He Yu slammed into the Fourth Realm spirit like the edge of a thunderstorm. Heaven flashed and winds roared. The Spring Rain Mirror turned the spirit’s first attack away. He Yu charged forward with the Rushing Wind and the crackling brilliance of Heaven’s Descending Blade.
The spirit was at early Golden Core. It stood almost eight feet tall, with long gaunt limbs that ended in razor-sharp claws. Its mouth hung open as though its jaw was broken or dislocated, with rows of sharp teeth that appeared half-rotted. Its tongue extended out from its mouth and hung down to its distended belly. Black oily hair hung down around its face. Intelligent and malevolent eyes peered out from behind the limp, greasy strands. The spirit lunged forward, its arms outstretched to grab him. Its breath smelled of rotting corpses.
He Yu darted to the side with the speed granted by his body enforcement. He slammed the metal cap of his guandao into the spirit’s midsection. It staggered back, and he brought the blade around, scoring a gash across its torso. It bled black.
The spirit twisted, swinging one clawed hand at He Yu, but the fight had turned against it already. In the brief exchange that followed, wind and heaven tore the spirit apart, and the Spring Rain Mirror pushed each of its strikes to the side. The fight may have been quick, and He Yu still had plenty of qi left after, but it had still cost him time.
The formation barrier around the town buckled under the combined weight of a hundred adversaries’ assaults. That was just the portion He Yu could see. With a flex of his presence, he threw himself to the town’s defense. He landed just inside the formation barrier and called the Sweeping Wind. He stepped forward with his attack and poured his cultivation base into Heaven’s Descending Blade. His guandao became a jagged blade formed of scintillating heaven. Sheets of lightning crashed down before him, pouring forth from heaven like rain. Beasts died by the dozen.
He Yu spared no time or thought for the cheers of the few cultivators he’d just relieved. He activated the Sky Dragon’s Flight and rushed to the next point of the barrier that was closest to failing. Like the wrath of heaven, He Yu slammed into a wall of beasts and spirits, scattering the ever-growing horde that battered at the formation barrier.
With the aid of the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, he quickly discerned which portions of the barrier were weakest. The points where he was needed most. With thunderous shouts fueled by his Body Refining lungs and the qi of a Golden Core, he bellowed commands to the two formation adepts he’s instructed to keep the barrier up. When on his way to put out yet another fire, he would drop a spirit stone so the formation adepts could restore themselves, or channel the qi into the formation. He didn’t care which, really. It only mattered that the barrier held.
He Yu rushed from place to place, fight to fight. He dropped spirit stones and the occasional low-grade medicine for the other defenders. Most of those at Qi Gathering had already mostly exhausted themselves. Now they rotated in and out of the fight. The Second Realms would soon follow. Then the Thirds. It would just be He Yu before long.
He would have to be enough. The town looked like it housed maybe a couple hundred people in total. Not a huge amount of mortals compared to the scope of the empire. But they were still lives. Lives He Yu might save if he tried. So he would.
Again and again, He Yu threw himself into the fray. He would land among a group of spirits or beasts at the edge of the town and start swinging. For the lower realm foes, he wouldn’t even use a technique. Just the strength of his immortal body. With every group he dispatched, the stench of blood and death grew stronger. The pile of bodies grew larger. And the horde itself swelled.
The Second Realm cultivators were close to their limits. The formation still held. He Yu bit down on a restorative pill as he flew across the town once again. He’d long since run out of medicine the lower realm defenders could handle. Hopefully, they could still restore themselves using their own supplies. The formation barrier flickered, the sense of qi He Yu got from it rapidly fading. The two formation adepts had nearly spent themselves as well. The barrier would fall soon. He would have to be enough when it did.
As the defense wore on, He Yu’s movements became rote. Effortless. Fighting became almost like a meditation. Even as his reserves slowly drained, his qi cycled more freely through his meridians. It reminded him of when he faced Tan Xiaoling in the tournament. Except now he was the one who fought without trying. Without effort.
Deep in the core of his spirit, his Wayborn Seed thrummed. His core, his qi, every little thought and action had aligned with something greater. He glimpsed into something greater. His Way, and the threads connecting him to the Eternal Dao. The resonance of his intent and action, the fruit of so many little decisions, and more than a few large ones he’d made over the past several years slid into place. They fit together as though they’d been made for one another. They had.
He Yu glimpsed his Dao. It was too faint, too distant for him to fully grasp, let alone name, but it was there. And he walked his Way.
His connection was far from complete, but at once closer than it ever had been before. This effort, this struggle, this valiant stand was the mark of a hero. To strive to save those not worth even a moment’s consideration. The foundation upon which he would build his legend. The first real step to becoming the hero he’d imagined himself so many times.
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Because He Yu tried when nobody else would.
Even someone like Yi Xiurong, the sect’s First Disciple and—in her own words—the personification of justice and order, deemed these people beneath her. They were too small, too weak to matter. Zhang Lifen, for all she’d done for him, saw no value in these mortals. So she would leave them to die. He Yu would not.
