City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

Fuel

When Richard and Nanook returned to the courtyard with a cup of water, the home was entirely empty with only a small pile of grey ash where the old man had been sitting. He was so shocked that his hand trembled, almost spilling the water he’d brought. His gut told him that he knew this man very well, but even with the ability to recall his entire past he couldn’t tell who it was. He felt the laws of distortion tugging at his mind, covering the truth with chaos.

This was perhaps the only person who knew where Flowsand was! Looking at the pile of ashes, he realised that the millennia-long wait had thoroughly exhausted the Chosen’s energy. Now that contact had been made, it was impossible for the old man to maintain his existence any further.

Richard sighed. Even in the Darkness, no matter how strong someone was they would perish after not eating or drinking for thousands of years. He turned to Nanook instead, “Did you know his name?”

The burly man smiled helplessly, “He never said. He was already here when I came to the city. I… I actually wanted to take his house from him, but he just sat there unmoving and let me. We started living together, and one day he told me that he wanted to find a young outsider that matched your description. I brought you over because I saw you today.”

Richard took a deep breath before puffing, turning to Nanook and offering the cup of water with a nod, “Thank you.”

“What… No! This is too precious!” Nanook was shocked. In the Darkness, anything that could be ingested represented strength, energy, and mana. That in turn meant increased combat ability, and a chance to survive. The cup of clear water in Richard’s hand was valuable enough to trigger a murder.

"I don't need it anymore," Richard dismissed, passing the water over. Nanook remained cautious; he knew this was a form of repayment, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to accept that. If they were even, he could lose a connection that was far more precious than this water could ever be. However, the short-term interest still won out. He carefully accepted the water and poured it into his waterskin, stowing it away carefully.

Richard smiled and walked out of the house, walking into the wastelands and travelling for an entire day to find a certain soul tree. Digging a large hole below, he watched as jet-black fluid seeped in.

This oily fluid contained a mysterious energy that the creatures of the Darkness loved, and it had been marked with a special spot on the old man’s map. Richard sat beside the hole and waited patiently, but it didn’t take long for a strong breeze to blow across the wastelands and a strange creature to appear with the wind. The creature looked like a disgusting garbage-filled pile of sludge, but its surroundings were actually filled with an alluring fragrance.

The creature jumped straight for the fluid, but it stopped and hissed sharply mid-flight. Richard had quietly appeared beside it, and Moonlight had just sliced through it. Even Apeiron wouldn’t have hit her mark with how abruptly the creature backtracked, but with almost all of the laws of awareness analysed he quickly blew the thing apart into countless lumps of mud and rubbish that flew in all directions.

He reached out to grab a lump of jet-black oil, his main target on this journey. This oil was fuel to light the timeflames in the Lighthouse of Time, allowing for a powerful surge of orderly laws that would encompass the world. These oil lumps could be found in the wastelands as well, but the quality was best when obtained from the land’s creatures themselves. It was just that the natives of this plane were rarely seen and abnormally powerful; even legends like Nanook would turn from hunter into prey in the blink of an eye. The garbage was actually the remains of powerhouses that hadn’t been completely digested yet, including their equipment.

Richard carefully placed the oil lump in a specially treated leather bag and tightened it; this was almost the same as the origin energy of this plane, so its value was inestimable. The main requirements for a Lighthouse of Time were the materials to build the lighthouse itself, the brazier to hold the fire, fuel for the fire to burn, and the material to ignite it. These requirements were also in ascending order of importance, so the fuel was second only to the tinder.

He had received information about where to obtain the other three materials, but he was clueless about the tinder. This was the core secret of the Lighthouse of Time, and only Chosen would know where to find it. Some materials seemed really simple, but in the distorted environment of the Darkness even simple things could become exceptionally dangerous. Most powerhouses that were stripped of their energy and mana acted just like commoners; a small bit of impairment to bodily defence was enough to put them in constant danger.

After taking the fuel, Richard started searching for any usable items amidst the garbage. Anything that could be used had a thousand times its normal worth in this god-forsaken place, and even epic beings couldn’t be picky with where they went looking. These strange creatures were called butchers, and it was said that few had ever won a fight against them before. With personal experience, he understood why; his killing seemed simple, but had he failed with his ambush the creature was strong enough to threaten even him.

After cleaning up the battlefield, Richard constrained his aura and hid in the void once more. Not long afterwards, another butcher appeared from the void. It surged out of a small black spot that was about the size of a fingernail, but before it was all the way out Moonlight had cut it in two.

……

Richard continued to rely on Moonlight and stealth to kill half a dozen butchers in a row, finally gathering enough fuel to meet the requirements for a Lighthouse of Time. However, he was midway through cleaning up when a sharp cry rang out from nearby, “So many butchers!”

Startled, he looked up to find a group of eight nearby. Even he hadn’t noticed their arrival, and their gazes refused to leave the corpses littered on the ground.

The man who looked to be their leader finally noticed Richard and barked, “Where’s the core oil, you bastard?”

“What does that have to do with you?” Richard replied coldly.

A scarred yet beautiful woman walked out from behind him and sneered, “We killed so many butchers and you’re trying to steal their core oil away? Put everything down, and we might spare your life.”

The rest of the team split up and surrounded Richard while a skinny boy ran to the soul tree and saw the hole below. He squealed with joy, “It’s a ditch of black oil! We’re rich!”

The group seemed to lose interest in Richard almost immediately, running towards the hole to take a look at the black fluid that was oozing from the base. The handful within was almost the same amount as could be obtained from a butcher, and one couldn’t blame the team’s excitement about that. The biggest use of this liquid was its ability to increase one’s adaption to the Darkness. It could raise one’s control over the distorting laws, directly boosting their battle capabilities.

Only the leader and woman didn’t move, continuing to stare at Richard with solemn faces. The latter eventually spoke up, “The brat’s rather useful, how about…”

“No, we can’t handle him.”

“Then we just eat him!” she revealed a nasty grin, pulling out a pair of serrated daggers that were covered in blood before walking towards him.

Richard’s eyes glowed ever so slightly as his gaze flitted across their bodies, numbers filling his vision to expose all of their secrets. He had recovered most of the use of his blessings over the course of his analysis, and in places like this some things that he hadn’t touched for a long time proved to be quite useful. Analytic showed him just why they could suddenly appear next to him; there was a strap on their wrists that could distort the laws around them to conceal them entirely. This was better than most stealth arts, and without a complete analysis of the distortion it was difficult to see through.

Once he understood how they had snuck up on him, his gaze turned cold as ice. The woman shivered as she met his gaze, but she still rushed over and swung one blade towards his body and the other at his throat. Her moves were vicious and beautifully accurate, showing that she had three or four of the laws here mastered, but unfortunately this was nothing in Richard’s eyes now. Moonlight slashed across with ease, and despite a shocked attempt to raise the daggers in defence the woman lost both her blades and her head.