> The third campaign of the Huang-Mo wars has in many ways become the singular event that nobody likes to talk about. A cynical observer would suggest that this is because those powers thrive on grand gestures and great events and great humiliation is neither of those. Like all such things though, the truth is a little more nuanced.

>

> The Huang clan had been aware for a while that the momentum of the conflict had somewhat exceeded their control. There were already doubts among the clan’s upper echelons regarding that most esoteric of alchemy by which great powers operate – the number of bodies in coffins versus the reputation of the clan as a whole – by the close of the first campaign.

>

> The Wuli branch and Fei branches were mostly content to see the matter as settled after the duel between Mo Zhao and Guo Wuli. However, the Gan, Hong and Shi branches all, for various reasons saw this as an opportunity to push for greater victories – either because they were dissatisfied at the prominence of Guo Wuli in those matters, or because they wanted to stir up sentiment in their own territories, using the war to push for greater victories elsewhere.

>

> It took a great amount of pressure to divorce the disastrous fallout of what happened above Kang’s Origin, from the ‘second campaign’ itself, in the eyes of most. The curse put upon half a star field by the God Slaughtering Hall for the shaming of their Saintess was dropped thoroughly in the lap of the Huang clan. This was exacerbated when it became clear that the only way that the curse could be lifted was for those ‘afflicted’ to bow nine times before each of the hundred maidens of the Mo clan and acknowledge their crime with true repentance in their hearts.

>

> As such, the Huang clan’s uppermost echelons within the court of the Wise Emperor of Huang largely washed their hands of the matter and told their ‘juniors’ to resolve it promptly, or new ‘Elders’ could be found, who had better eyesight.

>

> Thus, was the Third ‘campaign’ christened ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood’, and a great many people both high and low learned that the heavens contained terrors such as they had never conceived as they were faced with a cruel choice – cast aside all reputation and bow to the Mo clan, whom they held to be mendacious villains, or be known forevermore as an influence that offended God Slaughtering Hall. The Gan and Hong branches’ influence was lessened markedly for the next several thousand years, blamed as they were for the loss of reputation for not knowing when to quit in the eyes of the Wise Emperor’s Advisors.

-Excerpt from ‘Annals of Three Wars’

By Wen Beixong

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~ KUN JUNI – NEAR THE UR'VASH BATTLE LINES ~

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“I am not sure how disturbed I should be here?” Teng Chunhua signed from where they were kneeling in some rocky scrub on one of the rolling hills beside the battle line.

“You and me both,” she signed back, checking the new additions Lin Ling had had them add to their war paint as they caught up to the Ajara war camp.

In all honestly she felt… undecided about this. Teng Chunhua did as well, although she was being polite and not really saying anything. She had anticipated that they would just lurk at the back and pick an opportune moment to cross the lines in the confusion, once the Ur’Vash started using formations to deal with the superior soul sense capabilities of the Eastern Azure cultivators.

However, the scale of the army and the strength of old veterans that were present had made Lin Ling apparently rethink some aspects of that, and so now they all wore slightly fancier masks and a lot of new war paint. It was heavy on purple geometric designs, yantras in the shape of yellow flowers that looked remarkably like the herb her friend had nicked from the Golden Grass village and blue swirling patterns a bit like three legs joining together that Lin Ling had called a ‘triskeles’.

It was a variant pattern she had seen elsewhere on various Ur’Vash but usually in red or black, on shields and tattooed on chests and breasts, and never in the blue and white they wore. Lin Ling had even engineered a few opportunities for them to get ‘spotted’ briefly by other Ur’Vash as they moved around the edge of the camp just before the entire thing was shifted 40 miles in a single instant.

The younger woman had been a bit cagey about her explanation, beyond muttering about symbols, but the whole getup, including them now carrying metal weapons, was certainly something from her memories – tying in to them posing as these ‘Maker’s Dancers’, a group who seemed to hold a special significance to these Ur’Vash.

-Not to mention, that the flower designs Lin Ling painted on our masks, keep putting me in mind of the designs in that strange ruin with the statue… not to mention the flower she was holding is also remarkably similar.

Involuntarily she looked over at Lin Ling, who was watching what was unfolding below, her eyes scanning the various bands of cultivators some hundred or so metres away. Teng Chunhua was also looking in that general direction every now and then.

-I really hope this doesn’t backfire badly, she grimaced.

{Heart Shifting Steps}

Her divination art was still behaving very, very oddly. It felt almost skittish, like a compass needle being confused by contaminating alignments.

“No sign of them?” she signed to Lin Ling.

“Nope, but I recognise a few familiar faces,” the younger girl signed, adding some invective.

Across from them, the cultivators were arranged in a ragged line along a rolling ridgeline in this hilly, rocky swathe of grassland. The majority of their camp was clearly beyond it, out of their line of sight, and beyond that she could just make out the shimmer of greener vegetation. There was no sign of Han Shu or the others… or any kind of prisoners in fact. She could only assume they were held in the tents just about visible over the rise, from where cultivators not stunned by the strength of the drums and the chanting were still streaming to watch what was going on between the armies.

The faces Lin Ling picked out… were indeed familiar. The distant sight of Din Ouyeng made her hands itch to try shooting at him. There was little chance of injuring him under normal circumstances, but their careful checking of the ammunition-

“Found another,” Teng Chunhua signed absently, setting aside an arrow with a blackened bone arrowhead with white and yellow markings from the several quivers they were still re-distributing.

-Really, we should have done this before now, she sighed, but really, it was only a quirk of good fortune that had clued them into a few arrows being ‘more special than all the others’.

They had been watching the camp prepare and Teng Chunhua had noted that the shamans were distributing arrows with black bone points to many of the archers who had black and red tattoos on their chests or breasts. At that time, she had remarked that they looked kind of familiar, but not thought anything of it until Lin Ling started looking back through the arrows they had picked up before, rather uncritically, as they made their way out of the jungles.

As it turned out, a surprising number of those arrows were odd, unusual or, like the ones with black bone points, apparently made of better materials. The black bone was also rather similar in appearance to the black bone spear, which was now in her possession.

“Ohhh!”

“Ohhh!”

“Aiiii!”

There was an appreciative yell from below, rising up from the Ur’Vash as the combat between ‘champions’ stepped up a level.

It was hard not to be drawn to the arts on display, especially since she was now carrying around the metal sword-staff openly, again at Lin Ling’s urging. The two combatants were both experts, famous in their own ways. The Old Ur’Vash had tattoos that according to Lin Ling marked him as someone who had killed what was likely one of the serpents – a three-headed one, no less. It was the other combatant though, who was properly ‘famous’, and it left her somewhat conflicted, because Teng Chunhua had confirmed that he was the one who had threatened to ‘kill’ Han Shu back by the forest.

-Tian Cang Di, one of the ‘pillars’ of our generation, an actual Hero. They have story books about him… I used to have fantasies about meeting him, going on an adventure with him when I was much younger and a lot more foolish…

She shook her head and shuddered, pushing those thoughts away, instead choosing to focus on the melee.

The pair continued to trade flickering spear strikes, sweeps, blurring feints and incisive footwork. Neither moved more than two or three paces in any direction.

“OHHH!”

There was a roar from the Ur’Vash horde as Cang Di was wounded again. It was not a deep wound, but it did lacerate much of his upper garment, even as he warded against the old Ur’Vash with his spear.

“Well, I guess they know how we stole all their herbs now,” Lin Ling observed as Cang Di stored away his ruined outer robe in his storage device.

She watched as Cang Di nodded, as if satisfied he had confirmed-

The spear that struck wasn’t just for the old Ur’Vash but the whole battle line. Even at the distance they were at she felt tiny as the spear descended from the depths of everywhere. The drums skipped a beat, the entire horde arrayed on the hill shuffled and recoiled slightly.

{One with What Is}

Involuntarily she used the stealth art, warned marginally ahead of time by ‘Heart Shifting Steps’, even as the symbol in her mind’s eye and her mantra also blunted a bit of the attack.

Even so, the wave of Martial Intent, infused with Cang Di’s comprehensions regarding the spear, made her skin feel like it was being pricked by invisible blades from every direction. Her limbs were leaden, her breath impossible to draw.

“GOOD HEART!”

The old Ur’Vash’s roar seemed to blend with the pounding drums.

His return strike swept like a shadow across the grass, distorting and scattering as it met Cang Di’s own attack before breaking like a wave over the entire space encompassing the armies. Cultivators stumbled back all along the line, looking pale and drawn.

Weaker ones fainted clean away, except on the far side, where a woman carrying a bow, dressed in white robe and light armour, twisted her hand and with a flick of her wrist materialised a fan, sweeping it in front of her. The wave of intent scattered, splitting to either side, and there was more cursing as several of the experts wearing robes from the Jade Gate Court and Argent Justice sect had to also act to prevent their juniors being adversely affected.

-They really are not a unified force it seems.

She was relieved at that, because even this force that they had rather inadvertently caused to come haring off here might not have been a match for an entire sect’s worth of cultivators all working off the same page. As it was, the groups on the hill across from them were something of a tableau of everything wrong you thought of when you considered a bunch of cultivators forced to fight together for a common cause.

Having caught most of their initial response to the Ur’Vash’s arrival, she was put in mind of a saying of her brother’s regarding the conduct of rival sects mustered to deal with common problems – ‘Cats stuck in a sack of their own making!’

“At least their disorganisation makes our task easier,” Lin Ling’s observation cut through her reverie, and she realised she had been somehow caught up in the vagaries of the aftermath of the wave of Martial Intent.

Shuddering, she refocused and found the battle below had ratcheted up again.

Cang Di gained a further slight wound, but so had the old Ur’Vash, who was looking by far the more pressured. Cang Di had, from what she could see, gotten a grasp of his opponent’s martial intent and was beginning to grasp the rhythm of the combat as well. Even she, a rank neophyte with martial intent, who had only truly started to grasp it properly as she fought the Ur’Vash in the aftermath of Lin Ling’s battle in the jungle, could appreciate how breathtakingly skilled both combatants were.

Watching Cang Di, it was hard to believe she was watching a ‘junior’: the purity of his intent was such that it rivalled her grandfather’s – it spoke of thousands of years of fighting, striving every day to become stronger through the martial path.

However, it was the old Ur’Vash that drew her deeper consideration, because she could feel an unsettling kinship to him, through the shockwaves of intent he gave off as the pair clashed.

“What is that unsettling feeling from his intent?” Teng Chunhua muttered, also having noticed it, it seemed. “It is almost like…?”

“He has been into the depths,” she murmured, seeing the familiar scars, the dark divisive pressure and the smothering inevitability of those dark places they had crawled out of.

It made her… uneasy actually, but in a different way. Cang Di would likely win. This was a battle between the figureheads of two armies… and that old Ur’Vash had experienced something like what they had… and survived, like they had and that made her feel... conflicted.

‘Heart Shifting Steps’ continued to twist, not helping her mood there. Was its current unusual behaviour down to that?

Objectively, she had seen that these were a cruel and brutal people, honourable yes, and brave, but also unconcerned with death and more than willing to resolve their disputes with breathtaking violence. But that… that did not make them evil. She had seen evil. Evil was the spider tribe, those horrific banners… Evil was the death from the darkness, the thing that claimed the Sar’katush. Evil was what Di Ji had done to Lin Ling.

-And yet… when it comes to saving Han Shu… or Lin Ling, or anyone else I care about… I don’t care.

It was an answer she had found days ago, weeks ago perhaps… when she was first confronted with the idea that she might have to choose between the life of Teng Chunhua’s group and their own survival. Lin Ling had wanted to abandon them… in her rage, even kill them, but she would not have let Lin Ling do that.

-I would have done it myself and wept… but even now, I would not have regretted it.

The why… was nebulous? She knew he had had a crush on her, even though she had been linked to his older brother at that time. Later, she had been his friend, then mentored him when he joined the Hunter Pavilion and his teenage infatuation with her had just become friendship…

-Selfish, to filter it through the lens of Han Shu… to use him to justify my own…

She closed her eyes for a moment and acknowledged what it was.

-Hatred.

She hated her peers… the very people she had been feted to join all those years ago.

She had only ever told two people that. Her brother… and her father. Her brother had handed her a jar of wine and talked to her about war. Her father had just embraced her, then told her that the eyes of others should not define her… but the hatred never went. It was why she had been happy to become a Herb Hunter when her father and Old Ling suggested it. Happy to become Old Ling’s apprentice, embraced the pain and the torment of that training, because she had felt it elevated her beyond her peers, those who had flattered her one day, then when she failed the Kun clan’s inheritance test, turned away from her the very next.

-Okay, she sighed, considering Heart Shifting Steps again. I acknowledge that I am slightly disturbed by my own antipathy towards how many thousands may die today just to buy an opportunity so I can save my friend… and the others.

-I am even disturbed by the fact that I had to pause there to acknowledge that…

-But I am also no stranger to things sneaking in sideways and trying to rattle my psyche…

The two broke apart, and she saw the old Ur’Vash was looking tired now. Cang Di also looked…?

She narrowed her eye and directed her Heart Shifting Steps to consider the waves of martial intent still washing everywhere.

He was… winning, but he didn’t look pleased?

“That’s odd…” Lin Ling muttered…

“What is?” Chunhua asked, setting aside her current quiver.

