Chapter 21:
The dark figure continued to hover in the air for a long moment. Everything seemed to have gone quiet after their attack, leaving only the sound of the wind blowing. Then, the silence was finally broken by a deep male voice.
It was loud but didn’t sound like shouting. Yet it still seemed to resonate from all around us. Despite that, the voice was almost casual. Perhaps amused, even.
“An impressive artifact. But I wonder how much more it can withstand when wielded by a mere Qi-Gatherer.”
Something crashed into the golden dome again. The ground shook, and dust was kicked up all around us. But the noise was not as bad this time, and the dome itself remained solid.
“Perhaps more than I thought,” the voice said again, sounding intrigued. At the same time, the figure up in the sky moved. One moment he was flying up there, the next he was streaking down to the ground. Right before he would have crashed, he slowed and landed lightly right in front of the dome.
The light from Sun Xia’s shield shone upon him, finally revealing his appearance.
He was an older man with a tight topknot kept up by an ornate black hairpiece. He had a goatee, and both it and his hair had streaks of silver in it. His robes were black and silver, and he stood back straight with his arms held behind his back. He didn’t seem to have any weapons on him, but given his display so far, I doubted he needed any.
“Such an artifact is wasted on you, girl,” the man said, casually walking up to the dome. He reached out with one hand and pressed his palm against the gold light of the shield. “But if you surrender and give it to me, I promise your time in captivity will be… bearable.”
“I’m afraid I will have to reject such an offer,” Sun Xia said coldly, glaring daggers at the man.
“Then you only make things harder on yourself,” the man—no doubt the Black Wind—said. He pressed his hand harder against the dome, and the spot there glowed brighter. While the rest of the dome was semi-transparent, the part he was touching now looked like solid gold light, completely opaque. “Do you really think you can keep me out with this?”
“Perhaps not forever,” Sun Xia said, not backing down. “But we don’t need to do that. Just keep you here long enough.”
The Black Wind scoffed at that. Then he lashed out with a palm strike. The ground shook from the blow, and the dome flared for a moment as the wind went wild outside.
I gulped at the sight, trying to think if there was anything I could do in this situation. And, of course, there really wasn’t. The only thing I could possibly think of doing was running. Maybe if the dome didn’t reach all the way around us, I could swim away. But that was unlikely, or the Black Wind would have probably just blown up the ground already.
And even then, with the ability to casually destroy the landscape shown so far, I doubted I could move fast enough to get away from the man if he wanted to chase. No, my best bet was to hope this dome would hold and Sun Xia knew what she was doing. And hopefully that Master Fang Hong would finally arrive and deal with this guy.
If not, then the next best thing would be to stick close to Sun Xia, and hope she hadn’t been lying about having something to help us escape from the Black Wind.
“And what will you do, little girl?” the Black Wind asked as the wind around him seemed to calm again. “If I go back over to where you tried your little ambush and finish off the rest of your men? Will you be content to hide then?”
Sun Xia scoffed at that. “Are you expecting me to sacrifice myself for them? Do you take me for a fool? If you capture us, there’s nothing stopping you from killing them, either. And you might find yourself having a much harder time doing that than you seem to expect. You should not underestimate the power of the Alchemy Association.”
“Foolish,” The Black Wind said, emphasizing his words by hitting the dome again. “Do you think that pitiful Battle Formation they used to survive my first strike will be enough to stop me? Perhaps if they were all peak elites, that might pose a problem. But out here, in the frontier, there is no such force I have to worry about. Not commanded by a little girl like you.”
“It might not be enough to defeat you,” Sun Xia said. “But it would be enough to slow you down. Waste your time until Master Fang Hong arrives.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?” The Black Wind asked in an angry shout. He hit the dome several more times, shaking the earth again. “Do you think your Master Fang Hong so powerful? He is just a dog of the Alchemy Association! A pet begging for the scraps of his betters. I have built everything I have with my own two hands!”
The Black Wind reared back his hand for another strike. This time, black winds seemed to swirl around his hand, and he had a vicious look on his face.
Sun Xia reacted to that by throwing out her hands, causing a beam of gold light to blast from her necklace and hit the dome. It reached the dome just as the Black Wind attacked. The dome seemed to go fully opaque at that, cutting off the outside from sight. But we still felt the ground tremble, and the dome itself seemed to rattle.
