Sitting on the road, it took over two hours to recover the qi I spent. The Stormwall was rich with power, the natural formation creating an ever denser vortex of power as I carved a path deeper into its heart.
Here, the air was so thick with power that the air felt choking. The amount of storm qi gathered in the center began to overwhelm all others.
My cultivation was interrupted by the increasing distress I felt along the connection I shared with Littlebird. I couldn’t ignore it.
I hadn’t had time to properly investigate the connection between us after my return from the Savage Expanse; there was little to do except wait for it to hatch. I opened my eyes and stared down at the egg in my hand.
Exposed to the elements, it was growing cold. I needed to keep it closer, like a mother roosting. After a moment of hesitation, I grabbed the scraps of the bag that were still around my shoulders. There was just enough rough canvas to tie together a makeshift sling.
Under the canopy and the ever present roar of the rain and wind, I crafted a carrier for Littlebird’s egg, tying it to my chest inside my robe where I could keep it warmest and tucking the egg away. Under layers of my clothes, his distress immediately began to diminish.
I shivered at the cold I had exposed myself to.
The canopy did a good job at blocking most of the water, but gusts of wind carried sprinkles onto the Stormroad, water accumulating under my waterproof robe.
I rubbed the mud from my face while carefully watching my connection with Littlebird. Comfort returned and replaced the distress, but not completely. It wasn’t enough. I needed padding or insulation, but I wouldn’t find any here. And on foot, the journey could take days still.
I focused on our connection in another way; instead of focusing on the mental bond and qi, I focused on bringing up the System.
[Anti-Light Roc Egg]
[A spirit bound egg tied to Feng Sai. It contains the remnant consciousness of a Titan level entity with an embryonic perfected body. This egg is feeding off of its connection to Feng Sai’s power. Time until hatching: 8 days.]
Would Littlebird last eight days? Could I hatch him faster? Currently, the bond between us was a trickle of power. But what if I made it a river? Could it keep up?
I pushed on the connection. Gently at first. I turned the connection from a drip to a trickle. A spike of alarm stunned me into pausing. But the alarm dropped, replaced by comfort again. I raised the power flowing in slowly, eventually settling down at around four times as much power as the connection naturally drained. It would eat away at some of my qi. I would have to stop to rest more.
But it was worth it.
Littlebird seemed to be only half conscious along the connection between us. The outflux of qi I poured into him made me even more aware of the connection.
I pulled up the system again.
[Time until hatching: 2 days.]
“Can you hold on for two days?” I asked, putting a hand to my chest. A feeling of assent echoed across the connection between our cultivation.
I breathed out a sigh of relief, pushing myself to my feet and shaping the Anti-Light movement technique.
With the extra drain on my qi from the new connection, I reached a third of my capacity before stopping to rest. The road was enormous; it was an undertaking of incredible scale. Very rarely, other roads intersected with this one, leading away into the dark where the rain obscured the distant destinations.
Without a compass, I could only follow the road vaguely south.
I suspected that the roads did even more than was revealed by my [Identify]; at one point, these may have been part of a massive formation themselves. It was only speculation on my end; I was no expert in formations. But I suspected that all roads would eventually lead to the central most ruin if my guess was correct.
The Storm Temple must have been in the center, at the ruins of the Heavenly Cloud. The remnants of buildings began to appear along the side of the road, popping out of the treeline where nature tried to overtake them.
I raced by entire towns lost to time, wondering why Wen hadn’t caught up to me.
Could I have underestimated his cultivation? It wasn’t likely. But perhaps the Grim Tempest sealed his cultivation and he truly could only express the power of the Third Realm. Turning back wouldn’t help him, though. I continued on.
Piles of rubble forced me to weave around. Sections of the road were wet where broken canopy exposed them to the rain. I even crossed slapjob repairs.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The first real obstruction still surprised me. It wasn’t a broken section of bridge or a mudslide as I had imagine. Instead, it was a Spiritbeast.
[Stormgate Trapdoor Spider Nest]
[The nest of an insectoid Spiritbeast known for leaping out to ambush their prey.]
And it was something I couldn’t avoid. The side roads were a risk; there was no telling how many days they would add to the journey, and the last crossroad was hours behind me.
I also couldn’t risk a hit to the chest without endangering Littlebird.
The yellow lights embedded in the road revealed a monstrous, many legged shape behind layers of gray webbing; it was the silhouette of a monster projected through thin curtains. It was probably the same size as the boar. The nest was almost comically large for it, stretching across the entire road.
Shaping the Anti-Lightning movement technique and freeing my sword, I took a step forward. I watched and waited, experimenting with how close I could get. The spider didn’t react. I focused on it carefully, using [Identify] on the shape behind the webbing, rather than the webbing itself.
[Male Stormgate Trapdoor Spider, Second Realm Water/Ice Spiritbeast]
[A Spiritbeast evolved as an ambush predator in the merciless wilds. Semi-aquatic. The Male Trapdoor spider is a homemaker, a docile and peaceful spirit beast much smaller than their wives. The male spider never travels very far from the wife.]
