The Brink of Dawn

Jack crouched, hidden within the top of a small, three-foot-wide, space right between two buildings opposite of the Brink of Dawn. The inn was as run-down as he'd heard in the rumours: the balustrade was almost completely falling to pieces, the front door didn't have a handle, and at least two of the ten windows on the exterior facade were cracked. One could only wonder what the state of the rooms was.

No one was walking outside of the semi-abandoned inn. Semi-abandoned because there were still two people inside of it, according to Jack's spiritual probing. The first one was the innkeeper, who was busy moving things around on the lower floor; cooking some sort of porridge or broth, judging by the way he moved his hands in a circular manner over a rusty cauldron. The second one was the Jack's target, a recluse person in one of the rooms on the first floor of the inn. That person was donned in a thick tunic which stopped Jack from getting a detailed read as to their anatomy, precluding him from determining any information besides them being a person.

If that wasn't enough evidence, Jack felt even more convinced of his suppositions because he detected a large number of traps in place at the door of the room of various forms and purposes. There was an alarm array which would cause a large flash of light if anyone tried to force the door open as well as several killing arrays with a variety of deadly effects, up to and including corrosive gas.

Jack clicked his tongue and studied the formations whilst being very careful to not allow the person in the room to feel his probing. He ultimately concluded that he would be able to deactivate them within a few seconds, twenty at most, if he managed to get close enough. As such, getting access to that room was not much of an issue. The only complication was doing it in a manner that the person inside wouldn't perceive his tampering with them.

Jack examined the entire building once again and couldn't help but sigh to himself.

The problem with the man's choice of abode was the small number of people within the building given that it would be extremely difficult to go into the inn without bringing attention to himself, which meant that Jack would have to infiltrate it quietly. However, once Jack managed to get inside, there would be no one to protect his target, nor would there be anyone to barge in to help them. This made the inn, in effect, a double-edged sword. Overall, it was an extremely poor choice of location to conceal themselves.

This told Jack that the person in question wasn't familiar with counter-tracking or living on the run, which added greater weight to his theory that the person was acting as a proxy for whomever had designed the poison.

He stopped examining the arrays protecting the room once he was reasonably certain that he was familiar with each and every one of them and instead turned to examine the inn and locate a viable point of access for him. After a few short moments he noticed there was a window in one of the rooms beside the target's that had the window unlocked.

Jack smiled.

He used Shadow Steps to disappear from the small space he was hiding in, and jumped to the building right beside the inn. He chose to head there first because he felt with his probing that the target he was stalking was very much alert to their surroundings. This meant that there was a good chance they would notice it if Jack arrived on the premises of the inn without completely hiding his presence.

And to do that, he needed to move without the aid of spiritual qi and rely solely on his superior body.

Jack pulled back all of the qi within his meridians into his dantian and made sure that his presence was completely blocked off from the rest of the world. This was a technique he'd often used when carrying out assassinations back on Earth and if any random person had just so happened to walk past him at this moment, they would subconsciously feel that Jack simply wasn't there. That was the level of proficiency Jack had with this technique.

Without hesitating, he ran to the roof's edge and jumped towards the Brink of Dawn, landing silently against its outer wall. He used his fingers to hold on to the small crack's and creases of the wall and swiftly climbed towards the open window. He moved with the speed and ability of a spider, letting go of his holding before reaching out and grabbing the next.

In a few fractions of a second, Jack reached the window. He opened it quietly and let himself fall through it into what had yesteryear been an habitable bedroom.

There were throngs of cobwebs on every corner of the room as well as small black balls lining the sides of the floor; these were the droppings of cockroaches accumulated over a period of divines knew how long. The paint had dried up to the point it cracked everywhere and there was a hole in the ceiling. Thankfully, though, the door was still relatively intact in the sense that it still had one of its two hinges.

Jack forced himself to put up with his disgust as he crouched down and focused all of his concentration on his sense of hearing. He dared not probe with his spiritual sense in fear of alerting the target in the conjoining bedroom of his presence.

After fully reforging his body, Jack's senses had become much keener and so he listened attentively for any indication that he had been discovered but the target didn't so much as experience an increase in heartbeat; which Jack took as confirmation that he was still completely undiscovered.

All he had to do now was wait for an opportunity.

He only had to wait for an hour before it came.

--

Dr Seon coughed dryly. He hated that this cough of his hadn't abated in the slightest over the period of two weeks since he contracted it. Dr Cyan had assured him that it would eventually go away and that he had nothing to worry about.

It was a lie, of course, and Dr Seon knew it. But he refused to believe that Dr Murf wouldn't send someone to supply him with an antidote and save his life. They'd known each other for a decade and a half! He even thought of Dr Murf as a mentor of sorts! No, there was absolutely no chance that he would simply be discarded like dead weight just like that.

