The Night the Sky Glowed Red (Part Three)

Shao Ling's joints crackled like a thunder storm and his bones felt like red-hot iron. His dantian sucked in Heaven and Earth Qi through his straining meridians like a starving leech.

'This is the Qi Gathering stage!' he thought ecstatically. 'I can feel my strength increasing with each passing breath!'

He longed to test out his strength. The improvements to a martial artist's strength in the Body Purifying stage and the Meridian Opening stage were fairly modest, but it was well known that the strength of the weakest Qi Gathering stage martial artist could easily overpower the strongest ordinary person in the world. It was said that the Qi Gathering stage was the first step into the Martial Realm.

Before Shao Ling had time to calm his cultivation, the world suddenly turned red.

'What's going on?!' Shao Ling had never heard of such a phenomenon accompanying a breakthrough. 'Could it be because of my Extreme Yin meridians? '

Shao Ling could sense a yin aura from the light, but it carried a air of unbridled devastation which he was certain that he couldn't muster even one thousandth of with his current insights into the Martial Path.

Iron nails of fear dug into his heart, as the crimson light didn't fade as seconds passed. He realized that he could neither hear nor smell his surroundings. All he could sense was an unfathomable aura of unparalleled destruction with hints of both yin and yang energy. The ground beneath his feet shook violently, as if the strange crimson light sent shivers of fear through it. He suddenly felt his feet leaving the ground, and experienced the sensation of floating in the void. His body felt numb, as if he had been standing outside in the bleak of winter for hours, and the blazing energy from his breakthrough had been snuffed out like a candle tossed into a lake.

A minute passed and all he could see was crimson. After a few more seconds, the oppressive crimson light began to fade, and Shao Ling's vision began to darken. Shining patterns danced across his eyelids, and he realized that he had unknowingly closed his eyes at some point.

As he opened his eyes, Shao Ling slowly regained feeling in his body, and discovered that he was lying on his back against an earthen ridge. He tried to sit up, which sent pain lancing through his body.

'What happened?'

Shao Ling tentatively moved his limbs with greater care, and was thankful that nothing was broken considering the pain he just felt.

His eyes needed time to adjust to the darkness after that blinding red light, and as he looked around he saw that he was lying at the edge of a small crater, as if an artillery shell from his past life sent him flying.

'This world doesn't have artillery, but how did I survive something that comes close to it?'

Upon examining his body, Shao Ling realized that his dantian was completely drained of Qi.

'Did my breakthrough expend all my Qi? No, I felt more Heaven and Earth Qi flowing through my body than ever before during my breakthrough. Wait, did I use the Heaven and Earth Qi from my breakthrough to withstand this artillery strike?'

It seemed amazing, but it was the only plausible explanation.

'I must 've subconsciously enhanced my body's defense when the crimson light washed over me. Sigmund Freud would be proud.'

"Uuughhh."

A low grown rose from the center of the crater.

"Master?"

Shao Ling immediately rose to his feet, ignoring his muscles screaming in protest. Shao Ling realized that there was a crumpled human shape at in the center of the crater, which was about twice the depth of a kiddie pool.

A dagger of dread slipped into Shao Ling's guts.

'If master was at the center of the impact, he can't be in good shape. It's a miracle that he's still alive. I guess he's been cultivating longer than I have though. The martial arts of this world are too heaven-defying!'

Shao Ling stumbled over to the crumpled human shape on the ground. As he drew nearer, the figure let out a louder groan that transformed midway into a roar of fury.

"Ughhhhhaaahh! Damn that ice sculpture! And that shiny b*stard! And that Dao-loving son of a whore!"

All at once the lump on the ground sprang to its feet, and Shao Ling almost fell onto his rear from shock.

"I'll-"

The extremely disgruntled-looking old man was cut short by a coughing fit that led to spewing a great deal of black blood on the ground that made the earth sizzle.

Shao Ling was struck speechless.

The old man before him was gaunt to the point where some mummies looked more lively. His parchment-like skin was pulled tautly over sharp bones, many of which poked out of his skin. His tattered robes looked like they'd been tossed into a wood-chipper then put on again. He had wild white hair that fell down to his waist, and his eyes were burrowed deep into the back of his head, but glittered with a manic light despite being black as the void. Although this man looked like he had just tumbled down the entirety of Mount Everest, he stood up as straightly as his somewhat mangled legs allowed.

After some horrific retching, the old man's mad eyes focused on Shao Ling.

"Huh? Oh, ohohoho."

He grinned like a crocodile eyeing its next meal. Black blood trickled down his lips and corroded his skin, but he paid it no mind.

'Who- No, what the hell is this old man?!'

Shao Ling's mind was a tornado of confusion and incredulity.

"This old body has run its course. I've lived for a good while, although it might be wrong to say it was good!"

The old man cackled and coughed- this time there was no blood. The corrosive blood from earlier withered the ground and peeled away more of the old man's flesh, transforming him into a grinning zombie.

Shao Ling instinctively took a step back, but bony hands faster than the wings of a hummingbird grabbed him and held him in place. The old man's grip was astonishingly strong; it would be easier to dislodge an elephant sitting on his chest.

'Is this a martial artist? What insane realm has this zombie cultivated into?!'

"Relax kid, this senior's almost out of time. You're in luck, I'm giving you quite the opportunity, hehehehehe!"

The sleazy back-alley merchant routine filled Shao Ling with dread.

The zombie released one of Shao Ling's arms, but the other arm remained trapped in a grip with the strength of all of Heaven and Earth. He brought a long, bony index finger like the Grim Reaper's to Shao Ling's glabella, just above the center of his eyebrows.

"Wait, senior I-"

A beam of unfamiliar Qi thinner than a needle shot from the withered index finger and pierced Shao Ling's glabella before he could utter another word. He instinctively sensed that the unfamiliar Qi was much more powerful and profound than anything he had ever encountered, and he braced himself for oblivion. However; instead of a moment of agony before his total obliteration, Shao Ling felt a pleasant sensation, like a cool cloth applied to a feverish forehead. The feeling was only for a moment, but he felt like a ocean's worth of energy had entered his body in an instant and vanished just as quickly.

The old man, who seemed to grow more skeletal by the second, released Shao Ling, who stood still. At this point nearly all the flesh on the old man's body had disappeared; there was a barely enough skin to hold his bones in his body.

"There! It's all up to you now," the talking corpse said with the perpetual grin of an exposed skull.

Shao Ling met the senior's eyes- or rather, his eye sockets, which were like twin abysses since his eyes had dissolved. What just transpired was almost too bizarre to comprehend, but Shao Ling instinctively felt that the old zombie wasn't lying when he said that he was giving Shao Ling an opportunity.

"Thank you, senior," Shao Ling said with all the gratitude in his voice he could muster given that he was just barely able to form words.

"Haha, show me gratitude by making some offerings for my soul!" the skeleton replied with a grin before collapsing to the ground.