Mystique Soul: A Cultivator's Flame
Chapter 129: To The City Beyond The Skies

Chapter 129: To The City Beyond The Skies

As nights fell, the city became even worst. As if the blood shed in the early morning was just a fraction of the bloodbath that awaited it when the darkness fell.

Howls and cries reverberated around the four corners of the city.

Feng Jiao Xue and Mo Tianze frowned when they had walked out of the underground area. The scent of metallic blood filled the air. It was thick and obvious. Even to the civilians. Needless to say for Feng Jiao Xue who is an assassin familiar with blood and a cultivator whose senses was far more enhanced. Even Mo Tianze, his keen sense of scent felt like he was inhaling blood at the way it covers the air.

"What’s going on?" Mo Tianze asked as even if there is no eyes on him, he feels as if his under the gaze of a dangerous beast based on the aura that covers the city.

"You killed the city lord" Feng Jiao Xue analyzes and immediately understood the situation. "It is more likely that the power houses in this city is competing for who will subdue the others first to have control over the city."

Febg Jiao Xue released Shadow Flitter, a sleek and black-feathered, darting through the smoke-laden sky with purpose.

She conjured a letter and handed it to him. "Go send this to Chen Rong and the others"

"We’re not going to check on Wei Jian?" Mo Tianze asked confused making Feng Jiao Xue shake his head.

The small burd chirped before taking flighf. Clutched in its talons was a letter, light but heavy with meaning. It moved like a blade through the choking air, untouched by the madness beginning to bubble in the city’s underbelly.

It found its targets in a rented inn on the city’s quieter edge, Chen Rong, Lin Feng, Wei Jian, and Xie Lian gathered together, unease written across their faces as distant shouts and tremors echoed through the walls.

The bird perched lightly on the window frame, tapping once with its beak.

Lin Feng crossed the room in two strides and unfastened the letter.

As his eyes scanned the elegant handwriting, the tension in his shoulders bled away, replaced with something grimmer.

"She’s leaving" he said simply, voice cutting through the charged silence. "And she wants us to leave too."

He passed the letter around. Each read it in turn.

Feng Jiao Xue’s message was direct, as always

"The city is about to collapse. We’ve already lingered too long. Mo Tianze and I are going first. Send Xie Lian and Wei Jian our regards. We will go our way. I advise you to do the same. Stay alive."

At the bottom, a small, simple sign: her seal pressed into wax, a phoenix feather curling around a silver crescent.

No tears. No explanations. Only a choice.

Chen Rong folded the letter carefully, his expression unreadable. "She’s right."

"We’re not heroes," Lin Feng said, slinging his pack over his shoulder. "Not here."

Wei Jian grunted in agreement, his heavy boots thudding on the wooden floor as he rose.

Xie Lian hesitated, her fingers brushing the edge of the window frame where Shadow Flitter still sat. She offered the bird a silent bow of thanks before it leapt into the air, vanishing into the night.

Together, without another word, the four left the inn and disappeared into the labyrinth of alleyways, moving like ghosts, like whispers swallowed by the darkness.

They passed the first signs of madness easily. a merchant’s cart overturned, gold coins glittering in the mud; a noble’s guards turning their blades on each other in the streets; a once-proud cultivator clan’s banner burning, its ashes swirling into the black sky.

They did not stop.

They did not look back.

The gates of Yin City yawned open before them, abandoned by whatever soldiers had once stood guard. The wilderness beyond beckoned, cold, wild, free.

When the city finally erupted into full bloodshed, they were already gone, nothing but faint tracks in the dirt leading away from the coming storm.

Back within the city’s crumbling heart, the Adventurer’s Guild moved into action.

Madam Yao, the head of the guild, gathered her people beneath the shadow of the Guild Hall’s cracked walls.

Her voice was low, steady, and full of iron.

"We do not fight for crowns," she said. "We fight for survival. For those who have no one else."

There were no cheers. Only nods, grim and certain.

With Chen Rong and the others gone, the guild organized their forces, a swift, silent network of medics, scouts, and shield-bearers.

