Lu Mo groaned awake on a blanket of dried leaves, eyes opening to see lush canopies hefted by towering and broad trunks blocking out the skies and light.
A wince fled his lips as pain all over flooded his senses, his attempt to instinctively curl up eliciting a scream as a dull yet burning ache throbbed in his lower back.
Realizing now that movement only prolonged his suffering, Lu Mo got onto his back as he had awakened and lay there.
Where under the heavens am I? He wondered.
The last thing he recalled was a fierce battle with a crater-grade beast, its paws smacking him sideways, crushing his arms, and claws digging into his shoulders; it was only thanks to the artifact on him that he had escaped with his life. Just another hunting mission to slay some beasts and earn some essence stones.
Through the tree trunks, Lu Mo only saw darkness, still and calm. His divine senses failed to pick up on any movement.
All that practice, he thought, sighing, wasted.
Despite the flame blade technique he had refined painstakingly over the past month in the sect under his master's guid-
His train of thought paused.
Master. He constricted his divine senses to a circumference of a meter to increase the clarity, but to no avail. Where is he?
Memories of his master being separated from him while being ambushed by the crater-grade thunder cub and its mother, an earth-grade beast, surfaced in his mind. It had been an ambush. They had ventured too deep into the Eastern Wilderness in search of a fire-attributed beast core to push his cultivation to the late stage of the Essence Gathering Realm to prepare for the annual battle summit and paid the price.
Wretched beasts. He thought vehemently.
But Lu Mo was a grown man of twenty-five, and the guilt set in gradually.
Had he not been so insistent, things wouldn't have turned out the way they did. His master, the doting old man he was, had agreed with little hesitation. It is my duty. He had declared.
No. No. Lu Mo shook his head, driving away morbid thoughts that would aid him little in his current predicament. He's the mighty Flame-Sword Fu Da, an essence condensation expert; he'll do fine by himself. He assured himself.
He decided to worry about himself first and not let the feeling of guilt and trepidation weigh him down.
Inhaling a prolonged breath to prepare himself, Lu Mo lifted his right arm, gnashing his molars, and brought it before his face, a gold ring engraved 'Mountain Traders' on his index. His divine senses peered into the space-ring, a walled room with a myriad of ointments, pills, and weapons strewn about on the floor.
Grasping several pills with his divine senses, he placed his index just over his mouth and opened his lips; a fist-sized hole tore open over the red ruby embedded in the ring, pills slipping out, one, two, three, into his mouth.
Chewing them like candy, he gulped them down, relishing the relief he felt as the recovery pills took effect, gashes, cuts, and bruises under tattered robes healing visibly.
They cost a hundred high-grade essence stones for a reason.
A minute. Five. Lu Mo pressed his palms on the ground and propped himself up, exhaling a sigh of relief. Reaching into his space ring, he grazed a talisman on a green parched paper with yellow-gold glowing letters and jagged scribbles within a circle.
This was a treasure he'd stumbled upon during his childhood in the Warak Prefecture of the Hol Empire, where he grew up as a disciple of the Flame Ring School of practice. It had been on display on a counter of a roadside stall, laid bare for all to witness, but destined for only one—him, Lu Mo. Even all these years later, he believed it to be true. It had been the connection he felt with the talisman that had prompted him to purchase it.
Lu Mo plopped back down to the leaves that seem to cloak every inch of ground in the forests, crossed his legs, and pulled out a few essence stones—glowing incandescent rocks with a chalky exterior—and got to recovering his essence.
The rate at which the talisman consumed essence was jarring, even to a possessor of a top-grade flame attributed root like Lu Mo, and when there wasn't enough essence to consume, it fed on flesh and blood, a significant drawback if one didn't continuously monitor their essence reserves.
There also was the issue of which direction to head. He had fifty essence stones left, and going westward, the direction he came in from, wouldn't be an issue. Thirty to search for master and twenty for his escape from the forest if he couldn't find master.
All right. Lu Mo got up, clutched the talisman in his right palm, and guided his essence into it.
A cloak of light ensconced Lu Mo's figure, and with a step, he was gone from his spot, a trail of light like that of a comet's left behind as he sprinted through the forest, a streak of light.
There were rumors of another man in the Tel Prefecture, the prefecture across the Hol River in the southeastern side, of another man using the light-acceleration—as he had named it—in his battles two months prior. When he had visited the colorful city of Tel to confirm it himself, he only found out the aforementioned man had disappeared a month ago.
With short bursts of speed, Lu Mo began searching.
He didn't have hope of finding what he was searching for in his first attempt because the world just didn't work like that.
But he found what he would never wish for because the world worked just like that.
It was a vague spark he found in the darkness, almost like a ghostly beacon beckoning him. He paused, squinting; it was indeed a pulsating spark, yellow and gold, like a miniature of the sun. The more he stared at it, the warmer he felt, driving fatigue away and calling him to attention.
The tales of heroes he had read, of them encountering opportunities in the forests at their lowest, sprang in his mind, igniting hope within.
No. He thought. I must find master foremost.
He didn't let the veil of greed blind him from his objective.
He needed to mark this place somehow. That was what he intended. So, when his head turned to the spark and his legs moved of their own volition, he began panicking.
What's happening? He contracted his divine senses just over his body to observe any anomalies. It wasn't anything physical. There were no strings, no mechanism under him or around him pulling him in the direction of the spark.
Lu Mo poured every ounce of his essence into the talisman, glowing like a lantern in the darkness, in hopes of freeing himself from whatever was controlling him. It didn't work. The one thing he could always rely on in perilous instances did nothing to gain him his freedom, and Lu Mo was horrified at the realization.
The final morsel of his essence drained away by the artifact, Lu Mo tried to peer into the space-ring for essence stones but found he couldn't control his divine senses either.
He would be dead if he couldn't let the talisman go.
His fingers unfurled, the talisman swaying to the ground, as if the person who drove him had heard his thoughts.
He was needed alive.