Subterfuge: A Cultivation Academy Series (Bastion Academy Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

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  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  STUDENT. SPY. SON. Enemy.

  The Busa-nan student exchange program was designed to foster peace, share the knowledge of core building techniques, and bridge the growing cultural gap between the nearby kingdoms. This year’s exchange looks no different from the outside, but Jiyong and his friends have been tasked with a secret mission: discover the plot of the Kokyu foreign ambassador, Dokun Yamamotto.

  Jiyong knew the consequences of accepting the overseas exchange with the Kingdom of Kokyu, but when his disowned father, Hiro Kumiho, and the traitorous Ko-nah Wong get involved, Jiyong’s desire for revenge will take the reins of the mission. An encounter with a new type of cultivation magic gives Jiyong access to a power that can get him the revenge he so dearly craves.

  The student spies will be forced to control themselves in all ways if they plan on escaping the hostile kingdom with the knowledge of Dokun’s plans—and their lives.

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  Chapter 1

  MIN-HWAN DEFLECTED my blow with ease and then twirled away. He landed a palm strike against Hana’s throat with a smack. I gritted my teeth as I watched her stagger back, coughing. Yuri darted in, her hands flowing like water as she pushed and pulled the blood in Min-hwan.

  Blood commands were new to us all, and shouldn’t have been taught until the fifth year, but Min-hwan was certain they could help us in the months to come. Yuri was the only one to have gained any mastery in it, and so she’d dedicated much of her training to pushing and pulling her opponents around like a puppet master. Now, she held Min-hwan in a locked mirror pose, forcing him to hold his arms akimbo and present his chest.

  Blue munje flowed between them, warping the old Grandmaster in my vision. We had the advantage—for now.

  I moved in, my hands electrified with an enzo spell to shock the opponent into paralysis. Cho was in my periphery, coming in at the same angle. I sidestepped to avoid shocking him, too. Min-hwan broke free from Yuri’s hold—which he had likely feigned from the beginning. He batted my attempted shock strike away, and the spell backfired.

  Muscle-tensing agony ripped up my arm before I could defuse it with the counterspell locked in my muscles. I dumped the loaded spell into my veins and cut the paralysis in a blink, but it was already too late.

  Min-hwan moved so fast his arms blurred through the air like a ghost. Pain bloomed in my gut from his heavy punch. I skidded back through the worn training grounds, gasping for air. Shin-soo gained his feet next to me with a groan. He wiped blood from his upper lip and shook his head.

  “How do we keep losing,” he growled and reached for me.

  I pulled myself up with his offered arm and looked at our predicament. Hana had moved in next to Yuri to guard her while she worked another enzo spell of blood manipulation. Min-hwan was getting particularly adept at rebuffing those attacks—though I assumed being a Grandmaster, he was going quite easy on us. My energy was getting low, and heat blazed through my two full core bands. I took a single breath to capture the heat and redirect it into ry.

  “Go for his flank. I’ll distort you and follow,” I whispered in a pant to Shin-soo.

  He wiped at his bleeding nose one more time, then nodded. “Don’t mess up.”

  Shin-soo darted forward, his muscles exuding the black aura of infused zo munje. I twisted and whipped my arms through the air, releasing my stored ry. My fingers worked the complex pattern to direct the munje, offsetting Shin-soo’s appearance by almost a meter. It was a spell Hana had devised from the daggers she’d used to fight off Wong’s assassins, and something we’d perfected over the summer.

  Min-hwan spun and kicked away Cho, then turned to face off with Shin-soo. I completed the complex motions and felt my spell resolve. I followed behind Shin-soo as he threw himself into the fray. He got in two good swings—both blocked—before Min-hwan delivered a low-kick to Shin-soo’s knee and dropped him to the ground. It was as if he’d seen right through my spell, though I knew it’d been successful.

  Grandmasters were just too powerful.

  I dashed between Shin-soo and Min-hwan’s killing blow, aimed at my rival’s already broken nose. I shifted my weight and pushed forward, keeping the distance between us small. Min-hwan sent an open-palm strike toward my throat, and I released a burst of infused zo with timed precision. I twisted out of the way and ducked low, then jabbed a two-finger enzo strike up to his offending arm.

  The spell discharged into his forearm before he could retreat, and the Grandmaster growled with pain. Hana landed a heavy kick to Min-hwan’s back, and I hesitated to deliver another strike, worried I’d harm the frail-looking man. That half second was all he needed to regain the advantage.

  Min-hwan moved like lightning, feinting with another palm strike as his other hand gripped a fistful of my dobok. The Grandmaster tossed me aside like a cloth doll. I cartwheeled through the air, desperately trying to gain equilibrium before the ground and I were reacquainted.

  The heat monitor in the lower right of my vision flashed critical, and I hit the ground with a roll. I’d overheated myself in my first year and fallen unconscious for nearly twelve hours after almost melting my brain. This close to the start of the school year, I didn’t want to risk that again. I came up to a knee and spared another breath to cycle the building heat energy in my core.