They moved under cover of smoke and confusion, sweeping through abandoned estates and ruined marketplaces, gathering up the wounded cultivators who had been kidnapped, drugged, or discarded by the city’s warring factions.

Some were little more than skeletons wrapped in torn robes.

Others roused weakly at the sound of kind voices and soft hands, clinging to the last threads of life.

The guild never stayed in one place long.

Quick as lightning, they shifted the survivors through back alleys, hidden sewer tunnels, and crumbling servant roads, moving them steadily westward toward a forgotten monastery hidden in the foothills.

The journey was brutal.

Fires leapt from building to building, devouring whole districts.

Rogue cultivators fought running battles in the streets, their desperate clashes sending tremors through the ground. Merchant guilds were sacked; temples desecrated; blood pooled in the cracked stone streets.

Through it all, the guild wove unseen.

One group almost ran straight into a pack of bandits, only to be saved by a scout named Wen Yao, who threw a smoke bomb and led them away with a decoy squad. He was wounded, but he grinned through the pain.

Another group stumbled upon a half-collapsed bridge. Rather than retreat and risk discovery, the guild’s formation specialists crafted a temporary platform of spiritual energy, a shimmering pathway that lasted just long enough for them to cross.

Every moment was a gamble.

But they won, again and again.

Not because they were the strongest.

But because they refused to let each other fall.

Some didnt want to leave the city. It was chaotic, it was dirty, it was madness but it was home. So, inside the monastery, the atmosphere was heavy but peaceful.

A young healer named Yun Zhu moved from cot to cot, her hands glowing with pale green light. An older guild member, Grandfather Lu, kept a fire burning at the center of the courtyard, the warmth chasing away the worst of the night’s chill.

Far beyond the city walls, under a sky littered with distant stars, Chen Rong, Lin Feng, Wei Jian, and Xie Lian camped in the wilderness.

They sat around a small fire, each lost in their own thoughts.

None spoke of the city.

None spoke of Feng Jiao Xue.

But the weight of her letter, and her decision, sat heavy in their hearts.

Freedom was bitter sometimes.

But it was freedom nonetheless.

And tomorrow, they would move forward to where, none of them yet knew.

Only that it would be away from the burning ruin of Yin City, and all the ghosts it would leave behind.

Far away from the chaotic, decaying city. Another firmly stood in place by the sea shone like a jewel beneath the morning sun.

Sprawling along the silver coastline, its white stone walls and gleaming towers rose proudly against the endless blue, crowned by colorful banners fluttering in the brisk ocean breeze.

The streets bustled with life, a hundred different dialects weaving together into a vibrant, living song. Merchants called out their wares from open stalls, the scent of roasting meats and sweet pastries thick in the air. Performers danced on street corners, bright silks flashing as laughter rolled down the cobbled lanes.

And everywhere everywhere, the youth of the world had gathered.

They came from every distant kingdom and forgotten village, riding fine spirit beasts or simple wagons, carrying heavy packs or delicate lacquered cases. Some wore the proud colors of noble houses; others came with only threadbare cloaks and calloused hands, their eyes bright with dreams.

All drawn here by the same promise.

The Academy, the most prestigious institution for both cultivators and magicians across the known continents, would soon open its gates for a rare enrollment.

It was said that those who passed the Trials would carve their names into history.

It was said that within the Academy’s ancient halls, one could learn the secret songs of the stars, awaken sleeping bloodlines, and ascend the mountain paths of immortality.

Hope was a tangible thing in the air, a shining, quivering force that stirred even the jaded old sailors watching from the docks, even the grim-faced guards patrolling the crowded city gates.

New friendships sparked in the marketplaces over shared flasks of cheap wine and maps hastily drawn on scraps of parchment. Rivalries flared into heated debates outside inns and in the shadowed alleys where training duels were forbidden but inevitable.

The city, ever hungry for new blood, welcomed them all for where there was youth, there was profit, and where there was ambition, there was change

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