After another earth-rattling strike, cracks started to form where the Black Wind must have been attacking. But they sealed back up as quickly as they appeared. Still, I wasn’t sure how long it would last. There was clearly a toll on Sun Xia, judging by her gritted teeth and sweat appearing on her brow.
Yet, despite all that, the dome held until the strikes stopped. Sun Xia, however, didn’t relax and the beam connecting her to the dome remained.
“Truly, this artifact is wondrous,” the Black WInd said, his voice somehow still making it past the dome. “I will enjoy ripping it from your neck, girl. You cannot maintain this much longer. And there is something you should know. Your precious Master Fang Hong isn’t coming! He is too busy dealing with an ambush himself! Just how do you think he will fare against several Rank 2 Spirit Beasts going for his blood?”
I grimaced at that revelation. I had no idea how strong Master Fang Hong was, but the Black Wind seemed really confident. Had this whole thing actually been a trap for Sun Xia and Master Fang Hong?
I turned to Sun Xia to gauge her reaction. See if this changed anything. To my surprise, she didn’t seem to look that worried. Instead, she just looked like she’d finally got an answer to a question she’d been wondering.
“I think you will find Master Fang Hong more than capable of dealing with such an attack,” Sun XIa said, her voice sounding confident.
“Arrogant! Foolish!” The Black Wind emphasized each of his shouts with a strike. “That just shows how little you understand the power of true cultivators, little girl! Fang Hong has been stuck at the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment for the last twenty years! I am on the cusp of a breakthrough, and even I would have trouble with the forces I sent after him! He will be dead soon, and you will be mine. Each moment you delay the inevitable is just going to make your fate worse.”
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The Black Wind continued to attack the dome after that, the cracks growing more and more with each blow. Sun Xia’s confident expression was gone again as she gritted her teeth and strained to keep the dome up.
“Big Sis,” Sun Yun said, her voice soft, but I could pick it up despite the noise of the Black Wind’s vicious strikes. “Should we—”
“No,” Sun Xia said, cutting her off. “If all they’ve done to delay Master Fang Hong is ambush him with spirit beasts, then he should be here soon. They will have underestimated that old man. We just have to—”
Her words were cut off by another explosion.
I winced from how loud the sound was, then cursed when I saw even more cracks across the dome. I fully expected the dome to break, and I readied myself to drop into the ground. However, after another moment, I stopped myself when no finishing blow came. Instead, all we heard was silence.
“Just wait for that,” Sun Xia said, relief tingling her words. Golden light continued to reach out to the dome around us, and the cracks sealed one by one. “It seems Master Fang Hong has finally dealt with the beasts delaying him.”
When the cracks finished sealing, Sun Xia dropped her arms and let out a soft sigh. The opaque golden dome turned transparent, and the sound from outside of the dome became clearer once more.
What sounded like explosions seemed to echo in the air, drawing my attention upwards. I gaped when I saw the source.
There was a blazing red flame in the air. A massive one, far brighter than the starry sky, and in the shape of a bird. It soared through the air, chasing what might have been a black dot that I could barely make out—something I probably wouldn’t have been able to do before reaching rank 1.
“How?” the Black Wind's voice echoed from above as the flaming bird crashed into something. Flames burst from the impact and something was sent flying. “You! How could you finally manage a breakthrough after all this time? You miserable old man!”
Another explosion rang out as something struck the ground hard from far away. Probably the Black Wind getting slammed into the ground.
“Don’t think you can win just yet!” The Black Wind Shouted, and what looked like a tornado started to form in the distance. “You may have broken through, but I am still the stronger fighter. A pathetic lap dog like you can never—”
The Black Wind’s words were cut off as the firebird divebombed the tornado. A massive explosion rang out, and a moment later a massive plume of fire appeared.
I watched all of this, awed at the sight. So that was the power of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. I’d known that they’d be incredible, but to see it, even from a distance, was something else. It was both terrifying and amazing.
Terrifying because there was nothing I could do to stop people that powerful from doing whatever they wanted. And amazing because that was a level of power I could reach. Maybe. Hopefully…
“You dare!”
A different voice rang out in the night air. Then a streak of burning fire shot straight towards us. I only had a second to gape, and then it was past us. An explosion rang out from behind. I spun just in time to see a grey-haired man appear. His body was coated with flames, and his hand was outstretched.
It took me a second to understand what I was seeing. Beyond his hand was a blue flame. I’d thought it might have been his for a moment, but then I saw how his own red flames seemed to coil around the blue flame. Constricting and restraining it. It was an attack he was holding back!
