> The third ‘campaign’, the so-called ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood’, caused massive ructions throughout the territories of the Huang, Kong and Sheng. While the Mo clan’s apparent willingness to take money over face at nearly every turn in the aftermath caught many off guard, it allowed the Huang clan the opportunity to claim a sort of awkward victory in the eyes of their more ardent supporters.

>

> They also touted widely that they would have won, had God Slaughtering Hall not ‘interfered’, in contravention with many formally established agreements in the matters of the Heavenly clans, and that the Mo had effectively been forced to hide in its shadow through their thoroughly fortuitous, in the eyes of many, links to a Saintess of the hall.

>

> That the Mo clan were happy to just shrug and still show up demanding reparations, ‘hiding’ behind that strength, did nothing to help these perceptions. Many of those powers effectively doubled down, arguing, even as they paid over huge sums, that it was all because of God Slaughtering Hall and that this was bullying by sideways means.

>

> The final straw, really, was the vast, overinflated sums that various powers and the Huang clan had to pay to ransom back the eight juniors who had been captured by Mo Xiao, simply to avoid the ignominy of the Mo clan parading them widely in their own territory.

>

> As such, when the five great powers set up the ‘Young Sovereign’ competition, as much as a way to stimulate morale, while they did reach out to the cardinal courts, such was the ill sentiment among many regarding God Slaughtering Hall, and so widely had the outcome of the war been complained over, that there was little serious engagement with them, and as a result the other three, Turquoise Pond, North Star Grotto and Vast Obscurity Grove, were, if not disrespectfully disregarded, perhaps not given the due concern that they might otherwise have expected. This would, when the Heavenly Hundred was later set up, become a source of many bitter regrets.

-Excerpt from ‘Annals of Three Wars’

  By Wen Beixong

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~ TENG CHUNHUA – UR’VASH BATTLE LINES ~

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Once Lin Ling departed, they both started to work their way through the rocks, around the edge of the battlefield and towards the camp the cultivators had set up. She was still somewhat perplexed about what exactly Lin Ling planned to do – right up until a terribly familiar, soul-shaking roar swept through the battlefield.

She flinched instinctively, even with the protection of ‘One with What Is’ and looked over at Juni as bits of the puzzle slotted into place in ways that just left more questions than answers.

“Was that… Lin Ling?” she signed, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

“…”

Juni stared at her for a long moment then just nodded, before waving for her to advance forward. All around them Ur’Vash who had been flanking this end of the line, shooting mainly at the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall groups, were turning to look behind them now.

“…”

“She was the one who demolished the valley, and fought the spider tribe,” she signed, not really believing it even as she suggested it.

“Yes,” Juni just nodded, squinting across the hill.

“This is going to be annoying. Suddenly I really wish I had soul sense,” the other woman signed with a sigh.

“I have a divination talisman that can do that. It will work on anyone below Immortal,” she signed back.

“Oh?”

“Bandits,” she signed with a sigh, ducking behind a rock as a bunch of Ur’Vash ran past ahead of them, shooting arrows at a small formation of green-robed figures who had fallen back up the hill.

A second, immense and very obviously enraged roar twisted the landscape, making her ears ring faintly.

“And she has a few anger issues… stemming from her time in the depths and how we ended up in there,” Juni muttered. “We both do, in fairness.”

“...”

There wasn’t much she could add to that, really.

“Don’t overthink things,” Juni sighed, waving for her move forward.

“Hah!” She shook her head and sighed softly as a huge tremor shuddered through the ground, making rocks shift and leaves fall from trees.

Certainly, she had ‘questions’ but she was pretty sure Juni would not answer them. Based on what Lin Ling had explained earlier, she could piece together a few things, but the ominous implication behind ‘anger issues’ made her suddenly wonder if this wasn’t a bit more personal than just Han Shu.

Lin Ling had been by far the most antisocial of the trio… which was also at odds with what little she knew of the younger girl by reputation.

There was another sky roar from behind and a series of fluctuations in the ambient alignments that were traumatically familiar as yang strength surged in the world. Somehow, within it, the intent held a sense of ‘Devour’ and ‘Kill’ which made her skin grow cold and clammy in the heat.

-Yep, definitely levelled that valley, a part of her sobbed. That’s not normal power for a Mantra Seed cultivator.

“That’s still not good enough, it seems!” Juni signed, adding an annoyed gesture as they continued to move forward, ghosting along with the now much less confident advance of the skirmish line.

To their left, Ur’Vash were still storming up the slope, tearing into pockets of disparate cultivators who were caught adrift between the bigger groups.

“So, how are we going to do this?” she frowned, pushing those thoughts away.

“I guess we try to grab someone below Immortal who gets soul shocked and ask them about prisoners?” Juni grimaced.

“…”

She hesitated to call it a plan, but she really didn’t have much better to offer, so could only nod.

All around them the battle raged now, waves of Ur’Vash charging across the open ground as their progress devolved into zig zagging back and forth, following various bands and occasionally loosing off arrows to disrupt the lines ahead of them as they continued to work their way forwards.

The battle on the far flank and in the middle had intensified rapidly as well, various techniques and explosions shaking the now thoroughly ruined landscape in that direction as the experts on both sides continued to clash.

She also couldn’t help but note a surprising number of Ur’Vash were now moving behind them, heading for the shores of the lake?

“Are they trying to flank?” she signed over to Juni, who just shrugged as they took refuge behind an uplifted bit of rock from another barrage of fire element talismans.

Before they could ponder that though, an immense martial intent swept over the battlefield. Strangely it didn’t really affect either of them too badly.

“YOU HEAR THAT, WEAK HUMANS?”

The words, in Easten, hit the cultivator lines ahead of them like a hammer blow, making weaker ones stagger and a few formations on the edge actually collapse.

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE GHOBLAN, THE UNDREN AND THE AELF SAY WHEN THEY WALK INTO A DRINKING BROTHEL?” Ur’Vash roared, his martial intent washing over the whole ridgeline.

All around them, Ur’Vash who had been pushed down, their moment slowly ground away by wave after wave of talismans, which, as they had expected, were the cultivators’ main weapons of war here, started to hoot and jeer.

“AT LEAST WHEN WE GET DRUNK AND KILL EACH OTHER, PEOPLE WILL NOT CALL US STUPID HUMANS! HUMANS NOT EVEN ABLE TO AGREE ON WHICH BROTHEL OR WHERE TO GET DRUNK BEFORE DYING, THEY SO STUPID!” She nearly put her hands over her ears, such was the volume of sheer sound was projected by the shout.

“…”

“…”

As she shared a fairly disbelieving look with Juni, all around them Ur’Vash, who had been a bit indecisive, had recovered themselves and began charging forward. It also provided them with an opportunity to advance where before they had been basically going sideways back into the battle lines.

The Ur’Vash ahead of them were mainly focused on the cultivators ahead of them, trying to dodge talismans and pick off stragglers. She had seen three go down already, incapacitated by arrows and then hacked apart by the warriors surging forward in pockets now.

A cataclysmic roar from beyond the ridge made her wince and shiver. Warmth ran down her face and she tasted iron. Wiping her hand across her nose, she sighed and moved her mantra to stymie the nosebleed.

All around them, the soul-shaking component of the attack was clear on both sides. The battle had been effectively stopped by it. Ur’Vash were retreating back across their ridge, the cultivators across from them panicking properly as well.

The shockwaves that came were something she half expected, having been in the valley, and seen what Lin Ling was apparently capable of wreaking somehow. And yet they still unnerved her. Juni tensed as well. The proper soul attack washed past her with a roar that barely registered, thanks to 'One with What Is'.

-So she is also concerned…

-Which really doesn’t help! A part of her added.

“They took the bait,” Juni signed, looking relieved. “Let’s go!”

Nodding, she rose and followed Juni as she rapidly started to run towards the scattered, disorganised line of cultivators ahead of them-

She dove behind a rock as a cultivator on the ridge wearing the robe of the Argent Justice sect hurled a talisman in their general direction, targeting the group ahead of them.

“VILE DEMON! I HOPE YOU BURN!”

She winced as the martial intent within it clawed at her, even as the talisman exploded in a gout of silver fire that swept through the grassland and shrubs all around them. Recognising him as one of the ‘Immortal’ experts who had left the others behind early on, she sneered slightly, set an arrow to her bow and shot it at him.

The black-tipped, purple and blue arrow, dipped in Lin Ling’s ‘yang blood’, punched through the barrier around that group, the cultivator’s qi armour and his armoured robe to pierce all the way through his shoulder. He fell backwards with a wretched scream, his robe actually catching on fire as others nearby turned in shock to see what had happened.

Juni waved for her to move up, even as she also sent an identical arrow into that group. It again ghosted through all the barriers and hit a second disciple, wearing a glittering gold robe, in the stomach, sending him sprawling. His screams as the yang qi ate into his body echoed unnervingly-

The entire hill where the Ur’Vash had been mustering erupted like someone had hit it with a huge axe. That guess turned out to be quite right, as what she could only assume was Lin Ling, looking a bit like a cross between a human, a pangolin and a turtle crashed down in its ruin, followed by an old Ur’Vash wielding a great axe.

“THERE!”

The shout caught her attention even as Juni, who was ahead of her, threw herself flat.

A sheet of fire kicked up in front of them as a talisman obliterated part of the rocky grassland they were in. She slapped down a barrier talisman – because the alternative was a deeply unpleasant death – and scrambled down another small hollow to land beside Juni.

“This is really not going to-”

They both trailed off as two cultivators, one in dusty travelling robes, the other in the green of the Jade Gate Court, slid down the opposite side of the hollow and stopped, staring at them.

Neither of them had cultivations she could see through, but she would have doubted her eyes if she did find a Golden Core disciple still alive in the battlefield at this point that wasn’t an Ur’Vash. She was marginally faster than Juni, palming a stealth talisman and leaping across at the pair.

One shot to the side, effortlessly avoiding her strike, which she had expected. It was only to buy time for Juni to plant an arrow in the chest of the one wearing travelling robes. There was an explosion and she felt their qi turn chaotic and flow away from them.

“Die!”

She rolled away from the one from the Jade Gate Court and put a cage talisman on the ground as she did so. He shot right over the top of it, not even noticing until it enveloped him in a swirling morass of unstable qi that rapidly began to disperse its captive’s own qi reserves even as they struggled.

“You… you…” the disciple rasped.

Pulling out the divination talisman, she slapped it onto the disciple’s head, watching as his eyes became unfocused.

Glancing over, she saw Juni had divested the other of their storage ring and knocked them out.

“Where are the prisoners?” Juni commanded the youth.

“Prisoners?” he gasped. “The seniors took the female demons to the other camp?”

“…”

“That was not quite what we wanted to hear,” she sighed grimly.

“Just the female?” she asked.

“I… yes… the… injuries, use them to recuperate,” the disciple volunteered after a struggle. “More… than… deserve… but using demons… it is their honour.”

“Right,” Juni sneered. “And the other prisoners?”

“Other prisoners?” he rasped.

“You have other prisoners, we saw, captured near the forest,” she added.

“…”

He just looked confused. “The rebels?”

“Where are they?” she pressed.

“In… the main camp, over… the ridge…” he gasped. “All I…”

She sighed, because blood was starting to run from his nose now.

Juni moved behind him and sent a pulse of qi into his body, making him slump down, unconscious.

“So, we have to cross their lines after all,” she sighed.

“It does look that way. I am bothered by that other camp he mentioned as well,” Juni frowned.

“We could have asked him?” she pointed out.

“He doesn’t know anything,” Juni sighed deeply. “My divination art is going crazy in many ways but it’s quite good at that kind of thing.”

“I see…” she nodded, then ducked as a massive explosion ripped apart the landscape beyond where they were.

“They brought the banners around this side as well,” Juni grumbled, peeking over the edge of the hollow.

Scrambling up, she looked over at that side and saw… a hellscape, or what passed for one at least. Two formations of Ur’Vash and several formations of cultivators were battling it out between them, the distant lake and the nearest edge of the camp.

The explosion had originated from the meeting of a cloud of corrosive mist from a serpent formation and a large sheet of familiar green-gold fire that been sent forth by a formation of six from the Jade Gate Court.

“How did they end up with such a weirdly good defensive position,” Juni grimaced.

“So, we go over the ridge? With the main wave of attacking Ur’Vash?” she asked, regretting suggesting it even as she said it.

“Well, unless you want to try getting through a battle between that lot over there unscathed, yes,” Juni muttered as they watched the serpent clash again, this time with a phantasmal sword the size of a small house.

“…”

“Well, at least we can skulk,” she noted, “but do we do it as Ur’Vash… or as cultivators?”

