Joining the Endless Cycle

Jack waved goodbye to his graveyard shift team as he entered his house and picked up the plate of food from the table. He sat down on the comfortable chair and ate his dinner as he studied a scroll that Shi Furui left for him on the table.

When he finished the meal he picked up the scroll and lay down on his soft bed. While he continued to study it, he activated his cultivation technique and started to absorb spirit energy through his skin.

Fifteen minutes later his eyes widened and he exclaimed "Finally!" as he threw the scroll to the side and closed his eyes.

He focused his entire consciousness on his dantian. There, surges of spirit energy kept rushing into it without stop as Jack thought 'Four months, four months on this damned bottleneck and it melts away while I'm not even trying to break through.' His face had a slight wry smile as the spirit energy of the room created a small whirlpool centered on him.

After a few minutes of madly absorbing more spirit energy than it ever had before, Jack's dantian spasmed and sent out a now somewhat familiar pulsing wave of energy through Jack's body that nurtured it and made his meridians expand.

As the pulses reached his head Jack felt a slight discomfort in the middle of his brows which soon turned into a stabbing pain. A few seconds later Jack collapsed to the floor as something broke in his head with a *crash*. The whirlpool of spirit energy that previously spun around Jack's body collapsed, and with a soft *pop* it alerted anyone that could sense spirit energy in the vicinity that something happened.

Jack cracked his eyes open to look at the thing that he kept hitting his head on when he tried to turn in his sleep. After a few seconds of blinking in the darkness, he saw the bars of a cage and quickly sat up as he reached for his missing knife.

As he sat up he slammed his head into the bars of the tiny cage and ducked down as he rubbed the sore spot. He blinked away the pain and surveyed the room he found himself in.

He could only hear loud snores and wet coughs; by the time his eyes adjusted to the darkness enough to see a few of the other cages he heard a gruff voice say "Get some rest kid; you have a busy day tomorrow."

"Hello?" Jack snapped his head towards the voice and asked "Who's there? Where are we?"

After a few seconds, the same voice said tiredly "It doesn't matter. You're a prisoner of war now, just keep your head down and try to stay alive."

Jack called out a few more questions towards the voice, but no one answered him. After a minute of unanswered questions, Jack sighed and leaned back on the bars of his small cage. He looked at his wrists and considered biting them open, but gave up on the idea and tried to make himself as comfortable in the cage as he could while he waited for dawn.

As morning approached and people started waking up Jack managed to find out that their enemies held them in a battalion camp somewhere in the mountains. Everyone seemed to look at their fellow prisoners with distrust as they kept to themselves and refused to give out too much information.

A few hours after dawn light slipped under the door of their windowless prison, two guards that carried a few loaves of stale bread in their arms entered the room. They tore chunks from the bread and pushed them through the bars of the cages. The prisoners that got their food ate quickly as they looked around the room furtively.

To his surprise, the guards didn't give Jack any bread, and once he looked around the room he noticed that a decent percentage of the prisoners got nothing too.

When the guards finished with the feeding they turned towards Jack's cage and unlocked it.

Jack tried to resist them, but he felt too weak from the day spent in the cramped cage and they beat him down easily.

With a split lip and bruised ribs, the guards dragged Jack into the sunlight. He blinked his eyes a few times as he looked around the large army camp that stood located in the shadow of a huge rocky outcropping.

The guards half dragged Jack to a small building near the prison as his legs still struggled to take his weight.

The building stood almost empty, it only had two chairs in the middle of the single room.

Jack's hands and feet got tied to one of the chairs in a practiced manner, and the guards left soon after. Jack did everything he could to remember the regulations from the Military's Code of Conduct for POWs while he waited.

A few minutes later a tall man in a thick green sweater and army pants entered the room alone, the door locked behind him. He came armed with a knife attached to his belt, and a friendly smile on his face.

He walked over to stand in front of Jack, looked him over, and sat down in the free chair. In an elegant English accent, that had a hint of something foreign in it, he said "Tell me the location of your company and this won't have to turn ugly."

Jack gave him a look of defiance and said "Specialist Jack Nash, 582931229, September 19th…"

Before Jack could continue, the older man sighed and said "Hard way it is, then." He stood up, slid out his knife from its sheet, grabbed Jack's left hand in an iron grip with his other hand, and spread his fingers. He wedged the knife under Jack's middle finger's fingernail and looked up at Jack as he repeated his question "Give me the location of your company." After a second of silence he added "Damn, I just got this sweater cleaned." and wedged the knife into the meat of Jack's middle finger.

While Jack screamed the interrogator raised the handle of the knife and dislodged Jack's fingernail from his finger.

A few seconds later the interrogator wedged the knife under Jack's ring finger's fingernail and repeated his question. When Jack shouted his credentials into his face he didn't even blink as he stabbed the knife under the fingernail and dislodged it.

By the time the interrogator finished with Jack's left hand, Jack started having doubts about the Military's Code of Conduct. When the interrogator got to the third finger on his right hand he burned his mental copy of the Military's Code of Conduct and shouted "I'll talk, I'll talk." as the interrogator prepared to stab his knife under the thumb of Jack's right hand.

The interrogator beamed at Jack as he straightened up and said "See, isn't that better. You should have done this from the start." He reached to his back, took out a folded digital map, and spread it on a wall of the room where it hung by itself.

