Omari was now thirteen and Yufan being fifteen. Two years in the mines had carved the young boys into something unrecognizable.
The two had decided to try and make a breakthrough to the next realm the next day after realizing that there wasn't enough time and it was almost time for the miners to get woken up.
Omari went to his room and slept there for the rest of the night. Early morning, the morning bell rang and all the miners woke up rushing to their posts.
After a few minutes of working, a familiar face walked into the caves of the mines. It was Boot, now wearing a white robe. He walked with his head held high, an arrogant smile plastered on his face, demanding respect from the yellow robed cultivators.
"Greetings, senior brother."
"Greetings, senior brother!" the yellow robed cultivators greeted Boot with great respect. Some even offering flame stones to gain his favor.
Behind Boot walked five grown men and three kids.
"Welcome to your new home," Boot spoke, telling the new workers he had brought.
The men and the kids were all shaking, their hearts racing as they saw what working in the mines had done to the other miners.
One of the miners snapped his head towards the new kids, a creepy wide smile stretched on his face. The kids looked on at their future in terror. One of them bolted, running in fear. The other two wanted to run but the fear that gripped them was too strong; they couldn't move an inch.
"The kid's got the right idea, this place is hell, I'm out of here," one of the men ran and one more followed.
"Was wondering when that was going to happen," one of the yellow robed cultivators spoke and the rest of them got up, smiles tucked on their faces as they brandished their weapons.
"Woooooo!"
"Let's get them!"
They screamed as they charged forward. Some on the ground and some on their flying swords. One waved his hand and his sword flew at full speed, cutting off both of one of the escaping man's legs.
Ahhhh!!
The man screamed but the cultivators laughed.
"What the hell, I need to get the heck out of here," the second man screamed but a cultivator on a flying sword grabbed him and jumped forward, landing in front of the kid who was running away.
The kid skidded to a halt, falling to the ground. A sword flew into the cultivator's hand and he grinned, staring deep into the kid's eyes as he slowly slit the man's throat.
Tears ran down the kid's face. He crawled on the ground backward. He got up as quick as he could and turned to run away but he ran straight into a sword. The sword pierced his abdomen and he fell to the ground choking on his own blood.
The few left members of the new recruits watched in terror as the cultivators grinned and laughed while throwing their flying swords at the three who attempted to run away at the same time, stabbing them multiple times, leaving only pools of blood.
Omari and the other miners could only watch and continue with their work.
"I'll bring in more toys to play with tomorrow," Boot spoke.
"Our senior brother truly knows how to have fun," they praised Boot.
The rest of the day went the way it would normally go, with a few miners dying from pill overdose and some overworking themselves while in a crazed state.
The bell rang and the miners quickly rushed and grabbed their bowls. After meal time was over, they returned to finish up for the day. Once they were done, it was finally time to go and rest.
Omari nodded at Yufan, signaling that it was time. Yufan waved at Omari excitedly.
They both walked into their rooms and sat cross legged on their beds after they placed all their flame stones on the bed.
To reach the spiritualist realm, they needed to force all the natural qi in their bodies out, then absorb the spiritual energy from the flame stones or normal spirit stones. The process of expelling all the natural qi in the body for the first time was a torturous and extremely painful process. Many cultivators died during this stage. Once you started, you couldn't stop; you had to absorb and expel until the process felt comfortable with zero pain.
The process expanded the spiritual energy inside the body of a cultivator and granted cultivators strong spiritual energy and access to qi outside their bodies.
Omari took a few deep breaths and began.
He tried pushing the spiritual energy inside his body out. For the first few minutes, nothing happened. Only pain, a deep, gnawing ache that started in his chest and spread outward like cracks in drying mud. He clutched his hands into fists, gritting his teeth. His meridians felt like they were being wrung out like wet cloth.
Then the qi came.
Orange and brown strands seeped from his pores, thick and sluggish as honey. Each strand that left him carved a path of fire through his flesh. His nails dug into his palms. Blood welled. He barely noticed.
Keep going. You stop, you die. Keep going.
The pain sharpened. His vision blurred at the edges. Somewhere far away, he heard a sound he didn't recognize at first, a low, animal keening. It took him a moment to realize it was coming from his own throat.
In another room, Yufan laughed.
Not the careful, controlled laughter of a boy who'd learned to hide his tells. Something wilder. His hands were fists pressed against his knees, spiritual qi bleeding from him in waves, and he laughed like a man watching a house he had struggled to build for years burn.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Omari couldn't tell anymore.
His body was sore, his meridians shot through with pain that had stopped feeling like pain and started feeling like pressure, like something inside him was expanding and would never stop. His eyes drifted closed. His head lolled.
No!
He wrenched his eyes open. His body almost falling. He caught himself on one arm, gasping.
"No. No. Keep going."
He grabbed two flame stones from the pile. They were warm in his palms. Friendly. He almost laughed at that, nothing here was friendly, but the urge was there, small and unexpected.
He began to absorb.
The first touch was warm, almost pleasant. Then the energy hit his damaged meridians.
