The walk back to his wagon was a silent parade of shifting power dynamics. Lian led, his heavy, deliberate steps a stark contrast to the light, almost defiant gait of the woman who followed. She was his prisoner, his property, won as a prize. Yet, she did not walk like a slave. Her head was held high, her back straight, her gaze fixed forward, refusing to acknowledge the stares and whispers of the onlookers. She was a caged queen, and the contempt she held for her captors was a palpable aura.
Lian felt it. He also felt the gazes of the others. The merchant guild's mercenaries looked on with leering amusement. The Jade Sword disciples watched with barely concealed disgust and suspicion, their captain's face a thundercloud of frustration. The other servants simply stared with wide, fearful eyes. They were all pieces on a board, and he had just made a move none of them understood.
He pulled back the heavy canvas flap of his wagon and gestured inside with his head. It was a crude, silent command. For the first time, the woman's composure wavered. Her eyes darted into the suffocating darkness of the wagon, a space that was less a home and more a lair. A flicker of fear, real and profound, crossed her face before she mastered it, her features settling back into a mask of cold indifference. She stepped past him into the darkness. Lian followed, letting the flap fall shut, plunging them into a world of shadow and silence, sealed off from the rest ofthe caravan.
The inside of the wagon was sparse and smelled of dust, sweat, and Lian's own wild, earthy scent. A simple bedroll lay in one corner. His pouch of Chaos Fruits sat in another, a faint green glow emanating from the worn leather. It was the den of an animal, not the quarter of a man.
Lian did not look at her. He sat on the floor, cross-legged, his back to her, creating a deliberate distance. This was a new kind of hunt, one with rules he did not understand. He had captured the prize, but now he had to figure out what it was. He treated her as he would any new, unknown creature brought into his den: with cautious observation. He remained perfectly still, listening not just with his ears, but with his Primal Sense. He listened to her breathing—it was shallow, controlled, betraying a tension her proud posture concealed. He felt the faint, suppressed flutter of her Qi, a caged bird beating its wings against the bars of her collar.
After a long, stretching silence, he moved. He took a waterskin and a crude wooden bowl. He poured some water and pushed the bowl across the floor towards her without looking. It was the same gesture one would use for a dog. It was not intentionally cruel; it was simply the only way he knew to interact with a dependent creature.
He heard her sharp intake of breath. The insult was clear. He waited for a reaction—a cry of anger, a defiant rejection. He received only silence. After a moment, he heard the soft sound of the bowl being picked up, and then, the quiet, dignified sound of sipping. She had accepted the water, but on her own terms, refusing to be provoked by his crudeness. She was intelligent. She was patient.
Now, for the puzzle.
He turned to face her. In the dim light filtering through the canvas, he could see her more clearly. She was young, perhaps his own age. Her face, though smudged with dirt, possessed a refined, aristocratic bone structure. But it was her eyes that held his attention. They were dark, deep, and held no fear, only a watchful, calculating intelligence. And a profound, soul-deep weariness.
His gaze dropped to the collar around her neck.
It was not iron or steel. It was made of a strange, matte black metal that seemed to absorb the light, giving it no reflection. Thin, almost invisible lines were etched into its surface—runes, he now knew, similar in principle to the ones on the Kan Kurdu Totemi, but infinitely more complex and elegant. This was not the work of a village blacksmith. This was high-level spiritual engineering. He could feel it actively suppressing the woman's life force, a constant, parasitic drain that kept her Qi sealed away.
"Collar," he grunted, the single word both a statement and a question.
She met his gaze, her chin lifting slightly. "It is a 'Spirit-Sealing Lock'," she said. Her voice was clear and melodious, though rasped with disuse and thirst. It was a voice that belonged in a royal court, not a filthy wagon. "Forged from Stygian Iron. It dampens the connection between the soul and the Dantian. Only the one who holds the key can remove it."
Her lucidity, her willingness to speak, surprised him. He had expected defiance or silence. This was… a negotiation. She was giving him information, testing him.
He rose to his full height, the wagon suddenly feeling impossibly small. He walked towards her, his shadow engulfing her. She did not flinch, did not retreat. She simply watched him, her dark eyes tracking his every move.
He knelt in front of her. "Key," he said, holding out his large, open palm.
A small, sad smile touched her lips. "The merchant threw it away after locking it. He said a key was a liability. There is no key."
She was trapped. And therefore, useless to him as a resource in her current state. A caged bird could not show him how to fly. This was an unacceptable inefficiency.
"I will remove it," he stated. It was not a boast. It was a declaration of fact.
She raised an eyebrow. "Many have tried. The lock is designed to tighten and crush the throat of its wearer if tampered with by any force other than the key."
Lian ignored her warning. He reached out, his thick, calloused fingers moving towards the black metal collar. This was a lock, and he was the key maker. He had deconstructed the Jade Sword technique. He had reverse-engineered the Kan Kurdu Totemi. This was just another system of Qi, and all systems had flaws.
He did not try to rip it off. His fingers gently touched the cold metal. He closed his eyes and unleashed his Primal Sense, not as a wave, but as a thousand microscopic probes. He sank his consciousness into the collar, into the intricate web of runes. He felt the orderly, suppressive flow of the energy within it. It was a masterpiece of order, a perfect cage.
And the universal counter to perfect order is absolute chaos.
He didn't use the mountain's strength or the lightning's fury. He summoned the original, raw energy of the Chaos Fruits, the untamed, reality-warping power he had first consumed in the forest. He channeled a single, tiny, almost imperceptible thread of this pure chaos into the collar's central runic matrix.
He was not trying to break the lock. He was poisoning its very logic.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the black metal collar shuddered. The intricate runes flickered violently, their orderly light turning a sick, corrupted purple. The woman gasped, her hands flying to her throat as the collar began to tighten.
But the crushing force never came. The chaos Lian had injected was acting like a virus, corrupting the orderly flow of the lock's instructions. The runes fought against each other, their functions twisted and inverted.
With a final, silent snap that was felt rather than heard, the internal mechanism of the lock tore itself apart. The collar sprang open, its two halves falling uselessly into the woman's lap.
A wave of brilliant, pure, green-and-gold Qi erupted from her, filling the wagon with the scent of new spring growth and ancient forests. It was the power of life itself, vast, powerful, and utterly unrestrained. It dwarfed the Qi of Captain Jian. It was a power that rivaled Lian's own.
The woman took a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes closing as she felt her own power return to her for the first time in what must have been years. When she opened them again, the weariness was gone. All that remained was the calculating intelligence, and a new, dangerous glint of power.
She looked at the silent giant kneeling before her, the one who had claimed her as a "pet."
"My name," she said, her voice no longer rasped, but infused with the resonant power of her own Qi, "is Elara. And I am not your pet."