Volume 2, Chapter 56: The Midnight Express (Part 2)
The train rattled over an old switch on the tracks. My teeth clicked together. I rubbed my jaw. The cheap, spicy meat I ate earlier was sitting like a lump of lead in my stomach. The spice was still burning the back of my throat. I shifted my weight on the wooden crate. A sharp cramp pinched my lower back. I stretched my legs out, trying to find a comfortable angle. There are no comfortable angles on a freight train.
The kids were quiet. Tang Ya leaned against Bei Bei's shoulder, her eyes closed. Xiaotao was awake, tossing a tiny spark of orange fire back and forth between her fingers to pass the time. Yuhao was still by the barred window. He watched the dark, frozen landscape blur past us.
We were moving fast. The temperature inside the car was dropping rapidly as we pushed deeper into the north.
I checked the tied-up House Lin guards. They were still completely out. Bei Bei's lightning tap was highly effective. I reached under my coat and touched the hilt of my Kampilan. The cold metal grounded me.
Then, the air in the car changed.
It was not just the cold from the north. This was a sick, heavy cold. It felt like walking into a meat freezer that had lost power days ago. The smell hit me next. Bitter herbs, old copper, and rotting flowers.
I stood up.
Xiaotao crushed the spark in her hand. She stood up, too. Tang Ya and Bei Bei woke up instantly.
"Professor?" Yuhao asked. He turned away from the window. His eyes were already glowing with a faint gold light.
"Get back," I said.
A loud, screeching sound echoed above us. The thick iron roof of the train car bowed inward. Four deep parallel cuts appeared in the ceiling. The metal shrieked as it was violently peeled back like the lid of a tin can.
Rain and freezing wind instantly poured into the car.
Three figures dropped through the hole. They wore heavy dark cloaks. They landed on top of the stacked crates with heavy thuds. They did not look like soldiers or mercenaries. They looked like walking corpses. Their skin was pale gray. Black veins bulged on their necks.
Spirit rings flashed around them. Yellow, purple, purple, black, black.
Evil spirit masters. The Holy Ghost Church.
Do you know what a human soul smells like when it is forced to burn? It smells like burning hair and sulfur. These people stank of it. They cultivated their power by eating the leftover spiritual energy of the dead. They were scavengers. They were parasites.
The leader of the group slowly stood up on a crate of lead. He had no eyes, just dark, empty sockets. But he was looking right at the crates holding the Liquid Silence.
"Such a waste," the eyeless man hissed. His voice sounded like dry leaves scraping on stone. "Thousands of screaming voices. Compressed into oil. Used to grease a machine. We will take them back. We will consume them."
He completely ignored us. He thought we were just more guards. He thought we did not matter.
"They want the cargo," Bei Bei whispered. Black lightning started jumping across his knuckles.
"We hold our ground," I said softly.
Before anyone could move, the heavy iron door at the front of the train car slid open again.
More House Lin guards poured in. There were six of them this time. They wore heavy armor and held their glowing soul rifles up. They saw the giant hole in the roof. They saw the three cloaked figures standing on the crates.
"Intruders!" one guard yelled.
The train car exploded into chaos.
The guards opened fire. Red and blue bolts of superheated soul energy lit up the dark space. The noise in the metal box was deafening.
The eyeless cultist did not even flinch. He raised a thin, pale hand. A thick wall of coagulated black blood erupted from his palm. The energy bolts hit the blood wall and fizzled out with loud hisses of steam.
The second cultist moved. He was short and heavily hunched. He let out a wet cough. A swarm of glowing green insects flew out of his mouth. They were not real bugs. They were tiny, fragmented pieces of tortured souls. The swarm rushed the guards.
One guard screamed as the green insects hit his face. The bugs phased right through his physical armor and started chewing directly on his spiritual sea. He dropped his rifle and clawed at his own helmet.
"Don't let them take the cargo!" another guard shouted. He pulled a heavy, metallic cylinder from his belt and threw it at the crates. A soul-grenade.
This was turning into a bloodbath. And they were going to blow up the entire car.
"Stop that grenade," I told Xiaotao.
She moved instantly. A burst of brilliant phoenix fire shot from her hand. It caught the metal cylinder in mid-air. The extreme heat melted the grenade's internal mechanisms before it could detonate. It dropped to the wooden floor as a harmless lump of glowing slag.
"Yuhao," I said. "Shut down the bugs."
Yuhao stepped into the center of the car. The golden light in his eyes flared brighter. He did not summon a weapon. He took a deep breath. A visible wave of pure, clear spiritual power pulsed outward from his body.
