Chapter 221 Begging For A Miracle
Chapter 221 Begging For A Miracle
And it was ending here, in the mud, unable to lift a single finger to help the only man who believed in me.
No, I thought.
The word was small, a microscopic ember of defiance in a vast, freezing ocean.
I refuse.
I violently dragged my consciousness upward, fighting through the crushing weight of the venom. It felt like swimming through wet concrete. The system alarms shrieked in my mind, a deafening cacophony of digital sirens.
My eyes snapped open again.
The warehouse roof had a hole in it. Cold, freezing rain dripped through the rusted tin, splashing directly onto my forehead. The water mixed with the black sweat coating my skin.
The noise of the battle had changed. The frantic, deafening clash of dozens of weapons had been reduced to heavy, isolated impacts.
I forced my single working eye to focus.
The doorway was completely choked. A barricade of human bodies was piled three feet high in the breach.
Jin-Woo was standing over them.
He was leaning heavily on his straight sword, using it as a cane to keep himself upright. His chest heaved with violently ragged gasps. His left arm was completely useless, hanging dead at his side. He had taken a dagger strike to his right thigh, the dark fabric of his trousers soaked in fresh, bright red blood.
He had done it. Against impossible odds, against a swarm of desperate killers, he had held the line. He had broken the first wave.
The surviving thugs outside had retreated a few yards into the rain, staring in absolute, terrified awe at the blood-soaked Orthodox swordsman standing in the breach. They were greedy, but they weren't stupid. None of them wanted to be the first to climb over the pile of bodies and face him.
Jin-Woo didn't taunt them. He didn't even look at them.
He slowly turned around, his boots dragging heavily across the dirt floor.
He walked toward me. Every step looked agonizing. The deep blue Qi that usually coated his blade was completely gone. His foundation was utterly drained.
He collapsed onto his knees beside the canvas tarps.
His sword clattered from his trembling grip, hitting the dirt. He reached out with his right hand, his fingers slick with blood and black mud, and grabbed the front of my torn tunic.
The world around me began to aggressively tunnel. The edges of my vision turned to black static. The freezing numb sensation had reached my neck. I couldn't feel my arms. I couldn't feel my legs.
I stared up at Jin-Woo’s face.
The polite, composed diplomat of the Orthodox Alliance was dead. The man looking down at me was completely shattered. His dark eyes were wide, bloodshot, and filled with a frantic, unhinged terror. He wasn't looking at a comrade; he was looking at the last anchor keeping him tethered to his own sanity, and that anchor was currently rotting away.
The system interface flickered one final time in the center of my fading vision.
\[CRITICAL ALERT.\]
\[Time remaining until total organ failure: 120 Seconds.\]
Two minutes.
My physical body was exactly two minutes away from complete, irreversible biological death.
"Mu-Kang," Jin-Woo gasped, his voice cracking, shaking my tunic so hard my head rattled against the damp canvas. "Don't you close your eyes. Look at me."
I couldn't speak. The black sludge had completely filled my throat. I just stared at him, my breathing reduced to a shallow, wet rattle that barely moved my chest.
"They're regrouping outside," Jin-Woo wheezed, his tears mixing with the dirt and blood on his face. He looked frantically toward the blocked doors, then back down at my dying, paralyzed body. "They are going to bring torches. I can't hold the next wave. My Qi is gone. I have nothing left."
He leaned down, his face inches from mine.
The sheer desperation radiating from him was palpable. It was heavier than the poison in my veins.
"I know what you are," Jin-Woo whispered, his voice trembling violently. "I know you survived the underground dungeons. I know you broke into the most heavily guarded archives in the capital. You aren't just a rogue cultivator."
My single working eye remained fixed on him. The freezing darkness was actively eating the last corners of my mind, pulling me down into the void.
"You have hidden arts," Jin-Woo pleaded, his grip on my tunic tightening until his knuckles turned bone-white. "You have to. Techniques the Alliance doesn't know about. Blood arts. Demonic arts. I don't care! I don't care what they are, Mu-Kang!"
He shook me again, a raw, devastated sob tearing its way out of his throat.
"Use them!" Jin-Woo roared, his voice echoing off the corrugated tin walls, carrying the absolute entirety of his shattered faith. "Use whatever dark thing you have inside you and save yourself! Please!"