He moved with his Way. Heaven and wind and water flooded his meridians, surging into his techniques, and felling countless beasts threatening the town. He became the storm. The terrible and awesome instrument of the heavens, bringing hope or despair to the deserving of either below. Life in one hand, death in the other.
The fight wore on and he grew further detached from the momentary minutiae of the ordeal. Action unified with purpose, but undertaken without intent. He was everywhere at once. His thoughts all but ceased, and he simply was. The countless spirits and beasts that fell before him blurred together into a single mass. That mass registered only as a threat, a thing to stave off, to hold at bay for as long as he was able.
Overhead, the sky turned black. Within the roiling dark clouds, heaven flashed. Rain fell, driven by a wind that howled and screamed across the ruined plain. In the center of it all, a lone immortal fought against an endless tide. Alone he stood now, a force of heaven and nature, the sole bulwark against which an unending tide broke. He stepped forward, and heaven descended.
* * *
Jia Chao slumped against the low stone wall. His meridians ached, and his dantian was all but empty. The immortal who had shown up when all has seemed lost split the sky and held back the tide all by himself. He must be from the sect. Where else would a Golden Core level expert of this sheer power and talent come from?
When the immortal had arrived, he’d called for anyone skilled at formations to step forward. Jia Chao and his sister, Jia Meili, had answered. It was their father, Jia Yunru, who maintained the town’s formation in truth, but he’d been outside the barrier when the tide of beasts arrived. Jia Chao didn’t know if he’d survived.
Although the nameless expert had dropped a fortune’s worth of medicine to keep Jia Chao going, it hadn’t been enough. It couldn’t have been enough. Whatever was happening to them, whatever force of nature or heaven had turned its attention and its wrath to their little town, it was beyond what they could deal with. If it hadn’t been for this expert, they’d have died already.
Jia Chao turned to his sister. She leaned against the same wall, a mere arms length away. Her eyes were closed. She breathed slowly, cycling what qi she could from the storm the expert brought with him.
“Do you think we’ll make it?” he asked.
Jia Meili opened her eyes. They were still a bit red, a bit puffy. She had less faith than Jia Chao that their father would make it. “I hope we do,” was all she could say.
Jia Chao shuddered as the expert passed overhead once more. Every time he did, the air grew thick and heavy—moreso than it already was. His presence was so expansive and weighed down upon the world more heavily than anything Jia Chao had ever felt. Jia Chao and Jia Meili were only Foundation. This expert was like a giant was to ants compared to them. For the thousandth time, Jia Chao thanked the heavens for their fortune that he’d appeared when he did.
A flash of light, then a crack of thunder, marked yet another of the expert’s techniques. The thunderstorm raged above, by now having spread out to cover the sky. Jia Chao couldn’t tell anymore whether the storm was just the expert’s presence, or whether he’d manifested it. Either as part of some technique, or a consequence of his immense spirit. The only thing Jia Chao could say for certain anymore was that he was well out of his league when compared to the monster overhead.
On the side of the town opposite where the expert currently fought, the formation barrier flared brightly in the darkening storm. Jia Chao scrambled to his feet.
“Meili’er,” he said, “we need to go. The barrier.”
Jia Meili opened her eyes again. The exhaustion and despair on her features were unmistakable. She didn’t have it in her to make it to the formation stones in time, let alone pour qi into the formation and reinforce the barrier. Still, she wordlessly pushed herself to her feet.
Jia Chao ran. He ran as if his life depended upon it. As if the entire town depended upon it. He kept his eyes fixed on the barrier. He watched helplessly as he ran. As cracks spread across the shimmering dome before it broke like a dropped porcelain bowl and shattered like a vain hope.
Next to him, Jia Meili fell to her knees. Jia Chao leaned against the wall of a nearby house and waited for the end.
* * *
When the barrier finally failed, He Yu dimly noted that it had lasted far longer than he’d expected. He held himself over the center of the town in the grip of the Sky Dragon’s Flight. In that moment, before the law of earth asserted itself once again, he gave his order.
“To the central square! Cultivators, form a defense! Protect anyone you can!” His words cracked like thunder. They were carried by his winds to all within the town. To his relief, mortal and cultivator alike obeyed.
As the mortals below ran towards the center of town, the one spot where maybe He Yu could protect them, the horde followed. His stomach turned as the reality settled in. He couldn’t save them. They were doomed. He bit down on another pill. Medicinal qi flooded his meridians. Doomed or no, a hero would fight to the last.
He Yu slammed down in the center of town. He caught sight of one of the formation adepts nearby. She’d fallen to her knees, and stared out from the square at the oncoming throng, expressionless. He Yu hauled her to her feet.
“Make any sort of barrier you can,” he said, shoving the last of his low-grade spirit stones into her hands. He let go of her arm and faced away from the square.
He Yu cycled the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering. His skin shimmered like galvanized iron. Heaven qi crawled over his skin and his robes. Every tiny movement flickered, like he jumped from place to place in the moments between time. He called the Five Crescent Winds. He brought Heaven’s Descending Blade down upon the world. He cycled the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment. The truth he saw was a bleak one, but he cast it aside. If to cultivate was to defy the heavens, why not also fate?
He Yu stood before the coming tide.