“Ur’Vash don’t get weaker with age. There is no way that the old Ur’Vash should be that down; they are hardly even using qi,” Lin Ling sounded… confused.

She considered the fight… and the two sides. The Ur’Vash were chanting and howling, the drumming carrying their momentum, but it felt faintly hollow somehow. By comparison, the cultivators arranged across the other ridgeline were still ordering themselves or looking on anxiously.

Heart Shifting Steps continued to twist chaotically, making it hard for her to focus, she sighed and nearly cancelled-

She fought the impulse and swept the line again. Sure enough, there was a point where her uncritically-thinking, roving eye led the art to twist just a fraction more. It both drew her there and skittered away…

-Are they?

She pulled out the Eight Trigrams board made of the bamboo from the repression field and, grabbing nine random rocks, drew the nine symbols on them.

{Nine Earthly Stones, Cast from the Heart}

Distortion – Fate Unspun – Four Directions – Overturning

Yin within Yang – Deceiving – Four – Heaven – Metal

The eight readings from the stones on the chart were not exactly the most cohesive thing, but that wasn’t the point. Her grasp of feng shui was a skill she was clear on and she had been divining things for weeks on end by various methods. The hunch she got was just a hunch, but working on what she could see… someone was twisting the alignments of this place very subtly to bring about an inauspicious moment.

Given it was the old Ur’Vash that was affected more obviously, the culprits were clear…

-There are talismans that can twist these things – expensive, unfavoured, esoteric talismans that mess with aspects of fate…

Both parties certainly knew they are being manipulated as well, because she could see from the corner of her eye that they were warier now.

-Ah… There…

She managed to get a fix on roughly where the distortion to ‘Heart Shifting Steps’ was the worst. There were two youths…

-Wait…

She stared at the youth who she had nearly killed, who had tried to kill Teng Chunhua, who was now standing beside another in silver robes, the pair of them not really focused on the… the…

Heart Shifting Steps twisted chaotically again as she felt her mood surge and her gloomy thoughts try to reassert themselves. Lin Ling was looking… odd as well, her hands clenched.

-Ah, nameless…

-She has control of the memories but if something is trying to twist things, she said the more rampant ones were still close to the surface?

Wordlessly, she picked an arrow that was totally blue and white, with three yellow bands around it and a black bone point. For good measure she painted a purple stripe all the way down it and, hefting her bow, stood up and took aim. She didn’t use martial intent for the attack; it would be caught immediately, she was sure. Instead she just stilled her breath, got the range and then drew the bow and loosed it.

-Never have I wanted your crazy colour theories to work more, Ur’Vash, she sneered inwardly.

The arrow drifted lazily through the air, unnoticed by all. It was neither fast nor slow, crossing the diagonal width of half the line of battle, between cultivators who never even blinked, before anyone was even aware of what they were seeing.

She saw Din Ouyeng reach out and grasp for it, looking almost puzzled, and then look shocked as his grasp missed it and the qi and intent somehow didn’t really take purchase on the arrow.

Another cultivator in a silver robe put out a hand, and the back half of the arrow shattered.

The front half travelled on, spinning until at the last minute the other cultivator beside her target turned and managed to block-

The explosion kicked both ten feet into the air, sent several others from the Jade Gate Court nearby sprawling and turned the arm of the silver-robed youth into a bloody stump as he fell backwards screaming.

The sense of chaotic disruption to her divination art vanished in the same instant.

The final remnant of the black bone arrow itself sliced in front of Sheng Zhao, missed two others and was gently plucked out of the air by a bald-headed youth with a thick beard before it hit the woman standing beside him.

She suddenly became acutely aware that she was now the focus of not just the entire hill of cultivators, but the two combatants below and the large number of Ur’Vash, who were starting at her like she was some kind of…

Well…

Like an unexpected moon mushroom.

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~ YERGAK – UR'VASH SKIRMISH LINE ~

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Yergak stared dully at where the arrow had exploded. In that instant the sense of… losing ground, that had been creeping over him, vanished like bad wind in his stomach. The chanting, which had become rather frenetic and desperate, had fallen silent as well. Even the drums merely echoing as their wielders presumably fought to re-order themselves from what had been done.

Unbidden, he traced the flight of the arrow, as were hundreds if not thousands of others to the edge of the battle line… where, stood on a rock, silhouetted against the rising sun, was a female Ur’Vash wearing a carved mask of white wood purple geometric patterns on its cheeks and a golden flower on its brow. Beside her was a metal weapon and her whole body was covered in the swirling designs of the Mother of Blue Waters.

He found himself staring at a myth for the second time in a day at the Maker’s Dancer, stood not 200 metres away from their battle line, as she lowered her bow.

Most however, were just staring at the tattered, robed figures and the one who had nearly been exploded, and the familiar, fluttering paper dissolving into fragments before them.

“Magics…” someone else muttered nearby.

Very few of them, himself included, were sure of what those strange parchment things did other than ‘magic stuff’, but given the inexplicable difficulties that Elder Wurm Piercer had started to develop in the fight, the uncertainty of his opponent, this Cang Di and the total dissipation of the aura that had been creeping against them…

“Even stupid orc understand this…” Dergazt mumbled, sounding half angered, half awed.

“Truly, this is shamelessness that makes one think of elves!” another skirmisher added.

Indeed, it was not hard for even a rather stupid orc, never mind good, right-thinking Ur’Vash like they were, to put two and two together and arrive at a mathematically probable result.

“You also see her?” he asked Dergazt, pointing to the treeline…

His skin suddenly felt… He stared harder at the treeline, not hearing what Dergazt or the others nearby had said, because the feeling of being watched was also there again. He probably wasn’t alone because…

“Mother of Fortune…”

“Bringer of Prosperity!”

“Bright Mother…”

“She who brings the river of life…”

There, in the rocks, were two other figures now just about visible to him. Both of them were almost mirages, hard to pick out in the rocks beyond their masks and the swirling designs on their female forms.

“Mother of Water…”

“She who brings the choice of prosperity…”

“Hallowed are the dancers…”

“The river of life, the road to death…”

Shock rippled through the whole battle line, not in a demoralising kind of way… but… reverential.

This was clearly a moment that was going to be an ‘I was there when we saw a prophet of the old gods in the flesh’ thing that survivors of this were going to proudly mumble around their lack of teeth.

There was a dull roar as tens of hunters lifted their bows and took aim on the miscreants who had dared meddle in a sacred duel between war leaders. Arrows were already flying, his own included, before any order could be given; after all, for all that this was a warband, they were not really that… organized. Those forces were still massing to the east and west.

Arrows shattered off barriers all the way down the line as the different groups scattered to deal with the sudden reversal in the way the battle was unfolding. Other hunters were also picking on softer targets. There was no point going for the massed larger groups; they had coordinated appearances that suggested specific tribes and the largest two, the ones in green and grey, were not really coordinating with the others like the band of females in white and blue, led by the mage who had blocked the aftermath of Elder Wurm Piercer’s attack.

He sighted on one figure, part of a smaller group that was badly disorientated and looking for cover, and shot an arrow at them, watching it punch through the mana they were using to protect themselves.

A scruffy, bald, bearded male who had been standing as part of that group sighed and suddenly grew hundreds of arms, each one trailing shimmering golden afterimages as he snatched his arrow and every arrow descending onto that chaotic flank of their adversaries’ formations, smashing them to smithereens.

At the same time, two arrows, shot off from the top of the ridge, smashed through a barrier and took one of those white and blue females in the chest, exploding her in a twisting spiral of gore.

Then the female who had been standing near their side’s war chief had raised her bow, her face hidden by her veil, but somehow her eyes, sliver like moons, found him, sank into him, drowned him as the morning sun drained away, leaving biting chill in his bones-

The sense of horrible unease shifted and he found he was struggling to stand, coughing up the food he had eaten earlier… purplish blue… mixed with his blood. All around them the world still spun as he saw less lucky hunters than him collapsed, bleeding from their eyes, choking or just flat-out dead as phantasmal arrows pierced their eyes.

That attack brought appreciative Oooohs from those around him as he pushed himself forward. Behind them the drums found their rhythm again and his feet moved instinctually to them, drawing away the cold as his vitality surged to their beat.

Skills like those, were something like an old elder or a shaman would have. The woman had not used mana, just Martial Intent… same as the bald, bearded male.

He could only praise his luck as an arrow, sent from another of the white and blue females, hit a hunter from the Golden Grass village ahead of him, turning them into a scattering cloud of blood, drenched silver in phantasmal light reflected from an unseen moon.

Two more of the white and blue females, wearing cloth over their faces, drew bows and started shooting arrows back at them in a stream so fast he thought he was imagining it until it registered that their bows were presenting arrows without them needing quivers.

-Magic artefacts for archers… able to fire as many arrows as they had mana.

“Hold your fire you mangy-! ORDER, ORDER!” one of the elites above them roared, and he lowered his bow, grinning sheepishly.

“READY!”

He drew an arrow and gritted his teeth as two more explosions shattered the line to his right, blazing hunters defying the command as they sought to loose one final arrow before they succumbed.

“FIRE!”

The second volley had real venom and intent behind it, the bald male didn’t catch arrows this time, and instead he directly smashed them with palms and fists.

A youth in a grey robe drew a metal blade out of nowhere and cut-

He hissed with shock as tens of hunters skirmishing forward to his right died, swept away in a crescent shadow of gore. Two other grey-robed figures stepped forward now, directing gouts of silver fire in the direction of Elder Wurm Piercer, seemingly unconcerned that their own Warleader was there.

“FIRE!”

His next arrow found a target in the head of a youth in glittering robes who had just run over the edge of the hill. They stumbled forward, confusion etched on their face as the white arrow dispersed all their mana.

“FIRE!”

He didn’t have time to shoot his arrow because a golden palm the size of him smashed down like a hammer a mere twenty paces in front of him, the shockwave sending him flying like a leaf-

Struggling up, he saw others fall, the whole world turning into golden fists as the bald man with the beard, his hands now clasped together, chanted strange words akin to what the shamans were using.

“Namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ hāṃ”

“Namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ hāṃ”

“Namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ hāṃ”

A shadowy golden visage swirled around the bald one, its visage akin to the carvings of the ancient ones deep in the plains as the myriad hands bearing down on them twisted the world around them. He tried to find some path to avoid, but his limbs suddenly felt like they were bound by phantasmal ropes.

To his horror he found the blade grass of the plains twisting around him!

It snared at his legs, cut his flesh, robbed his limbs of strength as the chant continued to echo.

The vast palms were the sky above!

The land below them!

“BE BROKEN, GRASPING DEMON!”

“BY THE MOTHER OF EARTH!”

However, just when he was sure they were all about to become red paste amid flattened grass, a vast roar thundered out from their lines.

Two old Ur’Vash were running forward – one painted and tattooed in blue and grey swirls reminiscent of moons and water, carrying two scythes, and the other, in patterns of red flowers and black swirls. Between them, they managed to break and scatter the twisting oppression that had dragged down their whole line for a moment.

The blue and grey one was the scarred old Ur’Vash – Roja ‘Lake Cutter’ – who had come from Moonless Lake village. The one carrying the scythes was a surprise though. He should be Kuroz, an old elder of the region around Golden Grass village, widely known as ‘Elder Storm Cutter’ for his feat of splitting a lightning bolt that had fallen from the sky. He had not seen the old Ur’Vash when they had been in the village.

Rumour had it that he had become a herbalist of all things, selling mushrooms to young Ur’Vash as he wandered to polish his martial heart.

That brought cheers and jeers from the Ur’Vash who survived the attack.

“Such a gift, you lift men up from shadow this day.”

He joined in the shout as they surged forward as all around him other hunters whooped, jeered and stamped as they strung more arrows. All you could do was laugh and jeer in the face of that kind of power. It was a victory to simply live.

Grinning, he drew another arrow, and prepared to see how this many-armed elder would block arrows when having to stare down someone like these old elders.

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~ CANG DI – MIDDLE OF THE BATTLE ~

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Cang Di stood in the middle of the battle, fighting the last lingering vestiges of what had been attempted as demons wielding bows struggled up from Xin Dai’s attack and the retaliation from the Nine Auspicious Moons-

*tcch*

He skipped backwards as a blast of silver fire exploded all around him and the old spear-wielding demon.

Those nearby who survived the attack raised their bows and sent another withering volley of martial intent infused arrows at the hill behind him, even as they hooted and jeered.

-So Xin Dai is an Arhat from Erlang Shan on the slopes of their Eastern Azure’s Mount Kunlun.

-A question answered…

The old demon who had been battling him was still staring dully at the treeline where the original arrow had come from that had turned over the whole battlefield.

He also turned in that direction and saw the archer, a woman dressed with the appearance of one of the demons, yet bringing with it a subtle wrongness. His soul sense slid off her, barely finding her, like she was an intangible mirage, fading away even as he looked at her and the two other ghostly figures beside her-

A talisman erupted, cutting off his view as a surge of soul sense from ‘his side’ blotted out the hilltop and the rocks were smashed and obliterated by a dozen enraged attacks.

“You twisted my fate to send me out there.”

His killing intent… his real killing intent, settled across the whole battlefield like a shroud.

{Stepping Across Ten Thousand Peaks}

He took a single step and stood within the midst of the Argent Hall’s contingent, grasping the neck of the silver-robed youth who had lost his arm to that fortuitous attack.

