With a rumble, the transport lifted off, driving up at an angle toward the night sun. Even though we were technically riding off into another sunrise, not a sunset, the Westerns Gramps and I used to watch came to mind anyway.
We hadn’t stopped any cattle rustlers or saved any towns. If you counted the Heavenly Contrails’ location and the Heartchamber, we had destroyed one, and I’d killed almost every living creature in the other. By the time the whole thing was done, I’d gone from being the guy trying to do the right thing and rescue people to the one murdering everybody. No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t frame myself as the good guy in the white hat.
My stomach twisted, and I squeezed my locked-up hands together tighter like I was praying. I’d screwed up so much already. Done so much that would break Gramps’s heart. I had to do better. I would do better.
“Oh, Rali, guys!” Kest tapped my knee to get my attention, then pointed at the night sun shining through the little porthole. “Watch this!”
A shower of bright green sparks rolled across the window, making a crackling sound like static electricity. Here and there, they started grouping together and turned into watery-looking arcs, dancing back and forth across the boxy hull of the ship.
Rali shook his head in awe. “I’m sorry I ever doubted your grand plans, Kest. That was worth leaving Van Diemann for.”
Kest sat back, trying not to look smug.
As the planet slid away beneath us, the strange green lights rolled off the ship and dropped into space. I leaned back in my seat, watching them disappear.
After a few seconds, Rali bumped my boot with his walking stick. “You look way too serious for a man who just escaped a prison planet, Hake.”
“Yeah, grav,” Warcry said, sneering at the window. “You don’t see me pining after that rubbish rock, do ya?”
“Just wondering what’s up ahead,” I said.
“Shinotochi-Ryu,” Kest said. “Probably even an audience with the Emperor of the Eight-Legged Dragons at some point. You are his shiny new Death cultivator, after all.”
“Right.” The Emperor’s Death cultivator in an oncoming gang war.
As the little transport shuttle rocketed us away from Van Diemann, I stared out the window and promised Gramps that I would figure out how to become the guy in the white hat somehow.
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Looking for more awesome cultivation, and need it right this minute? Check out: Hollow Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 1). Or keep reading to take a sneak peek.
JACE WARIN NEVER WANTED anything more than to attend the School of Swords and Serpents to escape the labor camps and restore his family's stained honor.
But the determined young martial artist soon discovers the school he's always dreamed about is teeming with secret plots and sinister designs. To survive, he will have to master long-lost jinsei techniques, repair his wounded soul, and face down a most unexpected enemy: The Academy's ruthless headmaster and cunning professors.
Hollow Core is the first book in the School of Swords and Serpents series, a tale of wuxia adventure, cultivation mastery, and lurking threats.
Chapter One: The Champion
THE APPEARANCE OF A full-fledged member of the Resplendent Suns in the arena had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. He was larger than life, a mountain of a young man with channels so filled with jinsei that his blond hair practically stood on end from the energy coursing through his flesh and bones. His white gi shone like a beacon against the ancient polished wood beneath his calloused feet, and the bold scrivenings that ran down each of his sleeves blazed with so much sacred light they seemed to have been poured from molten gold.
I’d never seen an Empyreal before, but now I understood why the defender clans thought they were better than the rest of us.
They were.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t defeat one of them. And if I ever wanted to earn a place at the famed School of Swords and Serpents and heal my wounded core, I’d have to beat the man at the heart of the arena.
The trip from the undercity had taken far longer than I’d anticipated, and by the time my mother and I had reached the arena, it was already packed to the rafters with rowdy spectators who’d overflowed their seats and formed a human traffic jam in the aisles between the bleachers. While it wasn’t the most honorable thing to do, I forced my way through the crowd and ignored their angry shouts and curses. These strangers could be angry at me, I didn’t care. My only chance for a brighter future was to reach the registrar before the challenger window closed.
For a fatherless son from a disgraced family, that chance was too valuable for me to miss.
“Watch where you’re going!” A fat man shouted at me as I brushed against his back on my
