Alone Time

Jack tuned out the murmurs of the crowd and focused on his body. Spirit energy started pouring into the meridians in his skin all the way through his body to his quaking dantian.

During his last breakthrough he had to watch out not to get crushed by the collapsing building, so he didn't have much time to examine what the process did to his body from start to finish.

The spirit energy kept pouring into his dantian, making it feel like a bloated ball got stuck in his stomach. He had to force every possible strand of spirit energy into the dantian until it couldn't take any more.

Once it reached a critical point, his dantian gave out a shudder and performed a major expansion. All the built up spirit energy cycled through Jack's meridians in a few waves and somehow made every particle of his body feel stronger.

When the waves reached his head, he felt a spot next to the one that burst once he reached grade four, receive what he could only comprehend as a crack.

In one moment he could feel everything in the area of around a meter surrounding him, but it disappeared almost instantly and left him with a hint of sorrow for the loss.

He spent half an hour sitting on the rock and feeling the changes that the breakthrough to grade six made to his body.

With a thought, he formed a few Air Blast spell structures around his body and then made them collapse. 'Spirit energy flow has improved by a third, while my dantian's capacity increased by one fold.' he thought and opened his eyes.

When Jack stopped focusing on the internal workings of his body, he felt a lot more people standing around the pit than he could before.

'The Tribes really did send their best warriors to the Assembly.' He thought, stood up, and walked over to the discarded head.

"What do you think you're doing?!" shouted the voice of the Lolin representative just when Jack bent down and picked up the severed head.

For the first time ever since his breakthrough began, he looked up at the gathered crowd, focused on the Lolin representative, and said "I am taking my prize. It was won fairly and you cannot have it. I will let you have the rest."

Almost everyone that came to watch the duel stayed to watch the aftermath. When the Lolin representative shouted his challenge, a lot of excited murmurs sounded from the crowd.

'They must be bored to death in this town. I should do something about that.' Jack thought and used Moon Step to jump out of the basin in a few hops.

He handed the severed head over to Bai Maolong and declared "Add this one to the collection."

After Bai Maolong stored the head in the Star Bag with a grin, Jack turned to the Lolin representative and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

Fury bubbled behind the eye-slits of the Lolin's mask, but he managed to hold himself back and sent two subordinates down into the pit to gather the headless corpse.

After that, they left without saying a thing.

The crowd let out various grumbles of disappointment and started to clear up too. Numerous people shot glances Jack's way, but no one approached him.

Old Long and Ma Ruiman left as soon as they collected their winnings, even before Jack finished his breakthrough. They didn't want to do anything to signal that they knew him.

When only the Haechi Tribe remained standing around the pit, Bai Maolong turned to his friend and exclaimed "Congratulations!" His face turned a little sour as he continued "Did you have to break through already, though? I just managed to catch up."

Jack shrugged his shoulders and said "You'll have to make more of an effort in the future. I can't help being awesome."

Bai Maolong started throwing kicks and punches at Jack and they scuffled a little while they laughed.

"How can you act like that after what you just did?!" Tong Huakun snapped from the side.

The two men stopped their play fighting and turned to look at her. Jack spread his hands wide and asked "What am I supposed to do? Cry? Would that help matters?"

Tong Huakun's brow's furrowed as she said "No, but after that butchery, I would expect some seriousness." She hesitated for a second before she asked "Why didn't you just finish him with honor?"

Jack replaced his relaxed attitude with a serious one and answered "If I just killed him in a few moves they would think that he wasn't my match and left it at that. This way, their warriors will hear about what a savage I am and will not volunteer to attack any place I'm guarding without a good reason."

Tong Huakun showed some confusion in her eyes when she started "Still, what you did…"

"Enough, Huakun. What's done is done." Ran Huankuo finally opened his mouth and interrupted his former subordinate.

He locked his eyes on Jack's and asked "Do you think your little show here will keep the caravans safe for a hundred days?"

A small smile flitted across Jack's lips when he heard the question. He knew that Ran Huankuo understood what he wanted to do ever since he stopped the Lolin representative from acting.

With a confident nod, he said "It should. Even if it doesn't, instruct your men not to resist if they think they can't beat the enemy and we will replace the lost goods at our own expense."