{Shatterpoint}

He stared at the disordered remnants of the talisman and grasped them out of the air, letting the divination art guide him to seize the critical bit, so as to preserve its identity.

“Y-you…” one of the Argent Hall disciples goggled at him.

“Clearly you are tired of living.”

Even though the words were quietly spoken, they shifted across the surroundings, making human and demon alike sweat. The various old demons had actually waved a stop to their attacks and were looking on with concern. As well they should… he was after all within a hair’s breadth of breaking through to Dao Immortal.

“Brother Cang, Brother-”

“Fuck off, boy,” he slammed his intent into the hapless Golden Immortal who had just spoken up, sending the younger man sprawling, spitting blood.

Those around him shuffled back, shivering… The horrified Golden Immortal tried to move, but he had locked down his whole body now, the chains of his intent cutting the idiot off from his treasures.

“Brother Cang…” Hao Tai spoke up…

He turned to look at Hao Tai, his expression twisting in mockery. “Are you so witless as to not understand what your junior did?”

“Is this why you spoke those words to me earlier?” he added, just with soul sense. “Let me be clear Hao Tai – I will end you, and your Ghost Flame talisman will not save you, nor your old ancestor’s lantern.”

“My junior martial brother was just trying to help…” Hao Tai sneered. “And you are the one turning on us? We wasted a precious talisman to buy you an opportunity to end that old demon and this is how you repay my Argent Hall?”

“Help? Are you trying to say you don’t know what twisting an Ancient Immortal’s fate when they are at the threshold of Dao comprehension means…?” he snapped back, properly angry now.

“You…”

The various brats from the Argent Hall recoiled as if slapped, some in genuine shock and outrage, but a few, like Hao Tai, just covering for their stratagem.

-Which might yet have succeeded for all I know, he cursed inwardly.

“I TRUST ALL OF YOU WHO KNOW SOME THINGS ARE FAMILIAR WITH DESTINED STAR TALISMANS?!” he let his voice carry across the whole battlefield, not bothering to hide his disgust as he held up the talisman.

The various other Ancient Immortals down the line all turned to look… angry.

Qing Dongmei lowered her bow, her faced twisting into a sneer.

Quan Dingxiang had also lowered the cauldron he had been using to send gouts of fire at the hill, looking in their direction with narrowed eyes.

Xin Dai was also looking this direction, his face thunderous.

Zi Min looked fit to cut someone in half…

“Brother Cang… Brother Cang… this is an accident…” Kong Bo grimaced, arriving next to them.

The youth from the Ran clan spat in Kong Bo’s general direction.

The last to react near him was, in fact, the dark-brown haired woman with the scar on her face and neck, who had been part of Qing Dongmei’s group. She had been dusting off her travelling robes and was now also looking in their direction. Her eyes narrowed as she looked in their direction and in that moment, courtesy of the lingering effects of ‘Shatterpoint’, he found to his shock that she was an Ancient Immortal who was at least as powerful as Xin Dai… and had dyed her hair; its natural colour would be sandy brown.

The latter thing was such a strange thing for ‘Shatterpoint’ to pick out that he was genuinely confused for a moment.

“Brother Cang… please,” Kong Bo said, putting on his best, reasonable voice, forcing him to focus back on the nearer problems. “This junior brother has indeed made a mistake; his eagerness has caused some problems.”

It was very tempting to kill the Golden Immortal… but looking around, he could see that the vast majority of those here were still leaning towards the Argent Hall and the Jade Gate Court.

“…”

-‘Caused some problems,’ I should kill him here and now, if I didn’t know what trouble that would bring, he snarled inwardly.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a few people pull out charged teleport talismans and try to use them – clearly intending to just leave this mess here and now.

-Hah… at least the rest of you are caught in the Gu Jar. No running today! he sneered in his own heart.

“Teleport talismans don’t work…” someone muttered, although it went unheard by everyone except those few around him because both he and Kong Bo had cut off the space around them.

-In that at least he is not an idiot, not that it can be contained for long.

“Seems we are all stuck in the same jar,” he grinned nastily. “I wonder, this cretin intended to create an inauspicious moment… and well…”

“We certainly have that,” Quan Dingxiang, who had stalked over and was glaring at the Argent Hall, spat on the ground very close to Hao Tai’s foot.

The other nearby experts from Four Peacocks Court and a few others also glowered.

“…”

Kong Bo also glared at the disciples from the Argent Hall, although he noted that not all the Jade Gate Court were of the same sentiment.

In the distance, the drums were changing as well, the beat becoming more frenzied in its intent. The chant that the demons had started to repeat was… unnerving. They had recovered their momentum fast. All because those three had seen what was going on and acted accordingly. A single decisive act overturning the whole stratagem.

-This is why idiots should be banned from using talismans focusing on absolute stratagems, he groaned inwardly.

Destined Star talismans were useful as well: if used correctly, they could indeed have collapsed the whole battle line, pushed good fortune onto chosen combatants or a formation and used it to carve a vast swathe through part of this force. Instead these morons had tried to use it to drag him down, hiding behind the excuse that they wanted to help him fight the old demon.

It was a ruse bought by nobody with eyes, but the problem now was the majority here had no accursed eyes. Likely some recognised it anyway and chose to be wilfully blind or thought that they could use those circumstances, but for the majority, no, they simply did not dare to believe otherwise than the ruse at this point. They just wanted to survive, and that meant they would cling to the flag they believed in, the ‘Righteous Shield’ of the Imperial Court, for they had given up on being masters of their own fates, even if they themselves did not realize it, so all they could do was believe in others.

To not believe in their ruses would mean accepting that the Jade Gate Court and the Argent Hall were not going to save them but were merely using them as a means to an end. The real trap they all faced now was what happened when that brittle, self-serving manipulation by Kong Bo and the others became truly undeniable. At that point, he could see it spinning two ways really…

-In either case, it will be every group for themselves, he sighed inwardly. It is just a question of where the blame sticks once everything has fallen as it will.

That was basically what he was pretty sure would happen here. The Jade Gate Court would pay lip service in these opening acts, doing just enough to preserve face, and then when others, like the Nine Auspicious Moons and maybe even the Argent Hall, had committed enough, the Court would be the one to grandly make the ‘big’ gestures, having used some scheme or another to preserve their strength and ‘save the day’. If they could do so and pull out the fangs of others while they were at it…

-That aside…

He swept out his soul sense and scowled, because his killing intent hit the demons and broke off their once again advancing ranks like water off rocks.

-And our opponents are no longer afraid of death. Even that has backfired, although Xin Dai and Dongmei both meant well and tried to salvage the situation.

That was certainly the ploy, to be able to hold them up and say, ‘Look, they tried but failed, while we succeeded’. The issue of course was if that all came unstuck.

-Then again, this mob breaking up in chaos might actually be an improvement in matters… if I didn’t think the Jade Gate Court will then just throw the rest of the cultivators under the cart.

The problem there, though, was the ‘bigger’ picture. When it came down to it, he was pretty certain at this point that, excepting a few key people, most of those sent into Yin Eclipse, including those pushing matters along for the Imperial Court, were ultimately considered expendable. If they overreached and the Elders of the Court decided that the grim alchemy of ‘deeds done versus face lost’ was not to their liking, 'justice’ would probably be facilitated on their own juniors somehow, just so that the sects in question could move on.

It was a political side to events like these that rarely got much consideration, in truth, but he had known it to happen before. The problem there was that he, and many of those he was friends with, would likely already be dead.

-That said… those are problems for later, he sighed inwardly, because right now it’s more important that we don’t shatter thoroughly at the first blow, what with the way these idiots have been playing with talismans that twist fate, either ignorantly or wilfully…

He wasn’t the only one trying to push back with their soul sense either, he noted. He felt Jiao Den, who wasn’t attuned – interesting in its own right – Quan Dingxiang and Kong Bo all try to use their soul sense to overwhelm their opponents with varying degrees of killing intent.

“What is…?” Jiao Den was staring dully at the advancing lines.

“Congratulations, our opponents no longer fear-” he was cut off by the enraged howl as the warriors who had been forming up behind the archers all started to charge forward.

“KILL!”

Their speed was… spectacular. Even the Golden Core grade cultivators were suddenly moving as fast as False Immortals.

“KILL!”

They swept past the old demon, who was still stood alone in the middle of the battle line, looking haunted… old and frail.

“KILL!”

Cultivators scattered – some drew treasure weapons, others started to fall back or moved nearer to others. Several already had talismans out, sending swathes of fire and water, roiling earth or sizzling lightning into the charging forces.

{Shatterpoint}

Shaking his head, he triggered the art and took a step and arrived beside Qing Dongmei and Zi Min as the first wave, thinned out, reached-

Two demons came out of absolutely nowhere, their eyes bloodshot, purple and blue swirls painted across their bodies. He kicked one, sending it flying backwards into the others charging in from behind. The other Zi Min decapitated, sending its head flying away. Even then the demon got three clean swipes in at Zi Min before it collapsed, twitching.

In the instant before the rest of the wave arrived, hundreds of arrows hissed down, exploding with grass-shredding detonations in the middle of the scattered groups of cultivators. If there was a mercy here, it was that their disorganisation was actually working against their opponents…

-Or is it?

He spun and saw that dozens of demons had somehow got past them, totally unnoticed, and were already attacking the still confused edges of the camp beyond the ridge.

“What in the fates!” Zi Min snarled and cut down a second spectral demon that had just emerged out of the chaos.

It was only at Golden Core and died in a single blow, but even so it was nothing if not disturbing.

Flipping his spear over, he stabbed forward, slaying several just with martial intent, his steps carrying him face to face with one wearing a ragged hide and carrying a bone club that just screamed something at him and attacked him without a care in the world.

He swiped it away and spun, cutting two more, managing to only severely injure them. One, totally cut in two, screamed at him as the drums intensified and tried to crawl forward, determined to land one final blow until he stabbed it through the head.

-The drums…

He stabbed one through the head and swept the spear blade around him in a wicked arc, clearing space.

The Arhat, Xin Dai, set about himself with resignation, speaking a simple blessing for those he killed even as he smashed warriors away and deflected blades.

To his left, he saw Dongmei and the archers from the Nine Auspicious Moons and the Shen clan start returning fire in earnest.

Others were no so lucky; he saw one of the Immortals from the Jade Gate Court get torn down in seconds, unable to grasp the sheer ferocity of was happening, his body dismembered as one demon smashed his chest in with a club while another decapitated him.

“DIE DEMONS!” Hao Tai yelled, striking out with his sword and sending a wave of silver flame through those that came after.

With that, the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall were unable to remain aloof, if only because dozens of demons had gotten through the gaps and were now rampaging behind them. Their disciples finally opened up with their arts, mostly soul-based attacks that aimed to obliterate the consciousness of their attackers or set their souls on fire directly.

The issue, though, was apparent within moments as many disciples using that actually quite reasonable strategy found that it didn’t even slow down the rampaging warriors who just kept attacking with an instinctual, primal, martial ferocity.

{Shatterpoint}

Renewing the art, he scowled as an arrow arrived like a blade from the shadows, barely registering in any way, barely a pace from his head-

{Iron Soul}

Having seen enough of them explode already, he used one of the arts Ancestor Iron had passed on to him, merging his spiritual strength with his martial intent briefly as he intercepted the arrow with his spear. As expected, it detonated with enough force to damage the armour robe he was wearing and sent several others nearby sprawling.

Two more arrows, opportunistically targeted, hit him a moment later, one actually puncturing his qi armour before exploding in his shoulder with enough force to numb his arm.

Cursing both demons and cultivators alike in his heart, he slammed the butt of his spear into the ground.

{Thunder of the Mountain}

A shifting wave of Yang Earth Qi swept away everything within fifty paces of him – the shockwave hit the demons’ lines properly, knocking hundreds off their feet, but dealt precious little damage beyond broken legs and bleeding ears.

“What the fates! These bastards are durable in a way that’s inconceivable!” Quan Dingxiang, who was somehow still nearby, cursed.

“This is why you don’t annoy body refiners. We are fighting angry Buddhists… without their moral code!” he called back, making sure he sounded obnoxiously cheerful for the benefit of others nearby.

“Gah!” Quan Dingxiang shook his head and shot a dirty look at the source of their problems and spun the cauldron in his hand.

{Five Animals Flame}

A tiger, a phoenix, a monkey, a tortoise, and a Kirin charged out of the cauldron, cutting another swathe between their battle lines-

‘KRAKOOOOOOM!’

‘Shatterpoint’ barely showed him the viridian lightning bolt before it arrived in the form of a three-headed serpent, arcing from the eastern side, where the other forces were still massing and advancing, almost ignored in this current engagement.

Quan Dingxiang spat blood as the familiar Yin energies that had incinerated the luckless bird nearly did for both of them, Qing Dongmei and Zi Min in a single strike.

His arms shook and his qi steadied itself after a moment-

“May monkeys fuck your mothers!” he screamed out loud as three arrows crashed into him even as he triggered a Dao Lord Phase Barrier, burying the worst of the attacks that dropped on them.

“Still alive,” Zi Min groaned, pushing himself up and wiping blood away.

“Dao Immortal?” Quan Dingxiang gasped, his own injuries recovering.

“Not quite…” he grimaced.

His gaze was drawn to that distant hilltop where the pair of demons who had been dressed in flayed robes and carrying staffs had set up a drum. Tens of demons were dancing frantically around it, their limbs blurring as the thunder of the drum started to build again.