“Let’s try as we are. First, there are very few female disciples among the Jade Gate Court from what I have seen, and not many in the Argent Hall either,” Juni observed as they ran along the dip in the grassland in the direction of the ridgeline.

She grimaced and ducked her head again as the ground all around them shook. The mob of screaming Ur’Vash who they had been shadowing made it across the short distance under its cover and began to assault the lines ahead with renewed ferocity. Watching them, they waited until they had mostly engaged with one of the smaller groups, then scrambled over the edge of-

Juni suddenly grabbed her, dashing for a different hollow, ten metres to their right-

She landed in mud as, ahead of them, the rear of that entire group, two others to their left and the area they had been in were all abruptly enveloped in a twisting cage of collapsing space – the perpetrator was a masked disciple from the Jade Gate Court. They both dropped and a moment later a wave of misty red gore swept outwards, coating everything in blended Ur’Vash.

“Block the slope!” someone else yelled.

“The Seniors are going to strike at it!” another voice called over.

“Senior Hao! Fighting!” a third yelled.

“THE COURT IS RIGHTEOUS!” more voices called out from further along.

Scrambling up, she found several shimmering barriers were-

A talisman appeared in the air, almost overhead, rupturing and binding them to the land they were on, strange chains grasping them and tens of Ur’Vash who were still moving forward.

“DEMONS! PREPARE YOURSELVES!” one of the disciples from up above yelled at them gleefully.

“You will all die in agony!”

“Yes, Seniors are going to end it! Glory to the Imperial Court!”

“Glory to the Court!” the refrain was picked up as more disciples gathered around the group from the Jade Gate Court to their left.

She stared at the barrier. It appeared to be an Immortal grade one that just locked movement rather than qi manipulation. Pulling out a ‘barrier breaker’ talisman, she dispelled its effect on their surroundings, freeing most of the other Ur’Vash ahead of them in the process. The group on the slope, clearly caught off guard, scattered even as several fell.

Following after them, she put an arrow in the back of the one who had claimed they would all die in agony. It felt only fair really.

Scrambling through a melted divot a few metres wide, caused by an earlier earth attack, they crossed between the groups without looking back. Even with soul sense restricted, there was no way she was going to risk drawing the attention of a big bunch of cultivators.

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

~ CANG DI – MIDDLE OF THE BATTLE LINE ~

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“Gah!” He spat blood from his mouth, then gritted his teeth, bringing his errant qi under control.

“Die!”

Ilkurz, whose recovery was better than his own, it was becoming clear, launched a lunging attack through the pall of dust and fire still swirling around them, seeking to exploit the opening made.

Both of them had been caught off guard by the roar and the disrupting strength of yang earth it had stimulated as it passed. The crater, though, was the work of his own ‘side’, nebulous as that was. One of the groups defending the camp had seized the opportunity to target a talisman formation on their duel – it had been ostensibly aimed at Ilkurz, but earth attribute explosions were not known to be selective.

-I suppose it was only a matter of time before other things started noticing this mess, he grimaced.

The roar had had vestiges of the reclusive earth lizards that the camp had caught occasional traces of or heard as they made their way through the Badlands. Two groups that joined up with them had done so after getting mauled by one, and their descriptions of the battle pitched the lizards as more vexatious than the rock scorpions.

He made to sweep his soul sense over the ridge again to see what was what, only for Ilkurz to resolutely launch another attack, a scything, downward slash with his halberd. He parried the blow, grimacing again as his arms shook.

-Curse you, qi, get back under my control! You are meant to be refined for fates’ sakes! he complained inwardly as the energy flowing in his meridians continued to quietly revolt.

It was hard to say if that was because of the roar or the talisman.

They had been trading moves like this, dancing in a sea of carnage between the two armies for long enough that they had the measure of each other. His judgement there was that Ilkurz was probably the strongest opponent he had ever fought in this manner that was not a qi beast. Neither of them were able to make any particular headway and as such this entire flank of the cultivators’ main camp defence had become inadvertently anchored on their duel, which was becoming a focal point for the various shifting alignments all around him in ways he really didn’t like.

For their part, the Ur’Vash had been content to just keep this flank tied up, occasionally sending probing attacks to torment the back of the hill. Those defending the main camp were basically hiding behind barriers, using the odd martial formation to block the Dao Soul spirit totems and occasionally extolling others to ‘fight harder’ so the Jade Gate Court could prepare something or other.

-Really the fates are just laughing at us now, he sighed, continuing to trade flickering spear strikes with Ilkurz. Barely a third of our forces are engaged – and of the rest, those mostly capable are just sitting on their hands, doing the bare minimum.

It was a perfectly sound strategy, but not a good one to be caught in the middle of.

-That said, this is at least giving me an opportunity to whet my comprehensions of spear law-

The drums shifted, becoming more focused and deep, and now it was Ilkurz’s turn to be distracted as if…?

Shatterpoint chimed ominously in the same instant and he had a faint premonition of something…?

-Words?

It was almost like intuitively perceiving the up-strike of a lightning bolt.

The world swam in his vision as sound faded away, the sky trembled and the grass shivered. His qi went totally chaotic as the natural alignments of a law so esoteric and pure he could barely grasp that it related to ‘Yang’ distorted. The actual words, when they arrived a second later, in a language he had only truly heard spoken twice, punched through his and certainly the psyche of every other thing within earshot capable of conscious thought.

“DIN OUYENG! -- KILL YOU --- DEVOUR -- FOUNDATION!”

He avoided falling – barely – and was thankful to see that, if anything, Ilkurz was worse affected than he was. Nobody else was faring any better either. The formations on the hill were thrown into disorder; the weaker cultivators had been knocked unconscious just by exposure to the nascent intent within the words spoken.

He coughed up blood that glittered gold faintly, not even able to muster words to curse. Having dragons scream threats in your general vicinity in their ancestral tongues had a tendency to do that. The ‘Language of Mythical Creatures’, as it was sometimes called collectively, was all about active intent. Even the weakest dragon had a fundamental and innate grasp of intent from the moment they were born – for them, speaking was just a form of attack.

Dragons, true dragons at least, were a representation of a supreme natural force. The natural world acted upon their words as almost without question, irrespective of their realm.

“…”

Bits of circumstance slotted together, ominously. The Jade Gate Court had fled the forest fast and until recently barely let up their pace. Liao Ying had claimed that something demolished a whole valley fighting demons. The same demons as these he was now willing to bet, and now a dragon or something able to speak in that tongue showed up – right on the tail of their battle?

-Well, they did attempt to wring an inauspicious moment out of this for their own ends.

That said, there was also another important and distinctly life-endangering question here.

“What by the ill grace of the nameless fate itself have that unctuous brat Din Ouyeng and the Jade Gate Court done to piss off a dragon!?”

Even complaining out loud didn’t help.

It was a level of talent you would struggle to find in nine generations. It was at the degree where even the ‘great sects’ – and he included the Shu Pavilion in that assertion based on the behaviour of several of his ‘juniors’ over the millennia – would struggle to teach their most spoilt disciples, no matter what dizzying heights they started from.

In a way it was also unfortunate that knowledge of that ancient tongue was probably limited to about one or two words for most of those present: ‘Kill’ and ‘Eat’ along with the intuitive grasp that neither would be pleasant. Few would acquire the strength of soul to be able to interpret the deeper meanings while still being counted among the ‘younger generation’. As such, they were unlikely to ever know that it was Din Ouyeng and the Jade Gate Court they should curse with their last words when the dragon killed them all off just by yelling at them.

The drums intensified and he saw two more of the formations divert over the hill: a horned jaguar and a scorpion. He tried to grasp his soul sense to see beyond the ridge again, but the shock from the shout had turned the surroundings so chaotic he could barely extend it to the ridge in his current situation.

“Grraagggh!” he snarled inarticulately and blocked the viper like strike from Ilkurz, dancing backwards as he did so to find more stable ground.

Two more explosions echoed from behind, followed by some muted screaming that told him the Dao Spirit formations were still somewhat active. The demons were massing again, recovering much faster than they were.

He blocked a second wild strike from Ilkurz and made to kick his opponent in the leg-

The small green orb shot past his face, exploding between them with enough force to send him sprawling.

Two red, white and yellow arrows followed straight after. One, he blocked, barely; the other hit his qi armour, punched right through it as if it were non-existent and pierced his shoulder. Before he could even move to pluck it out, his arm nearly exploded of its own accord as the unrefined qi in his body tried to deviate by flowing backwards through his heart gate before he expelled the majority of it.

Coughing up blood, he caught a blow from a club that was descending from nowhere at his head and punched the wielder in the chest even as two axes hissed towards him-

{Mu’s Mountain Gate}

He triggered the talisman which twisted the land between him and the majority of the demons attacking him into a small rock outcropping, blocking various axes, arrows and other thrown weapons for the most part-

*Boom-Boom*

*Krrrrrrooomm*

The double explosion picked him off his feet as the barrier he had just pulled from the ground disintegrated into a cloud of splintered rock chunks. At first he thought it was the formation of twenty glaive-wielding demons headed by Ilkurz that was responsible for it, but the tremors kept on and were of such a magnitude that even their charge faltered-

{Land Cage}

This time, paranoia made him drop a cage talisman even before the induction from Shatterpoint warned him of the Soul Blaze talisman that blossomed right in front of the rampaging spectral form of a huge black and orange bull with horns.

Ilkurz still managed to dodge the worst of the attack, likely because he saw it coming. Looking around to see who had cast it, he sighed inwardly, because it was just badly aimed. One of the defence formations around where the Nine Auspicious Moons was still holding up a good third of the battle line had tried to do the right thing, but a bunch of Chosen Immortals and a Golden Immortal controlling an Ancient Immortal realm formation like that was only going to be difficult.

The formation reformed, proving it was a proper martial one, not a banner, and smashed into his spatial cage, before splitting apart to sweep past it and reform. Shaking his head at the damage that had caused to the barrier, he cancelled it and grabbed one of the glaive wielders directly, smashing them to the ground over his hip and then stamping on their chest to disperse their core, located in the heart, killing the demon instantly.

Two more diverted to attack him, but neither were close to his match. One died just from him kicking his spear at them from where it lay on the ground, the other he grabbed by the arm and bisected with a shockwave of qi from his palm.

“MOTHERLESS MONKEY!” he swore and dodged backwards as a ‘Soul Blade’ talisman tracking after that demon miraculously missed it at the last minute, somehow avoided setting it, and it alone on fire, and turned the area he had just vacated into a 20 metre wide glassy bowl.

Recovering, he glanced back up the slope, but everything was in such disarray now that there was no way to know if it was fluke, accident or deliberate.

{Soul Blaze}

The ward talisman he had on the handle of his spear triggered, turning a demon who had just picked it up into a purple bonfire of dispersing matter.

Sweeping his qi out, he grasped the weapon with a phantasmal hand, only for Ilkurz to cut that and advance on him once again. The other glaive-wielding demons fanned out, heading up-slope either side of him, towards the various forces who were still trying to recover from the beast’s shout.

Ilkurz pointed at him with his halberd and grinned mockingly. “Your own side trying very hard to see you dead with me!”

“As it stands, I can assure you they are going to regret living to see the consequences of their actions. Or perhaps that robed old demon will turn their skins into some underwear,” he replied, sneering faintly.

Ilkurz laughed, walking around the edge of the gyre of purple flame. “That is very good idea! I make trophy of you, they can make shit pants of others’ skins!”

Another of the glaive-wielders grinned and spread his arms, yelling in flawless Easten: “IF THEY FOUGHT WITH HALF YOUR DETERMINATION, THIS MIGHT ACTUALLY BE WORTH IT!”

“YOU HEAR THAT, WEAK HUMANS?” Ilkurz roared, his martial intent washing over the whole ridge line.

“Shit,” he grimaced and then had to dance back as a soul sense attack shot at him from the distant ridge line where the robed figures had been, preventing him from blocking Ilkurz.

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE GHOBLAN, THE UNDREN AND THE AELF SAY WHEN THEY WALK INTO A DRINKING BROTHEL?”

Demons who were staggering to their feet all around them started to hoot and jeer – the childish taunt buoying their spirits.

“AT LEAST WHEN WE GET DRUNK AND KILL EACH OTHER, PEOPLE WILL NOT CALL US STUPID HUMANS! HUMANS NOT EVEN ABLE TO AGREE ON WHICH BROTHEL OR WHERE TO GET DRUNK BEFORE DYING, THEY SO STUPID!”

Objectively, it was a terrible joke, barely even a joke – more an insult actually. However, in this particular set of circumstances, as he dodged two more soul intent infused arrows that turned the whole area around him into a turbulent mire he couldn’t manipulate, struck at the very essence of their predicament.

