Chapter XI: Beast Lures II
Shizukana Gake
Heian Kingdom
The Great Plateau
Month of the Pangolin 4, 172 ,328 DE
"That came from the north." While speaking, Vorn look in that direction.
Even though no one is looking in my direction, I nod out of habit. "Yeah. We need to find those lures. I wasn't sure before we got here, but they should be hidden inside the city."
Vorn turns to look at me. "How? Those Soul waves only come every half hour or so. If we have to waste the time to triangulate them from the pulses. it will take hours. Maybe longer."
"We have a reasonably tight cone to search going north."
"We do?"
I shrug. "I do. You need to get better at it. We just need to get vectors from the northeast and northwest on the next pulse. You need to focus and get the best vector you can of the next pulse."
Squirming like a child, Hoshi nervously stares at me. "How long do you think the city walls can hold out?"
Fewer defenders guard the west walls of the city, but the Ferocious Beasts outside the west walls are mostly weaker than those on the east side. Only about one in ten has actually Coalesced to First Circle, and less than one in fifty is stronger than the First Circle of Coalescence.
Vorn snort. "They should hold for at least two or three hours. If the city's clans sent out all their Martial Warriors, they could probably break a little Beast Wave like this."
"Brigette, drop me near the northeast city wall and take a position over the northwest edge of the city."
"Aye, Master."
Hoshi's stare shifts from me to Brigitte. After looking her up and down for the some-odd hundredth time in the last month, his eyes go back to staring out the bridge window. As I brush a thread of Empathy across his Soul, I find him to be as disinterested as his expression indicates. If Brigette were a human-shaped construct, Hoshi would probably be drooling all over her.
Weaving two threads Telepathy , I connect them to the Minds of Vorn and Brigette. *Can you understand me?*
*As always, Master.*
*I hear both of you.* Vorn always uses 'hear' to describe telepathic communications. It my have to do with how her perceives the communications. Every being's Mind is different in large and small ways, and the differences could very well affect how Mind-based techniques are perceived from being to being.
*You can let two people talk to each other, now, Master?*
*I have to be the intermediary for it. If I loose focus on the conversation. You'll only be able to communicate with and not each other.*
* * * * *
In the northeast area of the city, Brigette takes that Silver Princess down low over a large avenue, and I jump out of the main hatch. Dropping only ten or so meters, I absorb the impact with bent knees.
*I'm down. Head to the west.*
*Aye, Master.*
As the Silver Princess rises into the air and turns west, the guards standing outside the gate of the nearest clan compounds eye me suspiciously. The gates to the compounds stand closed, and other than the gate guards, the street is empty. Known as the Outer Noble Quarter, the compounds are home to the majority of the weaker Cultivation clans fill this section of Shizukana Gake. They do not like anyone not a part of the clans wandering the streets, and their clan guards tend to be thug squads that like to break the bones of the unwanted.
Expanding my awareness to its limits, I find active wards blazing in all the nearby compounds and armed guards patrolling. All the squad commanders have at the bare minimum reached the peak of Body Tempering, and some stand solidly within the Qi Condensation realm. If all the guards in the service to these clans had been dispatched city's walls, the time the city could be held against the Beast Wave could be doubled or tripled. But the Cultivation clans of Shizukana Gake care nothing for the fate of the commoners. As long as their clans survive, nothing else matters to the clan elders and patriarchs.
"Hey! Gaijin! Shove off!" One of the guards glaring at me from next to the nearest set of compound gates points down the broad avenue toward the south with his spear.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Ignoring the guards, I continue scanning the surrounding compounds. I am well outside the boundaries or my estimated cone for the Beast lure. I do not expect to find it in any of these compound, but the wards filling them make excellent tools to hone my awareness on. There is not telling if or how the Beast lures will be hidden. Wards are a possibility, and I have had practically no experience penetrating wards with my awareness.
I extend tendrils of Trinity, and with the effort of maintaining the Telepathy threads, I barely manage to keep the tendril in a coherent form. While keeping the tendrils in the Eidos, I send them over the walls of the nearest compound. Once inside, they pass through the garden and brush over a ward covering the front wall of the manor house. The ward primarily exists in the Soma, and only its pattern leaks into the Eidos. My Trinity tendrils pass right through the ward, and the interior of the mansion opens up within my awareness.
"Hey! Gaijin bastard! Are you listening to me?"