My eyes widened. I made a snap decision to move backward, practically kicking off the road and flying away.
A gigantic chitin leg with a hooked end stabbed into the road, then another, as a spider four times the size of the male crawled up the side of the bridge. The ground sizzled from acid that leaked from her massive fangs.
[Stormgate Trapdoor Spider Matriarch, Third Realm Water/Acid Spiritbeast]
[The Stormgate Trapdoor Matriarch provides for a harem of Male Stormgate spiders. This one is half starved and only has a single harem member left. It ate the rest.]
I scanned it quickly, looking for weaknesses. My enhanced intelligence helped. I had hunted dozens of Spiritbeasts, but they were all much weaker and more familiar. I drummed my memories for anything to help me fight a Spiritbeast like this one.
No self righteous cultivator held a proper hunt for an insect, no matter how large. But I had fought monsters like this one. Ones without cultivation.
The Sandshears were weak where their chitin plates interconnected, soft flesh falling apart to a single cut. My eyes flew up and down the spider, spotting the joints where the chitin plates bent. I just had to cut them.
Wind whistled in my ears as I shot forward, shaping the Anti-Lightning herald movement technique and freeing my blade in one motion. Black lightning crackled off my blade.
The spider didn’t even have time to react.
The smell of burning flesh overtook the rain as I cut clean through one of the monster’s joins, a chitin leg hitting the ground. The spider finally moved, stabbing downward with its fangs.
I met it with [Stormbreak Riposte.] The acid dripping from its fang’s sizzled away as it met the black lightning dancing at the edge of my blade.
[Stormbreak Riposte reached level 6!]
It let out a screech, stumbling to re-balance its weight on seven legs. I spun forward, severing a second leg, then a third. The monster tilted unsteadily.
One of its legs rushed toward my chest, where Littlebird’s egg was. I spun backward, dodging. The spider tilted back, moving towards nest. I chased, hacking away.
After I cut away four of its legs, it fell pitifully, screeching on the ground. I stabbed my sword through its head.
I was panting. The rush of my own heart and the roar of the rain was all I could hear. My qi reserves were depleted. Poking at the connection between me and Littlebird, I received a sense of comfort in return. He was un-injured.
[You have reached level 33!]
Exhaustion began to set in from the day. It was still too soon. I had one more monster to kill. I walked toward the nest. The spider shot out of it, running toward the edge of the town, but I dashed forward, stabbing into it.
I couldn’t let it persist out of my sight; I couldn’t safely rest if the monster was intelligent enough to pursue revenge.
A safe camp could elude me for hours. I started cutting through the nest's webbing, hurrying to leave. This was a territory controlled by a relatively powerful monster. In the Lower Third realm, I should have had trouble killing it. It was only easy due to my massively enhanced physique and stats, and because it lacked any Temper of the Third Realm.
In fact, most things here should have had trouble killing it. Which gave me a stray thought; no other Spiritbeast was likely to intrude on the spider’s territory. I looked at the corpse of the spider. Then back at the nest. I poked the web experimentally. It felt like fabric, bouncing away from my hand.
Maybe I already had found a place to rest.
I started cutting the webbing more intentionally.
----------------------------------------
Wen stared in disbelief as Sai made a hammock out of spider web. He sat on his sword, floating hundreds of feet into the air. A perfect sphere existed around him where no rain fell. His face twitched as he saw movement at the edge of the forest.
Wen made a slashing motion with his fingers. A blade of storm empowered wind fell silently to the forest. It was invisible to a lower realm cultivator through the veil of the rain, and another corpse joined the pile. The Spiritbeast horde dissipating had sent an endless tide of monsters outward.
The Spiritbeasts were unrelated to Feng Sai. And they weren’t getting near him. So, technically, Wen wasn’t protecting him. The sect would know that he channeled qi through his sword to fly. He would get an earful for it later.
His punishment would likely be offset for raising such a talented cultivator. The cultivator was just another tithe the Feng dynasty paid to the Grim Tempest. Wen dreaded what would happen once Sai won the tournament.
He could see flickers of the person Sai was raised to be. Scars from his upbringing showing through. The person who had executed a bandit without a second question, running a sword through his eye, the imperious noble cultivator who could rule a nation with an iron fist, the righteous Scion of the Grim Tempest.
And then there was the Sai that was willing to sleep in a bed of spider webbing, who would pass through a city without demanding its governor bow, and who would cross the wilds alone without an entourage of a dozen to tend to his every need.
Wen turned an eye back down the road. Miles and miles away, the Omen Alligator pursued Sai, not stopping to rest. Every time Sai used his movement technique, he traveled farther away. And everytime Sai rested, the Alligator started to catch up. Then, behind him, there was that bandit. Those were all Sai’s responsibility.
Wen believed he could handle them. And once Sai killed the Rainshadow’s psuedo-patriarch, they’d have new mounts to continue riding south.