Whatever response he might have been tempted to make vanished though, with the flare of searing yang energy that swept over a nearby hilltop, turning everything in its wake to ash. Abruptly, hundreds of the demons were retreating up the hill even as those on the battle lines on both sides looked around for the source—

Hundreds of demons were now breaking from the arrayed forces across the hillsides opposite their camp and turning back behind them now…

Ilkurz and those near him were also turning to look. One of the robed demons who had been tormenting Dongmei on the ridge line was also gone, as was Xavak-

Moments later a shockwave ripped through the hill, making demon and cultivator alike stumble and the ground subside.

“Hohmmmm!”

Xin Dai clapped his hands together and gave a shout infused with intent which stabilized that side of the ridge a little bit – but only a bit. He had not caught the word, but that had absolutely been another attack by whatever had been attracted by the battle, seeking out Din Ouyeng. The ripple of distorting silence that followed reached through him and twisted his dantian faintly as it passed, carrying with it an intense sense of wanting to twist or break him apart.

He fought with his soul sense to send it that far, to see what kind of draconic beast was actually wreaking havoc on the demons’ back lines, but it was almost impossible now. The turbulence of so many conflicting attacks and martial intent was such that even a Dao Immortal would probably have gotten a nosebleed.

“You weak little Orcs want to fight me?”

The words were gentle, almost feminine, carried on the breeze, swirling through the world around them, making grass ripple and dust dance in little swirls with the passage of the yang law they embodied.

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

The second shifting wave of words held even greater strength, the oppression of Earthly Yang Laws within them massively exceeding his own and making his limbs grow heavy, even as the qi of the world turned sluggish and stagnant across the battlefield.

That they were in fluent Easten was… disturbing, but he assumed it was so the demons, the ones it had called ‘orcs’, could understand it?

-It has this degree of comprehension regarding Yang Laws and an earth affinity… out here? His mind raced as he grasped just how big a pit they were now tumbling in.

-Can this actually get any-?

“~Soul Break~”

The words, which arrived just as he was wondering how, if at all this could get worse sank through his mind like a beautiful curse. The world’s own comprehensions of Soul Law touched his psyche, and he spat blood as his near unified foundation and quasi Dao Seed suffered an immense, torturous blow.

He had no grasp of the chaos in their own lines, but in the silence of the distorting world he saw hundreds, if not thousands, of orcs collapse, foaming at the mouth, bleeding from their eyes or just dying outright.

“As I said – You Are Weak!”

The words that followed after were like hammer blows, battering at him mercilessly even as he wrestled his mind back to some semblance of coherence. The attack had not been targeted at them, which was a mercy.

“Why should I tolerate you and your kind here?”

-Ah, so everyone is screwed.

It wasn’t just targeted at them; probably it was for the orcs that went over the hill.

“You whose ancestors hunted my people across the grasslands of Ancient Aerth and lifted my ancestors as trophies for your future descendants?”

-Oh…

So the ‘orcs’ here were as screwed as they were on a certain level. Beasts like dragons were not known for their love of lesser races making trophies of their kind.

“~Soul Brea—”

His awareness of ‘soul sense’ vanished and with it the echoing refrain of the dreadful curse that the dragon had directly performed.

Pushing himself to his feet, he collected his spear and used it to support himself as he looked around. With soul sense thoroughly cut off, he could only rely on his vision to judge his side’s condition, which was beyond poor. Only those at Immortal or higher were still conscious on the ridge line, but really only those at Golden Immortal or higher were in any kind of fit state to fight. Many had clearly suffered backlash from their soul senses abruptly being cut off as they manipulated treasures or talisman formations.

Xin Dai looked his way, now showing a mild panic in his eyes that he was sure his own expression was doing a similarly bad job of hiding. Zi Min was okay, as was Dongmei, because her formation wasn’t one working off soul sense or immortal sense.

Others had not been so lucky though. Quan Dingxiang was being helped up by several juniors, his face pale.

-Maybe the Jade Gate Court’s formation also collapsed, he laughed to himself.

The idea of them having tried to sit this out and swoop in in the third act as saviours of all, further cementing their position, only to see all their work undone in this unexpected way was darkly funny.

“This is why you don’t screw around with fate manipulating talismans,” he sighed, pulling out a spirit herb and-

“SHATTER”

The words, imbued with the echoes of spatial laws, washed through the world around them, leaving disturbing black blurs around everything for a brief moment. The rolling hill where the demons had been mustering distorted, rocks and trees tumbling and souls subsiding.

Seconds later one of the orcs, an old one wielding a sword, was hurled over the crest of the hill, bouncing several times before coming to a stop-

The literal eruption of the hill, splitting it like someone had just hit it with a hammer, caught the entire battlefield off-guard. Two figures crashed through the ruined landscape, followed by the familiar figures of Xavak and the robed old demon. The latter was holding a roll of ragged hide that gave him an intensely ominous feeling. The perpetrator of the attack, an old demon wielding a two-handed great axe, stalked through the ruin towards-

“SURGE!”

The ground surged and yang energy distorted everything, sending a wave of spikes out that Xavak managed to block and mostly disperse-

He stared dully as a muddy figure, about three metres tall and partially humanoid, twisted in the ruin of the hill and lashed Xavak with its tail, sending the orc flying back through the ruin of the battle like he was a child’s toy. Standing, it looked this way and that, before rounding on the Ur’Vash with the axe, only for that opponent to cover the distance between them in a single step and smash its weapon down on its head.

The beast rolled away from the attack and roared inarticulately at the attacking demons who all staggered back-

He got a barrier down just in time as the robed demon waved its hands and sent a shrieking wave of greenish lightning at it, making it stagger back and stripping away enough of its qi armour very briefly for him to make out its proper form. It looked a bit like the hybrid offspring of a pangolin, a human and a kind of tortoise, its hide golden and iridescent by equal measure.

Either way, she—for it was a she – appeared young in age, but worryingly he couldn’t tell whether she was changing out of, or into, her bestial form. Given the strength of yang earth laws involved, he had a rather ominous premonition it might be the latter. It also had what looked disturbingly like the ephemera of an inborn physique on its scales.

He was just considering what the best course of action was when a fearful essence of Yin Wood law surged across the battlefield, rolling over the recoiling orc lines. The point of its origin was further along their ridgeline, beyond Xin Dai, where the various cultivators aligned to the Imperial Court had rallied with the Argent Hall and the Jade Gate Court.

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

“What?!”

It was such an improbable talisman to see used in this circumstance. It wasn’t that yin wood wasn’t suitable, quite the contrary given the vast strength of yang earth that the beast was exuding. It wasn’t even that the realm was lacking, because it was a Dao Eternal grade talisman.

“How do they have one of those?” a blankly confused voice, from a thoroughly terrified Quan Dingxiang, mumbled nearby.

-How indeed, he hissed inwardly.

As far as he was aware, only one influence, the Meng clan, possessed Parasol Bloom talismans and they did not hand them out to others. Some small pieces of largely inert wood made their way into the hands of alchemists or weapon artefact crafts-masters, but this was the pure, captured qi of a parasol tree.

As those thoughts rattled around in his head, the area around the massed old orcs and the strange earth dragon beast bloomed with trefoil leaf sporting saplings rooted in the hundreds of scattered bodies. Within seconds many of them had been dragged upright, their physical bodies withering away as they became nourishment for the Parasol Tree grove blooming before their eyes amid the torrential, devouring gyre of yin wood law released and focused by the talisman.

The old orcs fled, even as the beast…

Almost as an afterthought, he registered that it had just, likely become the singular most inauspicious hour in any given day.

“No… no, no, no!” Quan Dingxiang was babbling as he struggled up. “You idiots… that’s not-!”

The surging strength of Yang laws that erupted around the beast in the same instant were very much… not earth laws. Earth laws were present within them, but the dominant attribute was fire… and metal.

“Oh! Shit!” he groaned as its aura shifted rapidly. The depth of the yang intent that was surging around it deepening by the second-

The cry that came had no words he could understand beyond the singular, consuming intent to ‘rampage’. It swept through the world, taking all sound with it and distorting the colours of everything within his line of sight as the beast unleashed the full strength of its ancestral blood to try to resist the devouring and refining yin energies of the talisman.

The fearful eruption of strength, to which he was far too close for comfort, was also terribly familiar. It resonated with the talisman in his storage device, even though that should be another space… and with the little seeds of yang qi he had been leaving as a trail. A trail that had apparently also been followed by the originator of the yang energy Liao Ying had trapped.

The beast’s scream was not really a sound; it transcended sound and just made everything within his field of view blur as it matched with the echoing resonance from the ‘Devouring Land Parasol Bloom’ talisman the cretinous idiots from the Imperial Court had somehow sourced.

When he managed to get a grasp on anything, he cursed, because the violent, hungry qi sealed within the talisman, saturated with voracious yin wood laws, was surging everywhere. Now, easily suppressing the yang earth energies, while feasting on the vitality of everything they touched, seeds of parasol qi were already taking root rapidly. Those unfortunate orcs caught at the epicentre were already being warped into the first vestiges of a small Parasol Grove.

Parasol trees and lesser phoenixes had once been distributed by the Meng clan, ostensibly as a sign of favour, but as much because they were a kind of warning, and an insurance. Eastern Azure had possessed one, during the later Teng Dynasty, before a foolish emperor got into a dispute with the Meng clan and Vast Obscurity Grove took exception to that.

It was old history, but parasol wood, when matured and harvested from a stable environment, was perhaps among the most valuable of the common spirit trees. Its timber prized by all and its leaves and flowers especially by alchemists. However, if planted incautiously, removed from the ecosystems where it existed with the yang fire attributed fauna that kept it in check – the most famous of which was the phoenix – it was at best a weed of the highest order.

If left unchecked or seeded in inauspicious circumstances, like it had been here, the trees did not mature and instead became, in the words of his teacher – ‘A world-ending disaster masquerading as a piece of ornamental topiary’.

Already, mere seconds after the first use of the talisman, the violent, hungry energies surging everywhere were turning hapless orcs into trees, some of which were already sprouting leaves and even, where they caught those of Immortal strength or higher, flower buds.

Scrambling back, he grabbed a random disciple and threw them bodily as far as he could over the ridge. Away from the disaster that was about to unfold, because there was a second reason why you used parasol qi very warily. As dangerous as it was, it was also widely sought after… as a mutate.

The beast, caught in the midst of the chaos, had completely transformed into its ‘natural’ form now – a quadruped behemoth nearly 10 metres long, clad in armour and spines. Its aura was now no longer just that of yang earth, but yang fire and yang metal.

“No, no, no!” Quan Dingxiang was almost sobbing as two other Pill Sovereign disciples dragged him back. “You idiots… it’s only missing…”

-It’s only missing?

In his mind, the spectral memory of his own brush with the qi sealed in the talisman resurfaced. He had noted all the yang energies were there except yang wood…?

Others were running now, the smarter ones at least. Quite a few, though, had pulled out talismans, which was downright suicidal frankly. The beast was eating qi that was infused with laws, unless someone was going to…

-No, don’t even say it! You have no idea what kind of insanity they might perpetuate if someone tries to use a talisman with an instilled ‘Truth’ here, he cursed himself.

Ignoring them, he raced towards Qing Dongmei, Zi Min and tangentially Quan Dingxiang-

The cocoon-like shell of yang energies around the beast erupted as it roared.

“DEVOUR!”

The word, spoken in that ancient tongue, made the entire area around it ripple as it absorbed huge amounts of yin wood qi from its surroundings. The shockwave sent him sprawling, his qi chaotic as he fought against both the all-encompassing intent of its shout and also the surging hunger of the parasol qi.

In that same instant, Shatterpoint screamed in his head, and the entire area of the hillside he was on, vanished in a detonation of yang energy-

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

~ LIN LING – EPICENTRE OF CHAOS ~

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

Rising from the unexpected blow from the old Ur’Vash, Lin Ling turned, just in time to see the talisman from the cultivators’ lines triggering in her general direction.

The voices of the blood howled through her psyche, even as memories welled up in her, explaining both the predicament she was in. At the urging of the memories she drew in as much of the blood from the various jars as she could, drinking it in and flooding her qi armour with the excess to protect herself from the rampant, devouring strength of the Parasol Tree’s intent.

-Blood rage…

-Give us control!

-Weak human… you cannot!

-Devour… devour it all!

-The plague tree!

-Speak the words!

-Devour! Devour!

-Blood… give us…

She screamed in her own head as the furious memories revolted. Some were terrified, some were enraged and some were greedy, all of them instinctually calling for her to deliver over control to them as her physical transformation surged fully towards the ‘third’ stage.