  “You’re too close to redline. Breathe again,” Mae ordered, and I complied. It wasn’t just my brain I could fry if I pushed too far—I could hurt her, too.

  I pulled down another deep breath and took stock of my reserves that Mae conveniently presented for me on the left side of my vision. The battlefield blurred in my eyes as I pulled the data into view. Enzo was on empty; no more shock punches. Zo infusion was down to ten percent in my legs, and twenty-five in my
back and arms. I was all out of ry and en, and almost completely out of energy from lunch.

  Cho howled in pain, and I refocused on the combat. He stumbled back, cradling his awkwardly bent arm before dropping to a knee.

  “Dead! Mr. Pak, step out of the ring,” Sung-ki declared from his seat on the periphery. Since we didn’t want to deal true death-blows to one another, severe injuries and loss of bodily control meant we were finished.

  There wasn’t time to spare an apology to my friend. I cycled the heat once more through the double bands and aligned for double zo. I ran back into the battle, putting myself between Min-hwan and Yuri. Blue en twisted between her arms like a typhoon as she prepared to unleash some deadly attack. Min-hwan noticed just as I had, and turned his attention to ending that threat.

  Hana zipped to his left side, and Shin-soo charged at his right. The Grandmaster deflected both attacks, leaving his front exposed. I aimed for his chest and turned into my punch, giving it all the strength I had. Min-hwan lifted his left leg in an unnaturally powerful spin. The strike hit Shin-soo in the face, then knocked my arm off course before smashing Hana’s nose. Shin-soo wasn’t getting up from that.

  The three of us fell back almost at once. As we hit the ground, Yuri launched her storm spell and trapped Min-hwan in a bubble of raging blue munje. The spell pulled him backwards toward the sea, giving Hana and me time to climb back to our feet.

  Hana’s body sparkled with purple ry as she released her distortion spell—likely the last of it. This was our final stand. I dumped my remaining energy into zo and rushed forward, chasing the chaotic cloud that had whisked Min-hwan away.

  Why wasn’t he fighting the storm? It sucked sandy water from the bay and battered him with invisible gravity that kept him stumbling like he was a boat on the high seas. I didn’t dare enter the sphere of effect, knowing Yuri’s spell didn’t differentiate friend from foe.

  When the en munje lost its inertia and the water fell to the ground, I darted in. Min-hwan flicked his wrist, and the ground shifted below me. Sand swallowed my feet, but I couldn’t stop from moving forward. I pitched forward and fell to my knees, watching as Min-hwan’s sandaled foot rose to meet me.

  Crack!

  My vision went dark, and my ears went deaf as my back hit the ground. I felt a breeze on my feet. Jigu be blessed, they were so hot. I grunted and rolled to my side, trying to get the ground to stop spinning. So that was why he hadn’t fought the storm, he’d used it to lay his own en munje in the wet sand.

  “Concussion and broken nose.” Mae’s voice was clear in my head, while the bird songs and rushing waves sounded far off.

  I stumbled to my feet and locked my sights on Min-hwan. He easily deflected Yuri’s attack, then advanced. She put up little blue barriers that pushed his palm strikes off-course, but she couldn’t keep it up long. Hana gained her feet behind Min-hwan, looking woozy.

  I tried to motivate myself with chanting over and over, Move, Jiyong. They need you.

  My head swam and I stumbled forward, but I kept the chants going.

  “Jiyong, you’re dead! Out of the ring!” Sung-ki called.

  “I’m fine,” I shouted back.

  I launched myself at Min-hwan and didn’t even see his rebuttal, but I felt it in my throat. I fell back to the ground gasping for air. The heat meter at the bottom of my blurry vision flared a warning. I sucked down a shallow breath and moved the heat through the collector rods at the bottom of my reservoir. It was no good; there wasn’t enough air to cycle.

  I gasped again and laid back from the nausea growing in my stomach. There was nothing I could do to quell the sensation but hold my breath and close my eyes.

  “You need to cycle that heat, Jiyong,” Mae reminded me.

  The sickness swelled in me with the heat, and I turned to the side. I wretched, but there was nothing to vomit up. I pulled in another shallow breath, my lungs burning for fresh air.

  A shadow appeared at my side, and Sung-ki pulled me up to sitting. He waved an uncorked vial under my nose, and with a snap, my diaphragm expanded fully. Sweet air filled my lungs all the way, and I grunted in relief.

  “Listen next time,” the Li Alchemy instructor said with annoyance.

  I glanced around with swollen, blurry eyes to see everyone—save for Min-hwan—panting and sputtering on the ground in defeat.

  “I can’t hold back when my friends’ lives are on the line,” I said, my voice nasally from the broken nose.

  Sung-ki tutted and passed me a corked vial. “Drink it and cycle.” He moved on to Shin-soo, who was still face down in the sand.

  I drank the potion and breathed awkwardly through my mouth, then sent the healing zo to my nose. Cho joined me on the warm sand with a grunt.