It was the Spiritual Shock, but scaled up. He used his mental strength like a heavy hammer.
The wave hit the swarm of green spirit-bugs. Because the bugs were made of fragmented souls, Yuhao's pure mental energy completely overloaded them. The swarm froze in the air. The tiny green lights blinked out. They dissolved into empty gray smoke.
The hunched cultist grabbed his chest and stumbled backward. When Yuhao broke his control over the bugs, the backlash hit the evil spirit master directly.
"Who is doing that?" the eyeless leader shrieked. He turned his blind face toward us. He finally realized we were not normal guards.
"Kill them," he ordered his third companion.
The third cultist was a tall, thin woman. She leaped off the crate. Her arms stretched out unnaturally long. Her fingernails grew into long, black bone blades. She swiped at Tang Ya.
Tang Ya did not back down. She slammed her hands against the floorboards. Thick, thorny vines of Blue Silver Grass burst through the wood. They wrapped tightly around the woman's ankles, yanking her hard to the left.
The woman lost her balance and crashed into the wall. Before she could recover, Bei Bei was there. His dragon claw formed over his right arm. He grabbed the woman by the collar of her cloak. He drove fifty thousand volts of black lightning directly into her chest. She violently seized up and dropped unconscious.
The eyeless leader let out a furious scream. His blood-red spirit rings expanded. The dark, heavy scent of decay grew stronger.
"I will strip the flesh from your bones!" he yelled.
The remaining House Lin guards were still shooting wildly. Their stray energy bolts were hitting the crates, burning the wood and exposing the glass tubes of Liquid Silence. The entire train car was shaking. The cold wind howled through the torn roof.
This was getting too messy. It was time to clean up.
I stepped forward. I did not draw my Kampilan. I did not want to cut him in half. That would ruin the floor.
I walked right through the crossfire. An energy bolt from a guard's rifle flew toward my head. I simply tilted my neck an inch to the right. The bolt scorched the air past my ear.
I reached the crate where the eyeless man stood.
He sensed me. He thrust his hand out, trying to summon another wall of black blood.
I raised my right foot and kicked the wooden crate out from under him.
The heavy box splintered. The man fell forward. I grabbed him by the throat before he hit the ground. I slammed his back against the iron wall of the train car. The metal dented outward with a loud crunch.
He choked. His hands clawed at my arm. His foul spiritual energy tried to rot my skin. It felt like a warm, wet sponge hitting a brick wall. It did absolutely nothing.
"You talk too much," I said quietly.
I squeezed his throat, cutting off the blood flow to his brain. He thrashed for two seconds, then went completely limp. I let him drop to the floor next to his hunched friend, who was still recovering from Yuhao's attack.
I looked over my shoulder.
The House Lin guards had stopped shooting. They were staring at me. They saw me walk through active gunfire and casually put down a high-level evil spirit master with one hand. They were terrified.
"Put the guns down," I told them.
They did not hesitate. They dropped their rifles on the floor and put their hands up.
"Tie them up," I told Tang Ya. "Put them with the others."
She nodded and started weaving grass restraints.
I looked at the giant hole in the roof. The rain was blowing in, soaking the wooden crates. This car was ruined. We could not stay in here. The noise would attract more guards from the front of the train.
"We are changing cars," I said. "Grab a crate of the Liquid Silence. We need a sample to figure out exactly what Chen Feng is doing with it."
Bei Bei moved to the broken crate. He carefully lifted one of the heavy glass tubes. The thick purple liquid sloshed inside. It cast a sick, bruised light on his face.
"What about them?" Xiaotao asked. She pointed to the three unconscious cultists on the floor.
I looked down at the Holy Ghost Church members. They were scum. But right now, they were useful scum.
"Leave them," I said. "When they wake up, they will be very angry. And when the rest of the train's security detail finds them, they will blame the Church for the attack. House Lin and the Holy Ghost Church can fight each other. We are going to slip away."
We left the ruined car and moved through the heavy sliding door into the next one. It was darker, filled with crates of normal machinery parts. It was quiet.
I leaned against the cold metal wall and crossed my arms. My wet boots squeaked against the floor. I was tired of being wet.
We now had an active sample of the Abyssal energy. And we knew the Holy Ghost Church was moving in on the operation. The board was getting crowded.
Chen Feng thought he was playing a clean game of numbers and logistics. He thought he could just build his machines and open his doors. But he forgot the fundamental rule of the Soul Land. When you pile up that much raw power, the scavengers will always come to feed.
The train continued its steady, mindless rhythm, carrying us deeper into the ice.
End of Volume 2, Chapter 56