“SHUT UP!”

She screamed, as much at those voices as in an attempt to reject the terrible clarion cry of the primordial predator striking down at her. The violent, hungry energies surged everywhere. Ur’Vash were turning into trees that were rapidly sprouting leaves and even flower buds.

-You cannot let them bloom! One of the older, much saner voices hissed.

-This is an opportunity, but it is mortal danger.

-The parasol survived and rose… but we…

-Our descendants failed…

-Its reality is greater than ours.

-Oh yeah, not helping! she shot back at them even as she continued to grapple with the ongoing transformation.

In mere moments, cocooned in a maelstrom of twisting qi, blood, earth, plants and whatever it was that talisman had done, she had almost completely assumed the true appearance of the creature whose blood she possessed. Her skeleton had changed as she collapsed onto four legs, the armour plates had thickened and the scales extended, her tail growing more spikes, her background plates and the last traces of her ‘human’ form fading away beyond the colouration derived from her hair.

Her own mind was still there inside it this time, although she was down to less than half of all the blood.

“DEVOUR!”

She opened her mouth and roared, the intent within it devouring the terrifying yin wood intent, born of the Parasol Tree. Orcs around her were now turning into actual trees, a grove of twisted humanoid forms as something beyond the true yang law in the blood tried to tear at her.

The symbol shuddered and raged of its own accord as it fought back in some other way. Bits and pieces of it were now sliding in and out of her focus in very disturbing ways, not that she had time to care.

In the midst of that, her instincts were drawn to the hillside to her right, whispering of genuine danger. There, a group of cultivators in travelling robes were scrambling back, the flows of qi between them showing that they were linked in a formation – one of them pointing a talisman in her direction-

“RUPTURE!”

The words, spat by the memories, consumed the entire hillside in a coruscating detonation of yang energy, obliterating them before the talisman could do whatever it had intended.

A silvery arrow crashed into her, dissolving, dispersing yin energies very different from the parasol tree worming their way into her body!

“Ah-!” she snarled, rounding on the source-

However, before she could do so, her barely stable dantian collapsed again, her viscous qi flowing inwards in a blur to form a red core, streaked with purple and gold that burned with a strange corona. Her tempered physique was also continuing to devour all sorts of energies and intents from the blood, the parasol qi, the land and even the distorting shield affecting soul sense, even as the shadow in her body kept twisting and changing.

-You must form your core before you form your soul, the very oldest of the voices hissed suddenly.

-DEVOUR! BLOOD!

-RAGE!

-OVERCOME!

Other voices rampantly ignored it, screaming, nearly berserk as her control over her ‘form’ continued to erode.

-If you succumb, you will fall here! it hissed.

-If you succumb, it will be for naught, the voice of another rumbled – the dark turtle creature that evoked a sense of mountains, she thought.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

-To move forward… you must overcome! That was Ochirioptrix, sending her images of his kind changing and transforming in a singular moment, breaking their chains in some unspecified way.

The hill, or what remained of it, shattered outwards, twisting up around her as she drew in energy desperately, letting the yang blood refine it, balance it, even as her ‘core’ collapsed a second time.

Dimly, she was aware of the sky overhead turning leaden as her core coalesced again at 33 rotations. This time the symbol, which had continued to shift bizarrely surged through it-

It collapsed and her body twisted, her bones shattering, her skin turning translucent for a second. The force of the detonation even managed to rupture space around her, scattering the bolts of multi-hued lightning like raindrops off a rock.

She had no time to worry about that though – tribulation or not, she was on a runaway cart now with only two possibilities.

‘Adapt’ or ‘Die’.

-Sorry Juni, Chunhua – I can’t say this is the opportunity I intended to make, a part of her muttered inwardly. However, you bastards that have delivered me to this point, I will at least ensure that you all burn in hell with me!

-Danger, follow!

Images and sensations blurred through her mind, overlaying themselves with terrifying speed to form symbols in her mind.

‘STATE – ISOLATE – OVERBURDEN: Transform, Break – Myriad, Wall, Isolate – DAY, Bestow, LAND’

Her roar, encapsulating what it represented, imprinted it into the firmament directly somehow, forming a series of interlocking rings around her that caught the eleven bolts descending for her. What she had done had no ‘name’ that she understood; it came through the very oldest memories.

They hung there, twisting abnormally, even as the 15 twisting black-gold lightning bolts that accompanied each pitch black bolt scattered across the hills, sending orc and cultivator alike fleeing in abject terror.

Nobody, even the cultivators who had thrown the talisman, was interested in sticking around for this it seemed. Although she was damned if she was going to let them go. One of that group had had Han Shu’s sword on its back and she was sure she had seen Din Ouyeng in that group as well.

Rather than jump, she just rolled, like a living landslide across the battlefield.

An orc with a halberd roared and struck out at her-

She swatted the land with her tail, sweeping across the devastation and hitting it hard enough to bury it in the slope of a distant hill, uncaring whether it lived or died-

A second silvery arrow crashed into her, a reminder that there were other cultivators there and that while she had intended to be fairly selective about the fights she picked, to them she was both dangerous… but also an opportunity.

Fixing on that group, she was about to just roll over the top of them when hundreds of golden fists smashed into her body, slowing her momentum-

A third arrow crashed into her-

A spear of red and gold fire left a huge score across her side-

A shaking, bearded youth spat blood on a cauldron and out of it swirled a phantasmal form of a Kirin wreathed in golden fire that ate away at her yang strength faintly-

Two massive, green bolts of lightning, transforming into twisting serpents, wrapped around her body, punched through her qi defences and wormed into her flesh far too easily for her liking-

Above her, the sky abruptly inverted colours and turned pitch black, and blazing white clouds spat lightning that was white lines of celestial death at her. The array above her shifted somehow and lost a ring. In response the memories gave her words to yell, which she did so, dutifully, even as she tried to keep the shadowy lines in her body that was certainly her realm about ‘Body Tempering’ that Chunhua had referred to as ‘Soul Meridians’, as something associated with her human form, not the bestial form she now wore.

Abruptly, the Yin Qi in the world surged.

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

This time, she saw the bastards who had activated it – a bunch of Golden Immortals of various sects affiliated with the Imperial Court, led by…

“DIN OUYENG!”

Before, she had called him out because the angry aspects of the blood had gotten away from her, she had to reflect. Or maybe the prideful bits. There had been bits of her that wanted to smash him up and eat him, ruin him a thousand times worse than he had helped ruin her, but those had been somewhat irrational in an odd way.

The truth of her memories had made that anger, even the anger towards Di Ji, cold rather than hot.

Now, however, she was thoroughly on board with ripping the little monkey to pieces. Probably she wouldn’t even refine his core, because that would mean that some part of him remained with her.

“I WILL MAKE SURE YOUR NINE GENERATIONS BURN IN YANG FIRE!” she roared, twisting over and leaping forward after the retreating-

Five massive white swords smashed down, cast by another figure in green who was controlling a formation of almost thirty Golden Immortals, all wearing robes of the Jade Gate Court. Her body held, their strength held laws, but they were weak; however, it did send her crashing back down into the battlefield.

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

Around her, the yin wood energy of the Parasol Bloom talisman surged a third time, a vast, spectral tree forming from the surging energies emitted from the talisman that tried to bind her, worm their way into her body and turn her into nutrition so it could bloom.

This time, however, she was not as powerless – or unexpecting.

“BURST!”

Her roar, infused with the strength of yang wood, catalysed by the spirit herbs she had drawn into her dantian and fuelled by the refinement of the Parasol Tree’s yin qi, scattered the tree, raining twisting green gold droplets of qi everywhere and making those in the formation using it with Din Ouyeng spit blood and lose control of it.

Her dantian, which was a nebulous wreck now, swirled back in on itself, drawing that orphaned qi into her, rapidly reforming it yet again, with an even greater capacity – the boundless longevity of yang tempering her in the process.

Abruptly, a sense of surging distortion in the ambient alignments of the whole battlefield drew her attention back to the orc mages who had attacked her with the lightning bolts before.

She focused on them, mustering strength to finish that threat off with a single attack. The old one, who held a strange white and black scroll in his shaking hands, stared at her with an expression of twisted rage and regret… and crushed the scroll.

A white plane bisected her array, which had been blocking the progress of the tribulation lightning and slowly dissipating it somehow.

-Ignorant primates!

-Foolish devil thing!

-FLEE!

-RUN!

The memories screamed in anger very uniformly now, urging her to flee, which she did with no urging, charging straight for the old mage as fast as she could. The lightning still caught her anyway, snaring her limbs like celestial serpents and trying to devour her whole – drag her both into the ground and up into the sky simultaneously.

Left with no other option, she tore at them with her claws even as her mantra and the symbol focused on mitigating the rippling forces trying to tear apart her body-

Above her, the sky shifted and turned dark as fire swirled in the clouds, which turned a smoky grey and boiled outwards, repelled by…

“…”

She had no words, really, as she found herself staring up at the meteor that fell through the shattered veil of the sky above her. There was no running from that. From horizon to horizon, sheets of grey fire fell and in the wake of the meteor itself, hundreds and then thousands… tens of thousands of lightning bolts of every colour scattered across the sky and fell to earth indiscriminately.

-DEVOUR EVERYTHING!

-EVERY BIT!

-NOTHING LEFT!

-THE END…

-THE ANNIHILATION!

Even as the memories screamed, almost all of them thrown into chaos at the sight of that heaven-breaking meteor. Some instructed her to drink every bit of blood and flesh along with all the spirit herbs she still had. Sweating, she swept them out and, with a colossal devouring intent, her primordial form consumed the small mountain of pilfered herbs.

Given there were a surprising amount of orcs still alive and scattering, that likely marked her as the perpetrator of their plight quite clearly, not that she cared now. Her body grew and her core collapsed again and reformed. The few remaining sane memories told her that time was not on her side, even as she continued to grapple with keeping her Soul Foundation… unfounded.

The meteor fell, tribulation bolts spiralling around it, directly for her even as the words surfaced from the oldest memories, cutting through the enraged confusion, panic and denial of the later memories. Her primordial form didn’t so much as shout them, as demand them of the world.

“Heaven Break.”

The meteor out of the darkest of those ancestral nightmares shattered and collapsed in disturbing silence.

The lightning falling down was devoured by her form as it aimlessly struck and scattered.

Beyond it, she saw darkness, an extinguishing, starless night whispering insanity from beyond inverted mountains that took up the sky like a jagged maw and finally understood.

She saw another shore in that singular horrifying instant, and the ancestral doom that her kind had fought across the aeons, even as the terrifying reverberation shattered it apart.

It was with deep relief that she found that her core had formed, fully stable at long last. Her core sea was raging and in turmoil, carving out a new space in her body as it began to purify all the qi within the bestial form-

The grey sky turned pitch black and out of the shadowless dark came 99 cloaked sages of heaven. Each carried a terrible stele graven with ominous scenes and words evoking dread and retribution. Behind them, she could see a shifting misty throne, wreathed in nihility.

“NOW IS COME THE ERA OF MAN!”

“RIGHTEOUS, HE HATH CAST ALL OTHER LESSER THINGS ASIDE!”

“OLD DEVILS WE SLEW!”

“OLD EVILS WE CAST OUT!”

“FALSE GODS WE CAST DOWN!”

“NOW, WE ARE THE NEW MASTERS OF THIS PLACE!”

“ALL THAT ARE DESERVING ARE OF HIM! FOR HIM! BY HIM!”

“WRETCHED LIZARD, WHO WOULD ENDURE PAST YOUR ALLOTTED SPAN!”

“UNFATED THING, CRAWL BACK INTO DEATH!”

“HERE, YOUR WILL IS UNDONE!”

“YOUR PATH IS ENDED HERE!”

They denounced her, proclaimed that her time had passed and now was the era of man, that the old gods had been slain by them and that they were the new masters of this place. That it was her fate to fall here.

As their words reverberated through the world, the eleven who had spoken cast down their stele towards her, whereupon they transformed into eleven terrible hunters in different forms who, unbounded from the heavenly hall, charged towards her.

Her dantian was still distorting, even as the core continued to do its utmost to rapidly refine the qi oversaturating her form. Within it, within her, was a flickering light – ‘Yang Intent’, she realised – coalescing around the symbol which was now starting to sink into her body. Her Soul Foundation, twisted and uncertain, started to naturally form.

She tried to slow it, even as she fought with the masked hunters who assailed her, spectral men and women wreathed in war paint of various colours. The weapons they wielded, made of dark metal, looked… familiar somehow, but that was the least of what she had to worry about, because the formation of her Soul Foundation was apparently inevitable now.