  “Sorry about that,” he whispered.

  “About what?” I asked, wiping blood from my lips.

  “I got in the way of your enzo strike.”

  I shook my head. “No, I should’ve been watching. I was too focused on only him.”

  When my face wasn’t so inflamed, we helped Yuri, Hana, and Shin-soo onto the grassy knoll that overlooked the bay on Min-hwan’s private estate. Woong-ji brought us all water reinforced with energy to recoup our loss, and we cooled down in the shade of a fragrant evergreen.

  Min-hwan paced thoughtfully. The wind was hot, and the midday sun beat upon our shoulders through the shading branches. Birds called in the distance over the sea, and we waited for his judgement, quietly panting from the exertion.

  Min-hwan heaved a sigh, then stopped and turned to face us. “You are not ready.”

  My protests stopped just short of flying from my mouth. Despite my failure to beat him in combat, I knew I was ready. Min-hwan did not react to my thought, which only reinforced my belief. My jang-ryzo—a mental shield—was strong, and he could not hear me. I would be able to protect my thoughts and Mae’s with ease, even surrounded by enemies.

  “Respectfully, Grandmaster, I don’t agree,” I said with a bow.

  Shin-soo, my rival turned teammate, nodded to me. “We can do it.”

  “What other choice do we have?” Hana asked, emboldened by our confidence. “This is our best opportunity. Ready or not, we have to take it.”

  “I trust my friends with my life,” Yuri said as she grabbed Hana’s hand. “We won’t fail.”

  Cho was quiet. All eyes fell on him as the silence dragged on. He shook his head, his eyes pinned to the ground. “I don’t want to die. I especially don’t want to be executed by my king and shame my family.” He looked to me, then nodded. “But I can’t let one more person experience the pain I had from that poison.”

  Cho had worked twice as hard over the summer to recover the strength he’d lost from Dokun’s malware. His second core band had been damaged beyond salvation, and he’d had to start it again from scratch. It was a long road to recovery, but now he was even more powerful than before.

  “I know we can do it,” I urged Min-hwan.

  The ancient man hummed. “I never said there wasn’t a chance of success, only that you weren’t ready.”

  I barely contained my grin. So, we were going to do this. We had trained every day over the summer to prepare, and while returning to school would’ve been fine, I wanted to go to Kokyu. I knew the risks. I knew that Hiro Kumiho would have a target on my head the second we set foot in Kokyu, but we were ready to face him.

  A blast of red sparks flashed through my mind with stunning clarity.

  I scowled. ‘Yes, I remember how powerful he is.’

  “Let me remind you that we did not master the deflection spell,” Mae said in my head.

  I sucked down a deep breath and refused to answer her. No, I hadn’t mastered it, but it was pretty good. I would be strong enough to withstand many attacks, just like Yuri had against Min-hwan. With my friends at my side, we could take Hiro down if we had to.

  But that wasn’t the point of this mission. We weren’t going to Kokyu to fight anyone. Reconnaissance, data collectio
n, and making “friends.” Hiro Kumiho wouldn’t be able to attack me in the open, because according to their King Hisachi, Hiro Kumiho had been executed.

  Grandmaster Min-hwan’s source had told us Hiro Kumiho had never returned. A man had been executed, but it hadn’t been my former father.

  Min-hwan snapped me from thought. “I do think you have a chance of success, but the risk of failure...” He blew all the air out of his lungs. “We will have other opportunities with better odds.”

  “But when?” I challenged. “How long will we have to wait? How many more innocent people will continue to suffer and die as Dokun plots?”

  Min-hwan’s eyebrows pinched with knowing compassion. “Jiyong, we can’t save everyone.”

  Gui-ne’s and Se-nim’s faces flashed in my mind’s eye. Mae didn’t want to relive their faces any more than I did, but I couldn’t prevent the memories from bombarding their way to the forefront. I hadn’t been strong enough to save them, but I was now. If I had trained harder in my second year—instead of babysitting the traitor Ko-nah—I could’ve been strong enough to make the difference.

  I clenched my fists. “We have to try. We have to do our best or renounce the name of Bastion.”

  Min-hwan’s eyes twinkled for a brief flash, then he turned away. Cho and I exchanged a nervous glance, then looked back to the Grandmaster. He stopped his pacing and crossed his arms, looking over the lapping ocean waves.

  “What do you think, Woong-ji?” he asked.

  I immediately looked to my master. Her gaze was set on the Grandmaster. “I think we’re as well prepared as we could ever be for this journey, and it will be enough.”

  “Sung-ki?”

  The alchemy instructor grimaced. He’d agreed to join this mission to get a better understanding of the drugs Dokun had used to deliver his poison. There were still people suffering from left-over symptoms. In ten percent of the population, the malware kept executing the last command it had received. For some that meant frequent headaches, and others involuntary twitches. The damage had been done, and some wounds couldn’t be healed by known means.