His back arched. His mouth opened but no sound came out for a long, terrible moment. Then it came, a scream torn from somewhere deeper than his lungs. The spiritual energy didn't flow into him. It carved. Each meridian a tunnel of raw fire. Each breath a struggle to stay conscious.
Ngrrrrr!!
He bit down so hard his gums bled.
From Yufan's room, screams echoed. Pure and unrestrained, like a man being unmade.
Omari clung to the sound. "He's still going. He's still..."
The stones went dark.
He dropped them and grabbed two more. The pain didn't get easier. He stopped expecting it to.
The breakthrough required at least fifteen to twenty cycles for a cultivator to be considered in the spiritualist realm. Push out. Absorb. Push out. Absorb. Each time burning himself open, each time letting the energy scour him clean.
By the tenth cycle, his hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the stones.
By the thirteenth, he caught himself smiling.
He didn't know why. There was nothing funny. But his lips were curved, and when he realized it, a laugh bubbled up from his chest, short, surprised, and utterly wrong.
He swallowed it. Focus.
Fourteenth cycle. He absorbed the energy and felt his mind drift sideways. The pain was still there, but it seemed… distant. Like it belonged to someone else. Another laugh escaped. Then another.
He caught his reflection in the dark surface of a spent flame stone.
He was grinning.
"I'm fine," he told himself. His voice sounded strange. Light. "I'm fine, I just... I just need to finish. A few more."
But when he picked up the next flame stone, he didn't start absorbing. He just sat there, staring at it, a smile spreading across his face.
"They laced them. Of course they laced them. Of course."
He started laughing and couldn't stop.
---
Yufan skidded to a halt at Omari's door, his eyes glassy, his grin a mirror of Omari's own. They looked at each other, two boys with bloodied hands and dilated pupils, laughter spilling out of them like water from a cracked vessel.
"I have a better plan," Omari said, the words tumbling out too fast. "Listen. Let's mine all the flame stones. If there's nothing left to mine, they have to let us go. Right? That makes sense. That makes perfect sense."
Yufan's grin widened. "We'll mine ourselves free."
"We'll mine everything."
"Everything!"
They grabbed their pickaxes, their movements jerky, uncoordinated, driven by something that wasn't quite will. The cultivators watched them sprint into the darkness with pure untamed laughter and shook their heads.
"Looks like we're losing two more tonight," one said, and turned away.
Quick, fast sounds of pickaxes slamming into rocks echoed as Yufan and Omari were mining like they were in a competition. Eyes wide open, crazed grins on their faces, nothing but pure focus on finishing mining the entire mines.
Their hands bled but they didn't feel the slightest bit of pain. Hours went by and they broke through a wall and entered another cave. They peeked their heads into that cave and looked at each other with confused expressions. Crazed laughs escaped them as they ran into the new cave, running.
"You're dying," Yufan skidded to a halt and looked at the other him that only he could see.
"You are killing us, you dumb psycho," the other Yufan spoke again and began laughing uncontrollably.
Yufan looked at the other Yufan about to join in on the laughter but before he could, the other him speared him to the ground followed by a brutal punch to the jaw.
He pushed the other Yufan off him and charged forward. The other him leaned down a bit and from below, an uppercut, he hit Yufan below the chin. Yufan was spun backward by the punch, landing on his stomach.
Omari only saw Yufan jump backward as if he had just failed to do a backflip. The other Yufan kicked the Yufan on the ground so he could be on his back. He sat on top and started choking Yufan while screaming in laughter.
"If you escaped, you were gonna go back to her, weren't you? I can't let you do that, Yufan. Let her be, she deserves to die."
Omari watched in confusion. Yufan was on the ground, his hand on his own neck, choking himself.
Omari walked forward and crouched down. "Yufan, our plan? Let's finish what we planned."
"Siwang, I can't go on anymore. You have to finish this for us."
Yufan continued, tears streaming down his face. "She never loved me, I was always her tool.
Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! I hate her!!
That witch from the Heavenly Fragrance Sect, she killed my father. She was heavily injured, that's the only reason she kept me alive so I could find spirit stones and more victims for her."
Tears flooded as Yufan coughed and broke down. "She never wanted to have me. She only married my father so she could use him to heal herself. I was born to be her slave and once she was done with me, my fate was to end up just like my father."
"Kill her, Yufan, please kill her. I beg you, kill my mother," he pleaded.
Tears started streaming down Omari's face. "Do you know who you're talking to? I am Omari Siwang, the bad omen, born to destroy this world. Of course I will kill her for you, ha ha ha hahahaha," he agreed with a crazed laughter.
A purple flower appeared on Yufan's left shoulder and purple veins started appearing on his neck as he choked himself. Trickles of blood dripped from the sides of his mouth as life slowly faded from his eyes and he died.
Omari stood up, tears running down his cheeks. "I will finish what we started, Yufan. I will leave this place and kill your mother... friend."
All this time, his eyes weren't blinking even once. He grabbed his pickaxe and bolted into the cave, sprinting with determination.