-You must endure…

-Endure…

-Overcome and endure…

The oldest voices hissed and pleaded, even as the beast finally started to take full control. She was fighting now as much to define the state of her own soul, she was dimly aware, as to deal with the attackers, the hunters.

Each attacker seemed to curse her as they fell and she pulled a fragment of them out of their bodies somehow.

As she tore down one that looked remarkably like an Ur’Vash, drawing ‘Yang Earth’ from it, she at last realised that each one represented an element or a people in a strange way. Among those she recognised, Humans had Yin Life and Yang Fire, Ur’Vash had Yang Earth, another people very similar to humans had Yang Water, Yin Earth and Yang Metal while the others were humanoid, but-

-Ten elements of yin and yang… and yet eleven hunters?

As the final human, encompassing ‘Yang Fire’ fell, she found herself face to face with the eleventh… a young woman, barely out of her teens, auburn hair and dark skin with silver eyes, which seemed to reflect a starry sky.

She was also ‘human’, and although naked, her body was painted in shifting white and black designs, such that it was hard to discern where movement and stillness began and ended, as if fading in and out of the moment faintly. She was also the only one without a mask, and to carry multiple weapons – a spear tipped with a black glass blade, a bow and a pair of blades made from black and white knapped stones.

Unlike the others though, she was not aggressive. Instead, she just stared at her with her eyes narrowed.

The spear strike was like that of a celestial viper, piercing her body even as the girl drew the bow, set an arrow that was like a glittering dark star to it and fired it into her-

Darkness obliterated her, the horrifying intent scything through her body in a singular, irresistible word.

‘Extinction.’

The answer to an impossible riddle-

-You must endure…

-Overcome…

-Become more…

-A new beginning…

Amid the rage and the fury and the hunger and the pride, her memories provided her with the answer, even as the beast within her perished. With that singular word, its very concept within her body and soul was extinguished, somehow leaving the power – and the human – merged into a new origin entirely.

-Such an opportunity…

-A lifetime, only once…

-A new beginning…

-All because the primates had eyes but could not see!

-eh?

She was surprised as much that the ‘memories’ had endured that, until she realised that they, just as she, had been caught in the grip of the ‘beast’ somehow, or at least the later ones. The early ones had always seemed aloof, or perhaps…?

A strange snippet of understanding informed her that those memories had no concept of ‘the beast’; that was a thing of later times, wholly divorced from them anyway. A cage their later generations had wrought, not them. The later ones, she noted, were silenced though, or perhaps they had just been so much ‘the beast’ that they really had just become orphaned scenes without any real agency?

Her soul snapped into being, fully human, even as she realised the ‘girl’ was gone. The lightning that grasped from the sky, almost drawn by her absence in some strange way, was like the tentacles of some terrible eldritch beast.

She saw shadow within white as it tore into the broken body of the ‘beast’, seeking to eradicate it.

Grimacing, she reformed her body from the expanding cloud of gore, drawing the orphaned flesh, blood and bone back to her, even as the lightning infiltrated her body, flowing through her meridians, trying to trap her in a new cage.

The shock of the attack seemed to drop her newly formed Nascent Soul through her body directly somehow, breaking it apart and yet reforming it in the same instant. As it reformed she found her ghostly meridians, her dantian with its core and her newly founded Sea of Knowledge and Nascent Soul all held ‘the symbol’ – which was still distorted to the point where she was unable to clearly perceive it – and were abruptly linked by it with the aid of her mantra.

The memories sneered, imprinting symbols, like fortresses, in her meridians. Walls rejecting the lightning somehow, taming it. Directing judgement into providence with the aid of the few spirit herbs that still remained attached to her somehow, chief among them the golden peony from Golden Grass Village.

-What even is this? she screamed, wracked in spectral agony, as the last of the lightning faded away, consumed by her new body.

Her lack of comprehension of what was going on was such that she nearly had a deviation of a different kind, as she sought to make sense of how she could end up with black lightning at this kind of realm, what had happened to her soul, to the beast within the blood, to the memories… all of it back and forth… and back…

Above her, in the heavenly hall, the 99 sages, who had never really gone away she realised, raised their tablets and with a great shout rejected her actions.

Each one read out a denunciation of her actions, refuting her, turning her own disbelief into a fundamental rejection of her own circumstance. Each one became a terrible moment from the past weeks – Images flickering through her mind, trying to show her all the things she had done wrong, and tempting her to change them.

To try to save Arai and Sana…

To try to save the others who they left…

Not damn the unfortunate beasts in the forest in her escape…

Not pass through that pool and awaken the abomination…

They blurred on, trying to force her to accept that her own circumstance was thoroughly unnatural and that she, not the world, was the problem.

They tried to lead her to circumstances where she had evaded Di Ji.

Where she had not been so cruelly violated…

Where she had not doomed Han Shu…

Those later ones were, she felt, particularly spiteful. In a weird way though, she felt it should have been harder. Their intent was basically to break her, but she had already been ‘broken’ in all the ways that probably counted at this point.

Even beyond that, she could see enough to intuitively grasp that no matter how tempting, how soothing, assuaging or buoyant experiencing those moments might have been, they would not lead her here, to this tribulation, and that was the trap being set for her. If she denied her own accumulation, succumbed to the belief that she, in her confusion, did not deserve this, it would be so, and she would be obliterated – and something else would walk away from here.

All around, the raging maelstrom of the sky above was spitting minor tribulation bolts everywhere, like a never-ending swarm of celestial locusts. The former battlefield was a hellscape now; if anyone was nearby, they were either dead or utterly insane…

That realisation, which came as the 66th one crumbled away, brought her back to the moment, leaving her lying on the glassy, baking ground, panting in anger and pain as her soul finally grasped a hold of itself. Her body was still a raging mess of destroyed qi channels and nebulous soul intent. Her soul, though, had imprinted back into it somehow, binding the two back together and restructuring her body.

Before she could even begin to hope that that was the end of the ordeal, the great heavenly hall cried out as one and shattered their 99 tablets. Each one formed into a black and gold dragon that circled in the broken sky above, pledging retribution for a mere human daring to touch their sacred bloodlines.

“…”

The memories looked at the ‘dragons’ just as dully as she did, apparently somewhat unable to process this level of stupidity on behalf of their ‘descendants’. Even the younger memories were shocked and then utterly enraged that their ‘juniors’ were daring to set themselves above their old ancestors.

Sneering, the collective gestalt of the memories supplied her something approximating an ‘answer’ to that allegation and her form shifted as it healed, restructuring itself back to something approaching what she had started with, but with her height and build. She caught the first dragon around the neck as it arrived, wincing as its lightning ate into her body even as she tore it apart and consumed it, flooding her meridians with the energy it contained.

What followed was something approaching a farce on a certain level, she was certain. Even though her body was smashed and reformed, even though she lost limbs, was horribly burnt, was half devoured and worse, the most ancient memories in the blood, which were largely unaffected by the ‘death’ of the ‘beast’ within, were easily able to fight on an equal footing with the 99 dragons, at least to begin with.

With every one she bested, those she had yet to fight became stronger, absorbing as much of their compatriots energy as she did. Fortunately, with each one she consumed, her own Nascent Soul was also rapidly consolidating. It was gaining colour, she realised, and her soul intent, which she had started the tribulation barely cognisant of, was now becoming thoroughly fused with the distorted symbol, with her qi and with her body directly somehow.

The memories cheered as this happened, or perhaps cackled with just a hint of disturbing madness at the same time.

She was also nowhere close to running out of qi either, she realised. The link to the land was still there, because that circle was still there. As was the yang blood, the parasol qi and any number of other things, not least the golden peony which was still breaking down in her dantian. That was in fact the problem, she realised, because she was racing against a catastrophe coming from both directions.

Her body’s capacity was still woefully insufficient for the insane amount she had devoured, even as the lightning from the dragons kept trying to tear her apart. All she could do, she realised, was try to refine both of them by selective annihilation, matching threat against threat and hoping it didn’t consume her as she barely kept both sets of energies under control.

By that point, she was drawing on the symbol fully, which was no longer simply ‘Shield Bearing’ and now held aspect of ‘Yang Shield’ as well, as she sought to better leverage the blood and defend against both the yin wood qi and the intent from the ‘dragons’. She was also having to use her mantra fully to support her failing body, exerting its strength to the utmost to renew her flesh and bones under the sustained barrage of lightning.

As such, she wasn’t even aware of when she stepped across the threshold and grasped a hold of her principle directly, such was the focused desperation of her fight with the all-consuming rage of the final dragons. The desperate intent within her actions, drawing everything together just so she could make something greater of the disparate parts, finally made something settle in a weird way.

In that instant, everything that made her ‘her’ was merged together.

The Mantra...

The Symbol...

Her circumstances…

The rationale behind her actions that had led to this point…

The desires of the memories…

Her desire to not be consumed by them…

Her attitude to her own memories…

Even the way in which the blood itself had become a shield of her own making almost since she acquired it.

The memories shrugged. It wasn’t perfect… but it was ‘Yang as a Shield, bearing her forward’, becoming a fundamental interpretation of her path rather than something provided for her by others and that was… enough.

In the instant it did, the fight was basically over and the three dragons crumbled and were consumed by the Yang Principle, becoming part of her.

The hall above her grew dim and a great throne, carved of dragons, sat in the shattered heart of the vault of heaven, its occupant shadowed in black and white, the very sky itself fleeing as darkness descended like a curtain from horizon to horizon.

The Emperor’s eyes, the only part of him clearly visible as he sat on his terrible throne, judged her. She was small… and alone, a tiny, miniscule, inconsequential… thing. He leant forward, raising one of his arms that had been gripping the arms of the throne, and simply pointed at her.

Unable to so much as move a muscle, she could only lie there, helpless, as a void-shattering bolt of black lightning bisected her, pulsing 11 times as she wielded her principle, still barely settled from its coalescence, to desperately resist it. Her skin burned, her blood boiled and her bones cracked at she felt the power tear at her. The shockwaves incinerated the still-spreading grove of Parasol Trees, turned the grassland to ash, the soil to glass and the rocks to melted puddles.

Robbed even of the ability to scream, all she could do was cast all the qi she had in her body behind her principle and use it to blunt the attack, diffuse it, grind it down, and tame the pulses, attempting to refine them into her body and use them to temper it and her Nascent Soul.

She was unprepared for all 11 bolts to basically give her nothing and instead roll back out of her, transforming into a cage as 33 white sages appeared, all bearing the younger likenesses of the aloof emperor. They spread their arms and sent a terrible net at her – the symbol raged, the memories recoiled… and then also raged. She got the impression they perceived something in this that she did not, but what it was, she couldn’t say. Instead the white cage shifted and, even as it enclosed her, suddenly became part of her own defence. The 33 sages were smashed apart on the walls of the very cage they had used to try and grasp the memories out of her.

Unsure what to even make of that, she found that 66 great generals were already flooding out of the sky, 66 legions following after them, arranging into formations like celestial constellations as the emperor on his throne roared in rage.

The figure was no longer really a man but a twisted caricature, half lifted from recollections of her traumas, the sneering youth in the room as he pushed her down, the old evils caged for eternity in their halls… Di Ji… Kong Din Hao… dozens of fractured faces merging into one with the twisted, insane expression of the Orcnéas shaman who had wanted to refine her into a totem shining through them all.

The howling legions, a hundred thousand lightning bolts shaped as ‘soldiers’, descended on her, following behind the generals forged of the great bolts of black and gold.

In response, her form changed and grew, her Nascent Soul shifting until she transformed with it – fully a creature from her memories, but also truly her, the memories having no direct grasp on her form now. In this manner, she tore through the armies as they flooded down, shattering their formations and devouring their lightning even as they sought to bury her in a sea of death.

Soon she found that not only was the blood nearly fully fused, but the qi from the Parasol Tree had also somehow stayed with her – a tiny thread having become part of her Golden Core, her soul and even her principle.

As the armies of lightning bolts foundered, she saw the Emperor sit forward and wave a hand. The shadows of the sky intensified, the hall at last becoming properly manifest in its great vaults as 99 figures dressed as imperial advisors stepped from behind columns. Now, they no longer carried steles but scrolls of gold, wrought in silver and black.

As one, they opened them and spoke a word. And the word was…

“Retribution”

Ninety-nine lightning bolts surged from the scrolls, turning into 99 chains that shot down like arrows towards her, to pierce her body. Each one carried a terrifying intent that spoke of the Emperor’s will to chain her to the world, bind her to the throne above and make her a thing that was totally of it.

All she could do was catch them even as they caught her, crush them, and break them apart. She shattered them with her teeth and claws, twisted them apart as they tried to pierce her armoured form.

