was not of flesh, but of spirit. A cold, draining suction pulled at the Qi in his meridians. Panic was a luxury. He slammed his heel down against the slab, crushing the thing's head, then pried the still-twitching body off. The cold suction lingered. He immediately spiral-bleed, expelling the draining residue. The effort cost him; his breath came in ragged gasps.
More fins broke the surface around him, drawn by the scent of expended energy. Their eyes were black dots in ruddy flesh. Bait, not battle. He let a single, hair-thin thread of his Qi leak from his fingers into the water off the far edge of the slab. Three of the creatures swarmed the spot, their bodies coiling in a frenzy. With a grunt of effort, he leveraged his weight and flipped the heavy slab.
The stone pinned the squirming mass against a submerged rock. He finished them with short, brutal strikes to their soft underbellies, his knuckles cracking against their strange cartilage. One contained a small, pulsating core fragment that felt thin and polluted. His instincts, sharpened by the Heaven Swallowing Art, recoiled. It was dirty Qi. Greed was a quick death. He left it.
Spend only what returns.
A movement caught his eye high on the canyon wall. A robed silhouette stood on a narrow ledge, planting a talisman that glowed with yellow light. A moment later, a gust of wind, unnaturally focused, swept across the river's surface, bending the current, shepherding it left toward a section where the water churned with a deeper, throatier roar—a whirlpool. Another silhouette appeared, lifting a tube to its shoulder. A bolt of condensed energy shot down, scorching the water inches from Li Tian's slab.
Not river. Intent. The realization was cold and clear. They were still herding him, using the valley itself as their weapon. He didn't fight the guided current. Instead, as he neared the whirlpool's pull, he dove. He kicked deep, under the influence of the guiding gust, using the sinking slab as a shield. The next energy bolt sizzled through the water above him, missing by a wider margin.
He surfaced, lungs burning, and clawed his way back onto the slab. Fatigue was a lead weight in his bones. His forearms were numb, his chest tight. He locked his breath, focused, and performed a slow, deliberate spiral-bleed. The ring pulsed once, a simple acknowledgment of his discipline. It offered no rescue, only a mirror to his own will.
The canyon split. To the left, the main channel plunged into deepening thunder, a maelstrom of sound and spray. To the right, a smaller side cavern opened, its entrance almost hidden by a curtain of hanging roots. But from it wafted a cooler, drier air carrying a faint metallic tang. Faint, familiar star-glyphs were etched around the opening.
The choice was stark. The main chute was a obvious path, likely where his pursuers expected him to emerge broken and exhausted. The glyph cavern was an unknown, likely booby-trapped, but it was his alone.
The current began to pull him toward the thunder. He made his choice. Digging his hands into the water, he paddled fiercely toward the side cavern, fighting the river's intent. As the slab scraped against the entrance, he swung himself into the relative calm of the smaller tunnel.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the star-glyphs flared. A curtain of rune-etched mist condensed behind him, and a stone gate began to grind shut.
The cave learned my name.