If he couldn’t feel the utterly horrific yin metal energies building again around the two robed demons, it would look rather comical.

“QING!” he yelled, pointing at it.

She nodded and pulled out a taiji disc.

{Nine Luminary Arrows}

Five of her disciples who were nearby made signs and the formation activated as she drew her bow, aimed at the drum for a moment then aimed it up in the air. The disc spun and nine shadow versions of her appeared above it, all loosing arrows which spiralled up into the sky before homing in on the drum.

The staff-wielding, bearded demon raised his staff again and then cast twelve blazing green orbs of fire into the sky, which formed screaming heads as they hurtled across the battlefield, colliding with the arrows. The detonation cratered the land below it and threw hundreds off their feet.

He pulled out a talisman of his own and, narrowing his soul sense on the drum, triggered it.

{Mu’s Mountain Cage}

The Dao Lord quality barrier talisman sealed off the area for a metre around the drum, killing the demon hammering on it and several of those dancing around it in the process when they were caught, half in the cage, half out. The two robed demons snarled, and the smaller one pointed to the barrier. One of the other robed figures nearby attacked it and vanished in a distant scream as yin-aligned earth qi devoured them.

That threat dealt with, he left the Nine Auspicious Moons to deal with that flank and stamped on a demon that had somehow crawled close enough to grasp at his leg. Their ability to avoid any kind of detection was their biggest nuisance really.

He flicked the butt of his spear into another attacker, sending them flying away down the hilltop, and shook his head as the Immortal realm demon somehow survived its brief time as a living meteor. Their ludicrous vitality and durability, coupled with their utter fearlessness, was making a mockery of any kind of battle line they might have held.

Whereas, even largely freed from the shackles of being unattuned to this place, he was having issues. Most of the other cultivators, even skilled ones, used to proper combat against organised opponents, were struggling as they battled both their own limits and their insane opponents.

Severing another attacker’s head with a plunging strike, he sent another wave of earth qi down slope, taking in their circumstances with a grimace.

Even with the best efforts of quite a few different groups, the first wave of demons were still making their way through by brute force, the black and red tattooed and armoured ones spearheading breakthroughs in weak spots and actively avoiding the large collectives of the Jade Gate Court and their allies.

-Their grasp of tactics is exceptional, and that is likely to be our undoing, he complained inwardly.

Looking back in the moment of calm around him that he had just bought, he noted that two other demons, a female one covered in red and yellow war paint and a bearded one carrying a bow, had reached their compatriot who he had fought and were helping him. The red female gave him a sense of ominous pressure that was close to the robed female next to the drum.

The spear-wielding old demon still looked somewhere between enraged and dazed, having eaten the worst of the manipulation from the talisman.

-Please stay dazed, or go after the Jade Gate Court, muttered to himself.

The two other archers on the back line were also doing grim things. He had tallied maybe twenty Immortals who had been picked off by them so far – opportune targets for the two quasi Ancient Immortal archers who were focusing on keeping their groups split up and making openings for the infantry to break through or waste talismans.

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Xin Dai was fighting a protracted duel in the middle of the slope a hundred metres to his left, stopping the sickle-wielding old demon from breaking through directly. In a way, that battle was actually more of a deterrent to anyone advancing up the hill than his own attack had proved to be…

Sighing, he sent another wave of martial intent infused qi into the air, sweeping away a few arrows. The steady rain from the skirmishers behind and among the wave of attackers was also vexatious. They were all painted blue and white, he noted, and were bizarre in the way they behaved. All of them were unfocused, the archers just firing at random, but more often than not they found all sorts of unwanted-

He stepped to the side as one nearly hit him, even as nearby an unlucky Dao Seeking cultivator was hit in the arm by one, disrupting her use of the talisman she was using to send bolts of fire at the attackers. Others he had seen find weak unnoticed weak spots in qi defences, interrupt people who hadn’t the strength to resist the intent within them directly and just generally be distracting.

“Use a fate-thrashed formation, you idiots!”

Zi Min’s voice cut through the battle, directed at another group who were struggling. Several had already started to do so, but the issue there was that outside of a few sects who specialised in martial formations, or had people particularly skilled in them, most of those here were just general disciples, thrown together by lot and luck.

Off to his right, he did see one such formation scatter down a blizzard of phantasmal blades into another bunch of the demons, buying that portion of the line some breathing space. Unfortunately there was no one covering for them, so they were getting pelted by arrows almost continuously,

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

He groaned inwardly as two of the groups on that side of their lines finally started to move in, aiming to sweep around the back of the hill and cut off retreat. Each one had acquired a weird animal-looking totem, a drummer and a demon blowing enthusiastically on some kind of horn.

-Nameless, accursed heavenly monkey… it’s absolutely a formation! He cursed, hurrying along the lines, and tracked back towards where Qing Dongmei and Zi Min were fighting and about to get awkwardly flanked.

As he watched, qi amassed around one banner, which became a rippling scorpion, a larger version of what Xin Dai had chased off when their groups met, coloured in shades of earth and grass which encompassed the whole group. The claws became the glaive-wielders, the sides the spear and shield users, the core the archers, representing the sting in its tail.

A few others noticed, mostly from behind the hill, where his soul sense told him most of the Jade Gate Court and their forces were still mustering, clearly content to let those already stuck here waste their strength. A few distant sword strikes shot down at the phantasmal creature only to be swatted away… Watching it happen, he got the second proper nasty surprise of the day.

-It’s a bound Dao Soul.

What he could only recognise as some kind of earth law crushed the incoming sword lights, the tail twisting as it stabbed impossibly through the intervening distance and obliterated half of a five man formation from the Jade Gate Court like they were the bug rather than it. The Golden Immortal leading it and a lucky Immortal managed to escape, barely avoiding suffering a deviation in the process.

That wasn’t even the worst of it though, because the second formation, coming for their back line, was some kind of armoured hog, made up of mostly spear and shield wielding demons who were massing with a momentum-

There was a sense of the land recoiling as it abruptly accelerated and crashed into the side of a carriage that had been about to flee that side of the camp. The talisman beasts dissipated instantly and the vehicle was obliterated as the metal law fuelled attack hit it full on. The miserable occupants vanished with it, the only sign of their passing being the disquieting cracks of storage rings shattering and scattering off the formation.

{Shatterpoint}

He refreshed the art as he looked beyond that formation that was now properly heading for the Jade Gate Court. Among the other forces lining up on the hills there he counted four more scorpions, another of the hogs and two of the horned jaguars. Now that he was in a position to see them all clearly, it chilled his blood, because the core of every formation was an Ancient Immortal demon, supported by ten immortals and maybe 30 Severing Origins and Dao Seeking demons, the archers mostly.

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

The chants from that side echoed again, and the drumming began to harmonise disturbingly with the main battle front.

“Can you deal with the metal law formation?” he asked Qing Dongmei as he passed her group who were just about finished reorganis-

{Mu’s Mountain Prayer}

The bound treasure triggered and the hill from where death had been about to descend on Dongmei’s group vanished in an eruption of churning earth as a pair of phantasmal hands imbued with Earth and Metal Laws swept together, crushing the scattered occupants of that hilltop, and more importantly obliterating the group of robed demons dancing around another artefact banner in a sustained, space-cracking thunderclap.

“…”

Qing Dongmei and the others nearby all stared at him, sweating visibly as the aftershocks subsided, leaving a crater where the hill had been. The demons nearby were also almost stunned into silence, their chants and drums drowned out by the dissipating rumbles of broken space.

He grimaced inwardly – the use of the object had taken a fair amount of qi, but the main problem was he couldn’t use it again for maybe an hour; that was how long it would take to recharge it with heavenly jades from his storage ring.

Not wasting the opening he had given them, the Nine Auspicious Moons disciples finished setting up their formation. Behind him, a massive pulse of qi-infused martial intent erupted from the far side of the battle line, once again aiming for Xin Dai and those fighting on that quarter.

Sighing, he started to walk down the slope, killing demons as he went, even targeting them with strikes designed to cripple their qi even if they didn’t kill them, as they had an inexplicable ability to shrug them off, luckily avoid his killing blows or just outright not die even when suffering decapitation, evisceration or bisection. In that case he might as well make use of his newfound advantage.

Massing his qi, he kicked the ground in front of him, sending a wave of yin earth forwards ahead of him as he hefted his spear and moved forwards.

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~ YERGAK – FRONT OF THE HILL ON THE UR'VASH SKIRMISH LINE. ~

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Scrambling up, Yergak found himself wondering how he was still alive, before hurriedly quashing those thoughts and thanking Mother Fortune. Across the battlefield, chaos reigned. The skirmishers were now basically trying to snipe off opportune targets and avoid getting turned into red smears on the ground by the two sides’ magic users trading blows.

The first assault on the war band’s lines had been more successful than they had any right to expect really. Mostly it had been comprised of those who had been guarding warehouses in Ajara and warriors determined to earn accolades or wipe away shame.

“Xavak is moving in!” Dergazt yelled from behind a nearby rock.

Glancing to their south, he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the formations that force had brought moving forward at last, having found whatever opening they had been waiting for. The Warleader who had duelled Wurm Piercer and the most effective of their opponents were focusing there as well now.

Xavak himself, accompanied by several of other elite warriors, also walked out across the grassland, likely to block off any attempt at intercepting his spirit banners before they were in position. Or, possibly because he didn’t want to risk them to the same fate as the shamans from Winding River village… and the entire hill they had been on.

Crouched beside him, Takgos poked him and pointed at another errant group of opponents who-

His ears ringing, he pushed himself up, the afterimage of the lightning burned into his eyes. The bolt had narrowly missed them, blasting a gap across the hillside, scattering Ur’Vash and defender alike.

“Oi! Watch it!” someone yelled weakly from nearby.

“Dumb mage, I seen orcs who could piss more accurately!”

Jeers and boos echoed from all directions, cursing the mage, whoever it had been, for their lousy aim. Clearing his vision, he found a target and shot at them, pleased to see the arrow hit, distracting the victim even if it didn’t do any actual damage.

Takgos and Argok followed suit, shooting the same target, who screamed in rage and did something with a weird piece of paper-

Beside him Takgos looked… perplexed, and crumpled to the ground, a stray arrow with pure white having pierced him through the head.

“…”

Argok and Dergazt both stared dully at Takgos’s corpse and its inexplicable death and then back up slope to where several fists and palms from the battle between Elder Storm Cutter and the many-armed bald defender had landed, and one of their own archers had randomly loosed an arrow.

“That very orange,” Dergazt mumbled, pulling the arrow out of Takgos’s head.

He saw the attacker look at his paper… sighing in relief. Anger twisted his gut and he took aim and let a blue arrow fly-

It was only Argok yanking him backwards that saved him from the piece of rock that scattered from the battle above. Had it hit him, it would have taken his head clean off. Another Ur’Vash from Ajara a few metres behind them was not so lucky though, getting hit in the chest by it and getting hurled away into the warriors behind.

“They is doing something odd with the papers!” Huklurz snarled.

“You is winning all kinds of prizes as a smart Ur’Vash, Huklurz,” someone yelled from nearby. “They is mages; of course doing shonky things is what they do.”

“I also want to be Moon Sickle hunter who tells grand kids about seeing Maker’s Dancer…” Huklurz spat, scouring the slope above them. “Not have others say ‘Remember Hunter Huklurz? He was very orange on day that I saw Maker’s Dancers… Don’t grow up to be orange like Huklurz!’”

He contemplated trying to shoot Takgos’s killer, but in the same instant an arrow hit that man in the head and his body vanished in a distorted blur of collapsing space.

-This war, it is what it is, he grimaced, seeking out another target and shooting them in the leg.

The dark-haired female in a white and blue robe screamed and ripped it out, looking in their general direction-

He tackled Dergazt and Argok to the ground as the world around them became a maelstrom of searing blue fire at her gesture, followed by an attack that made his limbs grow a bit leaden.

He aimed at her a second time, this time to kill her, even as several other arrows shot out-

A scruffy-looking female with sandy hair who was almost aggressively plain compared to most of the rest, notable only for the burn scar across her face, appeared beside her, even as one of the arrows exploded into another twist of destructive nihility.

This time, however, the expected death didn’t come. Instead, the female deflected it somehow, sending it spiralling sideways into a bunch of green-robed, masked defenders, who died without really understanding what had hit them.

She stared around, looking almost amused, then hauled the shaken-looking female up-

The second arrow, and then several others, were cut in a single sweeping strike by the sandy-haired female with contemptuous ease.

“Oh no…!” Dergazt dragged them both down to the ground as her cut continued, extending into a twisting ripple that ghosted over them.

He felt his body twisting in very unpleasant ways, as if he had just drunk very bad spider ichor and then some badly cooked meat. As his world spun disorientatingly around him, he saw other Ur’Vash behind him from the Golden Grass village and Ajara also twisting bizarrely… then one exploded… followed by another…

-Don’t explode… Don’t explode…

He fought the deeply disturbing sense of wanting to expel his own stomach out of his mouth as best he could.

“I is blue… Blue is with me… I is blue…”

He stared up at the blue sky, mumbling incoherently… not exploded.

“Me not exploded… such blue…” nearby he heard Dergazt’s rasping voice.

“Hate mages… worst…” Argok groaned.