“Blasted fox!” the old man—Master Fang Hong—cursed as he turned his head back to where he’d come. I spun to look but saw nothing but the trail of destruction he’d left to get over here so quickly. Except maybe…
Very far off in the distance, where Master Fang Hong must have just been, I saw what might have been the silhouette of the fox he was talking about. For a second I remembered the fox that had attacked me in the tunnel, but I dismissed the thought. This was clearly another one. Heck, given its size and how it compared to what must have been the Black Wind in its mouth, this one was massive in comparison.
The silhouette of the fox seemed to stare over at us for a moment—probably more at Master Fang Hong—before it rushed off in a blink of an eye.
“Damned beast,” Master Fang Hong cursed, drawing my attention back to him. The blue fire was now completely contained by his own flame. “Attacking Juniors with Fox Fire Essence…”
He looked at the contained blue fire for a long moment before he shook his head. Then he patted a pouch at his waist, and a cauldron appeared. Not like the kind witches use, but the ones from Chinese stories. Far more ornate and with a lid. It shone with a bright bronze luster, and the lid lifted off and hovered on its own. The contained flame flew right into the cauldron before the lid slammed shut.
The cauldron then hung in the air beside the man as his flame engulfed it.
“Master Fang Hong,” Sun Xia said as the dome around us finally disappeared. A moment of tiredness and relief flashed over her face before it was replaced by a much more neutral expression. “You’ve finally arrived.”
Sun Xia’s tone wasn’t cold, but it was far from warm. And despite the massive disparity in power between her and Master Fang Hong, the old man actually winced at her words. He rubbed at the back of his head awkwardly, a strange gesture for someone so old and powerful.
“My apologies, Disciple,” Master Fang Hong said. “I was on the way to meet with you when I saw what I thought was an Immortal Jade Lotus Root. Unfortunately, it was just a convincing fake, and then I had to contend with half a dozen Early Stage Rank 2 spirit beasts.”
“I see,” Sun Xia said, still just ever so slightly displeased.
It made me wonder just what the relationship between the two was. Was Sun Xia more important despite her lower cultivation? Was she from some super-powerful family or something?
“Well, at least I got here on time,” Master Fang Hong said, trying to laugh off the awkward atmosphere. “And I see that you’ve managed to save Little Yun as well. Wonderful. Just wonderful.”
“Yes,” Sun Xia said. “We were fortunate to be able to save my sister from falling into the hands of the Black Wind. Something that would have been far easier with your help.”
Master Fang Hong winced again at that. “Yes, yes, of course, of course. The heavens have shone on us today, it seems, despite everything else. We will just have to be more careful in the future. Now, I should go check on the rest of our men. Here, let me give you some protection in case any more of those cowardly bastards are skulking around.”
As he said that last part, he patted the pouch at his waist, and a bunch of those small flags appeared. He tossed them in a vague circle around us, then a couple more in some sort of pattern. Then, after a couple of hand seals, a silver barrier of light appeared around us.
“That should hold off anything long enough for me to come back,” Master Fang Hong said, still speaking quickly. “I will be back soon after checking on the men and dealing with the remnants of the bandits.”
With that said, the man rushed off. Instead of blurring, he seemed to just disappear from my sight. It would have been impressive if it hadn’t looked like he ran away from Sun Xia’s mild displeasure like a dog with its tail between its legs.
I turned to look at Ming Lin, to see if I could glean what that was about from her. Sensing my gaze, she met mine and I raised an eyebrow. She just sighed and shook her head.
Well, I guess I wasn’t going to get any answers there.
After that, we waited in the clearing for some time as Master Fang Hong dealt with things. In that time, Sun Xia went back to telling Sun Yun just how much shit she was in and how long she would be kept locked up in the city. Sun Yun, of course, tried her best to argue against such a thing.
Ming Lin, content to let the siblings sort things out themselves, found a nice place on the ground and just sat down to rest. I joined her, and the two of us sat in companionable silence as things were finally over.
We’d escaped the bandits. Saved Shui Jianfeng. Saved their friend Sun Yun. And now the bandits were going to get to experience what it was like to have a high-level cultivator stomp all over their operations. We’d won.
For the most part, anyway. That Black Wind guy had escaped his just desserts. But at least, the rest of the bandits would get what was coming to them. And all the slaves were going to be saved.
Or so I thought.
About an hour later, after Master Fang Hong had done his thing, we were back at the Black Wind Marauder’s bandit camp.
And things were not pretty.