As a feelings of disappointment and disdain fill me, I snort derisively. The design of these ward are a joke compared with what I have learned from Old Man Jones' books. I expected to have a lot more trouble, but if this is the standard of the Cultivation clans' ward, there should be no trouble finding the Beast lure.
The mouthy guard leads his four-man squad toward me. With hostilely scornful expressions plastered on their faces, they all have their spears at the ready. "You had your chance, gaijin. Now, you don't walk anywhere, ever again."
I snort derisively and move. The lead guard has just barely stepped in the Qi Condensation realm, and the other three are at the peak of Body Tempering. The could walk all over a common human, but they cannot even react to my speed. As I rip the spear out of the lead guard's hands, his expression does not chance, before my kick to his balls sends him flying back five meters or so.
I make three quick strikes with alternating ends of the spear, and as their broken legs give way beneath them, the other guards collapse to the ground. Over a second later, their pain filled screams fill the avenue.
"Invader!"
"We're under attack!"
"East gate! Attacker!"
The guards outside the gates of other compounds, who saw me take down the four, do not move so much as a millimeter from their posts. However, they do stare intently in my direction, and the nearest groups sends a guard into the compound they are guarding. As long as I do not make a move against them, they are unlikely to do anything without orders.
In less than a minute, the gate, which the guards had nominally been guarding, opens. A middle-aged man leads a ten-man squad of guards into the alley. They all have the same uniforms as the guard I just took down. The middle-aged man's Cultivation is higher than guards lying on the ground, but he is still in the Qi Condensation realm. His eyes take in the scene, before coldly staring at me.
"Beast, are you looking for trouble with Clan Harada?"
While I do not remember ever seeing the middle-aged man, he obviously knows who I am, the benefits of infamy. Clan Harada. I beat and tortured the brothers from the main clan line a few years ago, and ripped off Harada Gohan's dick a few months ago. I never bothered to find out if he lived.
As bad as those novels from the Middle Empires might be, their constant repetition of shit proverbs along the lines of "enemies are destined to meet" might be true. It could be why trashy lines that become proverbs.
I put on one of my obnoxious smirks. "I didn't know this was your clan's rat hole. How is Gohan enjoying like as eunuch?"
The middle-aged man frowns. "That is none of your concern. You have done enough damage to this clan. If you were not hiding behind Grandmaster Jones, we would have already made an example of you."
While snickering, I sweep my gaze across the Clan Harada guards. "If you want to attack me, I can help you join Gohan's eunuch status. If he has all of you to keep him company, he might not feel so bad about being dickless."
The middle-aged man glares at me, but he does not attack. The other guards behind him reek of fear.
I look past the middle-aged man, which just happens to be the direction of the Harada compound. "If you aren't going to attack me, don't bother me. I'm waiting for something to happen."
Despite the odors of anger and hate inundating the middle-aged man's scent, he stays quiet and does nothing more than stare coldly at me.
With most of my awareness focused through a tendril of Trinity, I continue to probe the wards inside the surrounding clan compounds. All the wards have similar designs. With the focus of the Yuan Qi in them being centered in the Soma and no Mind Force used in their construction, their only presence in the Eidos lies in their patterns. It makes them obvious and easy to analyze.
A wave of Elemental Soul washes over my Soul. I focus on the direction it came from and fix it in my Mind.
*Did you the direction?*
*I have it, but just a general arc. It's nowhere near as tight as yours from earlier. Maybe sixty degrees.* Vorn's thoughts come through in a wooden, emotionless manner. The lack of emotional context make it more like reading the text from a book that participating in a conversation.
"Mark it on the map. Brigette, come pick me up.*
*Aye, Master. We're on the way.*
While I wait, the Clan Harada guards continue to glare hostilely at me, but their scents give away their fear. When the Silver Princess passes over their clan's compound, the guards shift their stares to the airship.
As the Silver Princess slews into a slow drift over the avenue, the main hatch opens, and Vorn tosses out a rope. Grabbing onto the rope, I climb up to the airship. While watching me climb, the Clan Harada guards stand in the middle of the avenue, with their mouths hanging open.
On the bridge's chart table, a map of the city has two cones marked on it, the narrow one based my perception of the pulse from the south, and one three times as wide based on Vorn's perception from the west. Finding my position in the alley, I add a third cone to the map. All three converge over an area slightly less than a kilometer in diameter.
"That's the Old Merchant Quarter. Over a century ago, all the merchants moved their businesses into the Trade Quarter and turned it into a residential district. It became a collection of small manor houses and compounds for more well-off merchants. Brigette, take us over there."
"Aye, Master."