Pushing himself up, he saw that Korjai had not been so lucky; he was screaming, grasping at his ruined torso that had been somehow disrupted by whatever the female had done… It hadn’t felt like mana, more like…

“Is third war Warleader?” Dergazt moaned.

The drums behind them intensified…

Swallowing down his blood, he felt his strength and vitality surging as the drums became harsh and leaden.

“Black drums,” Argok gasped… “About time.”

All around them, the survivors were staggering up.

“We survive!” Dergazt snarled. “Mother of Earth lifts us up.”

“That she does,” he shuddered, watching as a hunter from another tribe helped Korjai up.

“DEATH!”

The shout was accompanied by a wave of phantasmal spears of Elder Wurm Piercer, splitting space, and several of the defenders in grey robes along the front of the hill who had been retreating back from the battle vanished in red mist and tatters.

“He angry,” Argok muttered, ducking as another wave of arrows scattered everywhere.

“You also trying to be Smart Ur’Vash?” Huklurz mumbled, pushing half of an exploded Golden Grass skirmisher off himself.

The Elder had apparently recovered from whatever had been done, with the help of the ‘Chosen of Earth’, the widow of the chieftain from Moonless Lake village, and was now stalking across the battlefield towards the hill, followed by a band of black-painted Ur’Vash from Ajara wielding stone axes, heading towards the sandy-haired, scarred female, who just laughed and also started walking down the slope towards him, laying about her with her sword, using it more like a lash than a blade.

He sighed and drew his blades, and waved the others to move sideways along the line to finish off who he could, because archery was clearly not a blue hunter’s game right now. Behind him, Argok was painting extra blue swirls on his head and shoulders – with added purple.

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~ AO KUI – REAR OF THE HILL, OVERLOOKING THE CAMP ~

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“Fates preserve us! What is that!?!”

“These motherless spawn know formations?”

“Run!”

“Kill it!”

“Watch o-”

“Stop running, fates cur-”

“Shi-!”

Ao Kui picked himself up out of the burning grassland and spat dirt that had a disturbing amount of his own blood mixed into it.

“How by the eight hells did I get caught up in all this mess!” he groaned, checking he still had the usual number of limbs and feeling that the original reason he had come here – and been sent by the Righteous Moonsong Pagoda – in order to ‘experience a cultivation trial in a Great World’ was really, really naïve.

All around him, chaos was unfolding. That was the only way he could think of it. It made him long for safe, secure moments. Moments like when he was running for his life through those valleys before they got dumped in here. Or his Immortal Crossing tribulation-

Another thunderbolt dropped out of nowhere, turning some of the group of demons who had managed to break through into scattered bits of gore.

“Why are they so durable?!” a girl wearing the robes of the Argent Hall screamed as she channelled a fire element talisman into the chaos.

“Because they were born in this shithole and we were not,” he muttered as he rapidly took stock of his surroundings.

That this was a shard of another world, adrift in Yin Eclipse somehow, was pretty much undeniable at this point. It was like being back to right after his Immortal ascension, when he had first arrived in Eastern Azure, except worse, and more protracted. Their attunement, such as it was, had been almost cripplingly slow to the point where he was doubting if it was even truly possible.

“Watch it-!” someone else yelled, their voice cut off abruptly by…

When he picked himself up, his ears were still ringing like his head was stuck in a bell. The source of the attack had been a formation of the demons enshrouded in some kind of nascent manifestation which had just smashed into an enchanted carriage, obliterating it and everything else within 20 metres, it seemed.

Pulling out a talisman, he sighted on a random demon.

{Zhong’s Blazing Lance}

The bolt of lightning transfixed it and three others, making their limbs jerk and their skeletons show through their briefly translucent flesh. None of them were stronger than Dao Seeking and still the talisman had only incapacitated them.

“A heavenly curse on this suppression!” he spat, pulling out another talisman and leaving them for others to deal with.

That was basically how the battle was going: little pockets of resistance amid vast tides of chaos. Those who had been on this side of the camp were fighting, but the inner camp was impenetrable now. The Jade Gate Court and others had set up some kind of barrier and were apparently preparing a formation.

“We just have to hold-” a nearby Dao Seeking disciple from the Argent Sanctity Sect, one of the branches of the Argent Hall, collapsed, a snow white arrow poking out of his eye.

“Fei!” someone else, he didn’t bother to see who, screamed the fallen disciple’s name.

His own divination talisman shivered and he spun this way and that before just decisively running along the base of the ridge. Arrows could land anywhere, but the slope of the hill was some defence at least.

“Hold! We must buy time for the Court!” someone else was yelling in the middle distance.

“PROTECT THE INNER CAMP!”

“Protect the formation centres!”

Glancing that way, he saw several other clusters of Argent Hall, Four Peacocks Court and Pill Sovereign Sect disciples taking cover on the back of the hill, occasionally firing off talismans and urging those around them to fight harder.

Another demon came screaming out of nowhere. He stumbled back and cut at it with his sword, glad he had made the effort to learn how to use one properly back before he became an Immortal. It blocked his first blow, but he caught it with the second, chopping off an arm. That bought him enough time to slap a basic explosion talisman on it and kick it away.

As far as battle plans went, he wasn’t a fan of it. In fact it barely classified as a ‘plan’ at all. It seemed to involve a lot of independent cultivators and members of smaller influences who had been left alone in this chaos without any real direction or leadership ‘dying gloriously’ so the Jade Gate Court and the other big sects could sweep in and save everyone at the last second.

*Krrump*

“What even are we meant to be doing here?” he hissed, scrambling forward.

The unfortunate demon exploded in a flare of heat, but it was completely overshadowed by the silvery pillar of ‘moonlight’ light that now descended down out of the sky thirty paces ahead of him, originating from the formation being used by the Nine Auspicious Moons. Horrified, he found himself drawn upwards for a split second, locked into its periphery, even as the swirling dust and smoke scattered to reveal that he had nearly walked right into what was now a broken formation of demons-

He hit the ground again, groaning, even as the banner dissolved away into silvery ash, obliterated by a strike from the formation.

-Other than not dying… or dying…

“DEATH!”

“Fates, I hate those old devils so much!” he whimpered as the force of the roar washed through everything. “I hope their nine generations suffer every misfortune!”

Whatever it had been, it had struck the other side of the hill, travelled right through it and left a huge swathe of devastation where he had just been. It also took far too long for his vision and the world around him to stop twisting in very disturbing ways as he struggled to make sure he wasn’t spotted by some random demon and finished off.

Looking around, two of the smaller camps were now just twisted piles of collapsed cloth and the occasional corpse-

Instinct made him roll away as a blade struck down where he had been. He cut upwards with his sword and managed to block the second strike, gritting his teeth as his arm shook under the impact. The Immortal realm demon grinned toothily at him and then flicked the butt of its glaive at his stomach.

{Moon Bright Barrier}

His defensive talisman triggered, protecting him from the worst of the strike; however, he was afforded no time to collect himself as the glaive user immediately accelerated towards him.

“Shit… shit… what are battle lines, you idiots?” he cursed the group on the hill. “Do you know them?”

{Thunder Pit}

He slapped down the talisman and feigned tripping over backwards-

*KRRrrrakKK!*

The talisman detonated, throwing both of them apart. His bones rattled under the force of the impact and he looked around frantically with what little he could muster of his soul sense, only to find the demon had died from one of his side’s own arrows, a white and blue arrow now piercing through his neck, somehow having killed him instantly.

“…”

Shuddering, he again wondered what curse of the nameless fates had led to those arrows, because there was no way that an Immortal should die from what was basically painted wood and bone.

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

The chanting of another band of the demons cut through the confusion and made his blood run even colder than it already was. This formation was a scorpion, akin to the one Senior Xin had made retreat when they first had the misfortune to run into this band, seeking help for Fairy Ning.

“You lot!” an imperious voice roared, from the edge of the distant barrier. “SUPPO-!”

Whatever was being said vanished with the pressure wave that accompanied a huge detonation and the hill above him slumped as several ghostly swords smashed down nearby, scattering the remnants of the first formation and executing a bunch of the glaive-wielding demons without much care for anyone else caught nearby. I need to get out of here, he urged himself.

Shaking his head to clear the distortions to his vision, which was worryingly pink-tinted, he started to free himself as the earth scorpion surged forward, ripping through two barriers from another group who had tried to stall it only for it to rip apart two more Immortals with its phantasmal claws.

A group of six green-robed, masked disciples finally ran forward from the inner camp, wielding white jade swords.

“Took their fate-accursed time,” a female voice from nearby spat.

He turned and saw that it was one of the women from the Dewdrop Sage Sect. He only had a vague understanding of that influence, but they were certainly not favoured by the Argent Hall or Imperial Court and so were basically stood behind the Nine Auspicious Moons.

“You,” she pointed at him abruptly. “You are from that Truthful Moonchime Pavilion, aren’t you, Ao Kui?”

“Righteous Moonsong…” he corrected habitually, wondering why she knew him – by name, no less.

“Good,” she said, sliding down and grabbing him by the collar of his tattered robe as she proceeded to extricate him easily.

-Ah, a Golden Immortal?

“Thank you… uh… senior,” he grimaced as she started to dash parallel to the hill, keeping low, dragging him effortlessly.

Behind him, he saw the six disciples from the Jade Gate Court start rallying the fractured defence of the inner camp while a second formation started to bombard the scorpion with shimmering swords.

“I can-”

He felt his qi distort faintly and she dropped him before he could say ‘I can run’. For a horrible moment he thought she had been killed, until he realised that they were wherever she had been taking him and he had just been dragged through a barrier.

“This the one?” the woman asked someone curtly as he struggled up.

Looking around, he wished he hadn’t, because their little bit of the hill was basically a line of corpses and qi-exhausted disciples trying to recover by some rocks.

“It is… thank you… Senior Liling,” he blinked as he found that Fairy Ning was also there.

-So that explained it… or half did, because the Argent Hall did not get on with the Nine Auspicious Moon’s camp?

“Why are you…?” he muttered, looking at her and the other few disciples of various sects crouched nearby.

“Bai… Shan… Ling… and Qing go way back…” she rasped, coming over to kneel beside him, withdrawing various spirit herbs from a pouch at her waist.

He was wondering at that, when he noted she was now wearing an over-robe that had ‘Bai’ worked prominently into it. As he recalled, the Bai clan was actually from the Imperial Continent, on the eastern coast near Meng City?

“What-?”

“Not bad. Patch him up then get him helping with the defence formations. We need more,” a cool voice snapped from nearby, cutting him off before he could finish asking ‘What does that have to do with this?”

“Yes… Senior Dongmei!” Fairy Ning murmured, before looking at him a touch apologetically.

Shaking his head, he accepted a spirit herb and took a bite of it, wincing at the sharp taste and looked around again. “Where is Senior Ran?”

“Fighting… beside… Senior Xin,” she coughed again and grimaced.

-So her injuries are still not fully healed? He thought with a wince.

He was still unclear what had been done to her, beyond Senior Xin saying she had been associated with dark karma and that was exacerbating a wound of her fate. It had translated into some kind of bizarre qi deviation. In a sense, the three of them had made a very bizarre group, connected mainly through Senior Xin, but they had overcome a lot…

“You two, start targeting that Dao Spirit on the far side see if you can’t drive it over towards the court as-” Dongmei’s voice, addressing someone else, cut off and he felt his divination talisman scream in his mind at the same time.

“BRACE!” someone else yelled from out of his line of sight as Fairy Ning, who was about to pass him a second spirit herb that still had dirt on it leant over him-

“What the hell, did I sell a planet in my last life or something!” he sobbed as the shockwave made his vision blur and his limbs grow cold. The barrier held, but he felt ill just looking at the blurring afterimages of yin fire that were dissipating off it.

“Oh come on! Evil Old Ghosts!” Senior Dongmei sounded disgusted now. “Just die already!”

----------------------------------------

~ CANG DI VS XAVAK ~

----------------------------------------

Grimacing inwardly as the wave of green fire scattered off the barriers protecting the defence position of the Nine Auspicious Moons sect, he braced himself as demons howled and charged at him, aiming to cut him off from the formations advancing towards their camp – eyes blazing, not just with rage, but pure determination.

-Even if they die, they are determined to buy some opening or opportunity… or get a lucky hit? He shuddered, thinking of how janky their ‘good fortune’ already was.

It was unsettling, even for him.

{Grasping Grave of Gu-Ryong}

Between one footfall and the next, a rippling wave of Yin Earth Qi, infused with his principle, turned the ground for 30 metres around him into a devouring quagmire. Nearly 60 of his attackers were devoured by it even as they thrashed and roared at him, many throwing their weapons as a last resort to land some desperate blow.

-Curse my lacking comprehensions in Earth Laws, he sighed, as several even managed to resist, staggering on towards him.

He stabbed one, kicked another back, and left them as they were also pulled down. Not a nice way to die, he noted, not that any way to die is good. In a war like this, there were no good or bad deaths… just deaths.

“All we can do is fight to the end,” he muttered, killing another before catching a thrown axe and sending it spinning back to end its wielder.

They knew it and he knew it – others behind him might hold onto more foolish ideas, but after this, their innocence about ‘war’ at least would be gone. For that, the facilitators of this mess might have given an unexpected boon to those who survived.

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

“XAVAK!”

