Destiny in Cinders

"Oh my..." Boss Liu snapped out of it. He scratched his head in puzzlement and saw squad guards nearby. His eyes brightened before he got on top of the furnace and shouted, "Hey good men over there! Gunner and his goons are here to cause trouble!"

"Don't panic, Mister Liu," said the squad leader. He assessed the situation and appeared quite shocked. It had taken them only two minutes to arrive at the location, but they still didn't make it in time before the fight ended.

Normally, arena duels fights among cultivators of the Spirit Awakening Realm ended quickly enough as escape and evasion wasn't an option. But outside of that, most people wouldn't be able to take out their opponents that quickly. Yet, the aggressors were flat on the ground and dealt with before half a minute even elapsed.

"Gunner's team from the Noontigers, huh..." The squad leader turned to Boss Liu and asked, "Who's the other party in the fight? Some elite fighter from a different gang?"

"Umm... I was knocked out for a bit." Boss Liu knew that Huo Qing definitely wouldn't have the capability to do this, so it had to be the badlander kid who was with him. However, he didn't know his name, nor did he want Huo Qing to get wrapped up in this either. He had watched Huo Qing grow up and knew that he was already involved in an intergang struggle, so it was best for him to stay out of trouble with the law.

"Understood." The squad leader figured that the other party must still be in the neighborhood, so it wouldn't take much to uncover them. He had a rough idea of who it might be, so he didn't press the questioning.

He waved for his men to arrest the knocked-out gang members and inspected their wounds. "One was knocked out with a single punch. The others were rendered unconscious after they surrendered. The person who did this was skilled indeed. They must have practiced some kind of body refinement technique. Interesting, a River Essence cultivator with decent talent in combat."

The squad leader was certain that this wasn't just any hitman from another gang. Someone in a gang with that kind of talent would've been showered with cultivation resources to reach the Tide Essence Stage, and if they had spirit roots, they would have reached the Qi Refinement Realm in almost no time.

Someone who displayed such impressive combat prowess and signs of body refinement techniques at the River Essence Stage must be a visitor from the badlands, which would make things much more convenient. In that case, they didn't even have to make arrests. All they would have to do was question the gang members about the situation before closing the case.

Contrary to Boss Liu's concern, the squad leader didn't intend to look into minor scuffles that happened in town. In normal times, he might even visit the badlander and try to recruit him. The town guard was always in need of talented people.

However, the times were far from normal. The squad leader's superiors had received orders to be on alert for escaped fugitives. The same was the case in nearby towns. The real trouble was still on the way!

An Jing and Huo Qing were blissfully unaware of the coming storm. They were heading towards the waste-disposal zone of Deepnight City. Unsurprisingly, a massive megacity like Deepnight City produced heaps of trash on a daily basis, leading to the need for more than twenty different disposal facilities. One of them that was located near the southwest had expensive machinery to process all the waste. Huo Qing's uncle ran a small recycling house there. This was also where he and Gunner sometimes went to sell off their things.

Waste-disposal facilities like those were one of the rare neutral zones that all the gangs agreed to uphold. The people who worked there were powerful in their own right and served Deepnight City's administration directly, so most gangs or minor firms wouldn't dare to cause any trouble there. It was also a convenient place where deals could be made without any coercion.

An Jing and Huo Qing made their way toward the southwestern disposal facility, bringing the unconscious Gunner with them. Lots of abandoned flying crafts and other damaged industrial machinery were piled up on empty plots of land outside the city. It looked like a gravesite for all things metal.

Many powerful recyclers with official permission from the city ran their respective recycling houses. However, it was difficult to keep a complete watch over the entire area, so scavengers also walked freely and unimpeded.

The chaos around Deepnight City didn't spill over into the waste-disposal facility, leaving it rather peaceful. An Jing entered it and immediately felt nostalgia at the smell of scrap, machine oils and rust that filled the air. He was also reminded of the time when the heavenly fiends at Direlife Canyon were released.

"The fiend qi here is rather strong." An Jing cautiously hid near a broken flying shuttle with Huo Qing and inspected the facility. "Are there heavenly fiends lying in wait?"

"It's not likely," Yvelbane said after a scan. "In typical untouched worlds, the manifestation of heavenly fiends results in a wild blast of fiend qi. Skysource, on the other hand, more or less has a haze of fiend qi all the time. It's a bit inconvenient, but it doesn't get in the way of cultivation."

"So this is a light haze, and it can get worse and turn into dense fog or smog, right? I honestly can't tell if it's harmful or not."

"Haha, there are many fine differences, but they aren't that significant."

"Why's the fiend qi here so obvious? Why do these trash facilities have stronger fiend qi than other places?"

"This world is infused with fiend, lethal and tribulation qi. Much like Void Embrace, it has undergone a massive calamity and emerged victorious, albeit only barely. Fiend qi causes corruption, rot, death and decay. Worlds that have been infested with it enter a fallen state. That's not to say that spirit qi stops being generated entirely. Instead, it's more like the world would lose its order. Many principles that cultivation is built on end up twisted. One such instance is how the immortal path in Void Embrace got entirely replaced with the martial path.

"As trash and waste represent rot and decay, fiend qi naturally congregates around them too. However, places like mass graves or battlefields where countless people fall would amass so much fiend qi to the point of causing lots of dangerous fiendspawn to appear. The worst fiendspawn we'll get at trash heaps are minor insects or rats."

Yvelbane seemed rather moved at that point. "The reason people here are savage and quick to fight must be due to fiend qi's influence. On the other hand, there's you. You've come into close contact with heavenly fiends at Direlife Canyon. Have you never felt your mind being pulled in that direction?"

An Jing gave it some thought and shook his head. "I feel relatively peaceful. It's more like the things that anger and sadden me the most have already passed. I already killed the vice apothecary of Direlife Manor and have avenged my dead comrades. I also managed to bring the survivors with me and escaped the cult, so I think I've lived up to my own expectations. I don't care about what others think. That's why I felt mentally at peace even when the heavenly fiends were manifesting. The only thing I couldn't quite stand was the stench."

"This is anything but normal. Heavenly fiends tend to greatly twist one's mental state and mood. It's akin to the sun that scorches everything that basks in its light. No matter how cold and frozen your heart is, the outermost layer will inevitably melt into water, which gives way to ripples. It's a little like how even the smoothest mirror surface can't be free of fine dust and has to be polished from time to time. The only explanation I can think of would be that you have a lifearc that's powerful enough to push back on that influence."

Yvelbane had pondered long about it and explained its hypothesis. "An Jing, your lifearc must be incredibly mighty. The acid rain from back then contained lots of fiend and lethal qi. Typically, most Fortification Realm martialists shied away from it in fear. Yet, you were completely unmoved by it. I don't think what we're dealing with is your average miracle arc. I suspect that you bear the Seven Ruins Arc, also known as the celestial arc of Seven Ruinous Luminaries!"