Ran Huankuo had some doubt in his eyes but he still grunted in acceptance. A second later, he looked at the Star Bag on Bai Maolong's hip and declared "You know, if you just lent us that Bag of yours we wouldn't have to go through all of this."

A corner of Jack's mouth twitched, but he shook his head and said "I am sorry, but we need them for our own usage. Also, what happens when we have more customers? Which one should get the Star Bag then? It's better to just treat everyone equally from the start."

'And I don't want to make things too easy for you either.' He added to himself and started walking back towards the town.

When Jack and Bai Maolong returned back to their rented house, old Long and Ma Ruiman welcomed with two pouches filled with spirit stones on the table in front of them.

Jack grinned at them and asked "How was it?"

Old Long snorted and grumbled "It could have been much better if you waited a little longer. I had to finalize all wagers after your little stunt with the severed heads."

Jack shrugged and said "I had to anger him somehow. Or else he might not have charged at me from the start."

Ma Ruiman stood up from his seat to take the spirit stone-filled pouches to Jack and asked "Are you sure that showing our cultivation technique to everyone was the right thing to do?"

Jack stored the spirit stones in his returned Star Bag. He started walking towards the door of the cleared out room while saying "They would have found out sooner or later. This way they think that we need to sit down to cultivate like everyone else. It might make them careless in the future."

He reached the door and added "I'm going to clean myself up, give me an hour or so; this damned coat takes a lot of care."

With that, he entered the empty room and dropped his uncaring attitude. He took out a wooden basin and filled it with water. When he saw his bloodstained reflection in the water he stopped all movement, crouched down, and just stared.

A few minutes later, a drop broke the flat surface and created waves that ruined his reflection.

Jack blinked his eyes a couple of times, wiped them with shaking hands, stood up, and walked over to a corner of the room.

He sat down on the ground with his back leaning on the wall and stared at the ceiling while a jumble of thoughts and feelings battled for control of his mind.

'I have to do it this way. These people don't understand anything else. If I gave them the chance they would kill me and the entire company. I have to do it this way.' he kept repeating to himself.

Half an hour later, he walked back to the basin of water and washed the tear-tracked blood from his face.

When he exited the room as clean as he could get himself, he found Tong Huakun sitting at the table with the rest of his men. She looked a little better, but she still showed some reservations in her eyes when she looked at him.

He greeted her, threw his Star Bag back to old Long so he could continue his search for wood, and took the basin of bloody water with him out of the house.

When he emptied it in the yard, he considered going back into the house, but then shook his head and started walking towards the White River.

Jack took the wide steps all the way down to the landing and filled the basin with white water. He walked back up to the halfway mark of the stairs and sat down with the basin on the lower step.

He attempted his last tweak of the Clear Water spell, but as soon as it started attracting the white liquid, a tenth of his spirit energy got drained.

With a sigh, he stopped giving spirit energy to the spell and saw a wave of pure white fall back into the river.

He looked at the raging waves, letting the all-encompassing sound of their crashing fall over him and just stared at them while he gathered his spirit energy back.

Everyone could hear the White River from any place in the Tribal Assembly, but they just chose to filter it out. It served as a constant reminder of the danger looming over their head even when they couldn't see the River.

'Am I too focused on the danger that the white liquid presents that I can't remove it from my intent when I use the spell?' Jack thought and tried to filter out the sound of the waves.

'Both the White River family and the Tribes just intend to clean the water in front of them so they could get safe drinking water. I, on the other hand, can't shake the need to attract everything that's near me. Can I really shift my intent?' He thought and looked back down at the basin.

This time he didn't make any changes to the spell and just used the most basic form from the White River family's scroll. The only thing he tried to change was his intent. Instead of wanting to gather every last drop of the white liquid, he focused on getting clean drinking water.

When he activated the Clear Water spell, he felt his spirit energy exhaustion drop by half of his previous attempt. He stopped giving the spell spirit energy and watched a much smaller wave drop back into the White River.

A real smile appeared on his face for the first time that day and he refocused his efforts on the spell.

As night fell, he took his wooden basin and carried it up the steps. At their top, Bai Maolong sat and threw stones into the River.

When he saw Jack coming up, he climbed to his feet and explained "Old Long told me you went here; I just came to watch your back."

Jack chuckled and said "It's fine, Maolong. Let's go get some food. I'm starving." He led the way back to their rented house while clean water sloshed in the basin.