The chants cut through the battle and he finally met his opponent. The demon, armed with a blade and shield, wore armour made of some kind of chitin, painted black and covered in red and gold patterns like beasts. His ‘guards’ ignored him and split past, aiming for the line behind him, or at least trying to.

He sneered inwardly as Dongmei hit one with an arrow, sending them flying 50 metres into another formation of demons.

{Mountain King’s Strike}

Focusing on his opponent, he sent out a surging strike-

His opponent deflected the strike, making his spear shake in his hand.

They traded blows again; this time he managed to avoid being driven back and cut the demon’s arm as it tried to cut him with its blade-

In response it smashed its sword off its shield and-

“Monkey Mo-!”

{Red Turtle Cliff}

He bit off the curse and managed to activate a defensive talisman just in time as Xavak vanished and hit the barrier with the force of a small meteor. The two of them smashed into the hillside behind him with enough force to produce a proper crater.

Shaking his head, he rolled away and swept back with his spear.

{Bamboo Cutter’s Sweep}

His spear swept out, making the demon jump to avoid the grass-cutting attack; tens of demons staggering up all around them were not so lucky though.

There was no time to collect himself though, because in the same instant, ‘Shatterpoint’ chimed in his mind and the hair on his arms and neck stood up-

{Feng Feng’s Devouring Eye}

An arc of lightning screamed across the battlefield, scattering cultivator and demon alike as it sought him out directly. His talisman blocked the worst of it, but to his surprise he saw that while lightning was crackling across Xavak, he was totally unhindered as he stalked forward, grinning nastily.

Shatterpoint drew his attention to the runes, tattoos carved into the demon’s skin, which he noted were awfully like moon runes – glimmering as lightning was actively repelled.

{Dragon from High Clouds}

With a yell, he charged the demon directly, punching out with his spear law, various principles and soul intent. The demon’s eyes widened, as it barely managed to block the blow with its shield, before trying to cut at the incoming spear with its blade, likely intending to take his forearm.

He swept the demon’s strike up, spinning the spear like a staff to smash it down towards his opponent’s feet, forcing a break in the other’s technique as it evaded having its leg broken and leapt backwards-

This time he expected the meteoric smash that came as his opponent surged forward, aiming to trap his spear near the ground, and properly collected its blow, striking upwards at the bottom of the shield with his spear.

The blow broke the momentum of the charge again as the demon was unable to correct its own deflected path and the worst of the intent that came with it scattered into the sky. As his opponent staggered back, he followed up the opening he had made, turning the spear in his hands as he advanced, the blade of his spear sweeping up inside the demon’s broken guard.

{Spiral of Heaven and Earth}

His comprehensions with spear law and earth law merged with his surroundings, managing to pull out a tiny sliver of sky law as well. The arc of the spear drew the sky down from above while his movement twisted the land around them, channelling it all towards the tip of his spear as he surged forward.

The demon howled and, showing remarkable martial acumen, charged into the attack, rather than away from it, seeking to minimize the amount of momentum he could gain.

Their blows connected and the lance of death blasted the demon backwards, carrying them both across the battlefield and into one of the advancing formations in the demons’ lines, turning most of it into a bloody mist. The aftershocks travelled up the hill, shattering limbs, breaking bodies and cracking space in eight directions until it was dissipated by the other truly formidable demon that stood at the crest, watching their fight.

This new arrival carried a halberd and was so densely covered in tattoos and black and red war paint it was nearly impossible to tell it had once had brown skin.

The demon he had fought staggered up, spitting blood, as the demons on the slopes all around howled and danced…

The demon roared something in their language and seemed to get bigger. He could almost feel the impact of their cheers on his opponent, merging with the drums again, to pull him-

-Oh… oh no.

A piece of the puzzle clicked, a thing that had been subtly gnawing at him since his first duel and the way it had ended.

-No, no, no… Those morons… I really will kill them when we are done here!

The weird luck, the fury, the unbreakable morale…

-No wonder the old demon was so obviously affected. He was the focal point of the whole army, and those idiots used a ‘Destined Star’ talisman on him?

He could see the whole pit suddenly, why things had spun on their heads… what that arrow had done… had found. That mysterious archer had seen the turning point and flipped the whole board over, turned misfortune into fortune and in doing so put them right in it – just because of the way that ‘accumulation’ worked for these demons.

-Idiot! I should have seen it when I saw the way they had such accumulation in that town!

-These demons are capable of fate melding.

-They are taking the disparate and making it more.

-They are using Martial Mantra and War Meditation… innately?!?

He closed his eyes for a second and exhaled, calming his nerves.

-No time to hide anything now.

-We have to finish this fast, because the more we kill, the more we push them, the harder this is going to become. They are feeding their own rage, the death, the slaughter, everything is making them stronger.

It was a dangerous strategy, brittle if evenly matched, but they were not evenly matched. The demons shared a commonality and a determination that their side did not, could not have, because they didn’t see the world in the same way.

“Sorry teacher, it seems I will have to cause you some problems,” he muttered, inhaling.

“UNFETTERED AND UNBOUND. I AM CANG!”

The declaration of his quasi Dao Seed made the entire battlefield grow still. His vitality surged and a ghostly symbol in his soul came to the fore and translated itself as ‘Health’ in his Sea of Knowledge.

The demon grinned and made to move-

He struck forward, driving it back with a series of brutal thrusts, qi roiling around him now.

His opponent stumbled backwards, desperately deflecting strikes and replying with attacks that carried echoes of Blade Law… and now Shield Law. Like spear law, both were simple, compared to the natural laws, but-

He felt a tug on his Dao Seed and the world went grey around him as he abandoned any pretence at not being thoroughly enraged. The attempt at nudging his ‘fate’ was eradicated by the ‘Health’ Symbol in his soul, which was now joined by a second one ‘Mountain’, overlapping the first. The two twisted and became ‘Yang’, shattering the attempted manipulation as the comprehensions of whoever had just used the talisman thoroughly failed to measure up to his own.

-When I get out of this I am going to make those malignant dogshit silkpants tip out their storage rings and give me all those fate-thrashed talismans using teacher’s talismanic avatar! he declared.

They knew what they were trying to do, and didn’t care about the consequences any more, it seemed.

-Consider this senior’s dalliance with decorum done with, he sneered, smashing another attack from the demon away.

A blade strike still managed to get through his guard, cutting deep into his arm as the other demon finally took the bait he had been setting out even as he let his rage build.

In return he finally got the opening he needed and smashed the spear through the demon’s shield, breaking it completely, piercing his side and planting him into the slope of the hill they were on. Ripping the spear out, he smashed it down again as the demon desperately blocked with his blade.

The clash of martial laws sent out a shockwave that shredded the whole area, their twin roars of rage freezing all the combatants in their area for a split second. The demon rolled up, but he saw it coming even before it happened, thanks to Shatterpoint, and, infusing yang earth qi into his intent, kicked the shield.

The impact shattered the land for a hundred metres in every direction, broke the hill, kicked a shockwave of dirt and rocks in every direction and probably shook trees miles away.

Unfortunately, it was prevented from making much headway into the demons’ lines by the halberd-wielding demon, who slammed the butt of his halberd into the ground and dispersed the worst of it, sending what could now rolling away to torment the flanks of this side of the battlefield and the cultivators’ lines.

-Sorry Dongmei, he grimaced, knowing she would not thank him for that unpleasant surprise.

Shatterpoint chimed again as he recovered himself, drawing his attention to another hill nearby, where the two robed demons had reappeared and were doing another strange ritual, dozens of chanting demons bowing to the skies. He could see the ripples of some kind of barrier around the hilltop as well this time.

-So they learned that lesson, he grimaced. Hopefully it’s not more lightning.

Advancing forward, he met the demon, Xavak, once more. His opponent was now wielding his blade two-handed, the injury he had dealt before merely serving to enrage his opponent further, it seemed.

They exchanged a dozen blows in rapid succession, spear and blade clashing and deflecting as they traded in both fury and technique as each blow became-

“Monkey Shit!” cursing himself as much as anything as the weight of the blade collided with his spear, he drew out his qi and martial intent to protect himself, his quasi Dao Seed shimmering in his Sea of Knowledge as he was surrounded by an ephemeral visage of a great mountain as the symbols in his mind merged briefly.

{Celestial Bronze Physique}

The blade strike cut the phantasmal mountain, deflecting slightly at the last, leaving a wicked gash down his shoulder, shattering part of his collar bone and sending a shockwave of blade law through his body that tried and failed to blend his inner organs and meridians into mush. In return, he managed to land a solid kick to his opponent’s stomach just before they were both repelled-

He crashed down in a small crater, thanking whatever passed for good fortune in this place that his attainments in his teacher’s inheritances were what they were.

Above him, hundreds of blue and white arrows were descending, fired from serried ranks of another band that had taken up station on a hill beyond the one he had just been fighting on. He could feel the tug of them clearly now, trying to find weaknesses in his fate.

“HAH!”

He narrowed his eyes and watched as the shockwave swept the arrows aside splintering-

Shatterpoint chimed, again drawing his eyes towards the critical threat, and he stepped aside as a pure white arrow with a black bone head that had been painted yellow split the air where his skull would have been. Even as he dodged back it exploded with enough force to be comparable to an Ancient Immortal Fire Element attack talisman.

He avoided the worst of it, but still had to stagger back even as two more arrows sought him out. He scattered both of them, turning to see an old demon carrying a bow on the main hilltop where the battle line was advancing from make a nasty gesture in his direction.

The demon, Xavak, who he had been fighting, had struggled to his feet, but his aura was less now. His opponent had lost the momentum with the breaking of that last attack, or perhaps put too much into it. Even so, his intuition told him that his opponent had likely gained more from their exchange than he had.

The battle around him was now in a terrible stalemate. The formations were facing off against the Jade Gate Court, who had at last been drawn into some kind of engagement beyond the hill.

Xin Dai was still basically fighting two of the old demons, supported by Zi Min and Quan Dingxiang and their cohorts.

Dongmei was trading arrows with various formations and keeping the two robed demons from wreaking a lot of havoc.

However, the surprise was that the sandy-haired woman was battling three on the slope below their lines – an archer, a sickle-wielding demon and the spear-wielding elder he had fought before.

She was… oddly familiar, now that he thought about it, and using…?

“Wave Law?” his own words sounded strange in his ears as he blurted that observation out loud.

That was an uncommon mastery among the junior generation. The abstract laws were even harder to grasp than the natural laws. That likely marked her as either a remarkable independent cultivator or someone associated with the Nine Moons or Dewdrop Sage Valley?

That said, he could not recall Dongmei ever really commenting on her at all?

Looking around, he could see she had all but eliminated the skirmishing forces that had come with the first wave; what remained had scattered to fight far away from here.

Vexingly, the Argent Imperial Hall had suffered little; the Four Peacocks Court, Beautiful Blessings Sect, Jade Gate Court and others were also looking in much better shape, clearly having done more to protect their own groups than help.

-So their determination now is to just bleed us dry, seize the momentum back and then…?

Dodging another arrow, that again exploded annoyingly close even after he dodged immediately a second time, he grimaced and palmed a Dao Sovereign talisman – ‘Sovereign Yang’s Heavenly Barrage’.

-Well, first let’s get rid of that second bunch of archers…

“…”

“Oh come on…” he grimaced, because while he was attuned, his soul sense went very weird as it swept towards the hill.

He swept it back across the battlefield and soon found what was going on. The central area around where they were fighting was just a bit chaotic, but the regions behind the battle lines, out of immediate line of sight were all now becoming shrouded in a way that made soul sense blurred and chaotic. It didn’t outright restrict it, but, now that he had fully unleashed his potential, he could feel the resonance of the drums which had been pounding away was linked to it.

Sending his sense across the camp, to the north, he sighed because there was another column of demons massing there. Unfortunately their numbers and strength were impossible for him to quantify. Interestingly it seemed to affect everyone, even the demons, but he could see how it was more beneficial to them to now begin to eliminate such a tactical advantage while they had a numbers advantage.

Continuing his sweep as he picked his way through the battlefield, periodically dodging arrows, he found that the drums were hidden somehow, probably by feng shui alignments.

What did draw his attention though, as he pushed back against the distortions, were two columns of combatants coming up from the south, each about 200 strong, wielding only melee weapons. They were all completely naked and covered in swirling red and blue designs to the point where it was nearly outlined camouflage against the grassland. All of them carried a brace of one handed axes and torches as well?

Their dancing and chanting as they ran was… frenzied, those running at the head waving jars of burning grass that sent swirls of smoke through the groups.

As they crossed over the hill, the demons fighting and skirmishing all started to chant and cheer.

The demons all lit their torches as they ran down the slope and immediately he saw what was happening as they started to emit a pall of acrid, misty smoke that was a virulent yin fire hallucinogen. The demons seemed to not care as they streamed towards them with frenzy now, wreathed in the smoke and unlimbering their weapons.

The points they were attacking were where forces were being forced up the hill from the battle behind, mainly those below Immortal strength who were unable to flee or fight with the formations being used.

-Gah! They really are good at war, he groaned inwardly.

He wasn’t the only one who had noticed the threat, as various people put out barriers and started to send talismans and arts at the new attackers. Unfortunately though, all the others on that flank were thoroughly pinned down-

Another wave of arrows scattered towards the near slope, reminding him that those archers were also a serious threat.