Dr Seon jumped up in fright. He was startled when he heard a bell suddenly ring right beside the door. Once he noticed what it was he let out a sigh of relief and grabbed a heavy cloak which he pulled over his head in a manner that fully concealed his features.

The bell was connected to a small wire which the innkeeper rang only when he'd finished preparing the meals which the tenants then had to go pick up themselves. Apparently, the innkeeper had seen this set-up in some fancy hotel in another kingdom and had wanted to replicate it. Judging by the state of his establishment, it hadn't been popular amongst the locals.

Dr Seon exited the room and went downstairs to pick up which could only be described as a barely edible bowl of potato soup. The innkeeper, a rough man with absolutely no hair on his head and a penchant for silence so strong that monks would find it enviable, handed it to him brusquely. Despite the dry treatment, it was undeniable that Dr Seon appreciated the level of discretion the innkeeper offered him without asking for anything in return. That being said, the man's cooking was atrocious.

Dr Seon didn't even bother thanking him before he took the bowl and headed back up the stairs. He didn't like being outside of his room and, by extension, the protection of his painstakingly placed arrays.

Once he arrived, he set the steaming bowl on the floor and proceeded to reactivate the aforementioned arrays because he'd turned them off whilst he went to pick up his food. As soon as he finished, he felt a strange sensation on the back of his head, like a sharp twilight breeze had just caressed the nape of his neck.

He rose to his feet and turned around to glance at every inch of the bedroom, looking for any sign of an intruder. He found none. And yet, every instinct in his body screamed at him that he was in grave danger.

Dr Seon didn't want to gamble on his well-being, and so he turned around to begin the process of deactivating the formations. He tried to do it as calmly as possible and acted as if he was simply reviewing them and checking for any flaws they might have had so as to not expose his intentions.

It was useless.

By the time he finished with the first formation, he felt something cold caressing his cheek. Dr Seon knew that it was a very sharp blade without even looking at it.

"Let's have a conversation." Said a light voice from behind his back.

Dr Seon stopped with what he was doing and raised his hands high up to show that he wasn't carrying any weapon and that he wasn't a threat. "Please, don't do this… I- I'm just a wanderer. Take whatever you want and spare me! Please!" He lied in the hopes that it would work.

It didn't.

"I'm not here for your belongings or your life. As I said, I just want a chat." Spoke the person behind him again. "Turn around." The voice ordered.

Dr Seon obeyed the command and began turning very slowly. He was still on his knees, so he could only do it at a snail's pace, given that his hands were still raised. As he turned, he saw that the bed had been unmade and a small cavity had been carved into the mattress. This meant that the attacker had hidden themselves in it in the brief period of time that he'd gone downstairs to get his bowl of soup. Whoever this person was, they were far from being a simple amateur.

Once he had fully turned around, he finally laid his eyes upon his attacker and gasped. In front of him was a young boy, no older than fourteen or fifteen, judging by his stature, with fair features and a pair of ice-cold blue eyes.

"Who the fuck are you?!" Shouted Dr Seon, struggling to believe the sight right before his eyes.

Jack chuckled humourlessly and took a step back. "Who I am doesn't matter. What is important is who are you, really?"

Dr Seon tried to laugh but coughed dryly instead. Then, he rose to his feet, ignoring Jack because he didn't put the boy in his eyes at all. "Divines take me, I'm growing skittish."

"I asked you a question." Jack's voice grew colder.

"Fuck you." Dr Seon crossed his hands over his chest and bared his teeth as he growled at Jack. "You're going to tell me how you found me and then I'll let you have a painless death. If not…"

It seemed as if Dr Seon was going to add more to his threat, but he never got to finish his statement because Jack struck out without mercy. He didn't have any time for a verbal quarrel; every second wasted was a second not spent finding an antidote for the poison. Jack simply didn't have the luxury to quarrel with his target.

He had activated Absolute Vision and saw that Dr Seon was in the second level of the Foundation realm from the moment that he'd turned around. As such, he struck out thrice in quick succession. The first punch was easily deflected by Dr Seon who had been on guard. The second kick almost caught him on the knee but he was also able to block it. It was the third strike that got him.

Jack's finger connected with Dr Seon's jianjing acupoint, pouring a stream of qi within his meridians that paralyzed his entire right sight in a moment. It was then that Dr Seon realised, to his horror, that the first two attacks had been bait to expose himself and allow Jack's real killer strike to connect without any difficulty whatsoever.

Before he could even exclaim or gasp, Jack spun around with impossible speed, activated Shadow Steps, and reached behind Dr Seon to strike at his dazhui acupoint, sending an electrifying bolt of qi into Dr Seon's meridians and paralyzing him completely from the neck down.

In just a brief four exchanges of moves, Dr Seon had been completely submitted.