Soulbound: Dual Cultivation

Lucas moved swiftly but carefully, tilting the vial and pouring its contents into the man's throat. The liquid shimmered as it left the glass, catching the light in fleeting sparks before disappearing past the prisoner's lips. The man swallowed involuntarily, his face twisting slightly at the unfamiliar taste, but he didn't resist. His eyes locked with Lucas's until the last drop was gone.

The moment the potion trickled down his throat, warm and sharp like fire laced with liquid lightning, something stirred within him. At first, it was so faint he almost believed it to be a cruel trick of his senses, like a phantom limb twitching in the void. But then it deepened, blooming from a subtle flicker into a vibrant pulse that spread across his chest and down into the marrow of his bones.

The chains creaked ever so slightly as he strained against them, not in resistance but in stunned awareness, every fiber of his being suddenly awakened to a sensation he thought he'd never feel again. His meridians, severed, damaged beyond repair, stripped of their function, were no longer silent. A whisper of energy brushed through them like the first breath of wind after a long, suffocating stillness. His dantian, once a hollow shell of its former self, shivered faintly with life, as though some ember buried deep within had been coaxed into a fragile glow.

He stiffened, his breath caught in his throat. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, focusing inward with the desperate urgency of a man drowning who had just touched the surface. It wasn't imagination, It wasn't some cruel alchemical trick. The feeling was real....real. He could feel the Qi stir like the early tremors before a storm, threading through the pathways he thought had turned to dust. His broken core had responded.

His eyes snapped open, disbelief washing over his hardened features, cracking them open like a weathered stone finally split. He stared at Lucas, no longer with disdain, no longer with mockery. There was shock, yes, but it was overwhelmed by something deeper, rawer, and almost painful to witness....Hope.

The man's breath trembled in his throat as he searched Lucas's face, his pride buckling under the weight of what had just been handed to him. He had resigned himself to a silent, bitter death, shackled to his convictions and the loyalty that had cost him everything. But now, that future crumbled before him like ashes under rain. The very thing that had been taken from him, his cultivation, his strength, his identity, was reaching back to him through the fog of ruin.

He looked up at Lucas, his gaze stripped of all pretense, all arrogance, all the distance a man of his standing would normally cling to. For the first time, he looked not like a master brought low or a loyalist unmoved by pain. He looked like a man offered a second life, a man who had believed the doors of his fate had shut forever but now saw one cracking open in front of him.

And in that gaze, the pride was gone, there was only pleading.

A silent, desperate cry from a man who had tasted what he thought lost forever and was now willing to give anything just to hold on to it.

Even Henrietta, who had stood beside Lucas found herself briefly speechless. Somewhere in the depths of her heart, she had begun to believe in his madness, that he could do what no one else would even dare to dream of, but seeing it with her own eyes was something else entirely. She had tortured this man, broken his body in ways only someone trained in the art of heart-wrenching could. She had seen his strength crumble, watched as he refused to speak, his will unshakable, even when pain was all he had left. And yet now, with a single sip from a vial that had seemed so insignificant in her palm earlier, he looked like a man reborn.

She turned to Lucas, her gaze no longer that of a superior assessing an ambitious youth. There was something else in her eyes now....It was awe. Quiet, stunned awe that twisted subtly with admiration. This boy had just made a crippled cultivator feel his Qi stir again.

Lucas, still as composed as ever, caught the glimmer of disbelief in Henrietta's eyes and allowed the faintest smile to lift one corner of his lips. He stepped forward, watching the man with a calmness that barely veiled the razor edge beneath it.

"You believe now, huh?" he said softly, but there was steel beneath his words.

The man didn't speak, his eyes were locked onto Lucas, wide and disbelieving, yet filled with a hunger that could no longer be masked. Lucas could see it all, the whirlwind of emotions, the fractured pride, the stunned recognition, the swelling, overwhelming desire to reclaim what had been lost.

From within his robe, Lucas drew out the second vial. This one shimmered differently in the dim torchlight of the dungeon, the liquid within more potent, glowing faintly with a pulsating warmth that seemed to throb like a heartbeat in glass. He held it up, not as a gesture of kindness, but as a deliberate act of control.

"This is the real deal," Lucas said, his voice low and deliberate, the words hanging in the thick silence between them. "This one will do more than stir your Qi. It will fully awaken your cultivation. Everything you lost, your strength, your power, your status."

The man's eyes latched onto the vial as though it were the last piece of his soul. His body reacted before his mind did. He leaned forward, no hesitation, no attempt to mask his yearning. His movements were sharp, animalistic, a twitch of instinct more than intent. His chains clanked loudly as he strained against them, the iron biting into his wrists, but he didn't care. His gaze had narrowed, his entire world condensed into the small vial in Lucas's hand. Had he not been bound, had he retained even a fraction of his former strength, he would have lunged at Lucas without a second thought. He would have fought, clawed, wrestled the vial from his hands like a man possessed.

In that moment, nothing else mattered, not the mission he once served, not the secrets he had buried with his silence, not even the chains that bound him. Only that vial matters to him, and the impossible promise it held.