Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

the name. I needed to know more about developing Sho techniques—namely if I could even do that at such an early stage in my kishotenketsu.

I fanned the jade slips out in my hand. Now that I’d read one, the titles of the rest were decipherable. The script hadn’t changed, but it was like my brain could understand it in English now.

I found A Study in Mortal Techniques and lifted it to my forehead.

The answer to my question was part of the introduction. Like I’d hoped, the Ki and Sho levels of kishotenketsu were pretty fluid. You had to do something called Condensing before you could manage any Ten abilities, but most cultivators developed Sho techniques early on as they started to figure out what they wanted to do with their Spirit.

“I have something I want to try,” I said when I finished reading Mortal Techniques. I looked at Kest. “Would you mind throwing those pointy weights at me again for a while?”

Dead Reckoning

THE NEXT MORNING, I was the first person out by the fight cage. Ripper and the other OSS hooligans showed up together as the blue sun started to reach into the sky, and a bleary-eyed Warcry was right behind them. Nobody paid much attention to me until the Bailiff showed up and made me go through the speed drills. I just used Ki on those, like usual. I didn’t want to give away my plan before I faced Warcry.

When the Bailiff was satisfied with my speed enhancement, he called Warcry over from those slow exercises he’d been doing.

“Face your opponent,” the Bailiff said. “Bow.”

Excitement pumped through my body on the back of the adrenaline. Time to see whether Dead Reckoning would work like I thought. It’d been easy enough to do while practicing with Kest, but facing down a guy who wanted to beat me half to death was a whole different ballgame.

“Take your fighting stances.”

I brought my fists up to high guard and took most of the weight off my front leg.

Warcry dropped into his usual fifty-fifty stance. He wasn’t favoring the prosthetic, so maybe he’d finally gotten the knee joint fixed. Or maybe he was just really feeling good about destroying me today.

I made myself breathe and focus. If I didn’t pay attention from the get-go, I’d never have a shot at Dead Reckoning. Warcry was too fast to give me a chance if I hesitated.

The ghost hand dropped like a flag between us, and the Bailiff said, “Whoop ass, gents.”

I threw out a blast of Death Spirit, the Miasma hanging in the air in like a storm front between us. Warcry didn’t hesitate, just charged right through it, leaping into a big roundhouse.

A blip went off in my Spirit sea the second he hit the Miasma. I zipped inside the kick and shot an arm out to block it. As my body twisted into that block, I used the centrifugal force to smash an elbow into Warcry’s jaw.

He spun in midair. But instead of slapping the dirt unconscious like I’d pictured, Warcry hit the superhero three-point landing and glared up at me in shock and fury.

For almost a whole second, neither one of us moved or said anything.

Then the Bailiff hooted, slapping his knee with a huge ghost hand. “I’ll be dogged if the smart boy didn’t learn a new trick.”

That snapped Warcry and me out of it at the same time. The redhead shot at me again, red flames screaming out behind him like contrails. I barely had time to get my Death Spirit out there, but thank God I did. Without Dead Reckoning, I would’ve been killed. Now that he knew I could fight back, Warcry was going all out. Full batteries of kicks and punches.

Using Dead Reckoning, I kept up. I didn’t land a single counterstrike, but I did manage to block most of what he threw at me.

Dead Reckoning worked how I imagined radar worked as a kid. I sent a cloud of my Spirit into the air around me, and that told the Spirit in my muscles where my attacker was. I could sense his attack and react all at the same time instead of waiting for my eyes to see it and my brain to process it and my muscles to get the message to move. Plus, my aim didn’t rely on my hand-eye coordination. It followed where the Spirit told me to attack, so my shots were way more accurate.

Unfortunately, as Kest pointed out the night before, Dead Reckoning wasn’t very efficient. While we’d been practicing, I’d managed around six controlled blasts before I ran out of Spirit. Now that the adrenaline was pumping, I wasn’t as careful with how much Miasma I used at once, so just the two Dead Reckonings had already drained my sea dry.

A few seconds and about ten thousand attacks from Warcry later, Dead Reckoning disappeared, my speed and Ki-sight dropped off, and all I saw was a blur of red fire and fists. Then I was in the dirt, spitting blood and trying to breathe through a smashed face.

A shadow covered my sight for a second, and I flinched, bracing myself for the K.O.

“You’ll live,” the Bailiff said. “Looks like you’re gonna need a few of these, though. I want to see Mr. Champion facing that ability the rest of the morning, Smart Boy.”

Cold Spirit stone pressed to the tattoo on my forearm, battling with the burning heat of the OSS tattoo. Healing my broken face took three Spirit stones and, judging by the sudden ravenous beast howling in my stomach, a lot of calories. I could’ve used Hungry Ghost to refill my tank, but I didn’t want the Bailiff or anybody else to find out about the little skull. That seemed like the kind of thing you’d kill somebody to take. I would just make sure I had enough to repay the Bailiff’s Spirit loan before it was time to transfer the quota that night.

And because the Bailiff wanted