Part 2 · Chapters
The Hunter of Black Flame
An unexpected encounter opens a door. Climbing out is still up to you.
The ancient battlefield had never truly fallen silent. As wind passed through broken swords and empty helmets, it sounded as though those who never went home were still asking one another whose victory their hatred had left behind.
Countless weapons lay buried on the ancient battlefield.
Broken swords jutted from frozen soil. Rusted armor lay half-submerged beneath gray snow. Legend said the five great elemental peoples had once fought here, and wayward mechanisms still lurked underground. Whenever wind passed between the weapons, it sounded like countless dead sighing together.
Black drag marks led into a forest of stone pillars.
Xiao Jin walked ahead, lighting his tiny flame at intervals. The black mist took shape in its light, then quickly shrank into cracks in the stone. Xiao Hui followed close behind with his tool bag. His lips were purple with cold, but he still gathered parts from broken mechanisms along the way.
“Someone's been here.” He pointed to a fallen stone soldier. “The power wheel in its chest was just removed. The break in the rust is fresh.”
Before he finished speaking, a low growl sounded in the distance.
Six pairs of black-red eyes lit up in the snow. Blackflame hounds crawled from behind the wreckage. Their bodies were not flesh, but frames pieced together from thick mist and black fire. Xiao Jin swung his broken staff, a faint flame running along the iron. Instead of devouring that little flame, the hounds recoiled as if it hurt them.
“They're afraid of your fire!” Xiao Hui shouted.
“They're afraid of light.”
Xiao Jin did not waste his small flame on attacks. He quickly lit the battlefield's fire pillars one by one, forcing the hounds to change course, while Xiao Hui activated a stone soldier's surviving launching arm. Stone cables whipped up from the ground and bound the leading pair. As the others lunged, Xiao Jin used the light to reveal their misty cores and drove his broken staff precisely into them.
The black mist shrieked and scattered.
The last hound had barely fallen when applause sounded from atop a pillar.
A figure in black stood on the stone pillar.
He wore an expressionless iron mask. Frost clung to his cloak, yet black flames burned at his fingertips. His breathing beneath the mask was heavy and regular, like a suit of armor not yet fully closed.
“So a little spark from the Ash District can see Lord Hui Ying's trail.”
Xiao Jin raised the broken staff. “Where is the Heart of Fire?”
“You've come too far.”
The figure raised a hand. Ice spikes erupted beneath Xiao Jin's feet. He flipped aside, only for black flame to fall from above, forcing him to block with his staff. Fire and ice in the hands of one person: no single elemental people could do that.
“Xiao Hui, remember him!” Xiao Jin shouted. “The black mist framed the Frost Kingdom!”
He leaped off a pillar, aiming the broken staff at the mask. The figure caught its tip between just two fingers. Black fire surged back along the iron and charred the flesh of Xiao Jin's palm at once.
A kick struck his stomach. Xiao Jin smashed through a stone pillar. Before he hit the ground, chains of ice had bound his limbs. The gulf between their strength was so vast that this was hardly a fight. It was more like a hand brushing away dust.
The figure approached, then noticed the light still burning in Xiao Jin's palm.
The black mist touched it and gave a faint sizzling hiss.
“I see.” The voice behind the mask grew colder. “Then I certainly cannot let you live.”
He formed a spear of black flame. Behind a broken wall, Xiao Hui's hands shook. Yet when the figure turned away, he crawled toward the open ground. A black emblem, dislodged by Xiao Jin's attack, lay in the snow. Five interlocking cracks were engraved on it.
Xiao Hui slipped the emblem into his tool bag.
Then he took out a discarded work order and quickly copied its five cracks with a charcoal pencil.
He kept the real emblem in the tool bag and tucked the tracing into Xiao Jin's pocket.
At that same moment, Xiao Jin snuffed out his flame. The ice chains briefly loosened as the mist tracking their target lost its guide. He used the broken staff to lever up a spear on the ground, triggering a buried elemental mechanism. The entire pillar forest began to collapse.
“Run!” He grabbed Xiao Hui.
They raced into the blowing snow. Behind them, black flames easily shattered the falling rocks. Their pursuer walked without haste, but they could never shake him off.
Ahead lay the cliff at the edge of the ancient battlefield.
The black emblem had made almost no sound when it dropped into the bag, yet it became the heaviest thing Xiao Hui carried. It was more than evidence. It was the first trust Xiao Jin had placed in his hands at the risk of his life.