She shattered them with ancient words and broke their links underfoot with arrays, even as they writhed like serpents and tried to snare her from every angle.

It was not enough.

Chains got through, wormed into her body like parasites, shadowing her meridians, trying to twist them in strange ways. They tried to force their way into her dantian… her Sea of Knowledge, even the symbol, within her spirit root.

She snarled and her Nascent Soul returned to its human form, using her hands to tear out the chains that did get through, even as they tried to catch her Nascent Soul as well now.

…

She lost track of how long she fought, but eventually the final set of links broke and the world fell silent.

The emperor on his throne trembled, shivered in rage and a figure appeared before her. A youth, beautiful, princely, enchanting, garbed in silver. The picture book prince for a young lady’s dreams…

Her prince reached for her, whispered that she had finally succeeded…

That she would join him...

That she had found the memories he sought…

That he would protect all her friends…

That she had won.

…and she was exceptional!

She stared at ‘Di Ji’ and tried to fight the oblivion, to shield her mind in the darkness, from the horror of spaces she wished were empty, of the feeling of being broken twisted and alone…

Di Ji reached out for her, caressed her head, whispered in her ear….

That he had indeed done those things to her…

That Juni had just lied to her…

That the memories had lied to her…

Alone… in the dark… she had become his…

That everything she had seen there, was just her mind concealing the truth.

That she was always going to be his, his pet… both as woman and beast.

A great gift the heavens had granted just for him… because he was special enough to have deserved a second life.

The dissonance of it jarred her horribly, because on the one hand it was disturbingly compelling, but on the other she was pretty clear that this was a horrid scam and that something really was trying to totally screw her over.

The memories were pretty clear on that point as well, which helped, because the horrible, compelling ‘comfort’, juxtaposed with the ‘grasping avarice’, was nigh irresistible.

In that instant, as she came to that conclusion though, the world cracked.

Darkness rose as a pit beneath her, or a gate above her – it was hard to tell – as it devoured ‘her’ even as the silver prince denied her everything… No matter which way she turned, they seemed to say, she could only become theirs.

-But does it actually matter? she thought dully.

-To all intents the ‘girl’ Lin Ling died on a table in darkness and afterwards I was basically a vessel for the blood.

-My body has basically been destroyed completely… twice… thrice in fact if you could count this tribulation.

-So what?

-I survived all that. You think I am beholden to that darkness?

-You think I fear you taking my face and shoving it back there?

-It’s just a memory; I survived the reality.

-We crawled out of there, in spite of you.

“If my only choice is this? I choose to fight until the end!”

Sneering, she grasped the silver youth around the throat, strangling it. The youth just laughed, mockingly, and extinguishing lightning sank into her body, shredding her meridians and arriving in her dantian and her Sea of Knowledge and in that instant…

The grasping, surging lightning found the golden flower in her dantian as it dove for her spirit root.

The greedy, grasping hands, ripping her memories out of her Sea of Knowledge somehow, snapped a singular, almost forgotten meeting into focus: A golden-blonde girl about her age, with brilliant blue eyes and earthen skin, stood next to a nest of eggs, tilting her head to the side and peering at her, frowning in a way that suggested, somehow, inexplicably, she had been seen.

The golden flower was consumed, almost gleefully, the lightning surged through her sea of knowledge avariciously grasping that memory along with many others and in that same instant, everything around her seemed to still and she heard a voice whisper into her ear across eternity, as golden peony flowers bloomed around her…

"Break!"

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

~ CANG DI – RUINED HILLTOP ~

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

He finally managed to extricate himself from the chaotic ruin of the slope, just in time to see Ilkurz smash into the slope of the hill opposite him and, much more problematically, Qing Dongmei, who, her face a mask of fury, targeted her formation at the beast-

{Nine Luminaries Celestial Arrow}

“No!” he tried to call out, but the sound just refused to carry; such was the ruin unfolding all around them.

The silvery arrow smashed into its side, doing remarkable damage to its qi armour, he was surprised to see, and also somewhat dispersing the yin energies that were still worming into it.

The beast turned, fixing instead on their group. Shatterpoint was skittering all over the place now, sending him premonitions of various misfortunes that led him to suspect rather strongly that the responsibility for drawing this awkward moment didn’t entirely land with Qing Dongmei, or even Ilkurz or himself for that matter.

However, before the beast could launch any attack, Xin Dai also intervened from where he had been shepherding the retreat of many of the cultivators.

“Namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ caṇḍa-mahāroṣaṇa sphoṭaya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ”

The mantra echoed faintly, even as hundreds of golden fists crashed into the beast.

{Nine Luminaries Celestial Arrow}

A moment later a second arrow crashed into the beast-

{HONG FENG’S BLAZING LANCE}

It was followed by a spear of red and gold fire from one of the nearer camps, cast by who knew who.

Even Quan Dingxiang, who had recovered, launched an attack, summoning the Kirin’s flame from the sect treasure he had to block the beast.

*KRACKOOOooooom*

*CRAZzzzzzzkkkz*

Two massive green bolts of lightning split the battlefield in two, streaking off a hilltop near where the robed orcs had previously been. Both transformed into horned serpents, coiling around the beast, ripping apart even more of its qi defences-

The sky above inverted and the clouds spat white celestial death, at which he could only stare dully.

-What realm of tribulation is this?

Above him, the vast thunderheads were still rising as well, having gained a second proper layer of roiling clouds. Even as he struggled to adjust, the strange formation above the beast swirled and lost a ‘ring’-

Abruptly, the Yin Qi in the world surged.

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

This time, he saw the idiot bastards actually activate it, because the land was basically flat in that direction and all the dust had been flattened to the ground.

“DIN OUYENG!”

Her scream, in the mythical tongue, made his soul waver. If before the beasts rage had been… provocative, now it was absolutely irreconcilable, and probably justifiably so. There was basically one reason to try again-

“I – NINE GENERATIONS – BURN – FIRE!”

The follow-up roar, was just a roar, but the response was… emphatic.

{EXECUTING JUDGEMENT OF FIVE JADES}

Implying that Din Ouyeng’s, or someone else’s, stunt – but his hunch suggested the former – was not the trump card the Jade Gate Court had been preparing, five huge white swords spiralled up into the sky and then smashed down on the beast – to disturbingly little effect.

The beast rolled backwards-

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

Everywhere, yin wood energy surged, shimmering fireflies like golden flowers welling up from the fruits of its previous uses to form a vast spectral tree and in the process all but confirming why they were doubling down on using it.

“The idiots really do want to refine it into a Parasol Fruit,” he groaned under his breath.

That was the main, offensive use of these talismans. The Parasol Trees would not survive long, unstable as they were in their first generation. They would devour what qi they could and synthesise it into a fruit, or several fruits, and then die. That fruit, though, would be much more stable and hold almost all the devoured potential of the land they had grown in…

Or on…

Or of whatever else had been caught up in their first generation’s lifecycle.

The fruit was also, in effect, a ‘reincarnated item’ so it was largely immaterial how the things it fed on had died when it came to using the energies of it. That made them remarkably prized cultivation resources.

That said, this time the beast was not so unprepared, as it turned out.

“BURST!”

The roar, infused with a vast strength of yang laws attributed to wood, scattered the tree, sending the coalescing qi drifting back down to earth. The beast was already devouring much of it, refining in turn the very thing that had been directed to refine it, no less. The talisman itself, he was relieved to see, had finally run out of use and those controlling it were scattered and bloody from the backlash of it being broken.

Suddenly, space around the beast twisted again and a boundless wave of yang wood washed out with it. In the same instant, the beast turned away from their camp, looking back towards where the orcs were-

‘Shatterpoint’ twisted and went blank, ceasing to work or give him any intuitions-

A white plane bisected the formation above the beast, which had been blocking the tribulations’ progress.

Qi bled away from their surroundings and he felt for perhaps the third time ever in his life, the strength of ‘Severing Law’. It split the formation, scattering it completely and turning the area around the beast so thoroughly chaotic that it nearly vanished from sight.

“…”

He realised he was shaking and cold, watching the last lines of the formation dissolve away.

-So that was their ‘hidden stratagem’… he shuddered inwardly.

-The Jade Gate Court must be thanking the fates right now that that old orc saw fit to use it on the beast and not on us. If they had used that critical moment, we would have been delivered straight to death, pretty much.

The beast spun and, with considerable anger, hurtled towards the orcs, the delayed lightning from the tribulation surging after her. Faced with the serious possibility of getting caught up in it, the various cultivators on their flank all scattered.

All he could do was run in the opposite direction to the one had been, cursing that space was utterly wretched and doing really weird things, which accounted for how he had barely made it 200 metres this way and that since the beast’s tribulation started.

Behind him the behemoth gave an enraged roar and the white lightning finally dissipated.

-Wait… was that?

He had to force himself not to slow with the shock of what he was seeing. Above, the sky turned dark, and the two layer tribulation became three, but in doing so…

The storm clouds overhead boiled from horizon to horizon, flooding away from the shadow that fell, the clouds burning even as the sky itself shattered. His momentum nearly faltered under the oppressive weight of worldly principle, even as his stomach twisted in fear at the sight of the blazing silvery grey, mountain-sized meteor that was dropping straight out of the sky on top of them.

The clouds themselves started to fall, dragged down in its wake, becoming sheets of grey fire, even as thousands and then tens of thousands of lesser bolts scattered across the sky and fell to earth. The horrifying, oppressive manifestation of denial that came with it spoke not just to the eradication of the beast, but somehow, a whole…

“Era Denying Tribulation?” he blurted out stupidly, sitting down dully on the shallow hill he was now on.

Even had he wanted to flee, he probably couldn’t. The strength of the laws oppressing the world now were such that even his teacher’s talismanic avatar would be able to do nothing. Tribulations operated on different sets of rules.

Everywhere, swirls of grey fire were sweeping across the landscape, incinerating everything. The beast itself had stopped and was…

He stared blankly as it emptied out what had to be a whole storage device into a small mountain of various herbs, jars, crates and other assorted goods before devouring almost all of it directly, including what looked like a very large store of the blood it had consumed before.

“That is Grass Stalker box?” a voice in Easten muttered dully from nearby.

Turning, he saw that a few lucky orcs had somehow made it this far, archers mostly, and all looking much the worse for wear. A few appeared to have just tipped blue war paint at random all over their bodies and it was one of those who was pointing at the beast. Most were just looking at the sky, slack-jawed, as unable to process matters as he was.

The beast, for her part, was now looking up at the meteor—

“Heaven Break.”

The roar that split the heavens directly and rose up to meet the great meteor was… he couldn’t call it terrifying, even though it was. Rather, it was defiant, enraged even, but also evoked a remarkable and poignant sense of loss.

They sank through his consciousness, and in that instant, he grasped that they were not really spoken by the beast standing before him, but somehow, terrifyingly, by its bloodline, somehow reaching out across the aeons, burning its ancestral blood directly to overcome the tribulation.

The heavens shattered – quite literally – breaking like a mirror and falling upwards under the force of the words and the sentiments they evoked. The meteor itself shattered, dispersing through the clouds even as it crumbled into silver grey fire that rained down everywhere.

{Dao Cage}

Grimacing, he finally used one of his Dao Ascendant grade Dao Cage talismans, sheltering the hill he was on, even as the grey fire fell down like a pale rain of ash within half a mile or so of the epicentre. It burnt strange holes through vegetation that it didn’t incinerate outright and turned the dirt to glass anywhere it landed before dissipating.

The dozen or so orcs there stared at him stupidly, perhaps wondering why he would bother to protect them as well. In truth, he wondered as well, but prior to this point he had had no serious enmity with them, and even as things were, all of those here were below the Immortal realm and so didn’t pose a significant threat.

Watching the last embers of grey fire wink out, he winced at the lost integrity of the barrier and hoped Qing Dongmei and Zi Min had gotten clear. Both had lifesaving treasures, but their juniors would be nowhere near as fortunate. It was probably possible to survive some minor exposure to the fire, but anyone who did would be very miserable.

“Oh come on! Isn’t this just damning heaven and deceiving earth?” he muttered, as just as he was considering cancelling the talisman to save its charge, the vault of heaven… got darker.

Out of that rising shadow, a scene to truly strike fear into any cultivator’s heart appeared as 99 black robed sages carrying 99 stele listing the great heavenly retributions of the aeonspan stepped forth. The ‘Retribution Hall’ could appear at Dao Immortal, but it was exceedingly rare. His teacher had suggested that Heavenly God Physiques could see it at Immortal but usually it only manifested for Dao Lords who had grasped three great laws or better, or for Dao Sovereigns and Eternals. For it to show up here was…

-Is it related to the physique patterns?