{Sovereign Yang’s Heavenly Barrage}

Shaking his head in annoyance, he targeted the talisman vaguely on the distant, shrouded hills and watched as a small sun shot up into the sky, twisting as it went. Behind him, the warriors arrived within range and hurled their axes, which hit the barriers and shattered them like glass!

He didn’t have time to care about that though, because the two robed demons sent a crackling bolt of purple-green lightning at his talisman, forcing him to ignite it prematurely. Thousands of blazing meteors shot down into the hills beyond, making the ground shake as they hit randomly across several square miles rather than focused on those two hills he had intended.

“Bah,” he spat and pulled out another talisman, considering one of the locations he suspected drums-

At that moment, the halberd wielder on the hill finally moved and, with a single, standing leap, travelled the whole distance towards him, striking down like a fisherman who had leapt for some great beast with his harpoon.

He dodged and sent a solitary spear strike back along the length of their battle line, dispersing some of the new attackers somewhat, killing maybe 30 and injuring half as many again.

The survivors didn’t even flinch as they unleashed a second rain of the strange stone axes at the hilltop.

The demon, whose attack he had evaded, stood, having recovered his halberd, and now blocked his path to the rest of the battle pretty much.

“I am Ilkurz, Ur’Vash of these lands,” the demon said, grinning toothily and planting his halberd on the ground.

“I… am Cang Di,” he said after a moment, “Disciple of the Shu Pavilion.”

“Ah… I had hoped you were a Grass Scorpion,” Ilkurz sounded a bit disappointed.

“…”

He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“The Maker’s Dancers have blessed our battle today,” Ilkurz continued, strolling towards him.

“THIS WAR CHIEF HAS FOUGHT WELL!” the roar echoed across the whole battlefield as Ilkurz levelled his halberd at him. “HE WILL DIE WITH MUCH HONOUR!”

All across the hills around them, the demons… Ur’Vash, as Ilkurz termed himself, howled and chanted in their own tongue, their determination surging yet again.

Exhaling, he set his spear and watched for an opening.

That had sounded awfully like a hint that those behind him would die ‘dishonourably’ somehow. In a weird way he didn’t actually begrudge them the desire to tear a huge strip out of the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall at least. However, others like Dongmei and Zi Min… even Quan Dingxiang were friends…

“UPHOLDING RIGHTEOUSNESS!” he roared, setting his spear. “THOUGH THE AEONSPAN MAY CRUMBLE, SHU OVERCOMES ALL! WE FIGHT TO THE END!”

Even if others did not uphold the courage and desire to fight against the heavens, that was no reason for him to cast aside those principles and fall to their level. The amount of martial intent he put into the shout drowned out the drums for a split second, pulling the various cultivators within earshot up out of their despair and imbuing them with an echo of his own determination.

-It is just not in my Dao Path to consign others willingly, he sighed, and launched his first attack at Ilkurz.

----------------------------------------

~ LIN LING – EDGE OF THE BATTLE LINE ~

----------------------------------------

“You have a terrible talent for statement-making,” Lin Ling muttered to her friend as they crouched amid a different set of rocks, watching chaos unfold.

“…”

Juni grimaced. “Look, I said I was sorry. I think someone tried to screw over the whole alignment of the battle and subvert matters…”

-Can I blame her? I was nearly caught as well…

She shuddered, thinking of how she had somehow been dragged down into those dark thoughts as well.

“In the end, I managed to salvage something out of it, it seems…” Juni added, before wincing as another detonation sent a shockwave over their locality.

“Yes, although whether it’s a brick to the head for us, the cultivators or the Ur’Vash is… debatable!” Teng Chunhua grimaced, wiping a bit of blood from her mouth.

Juni nodded, wiping a stream of blood from her own nose.

It had made a hell of a statement, she had to admit. It had turned over the momentum of both battle lines in different ways.

“It is a pity you didn’t manage to kill that disgusting little scoundrel,” Teng Chunhua added.

“If he is still alive, I’ll shoot his legs for you,” Juni added. “At least it proves that the arrows in this kind of circumstance are… effective.”

The problem, though, as they watched the ebb and flow of battle as the Ur’Vash’s second, much more concerted attack tore into the cultivators, was that it wasn’t quite going in the direction they needed it to. They could move with relative impunity near the Ur’Vash lines so long as they were careful, but so long as soul sense was still usable by the cultivators there was no question of them risking infiltrating the flank and heading for the camp behind to search for the prisoners.

The problem as far as she could see was, as Juni had pointed out earlier, that they had done too good of a job. The Ur’Vash had taken the threat seriously and sent an actual army to deal with the problem, and now they were winning without needing to restrict soul sense more than a fraction, mostly to keep their own lines warded from big talismans.

“This needs an extra nudge…” she scowled decisively as they all ducked, sheltering from the rocks that dropped around them from another distant explosion.

“Define… extra nudge,” Chunhua muttered.

“They are not locking soul sense down fully, and there are still more reinforcements arriving,” she sighed.

“Yeah, your plan worked too well,” Juni grimaced.

They watched the third wave of axe-throwing Ur’Vash assault the hill even as the different bands of cultivators splintered and evaded them as best they could.

“I feel my pride in Eastern Azure has taken a bit of a knock, watching this,” Teng Chunhua said eventually.

“So, what kind of nudge are we talking about?” Juni asked, looking sideways at her.

“The kind of nudge that should scare the loin cloths off those old Ur’Vash,” she sighed, sitting back. “They are keeping the formation half off because they think they are striking from a superior position.”

“Well they are,” Chunhua pointed out, pulling out another roasted longevity Lingzhe and nibbling on it to replenish a bit of her qi. “I am no strategist, but the losses they are taking are clearly acceptable to them and the cultivators’ advantages are limited because of attunement issues and disorganisation. If they can wipe them out and capture them like this…”

“They are,” she sighed again, standing up. “So this is probably something only I can do.”

“Oh…” Juni’s complex look made her feel bad.

“Anyway, I need all the highest rank spirit herbs you both have on you?”

“…”

Juni nodded, passing them across rapidly as she dumped a few inconsequential dried herbs out in return. Teng Chunhua followed suit a moment later, looking a bit confused.

“What do you plan to do?” Teng Chunhua asked.

“There is a technique I have from the memories that can… turn the tide of the battle on its head,” she explained. “It requires a bunch of rare spirit herbs though. I’ll make up what I use.”

“It’s fine,” Juni shook her head. “But… the blood? Are you sure?”

“I won’t go berserk?” she chuckled darkly. “If that happens – run away. There is nothing here stronger than that crazy one with the black spear.”

“In any case, it’s as much a part of me as my mantra, and, thinking about why my core formation failed… I think that’s the problem,” she added, giving Juni her best bright smile.

-And it was me running out of control that contributed to this sorry mess…

-So if you wretched, angry bastards can get us out of it, and save Han Shu, that is something you are gonna do! she directed that last bit to the angry, lazy and indifferent voices from the younger blood memories directly.

Juni stood abruptly and gave her a hug, which she returned after a moment. “Don’t… die… and don’t… don’t lose sight of what is ‘you’.”

“I won’t,” she replied, giving her best smile, not that she felt Juni bought it for a moment. “When the opportunity comes, don’t waste it. The entire battle will turn on its head. Find Han Shu… and the others and get out of here.”

“…”

She stared at Teng Chunhua for a moment… not really sure what she could say.

“Good luck,” Teng Chunhua said after a moment, looking a bit confused still, but apparently willing to just go with things.

As a final gift, she emptied all her spare arrows, bow and the other weapons out of her talisman and then, without further comment, turned and made her way rapidly through the rocks, keeping low and heading back through the edge of the Ur’Vash lines.

The sun was fully over the horizon now and starting to move upwards. Hard to credit that the fight below and around her had only taken… 30 minutes so far. As she went, she stripped off her garments and used her qi to scrub the dye off her skin and especially her hair – it was unnecessary and would cause awkward questions among observant Ur’Vash.

Covering herself in a grass cloak, she made her way across the broken ground and, unnoticed, wound her way around the perimeter of the Ur’Vash lines, heading towards the general direction of the cultivators’ trail.

The question of why her breakthrough had failed still bugged her. The impression she got was that it wasn’t her fault, so much as there had been some kind of incongruous disjunction between the memories, her core formation process and her physique. She had still broken through to Body Tempering though, which meant that she was ‘at’ Soul Foundation. Her grasp of intent had already been pretty good, but now that she had a grasp on how much she had advanced, she was fairly confident she could stably hold the ‘second stage’ of the transformation.

In theory, she could probably rely on her mantra to help her with the third stage as well, but that remained to be seen. That ran the risk of the memories taking over again, and while she had an understanding of sorts with the oldest memories, she was starting to see distinct problems with the more recent ones, many of which had pretty consuming defects – be they rage, apathy, arrogance and worse.

Clearing the Ur’Vash back line, she noted where the drums were, and, fleeing down the trail, started to prod at the ‘symbol’ in her mind’s eye, getting it to start on its side of things while she looked for a suitable spot.

That part, the finding of a suitable spot took her nearly ten minutes in the end. The land around here had various rocky outcroppings but she was determined to do this ‘properly’ this time, rather than in the rushed way she had back in the valley, or the instinctual way in the darkness.

The spot she selected had a vein of rock through which ran traces of yang-rich iron. These deposits were quite common but not pure enough that they could be easily exploited, she guessed. The main thing was that they had a fundamental association with ‘Earth’, which fed ‘Metal’. The hour of the day was such that the ‘Emergent Yang’ of the sunrise had thoroughly infused it. There was also water in the land, the grass around here was life-attuned with fire aspects.

It took a few minutes to draw out the basic symbols using the yang blood and link them up. After that, she put a pile of the fruits of the land attuned to each element on each symbol and then, sitting down In the middle of the circle, she took a pot of the yang blood out of her storage talisman and drew the rest of the array across her own body, connecting everything up to her heart, dantian and her third eye.

The last step was to drink the rest of the blood, which she did, wincing slightly as it went down. To her, the experience was akin to drinking too hot soup.

-Then again, anyone else who tries this would likely die screaming and very much on fire, she thought wryly.

Checking the formation one last time, she inhaled and exhaled, then pushed her qi into the array and started to initialise it.

‘State – Contain, Yang, Focus – Gather – Myriad, Land, Fortune – Link, State’

~{Breath of the Wild}~

This version had a few extra symbols in it, designed to take advantage of her advanced realm. She focused on the feeling of change as she drew out her qi armour, letting it form a shield around her that linked to the array.

Soon she was shrouded completely in a twisting gyre of yang qi, drawn out of the land, focused on her, not simply fuelling the transformation but enhancing it. The blood had a deep connection to this land, and her goal here was to basically capture a bit of that and use it to empower her. The concept was familiar to her, because it worked in exactly the same way that old ancestors of a clan could draw on the strength of a clan’s roots in their land.

The blood’s ancestors… the really old ones, not the angry young ones, had clear visual links to this place, the place this place was modelled on, in fact. This land was not the original; it was just a copy, a clone almost, in their eyes, but more than just shape and nature had come with it. The powers that had achieved this feat had even brought a facsimile of the most ancient aspects of that heritage.

Slowly the shield of qi drew out her blood, even as it contracted. She breathed calmly and circulated her mantra.

‘Blessing’ came first, connecting the yang within and the yang without.

‘Path’ was next, drawing that strength into her meridians and ensuring that it didn’t overwhelm her.

‘Lotus’ drew it all into her dantian, rejuvenating the cycle and regulating it as her body continued to transform.

‘Body’ sent the qi, merged intent and what she suspected was burgeoning soul intent through her whole body, unifying the aspects of the transformation.

‘Gift’ made the final link between the symbol of her physique, the memories, her dantian, the yang of the land and the rest, feeding back into ‘Blessing’.

Moment by moment, her whole body began to change, even as the mantra and the symbol synergised. She could feel the skin across her back slowly extrude scales, then bony plates.

They formed on her shoulders, her thighs, her calves, down her forearms, turning into crude armour. Last, bony plates formed out of her hair, even as it grew, winding through the rest, forming another layer of armour that was close to scales that covered most of her body. On her forehead she had something approaching an armoured helmet with several short horns.

The plates covering her body, weren’t really bone, she knew, not properly, but rather closer to something between bone and hair. Still, even as she was, they were hard enough to turn even Juni’s spear unless she got the angle just right.

After that, she had to stand, because her bones began to twist and change, her spine extending to form a tail that was almost as long a she was.

Gritting her teeth, she was forced to her knees as her back grew vertebral bone protrusions and then extra scales along her sides.

Shrugging her shoulders, she felt her musculature continuing to change, snapping and popping faintly. The whole experience was not ‘painful’ but it was singularly discomforting. She stretched again, getting used to the change and then pulled out a jar of…

It was slightly smaller in her hands, which were slightly clawed. Her height was no longer around 150 cm, but closer to 250 cm.

Shaking her head, which also felt a bit weird with her restricted neck movement, she drank down the rest of that container as the last plates finished growing out of her hair. Her eyes had changed as well, growing more like those of the creatures who comprised the early memories. And with that change came an increased ability to see the alignments of the world itself, and qi… which was rather disorientating.

The memories in the blood shivered and surged, the old ones helped her adjust, but the newer ones struggled and felt… greedy. She grimaced at that and let the mantra do its thing, hoping that it would keep them in check.

Qi began to form around her again, flowing off her to form armour, layering over the transformation. The symbol slowly started to appear like a repeating design all over the scales. The most surprising thing there was that she wasn’t that drab. She had expected red and brown, but not the blue, green or gold, or the flashes of iridescence.