Jack looked at the map for a few seconds before he said the coordinates that the man wanted to know, ones for the camp of his platoon, the ones they used four stops ago.

As the map zoomed in on the location of the coordinates that Jack gave, the interrogator's smile grew wider and he patted Jack on the shoulder in a friendly manner.

The interrogator took the map down from the wall and folded it back into his back pocket. He went to the door and shouted a word that Jack didn't understand. A few seconds later the door unlocked and a guard peeked a head in. The interrogator looked at Jack over his shoulder and gave him a sly smile as he turned to look at the guard and deliberately said in English "Take him to the Pit." After that, he walked out into the sunlight and left Jack to the mercy of the guards.

The guards led Jack to an area slightly outside of the camp where a couple of dozen men gathered in a circle around a two-meter deep pit.

When they reached it, the guards unceremoniously pushed Jack down the steep slope into the pit.

He rolled once and slammed onto the hard packed dirt of the pit. It took him some time to get up while his fingers gave out screams of pain each time he tried to use them to lever himself up from the ground.

When he stood up he saw the jeering faces of the enemy soldiers that stood on the edges of the pit and shouted insults at him. He looked around and saw that the pit had around 10 meters in diameter, and the only way out of it came from a knotted rope on one side. He didn't dare to try for the rope under the gazes of so many hostiles, and he doubted that he'd managed to climb out of it on his own with his hands in their mangled state.

After a few minutes of waiting, the guards returned with a prisoner in tow and pushed him towards the pit as well. He seemed ready for it and jumped down on his own. As soon as he did he distanced himself from Jack and took on a careful guard with his hands.

Jack looked at him and asked in a bewildered voice "What's going on?"

The man took a second look at Jack and his eyes widened slightly as he asked "You're new?"

Jack nodded his head in response as he looked at the excited faces of the men that stood around the pit who started exchanging goods with each other.

The other man furrowed his brows slightly and hesitated as a quiet battle happened in his eyes before he finally sighed and said "They make us fight for entertainment. Sometimes up to three times a day. If you don't win, you don't get fed. That's all you need to know." He turned his gaze up to a man with officer's bars on his shirt.

The officer took all of the bets, and after a few seconds yelled something.

As soon as the man opposite Jack heard the yell he roared and charged at Jack. Before Jack even know what hit him he slammed down to the ground and the man started pounding Jack's head with his fists.

The world collapsed as Jack cried from the pain and humiliation.

"He's waking up!" a voice yelled as Jack felt his consciousness returning.

When he opened his eyes a flash of light seared them and he closed them immediately. Even with that, he somehow knew the people that stood around him.

Usually, he could just sense a cultivator's location and their cultivation grade, if they weren't stronger than him. But now, he could tell that Kuang Bindun loomed over his head, while Shi Furui tried to insert a strand of his spirit energy into Jack's meridians, and failed. Bi Tuohui stood at the entrance to the small room and kept the others that crowded outside from getting in.

Jack could sense, and recognize all of them.

"This feels so strange." he murmured as he squinted his eyes in the glare of the unfamiliar light.

"What's wrong?" Kuang Bindun asked immediately as his smile disappeared and a frown replaced it.

Before Jack could answer, a voice from the outside said "His vision improved and he has not gotten used to it, yet." The small crowd outside made way as Du Angliang passed through and entered Jack's house.

He looked around at the small hoard of furniture and items that Jack gathered with disinterest and finally looked down at Jack. He studied him with a face that had something that resembled the mixture between a sneer and a satisfied smile for a few seconds before he said "Get up; Elder Yu wants to see you."

Jack forced his eyes to remain open in the glare as he looked up at Du Angliang and said "At once, Senior Brother." He motioned at Kuang Bindun and Shi Furui to step back as he stood up on his own and felt the new power coursing through his body.

Du Angliang turned on his heel and exited the house while Jack followed in his wake. He gave the concerned faces gathered outside of his house a reassuring smile as he stepped onto the road for the Elder's manor.

Once they arrived there, the Elder's study door opened immediately and they entered it.

After politely greeting Elder Yu, Jack and Du Angliang stood there with lowered gazes, both in their own worlds of possible future prospects.

The Elder stood up from his packed desk and looked Jack over with a slightly satisfied gaze. He walked from behind his desk and grabbed Jack's arm to check the flow of his spirit energy.

After a few seconds, he chuckled and said "It took you a little longer than I predicted, but you managed to break through the bottleneck to the fourth grade just in time."

Elder Yu looked over to Du Angliang and said "Angliang, you have given your patrol duties over to Tanda to focus on breaking through to the seventh grade already. The time has come to give your other duties over to him as well. You will go to the back of the Eternal Rest Mountain and attack the barrier to the seventh grade so that you can take part in the upcoming inner disciple test."

Du Angliang bowed down deeply and said "I will, as with all things, do as teacher commands."

The Elder turned back to Jack with a slight smile and said "And you, Tanda. You will join the Endless Cycle Sect officially and accept me as your teacher."

Jack bowed down even deeper than Du Angliang as he said "I obey with a glad heart, Lord."

On the inside, he thought 'Finally, after a year and a half of preparations in this s*ithole, I can start implementing my escape plan.'