-Or did she get an unfortunate mutation…?

-Or is this ‘our’ fault?

That last, rather haunting thought, seemed quite likely, the more he thought about it. There had been so much mendacious and ignorant messing about with the ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ of this world before and during this battle, not to mention all the alignment disruption, that that really did seem quite probable.

It was impossible to hear what the hall said – usually. Even so, the immense sense of denunciation that came with it though was almost personal in its vehemence. However, the expected 99 bolts and associated ephemera didn’t descend. Instead, eleven of the elders raised their stele and 11 more black bolts fell, carrying with them a rain of lesser bolts that scoured the landscape all around them. The Dao Cage held, better than he had expected actually.

“What step tribulation even is this?” he muttered dully, looking at the beast.

It was impossible to see through it, but dozens of direct hits should have nearly finished off the barrier. As it was, it still had nearly a third of its current qi left. Shaking his head, he pulled out a bunch of Dao Jades and hurriedly linked them to the barrier. One thing was clear though: it had just succeeded in stepping up the tribulation, breaking through to a higher realm, before it finished the initial tribulation.

“Stepping tribulations?” he mumbled, shocked just to see it really.

Those were another thing ‘talked’ about, mostly by the old elders in the Ancestral Peaks. His teacher had just told him not to entertain such notions when he asked about them after one such discussion he had been allowed to sit in on.

Watching this, he could see why.

Up above, the surging layers of heaven gained a fourth layer as well.

“You… is heroic person… Has drink? Watch world end?” an orc had sidled up to him, the one who pointed out the ‘Golden Grass box’ whatever that related to, and was holding out a jar of what appeared to be alcohol.

Wordlessly he took it and drank a swig… and regretted it, because it was vile – drinkable and with a weird kick to it – but very, very vile.

It kind of summed up the whole experience of the previous few days in a nutshell, really.

“Um… thanks,” he resisted making a face. “What did you make it out of?” he asked, before wondering if he wanted to know the answer.

“Spider ichor, mostly… and some spirit herbs,” the orc grinned.

“…”

As it turned out he really didn’t…

Wordlessly, he pulled out a jar of Immortal realm liquor and passed it to the orc, who took a swig and grinned, saluting him back. “You is indeed great hero!”

“Is not often you see evil old things come out,” the orc gestured to the sky, and few of the others who had limped over to get the alcohol nodded dully.

“Not… often?” he stared at them blankly, trying to process that statement.

“Yes... In Moon Sickle, once in grandfather time,” an older orc, with a badly injured arm, nodded. “He see great serpent of shadowless lake step over, get 4th head.”

“I remember tale!” another agreed.

“Indeed,” the old orc nodded, grinning. “Grandfather say then, he watch Great Punishment and Old Evils come out, but serpent swear at them a lot and devour them all get baptised in silver after!”

“I remember him,” the orc who had originally offered him the ‘wine’ nodded. “He very blue old man, always have lucky things. Even death lucky, in arms of pretty young woman who still bear his child!”

Several of the other orcs snickered and nodded at that. He found he was somewhat surprised at the commonality of the expression as much as anything.

Above them, the black bolts twisted and warped, acquiring manifestations in the form of 11 weapon-wielding masked and painted figures. Figures at which he could only stare dully, because while there were orcs, a male and a female one, there were also demonic looking figures with grey skin and pointy ears, pale skin daubed in blue and white war paint, and among the others, three who were absolutely, very crudely dressed cultivators.

Space was now totally broken around the point of the tribulation, the land twisting oddly and distorting at random as the beast fought the hunters. The battle itself was… uncompromising. The hunters danced and swirled around the beast, shooting it with arrows, stabbing it with spears or snaring it with ropes and other such weapons. For its part, it raged back against them, tearing them down one after another in desperate battles as they tore at it, cut its limbs, broke its scales, cursed it in death, unleashing torrents of world-shattering thunder.

It was not the typical experience of this kind of tribulation either, which was terrifying in a different way. Usually, when you were challenged to a ‘Duel of Fate’ within the constraints of a tribulation you faced off against the eleven one after another. He had met that Bureau once, when he crossed over to Immortal. The idea of facing all of them at once?

-I would have died without a grave, he shuddered.

“Is old ancestors?” one said dully, as they continued to pass around his jar of wine.

“True, it look a bit like crazy old shaman,” the older one muttered, shading his eyes against a particularly effusive blast of lightning that skittered across the Dao Cage.

“However, Deathless Grimvak not look so pretty,” another muttered.

“Only ten fought?” he muttered, realising that as the last one fell, the 11th still remained.

That 11th one was very different as well. She was younger, more vivid in a strange way, painted in black and white?

In his memory, he quickly tallied up the different colours of war paint and weapons the others had, then realised and stared blankly at the tribulation for a moment. All the yin and yang elements had been represented – so was this final one yin and yang itself?

“What kind of tribulation is this?” he asked dully, watching as the yin yang bolt, for that was surely what it was, stood there, staring at the beast. “The 11 fated reflections don’t behave like this?!”

Unlike the others the girl was not ageless, looking to be in her teens, naked, although her whole form was obscured by the black and white geometric war paint in such a way that it made his eyes slide off her. She was also the only one without a mask… and carried multiple weapons – a spear with a black stone blade, a bow and a pair of blades made from black and white worked stone-

{Okay. That’s a bit ridiculous!} the talisman abruptly spoke.

{There is such a thing as being treated unjustly by those grasping, sticky-pawed heavens, but how, by all that was… How does that girl have karma with her?}

He nearly jumped up, so unexpected was the intervention by the talisman. It had not spoken to him at all since they had their brief, illuminating discussion on the hillside. Instead it had just become a gloomy constant, its aura of anger hanging behind him like a ghost ever since, rejecting all further attempts to communicate.

“What do you-?”

The yin yang bolt cast her spear-

As it pierced through the beast in a single, flawless move, that provided no opening to dodge or even comprehend, the ‘intent’ washed over the battlefield. In its face, he was suddenly certain that if he stood there, even as he was now, he would die without fail before it.

He was still reeling from that when two arrows, like dark stars, pierced through its head, carrying with it a singular, irresistible intent.

Darkness washed over everything, scything through the world, encapsulated in a singular, horrifying, inevitable word.

‘Extinction.’

He was certain his heart actually stopped…

His soul dispersed…

His destiny collapsed…

His fate… the world and every connection he had with it was swept away, flowing backwards until he vanished without ever having been born.

Every action he did, undone…

Every person he met… untouched by his passing…

He…

He…

He snapped back to the moment, his body covered in a cold sweat as he fought to not succumb to it. The orcs were staring slack-jawed at the sky. One slowly keeled over blank-eyed, a compatriot giving him a kick before being satisfied that he was just unconscious, not actually dead.

“Truth,” he mumbled, closing his hands, which were shaking now. “That was a truth, manifest through the world as a natural intent?”

Even though it was merely a reflection, echoing through the aeonspan, mirrored by this tribulation somehow. Even though it had just been intent, not principle or even a Dao. Just that brief glimpse had been enough to nearly deliver him to a fate execution; such was his proximity to the formation threshold of a Dao Seed.

The enraged beast collapsed to the ground, its body crumbling away.

“Well, that is that,” he sighed, grimly and sadly.

“It fall…” another orc muttered, sounding almost sad.

It was absolutely dead, he agreed, accepting the jar of wine back and taking a big swig. There was no doubt about that, and, with its death, he had a terrible premonition suddenly, that its ‘death’ and all their roles in disturbing the fate of this world would certainly come to haunt him when his own breakthrough came.

“Eh?” the old orc had actually stood up.

Confused, he put the jar down and stared at the beast… just in time to see its whole body explode into bloody mist even as the form of a young girl, maybe 13 or 14, with blonde hair appeared in its midst.

“What?”

He stared dully at the core that rose up from the ruin of the beast, rippling faintly as it finished stabilizing and the various bits of the puzzle slotted together. The vast, distorting waves, the collapses, the fact that the tribulation had started with heavenly lightning in the first instant…

“Impossible! That can’t be?” he stared at the sky, at the four swirling layers and then back at the freshly formed Golden Core.

-Did she just form her core…?

-Did a Qi Refinement beast do this… with blood rage?

-That can’t be right… did she have a Soul Foundation without a core somehow?

-Like a physical cultivator’s Soul Meridians?

No matter how he put that, it was a lunatic’s theory, and yet the core itself was like something out of a story in its own right.

It was a deep, reddish black, flickering with gold, surrounded by a red-purple corona that sparked gold. He could clearly see the swirling ephemera of the 33 rotations it had taken to form it along with the surging yang strength that it drew forth – yang fire was there… but also other more esoteric aspects, yang through eternity, yang in its endless, timeless, ageless aspects of vitality. The ocean waves, the thunder above, the ancient trees in the forest, the eternal fires of the earth, the timelessness of mountains.

“A Sovereigns Core!” blurting that out, he felt he really shouldn’t be surprised anymore, by anything about this freakish tribulation. That was clearly a sovereign core, and a unique permutation as well. In that regard it was actually a step higher than his own which while unique did not have the sovereign attribute of earth, let alone True Yang.

White lightning surged down from the sky, binding the soul directly, tearing through it and turning the qi of the land all around them chaotic. When it faded, the girl still stood there… and shockingly it was much less nascent than it had been, more vivid somehow.

The great sages above roared out in frustration. Raising their steles, they spoke 66 great denials and he saw the rippling soul chains of the ‘Soul Denying’ Tribulation descend, vanishing into the beast’s new soul one after another.

The Heavens stood still for a fearful second while the girl’s soul was transfixed amid the surging chains before. One after another they shattered and turned into grey ash that was blown away on the wind.

Setting aside the question of how a Nascent Soul cultivator could get what was a thoroughly terrifying variant of the tribulation usually faced when stepping into Ancient Immortal, what shocked him most, yet again, was how vehemently personal it felt and the fact that she had been afforded no opportunities to get anything from it. Usually, broken tribulations could be claimed as reward of sorts, but these were basically running from her as soon as they were broken.

The figure collapsed, slumped amid the distant carnage of the landscape, looking small and alone.

“Abnormal, utterly abnormal,” he could only exclaim.

Even though he wasn’t actually using the art, Shatterpoint was also telling him that something was… off with the tribulation, intuitively drawing him back to how ‘personal’ it had felt?

It was probably good that nobody other than them was likely to have lingered after the punishment hall descended. Not that running would do them any more good than it had him, survival out there was down to luck basically.

-Sadly bottled luck is something most of them have in strong supply, he complained in his heart, taking a further swig of the wine jar and passing it back around.

Above them, the heavens shifted and the elders roared again, the hall snapping back into focus. The 99 steles they held all ruptured, each expelling a bolt of black and gold lightning that transformed into a black scaled dragon with 5 golden claws, wreathed in golden fire. They swirled across the sky, howling in their ancestral tongue as the elders extolled them to seek retribution on behalf of the heavens.

“Fate Seizing Retribution?” he exclaimed dully, then realised he had spoken that out loud, because the orcs were staring at him rather expectantly.

“Err…. Erm,” he coughed a bit awkwardly, and looked at the dragons as they swirled down, wondering if he needed to add more Dao Jades to the barrier suddenly. “It err… according to my teacher, it normally appears if you seize another’s fate or disrupt a tribulation that had an aspect of fate in it.”

-And I rather suspect at this point, all of us are going to be seeing it up close and personal in due course, he complained in his heart.

He realised it was probably hard to explain if you didn’t have his depth of knowledge.

The orcs stared at him blankly, making him realise that they likely didn’t have his depth of knowledge, even if it was just repeated rather verbatim from what Ancestor Bronze had told him.

And besides, the beast was also radiating a profound sense of shock, and behind it, something he could almost tangibly equate as being ‘shocked to silence by shamelessness’ which made no sense at all, unless it really was a proper dragon?

“…”

Shaking his head, he simplified his explanation as best he could, while still pondering that latter point, because the girl was clearly enraged as she stared up at the descending dragons.

“If you manage to take another’s luck, you get this judgement. In this case, heaven thinks she has stolen a dragon’s luck, so it’s 99 imperial dragons. But she clearly has ancestral memories and was able to stimulate them… so while she doesn’t look like a dragon, she… well it’s weird,” he finished a bit lamely.

“Oh…” the older orc nodded. “It like she somehow find way to feel really blue at the expense of someone else, take their blue sky away and gods not like it, so make her eat stinking shit, like it is really orange.”

The other orcs all nodded as if this made perfect sense. In a way, the metaphor was quite apt, but the colours?

“Blue? Orange?” he almost felt he didn’t want to ask.