Power surged through her, such as she had never felt up until now… while remaining thoroughly her. The connection to the land remained, just as she had hoped as well, her body now imbued with the strength of yang from both it and the blood.

“ALRIGHT!” she yelled, in the tongue of the blood.

Grinning, she watched as the grass shifted, trees swayed and the ground hummed as the sound rolled out across the plains, arrived at the battlefield and even momentarily drowned out the distant drums, chants and explosions.

She drank another draft of the blood, storing the empty pot away again. It was pleasantly warm now, flooding her body with yang qi and infusing further strength into her qi armour, which was still growing around her body and stabilising.

-This is a bit outside my expectations, she added inwardly.

-It is because this place is in harmony with true yang, one of the old voices cackled.

She devoured several of the True Yang herbs from her storage talisman, which was now tied securely around her neck, nearly subsumed into the armour plating that now extended like a cape across her shoulders and down over her breasts. Her hands had not changed much more, she was glad to see, but she definitely had ‘claws’.

Her transformation finally stopped when she was just over three metres tall, six if she counted her tail, which now had a few wicked spikes on it. Her scales had assumed a dominant golden tint…

-Because of your hair. It is unusual, another chuckled.

The rising power within her pushed her to see how strong her roar had become now. She massed her qi and, pushing it in accordance to the pulsing natural rhythms of her blood’s memories, roared:

“DIN OUYENG!”

“THIS LITTLE SISTER IS GOING TO KILL YOU AND EAT YOUR FOUNDATION!”

The words made sense to her… but really only ‘Kill’ was likely to be vaguely intelligible to anyone else along with the clear intention that that dying would be unpleasant within the shocking sound that reverberated through a savannah already jarred by her roar.

The drums fell silent… the sound of battle ended as people and orcs… Ur’Vash she corrected that minor intuitive change, stared wildly around, seeking the source of the noise.

Without much care, she started to run towards the back of their lines, discovering that after a few strides it was actually easier to run almost on all fours, thanks to the addition of the tail. Without the memories’ instinctual understanding she would have probably been quite ungainly, she had to admit.

The Ur’Vash, for their part, spotted her quite quickly, given she was making no effort to hide and was a charging ball of yang qi probably quite unlike anything they had ever set eyes on. Several powerful soul senses tried to lock her down from different directions, but they slid off her like water drops on rock.

On a certain level, this was basically an unfair matchup. Her blood contained a soul strength far in excess of anything present here and she was directly drawing upon the alignments of the world to support her transformation. The disparate bands massed together were largely weaker than the spider-riding Orcnéas that had besieged them in the jungles.

They had had dozens of fighters at the peak of the 7th Circle, her memories told her, and several experts even stronger, such as the orc with the terrible twisted robe and the half-blood wielding the spear made of fused bones of their ancient kin.

-Dammit you just slip these things in there! Every damn time! She cursed them.

The memories laughed, amused, and she turned back from them and focused on one of the larger groups of ritual drummers ahead of her. The orcs-

-Ur’Vash, she corrected again, overriding the younger blood memories even as they tried to bombard her with horrific scenes of what ‘orcs’ did to their kith and kin.

Her opponents were backing up now, hunters loosing arrows at her that just shattered on her scales even as those memories kept twisting like slippery eels deeply unhappy at the shackles she was putting on them with her mantra.

An arrow did get through, hammering into her shoulder, and exploded with enough force to make her slow but that was it.

Seeing the utter lack of effect, other Ur’Vash started backing up, their expressions and words they were trading definitely conveying that she was not what they had come here to fight.

Morale was a nebulous thing among Ur’Vash, the memories had told her. Drawn out battles were in their favour, because the more they got a grip on their circumstances the more flexible that shared connection became. Similarly, cut them off and give them no way out and they would double down and try to beat you to death with anything to hand.

They could be almost unbreakable, if you were incautious, but more often than not, that did have limits and when they reached those limits that unbreakable momentum was brittle. If you delivered big enough shocks and didn’t give them time to build momentum they could suffer huge morale spirals.

As she turned, warriors who had been heading to the front, another wave of the axe-wielding, torch-bearing ones, split off from the slopes of nearby hills, charging down at her en-masse. She noted with amusement that most were daubing on extra blue and black as they roared at others who were falling back.

The drums elsewhere started back up, carrying an intent she identified as ‘black’ and then also ‘blue’. The combination was strangely upbeat, almost jaunty – in an ear-rupturing way.

Behind them, she spotted two old Ur’Vash, elders from Ajara, moving down the slope; one with a great bow, the other with a 2-handed sword.

From her left, a formation of archers and the glaive users, carrying a banner with a horned jaguar, was also rapidly closing, their drummer hammering manically as qi coalesced around it. A smart formation, but unfortunately, she was not that kind of prey.

-Them first, the memories noted.

-Duhh! was all she shot back at them.

“BURN”

The word sank into her mind, somewhat fuelled by her annoyance, and she projected it in their general direction without even breaking stride. Yang attribute fire qi surged from her surroundings, her dantian, her body, and unified to flow through her meridians, and merge with the words.

A sheet of rippling distortion flowed across the grassland, turning a swathe of half a square mile around the unfortunate banner of Ur’Vash into a wasteland of drifting charcoal and popping bones and a burning banner.

The others rushing forward nearly stumbled as she turned back in their direction, and, with a single bound, crashed almost 40 metres straight into their advancing line and rolled forward through them.

Her qi surged again, this time knitting to wood and earth, drawing energy from the herbs dissolving in her dantian and pushing it to her limbs, as she spun over in the air and slammed her tail down on the ground with another roar.

“FRACTURE”

The ground all around her cratered as True Yang Earth Qi and Wood Qi sank into the ground around her, splintering the shallow bedrock and uplifting the entire area around her for hundreds of metres in a localised earthquake that outright killed anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the rings of shatter sweeping out from the shockwave of her impact. Everyone else was stunned, with the survivors sent flying, limbs shattered and qi dispersed.

It collapsed the charging Ur’Vash trying to reinforce from all directions ahead of her into chaos. Rising, she drove straight through another line, sweeping her tail in a wicked arc that sending them flying, bleeding and broken, before she crashed into a rapidly reforming line of spears.

Those, she just rolled over, letting her qi armour do the work as it enlarged around her to form an enlarged size facsimile of her current form – a terror of phantasmal armoured plates, spines and claws.

Singling out another banner, drew on her qi again.

“BURN!”

This time, the sound transformed into a searing crescent of yang-attributed fire qi that swept through the group like a scythe, melting flesh and setting the grass on fire. Those who could take cover amid the shattered landscape just about survived, badly burnt. The unlucky ones crumbled to ash still howling in desperate bravado.

Turning back, she found the two Ur’Vash Elders had arrived before her. She turned an arrow with her shoulder armour, wincing slightly as it exploded again. By way of reply, she rolled forward, tumbling in mid-air, and sliced down at the sword-wielder with her tail.

The strike missed as he dodged to the side and struck out at her, his blade and the strength of his principle biting deep into the armour but skittering off her scales, drawing a line of blood below one and nothing more.

Sneering inwardly, she smashed the ground on her landing, making the entire reverse of the hillside above her start to subside under the force of the impact.

Two soul senses targeted her directly, then a third… and a fourth, finally a fifth, the strongest of all.

That last one belonged to an old Ur’Vash wearing the flayed robes of some unfortunate Ur’Vash, who was hurrying towards their combat. The others belonged to the two elders fighting her and the two coming from beyond the old mage. The first was the hulking, chitin-armoured Ur’Vash carrying a blade who had been fighting with ‘Cang Di’. The other, an old, scarred Ur’Vash wearing a few bits of armour crafted from blackened bone and carrying a great axe.

Their combined attempt to lock her down was… spirited, she had to acknowledge, but the robed Ur’Vash was not close to the shaman of the Orcnéas, never mind the old Jotnar.

Looking at them, she grinned broadly.

“You weak little Orcs want to fight me?”

She spoke softly, for there was no reason for her to shout: her qi projected the words, spoken in Easten, easily for everyone within several hundred metres around the shattered field back lines to hear.

“The old spider devil… The orcnéas priest was far stronger than you lot. His treasures could not save him…”

With an inner eye roll, she pulled out the tattered robe, suddenly glad that she had picked it up, even if this was a rather ignoble use for it. It was also theatre at a certain level, but she had killed two others wearing similar robes, even if it was Juni who delivered the blow.

The Ur’Vash, especially the old Ur’Vash, stared at her dully as she stalked forward. Many were backing away properly now, staring in horror at the ruined robe of corpses she held in her hand.

-Ah, if I had kept the spear rather than lend it to Juni, it would have added some useful emphasis, she sighed with regret.

The distant thunder of the drums didn’t change, although she sensed a shift in their rhythm as the drummers fought against their own instinctual fear, having heard the whisper of her words carried across the distant battle.

-And yet still they are being cagey little orcs, she complained inwardly, again wondering if, in her desire to push them to the limit, she had again accidentally pushed them too far with the robe.

Sighing, she grasped the final bit of the puzzle, the words shifting out of memory and into her mind’s eye. Before she hit Body Tempering, this would not have been possible, not without relinquishing control to the blood. Now though, she had that tiny sliver of soul intent, and that was enough for the memories to hang power on.

The words were a whisper rather than a roar now… She couldn’t manage more than that if she wanted to use this a few times. Her qi shifted and the nebulous soul intent within her blood shifted and connected with that little sliver, even as the Ur’Vash elders steeled their resolve and fanned out, advancing on her.

“~Soul Break~”

The mage and the axe-wielder staggered, coughing up blood.

The warrior who had fought Cang Di groaned and bled from his eyes, looking pale.

The two Ur’Vash from Ajara staggered and seemed to age visibly, also bleeding from their eyes.

Every other Ur’Vash within earshot staggered and collapsed drunkenly, many bleeding from all their orifices or frothing at the mouth.

Looking around the surroundings she had just cast into utter disarray, she grinned nastily.

“As I said – You Are Weak…”

Stepping forward again, she reached for the old orc with the sword, grasping him around the neck. She was actually a little bigger than him, even with his thick set form, she was able to grasp him easily with her fingers which were gaining claws slowly as she did so.

“Why should I tolerate you and your kind here? You whose ancestors hunted my people across the grasslands of Ancient Aerth and grasped my ancestors as trophies for your future descendants?”

The words weren’t just spoken by her, but by the blood memories themselves, as a bit of the rage, even from the older memories, filtered through to her as she took up the shield of their fight as well.

The old orc stared at her, horror reflected in his eyes.

Grinning broadly, she mustered her qi and soul intent again, finding it much easier the second time.

“~Soul Brea-

Just in time to save him, she felt the locking constriction of a full formation's descent on her, distant orcs with banners smashing them in the ground and screaming their activation words even as she lifted the old orc up to kill him.

The drumming re-intensified and several hundred more orcs pulled back over the ridge, mostly archers. To her right, she could see two more groups of halberd and bow wielding Ur’Vash, their beast totems already partially materialized, moving forward to capitalise now as well.

The other Ur’Vash around her all breathed deep signs of relief and rapidly regrouped, apparently believing they now had the upper hand. To lead them on in that idea, she feigned a bit of a stagger as several arrows exploded ineffectually against her armour, letting the old Ur’Vash she had grabbed half escape her grasp as she cast him to the ground with a disgusted snarl.

Checking her condition, she grimaced, noting that the expenditure of the blood within her system was a bit more than she would have liked. The array would keep catalysing it, but if she ran out, the link might be broken and that would be bad. While she did have several dozen gallons of the stuff in jars, drinking it openly in battle would be somewhat… suboptimal, for the scene she was trying to set.

Thankfully, now that all soul sense, irrespective of cultivation realm or side, was properly blotted out, the battle became much simpler for her. As a bluff it was kind of funny, because she had no manifestation to use, therefore all it did was rule out a few tricks like ‘Soul Break’. It could even be said to benefit her somewhat because it unwittingly stopped them sapping the passive soul intent in the blood, which she couldn’t use freely anyway.

The orc rolled out of the way as the archer put another arrow in their bow. She didn’t bother chasing either, because it would be impossible for her to catch him. He had a principle, but wasn’t really using it because he didn’t want to be exposed. If she accidentally revealed she didn’t have one, they could pretty much kick her about like a ball, even if the damage they did was non-existent while she just tired herself out chasing them.

The sword-wielding one arrived at her side and cut deep into her qi armour again, while the blade-wielding one attacked her front and the axe wielder circled around behind.

Chasing wasn’t necessary anyway, because she had other tools to play with, that they couldn’t run away from now soul sense was sealed.

“SHATTER”

Fixing the sword wielder in her mind, her qi surged and the spatial comprehensions from the blood flooded into the word she spoke, shaking her body as she did so. It left spider cracks in the world around them as the shockwaves travelled through air and ground alike. Rallying Ur’Vash and those who had been mustering their spirit banners were thrown into disarray.

The target of her attack, the sword-wielding orc, coughed blood and tumbled back as the others staggered, looking shocked. This time she didn’t bother to kick him, instead just picking him up with both hands she hurled him over the hill with all the strength she could muster, watching with satisfaction as he bounced twice, scattering the lines of advancing archers before skipping over the ridge, and dropped from her sight.