The orcs looked at him like he was a moron.

“Blue is like sky, boundless possibilities, big fortune, many paths, see blue sky is boundless; if you is wearing blue, you is lucky Ur’Vash, carry bit of blue sky with you. Orange… like bad poop, never see Ur’Vash wear orange. It is very unlucky, knock-off yellow, or bad teeth. Ur’Vash who have orange teeth orange shit, eat bad fungus… died this kind of thing?”

The old orc… or Ur’Vash as he now realised they called themselves in Easten trailed off, presumably realising much as he had, that there was a culture barrier at play here that pushed the problem beyond their means to easily explain.

“Blue is lucky colour… orange very unlucky colour,” another added, grinning helpfully.

In a weird way, it made a sort of sense, even if the deeper logic eluded him. It did make him wonder though, what red and black and yellow, which had been much in evidence, let alone white, which had been dispersing people’s souls somehow, stood for.

Shaking his head, he turned back to the tribulation above, watching it meticulously now, because if nothing else, his teacher would probably not speak to him for a century if he didn’t show him this – assuming he survived.

Above them, the tribulation continued, the girl, snarling curses in their ancient tongue that echoed across the sky like a refrain to the celestial thunder, was ripping apart dragons with her bare hands and devouring them like they were some kind of fish. The damage she was taking was punishing, but with her yang vitality…

“Oh…” Watching her, and how her body was reforming around her core, he understood another bit of the puzzle.

She had too much qi. That was why she was taking such risks. She was actually using the tribulation to break down the parasol qi and everything else that was in her body. It was ingenious – and also utterly insane. However, at this point, she clearly had little to lose. What was more shocking though, was that the rate at which she was doing so was beyond ridiculous.

There was also something else at work, he came to realise as he watched her progress, scrutinizing what he could of her qi absorption and manipulation.

He was familiar with body cultivators; the western continent had a lot of them. He had also been somewhat curious about Physical Laws, the mantras of the Eastern Continent – however, his teacher had been vague on them, saying that they could be a potent tool in the right circumstances. Ancestor Bronze had also been clear though, that barring some remarkably good fortune, they were basically a dead end within the current heavens of Eastern Azure.

She had a core… and a dantian presumably, and a Nascent Soul, but had somehow had a Soul Foundation before forming her core?

As he stared closer, pondering that riddle again-

He suddenly hissed and pulled back his intent, realising that his soul sense had just snapped back, presumably as whatever restricted it finally failed in the face of the tribulation.

“Bah,” he sighed, pulling out another jar of wine and taking a sip.

There was nothing else he could do anyway. Watching too closely now would just see him implicated, even more than he was already, if he was incautious. There was no way to run either, though the barrier would be fine unless it started taking direct hits from dragons. The Ur’Vash had clearly recognised this, because they were remarkably sanguine, more so than he was in effect, and now having some kind of debate in their own tongue while occasionally cheering a particularly vicious ‘dragon kill’ by the beast.

Counting the dragons though, which were getting stronger with each one she killed – another remarkably vindictive streak to the whole thing he thought, and very atypical – the girl was likely in trouble. It was possible she might pull herself over the line, but the damage being done and the burden of her excess qi were starting to drag her down as-

“What?”

He stared blankly, as between one moment and the next, her principle clicked.

“That’s… that’s?” He was glad he had a mouthful of wine to spit, or he might have actually spat blood in anger.

“UNFAIR!” he yelled, irrationally.

Even though he couldn’t see what it was, beyond that it related to yang and was remarkably obscuring, he had no doubts she had just ‘formed’ her principle. Having barely been in Nascent Soul for… however long it was?

“Even if this is a deeply unfair tribulation, isn’t this… this… this…” he trailed off, unable to find words to articulate how he felt as the girl easily finished off the last three dragons.

“…”

They all looked upwards, as the heavens deadened and a vast, aloof pressure settled down from the sky as the misty throne manifested directly, the shadowy figure on it leaning forward and glowering into the world.

11 black bolts of lightning rolled out of the heavens, not from above, but around the horizon, constraining the space around the girl, who blocked them one after another, whetting her principle on them-

Suddenly, 33 white sages appeared, stepping over the horizon, their hands making signs to create a vast cage of the black lightning.

He found he really had no words now… The beast, girl, whatever she was, had already stepped up three times using the Retribution Hall – to see Fate Locking Cage then 33 Seizing Sages, both apex tribulations for Dao Immortals in the same tribulation, was akin to the Pillars of Law descending for an Immortal Ascension – tantamount to the heavens leaving no path.

Abruptly, the cage warped, and the net of white light that the sages had cast, trying to seize away her principle in the way that the heavens tried to forcibly reclaim or steal away particularly potent interpretations of Dao Laws, was dispersed directly. The sages were smashed apart by their own cage and everything crumbled into black and white lightning which she drew into herself.

He found himself applauding.

“Outstanding! However you did it… utterly outstanding!” The specifics of it were totally opaque, but he could only admire such an ingenious way to break the tribulations.

Above them, the emperor on his throne snarled in rage and waved forward 66 generals, who descended from the roiling black void above, leading legions of demon soldiers melded from the never-ending waves of lesser tribulation lightning bolts that were streaking across the four layers of clouds.

As they charged down, the girl shifted back into her primordial behemoth form, or rather her Nascent Soul did – first.

“That’s not how body transformation works though?” he complained to the uncaring world as her reformed physical body then shifted to match it.

It was a pointless complaint really, but he felt compelled to state it, just for his own peace of mind.

“Is very scary beast,” the old Ur’Vash nodded.

“Scary,” others nodded as well, adding other comments in their other language as well.

Nodding in agreement, he took a deep swig of the wine to steady his nerves and watched the devastation unfold as her physical form took on the generals and her soul laid waste to the legions that followed. The ebb of the battle was tense, the behemoth/girl – he still wasn’t sure which was the original form – was almost torn down before the 66 generals all fell, their banners crushed and dispersing back into black sparks, while their bodies became diffuse grey fire that the behemoth mostly managed to absorb.

The emperor on his throne trembled in anger, and the retribution hall returned, snapping back into focus with a forceful moment that made the entire sky shudder. This time, however, the 99 Elders of Yama’s hall held golden scrolls, edged in silver and black. They held them up and with a single voice proclaimed.

“Retribution.”

The barrier above rippled and he felt his mind grow dull, even though he wasn’t the focus of the declaration.

‘Fated Retribution Tribulation’, reserved for laws that go against the threads of fate, basically a dead end if encountered before Dao Immortal, it was, his teacher had confided rather grimly, reserved for those who had incurred personal enmity with the current heavens. Even then, it was rarely seen below Dao Eternal and most of those broke through in the maelstroms outside Eastern Azure for just that reason.

He watched blankly as the great formation of 99 scrolls unrolled and 99 golden chains shot down, carrying black lightning with them to try to tie up the unfortunate offender and drag them into the world’s fate directly and consume them.

This basically confirmed for him that someone up there was keeping a dark eye on matters and was really not enthused with this. Involuntarily, he glanced in the direction of the main camp, which was just about outside the epicentre.

-There is no way someone could be that blindly greedy? he wondered uneasily.

The likely intent behind the use of the ‘Parasol Bloom’ was almost certainly to form a Parasol Fruit out of the beast and as many of the Ur’Vash elders as possible, which would likely have been claimed by the Jade Gate Court unopposed in the circumstances.

Xin Dai would not touch it.

He himself already intended to kill several of those brats, but like Xin Dai had no desires on something like that.

Qing Dongmei… would also not do so, he was sure.

As to the others, none of them had the strength to band against Kong Bo or the Jade Gate Court as a whole.

The behemoth raged, breaking chains, as they looked on. The girl’s Nascent Soul had now returned to the form of the golden-haired girl, fully matured now, though she still looked only 16 or 17, and started to support her physical body in tearing apart the chains.

The war of attrition lasted for what seemed like an eternity, before the final link was broken, and the formation collapsed in a sea of golden fire and black serpentine snakes of lightning that the body and Nascent Soul absorbed. The emperor on his throne snarled in rage and a silver beam split the sky, shining out of the seated emperor’s third eye, connecting to her forehead.

The world twisted, and a terrible, seizing force flowed through that silver link as the tribulation continued to deviate from any sense of normality. The emperor got off his throne and walked down towards her, the years falling away from his tyrannically aloof, regal form until he stood in front of the girl as a princely figure, wreathed in august and noble ephemera of silver dragons and phoenixes.

The girl seemed to freeze for a moment, then lunged straight for that imperial youth, her hands closing around his neck even as the form sneered and the seizing force-

Just as abruptly, golden peonies bloomed all across the grassland, even inside the Dao Cage. The blooms inspired within him a sense of primordial awe, and boundless good fortune and auspicious happenings. However, there was also a shadow beyond them that whispered of just as great a doom and unspeakable, nameless catastrophe for those that crossed their presence in inauspicious circumstances.

The seizing force shattered and vanished, its connection disrupted somehow by the presence of the flowers. In that instant, he felt something within them reach out and touch him, touch all the orcs as well. The intensity of the blooming phenomenon seemed to stare through him, through his life, not judging him exactly… but appraising him?

Shuddering, he endured the examination, his instincts telling him that failing this ‘test’ would be the regret of a lifetime. He had never heard of golden peonies manifesting ever, and that monolithic depth within their bloom? It was easily the most terrifying thing he had ever perceived since he had first started cultivating his qi.

The silver lightning flickered across the girl’s distant form, before dissipating into her body. Frozen in place as he was, he could only watch as the golden flowers dissolved into qi that flowed into all of them – even the talisman.

Before his disbelieving eyes, the ruined landscape returned to normal. Patches of charred grass regrew, trees that had been destroyed were reformed before his very eyes, and the landscape scars of the war and the tribulation now vanishing for the most part.

The sky was suddenly blue and cloudless again, the summer sun was as it had been, and birds chirped, an animal barked in the distance…

All that was there to tell him that this had transpired were the corpses, scattered everywhere.

{…}

“That… was the weirdest thing I ever seen,” one of the Ur’Vash finally said.

“Yeah… Is really glad I was feeling blue today…” another muttered…

“Is a shame Takgos died,” another cut in from up slope.

“Is true, usually is smart Ur’Vash who die,” Another grumbled, swigging on the wine.

He sighed and cancelled the barrier and sighed again, in relief mainly, before noticing that all the orcs… Ur’Vash, were looking at him warily.

“I have no quarrel with you,” he stated, more concerned about where his spear was.

The orcs breathed out imperceptibly and nodded.

“You is keeping us alive, otherwise we all end up like them…” the Ur’Vash who had first offered him the ‘spider ichor stuff’ nodded, gesturing to the unlucky ones strewn across the landscape.

“You think is many survivors?” one muttered.

In truth, he was shocked as he swept his soul sense out, at just how many Ur’Vash had survived. On the hills around, quite a few were now pushing themselves up and looking shakily about.

“Many today was feeling very blue… so probably yes. Wear much blue because going to fight mages, not expect to fight sky instead, but same thing in end. Whether mage make go boom, or sky make go boom, still depend on luck,” another sat nearby Ur’Vash grinned.

“Mage?” he blinked, turning over the unfamiliar word.

“You mage, combat mage, not like old elders, maybe more like shaman, Magics Warleader,” the old Ur’Vash shrugged.

“I see,” he nodded, taking in the surroundings, looking for where the other cultivators had rallied.

The bulk of the cultivators had scattered widely, likely because it became every person for themselves at some point. Qing Dongmei and the others had largely survived. She was rapidly racing towards the other camp. However, the prisoners…

“Ah,” he grimaced and stood.

The prisoners were scattered. The nearest bunch were with the Jade Gate Court, which included Han Shu and the others. They were still the focus of attacking Ur’Vash. However, his immediate concern was those wretched…

“You is killing people you protect? Seem odd,” another shrugged, noting the killing intent creeping out around him presumably.

“Hah,” he laughed bitterly. “If you hide behind your… chief? or those old elders in battle from rival clans, call him an idiot in private while pushing him forward, speaking only of his good deeds, then shoot arrows in his back and try to trip him at every turn, even when he is helping ‘your side’ because it is what he should do, what will happen after the battle?”

“Hmmmmm,” the old Ur’Vash just rolled his eyes.

“That chief go with all his friends and find stupid Ur’Vash who behave like orc and make shit pot for wife out of their skulls,” another one grinned.

“Smart Ur’Vash, who not want to be like orc, makes sure chief is dead and friends not see, if has to do that. Then that Ur’Vash is chief, except has to maybe worry that other Ur’Vash also have same smart idea for rest of life, which probably short!” another laughed.