Fuck!
Nolan watched Esteban blink back tears as the raw flesh of his ankle stump continued to writhe around as if it were an independent, living creature. While he, Sean and Esteban were capable of regenerating missing parts of their bodies, the effects weren’t as potent as those enjoyed by genuine Genesis-staged cultivators. Judging by the severity of the wound, it would take at least several hours for his younger friend to fully recover.
Others among the group had also been injured, some grievously.
Despite the excessive triangle of blood that gushed from Aine’s broken nose halfway down to her waist, most of her worry was focused on Esteban.
“H—hurry and dip your leg in the water,” she was saying, blood dripping into the openfaced barrel that she had summoned as it trailed down her little chin in excessive rivulets.
“No time,” grated the youth, who was balancing on one leg atop his flying sword while his eyes darted around like a cornered animal. He’d never shown such a pained expression before.
“What can you even do without a foot? Just hurry and dip your leg in here!”
Sean subconsciously hovered in front of the two, even as he forced his left shoulder back into place where it had recently been dislocated. Afterward, he gripped his halmite longsword with a tight grasp as he stared through uneasy eyes at the intimidating force that surrounded them.
Ian stood with his weapon at the ready, its black surface slick with blood as he floated about a hundred metres above the unfortunate disciple that he’d just bisected with an instantaneous slash of his sword. “Well, we sure didn’t see this coming…” Still in his swimming trunks, his chest was stained by a several crimson blotches, a few flecks in his short golden hair. All the fingers on his left hand had been cut from the appendage, though the young Varai had already stopped the bleeding and was in the midst of regrowing his hand back to its original state.
Down below, one of the summoned spirits subconsciously turned to the still-gasping disciple that had targeted Ian, who was the face of shock and pain as he struggled to float up from the ground after successfully sealing the gruesome faucet of blood that was his waistline. Thoughtlessly, the lingering spirit summoned a martial skill that manifested a fist of blue light about the size of a standard crate, which it promptly used to crush the young man with a gruesome splatter. As per Nolan’s will, anyone not in the group that came within a few dozen metres of the spirits would be killed on sight, an interesting thing to see when making use of the formation for the first time.
“Damn it,” muttered Nolan, who never in his wildest dreams would have anticipated one of their enemies having a similar trump card to their own. “Over eight hundred of them too, huh?” Raising his voice, he addressed his friends with stern, solemn words. “Alright guys, this won’t be as easy as we thought, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win. They might have more summons on their side, but ours are stronger. Keep your movement skills active and do your best to keep safe until the formation’s finished doing its job.”
“You think you can survive this?” came the cool voice of the man that had summoned so many artificial spirits. “I’m afraid you’ll be dying here, young man. While it’s a pity to do away with such talented youths, I’m being paid a large sum, you see.” In a mocking voice, he added, “I hope there’re no hard feelings.” He had a handsome face, but the sort that showed his belief that he was superior to others. Framed by long strands of dark, healthy hair, his gaze was quite devious as he silently stared in their direction.
“Wha—of course there’re hard feelings! You’re fighting us to the death for the sake of some useless tower.” Hit by a sudden thought, Nolan looked past Tems’s eager, murderous gaze and fixed his attention on the Falling Rain Sect’s elite force that hovered at the ready behind their erratic master. “Members of the Falling Rain Sect! No matter what you do, you’ll be losing the Desolate Spirit Tower today. But think about it—are you really willing to watch your sect fall apart—to actually contribute to its inevitable fall? Especially for the sake of the guy who murdered your previous sect master?”
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“A waste of last words!” screamed Tems, who abruptly pounced forward to attack Nolan lest his words sway the hearts of his followers.
Nolan focused on five spirits at the fifth level of Genesis and envisioned the actions that he wanted them to take. Perfectly in sinc with his thoughts, these five arrived in front of Tems like the sudden appearance of a group of ghosts. Without visible effort, the man’s martial skill was dispelled and he was flung back over eight hundred metres, uninjured but visibly taken by surprise.
Returning his attention to the sect members, Nolan infused his voice with energy and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear him.
“I never had any problems with your sect! I was just innocently participating in the tower climb when some big shot disciple of yours named Drasin tried to murder me with a sneak attack so he could rob some treasures from me. We had a life and death battle and I barely survived. Then one of your great elders comes to murder me for revenge, though May ended up falling out with you guys to save me.
“Then Tems sent thousands of your sect members to hunt us down, so we had no choice but to fight for our lives. If you were in our position, wouldn’t you have done the same? Then of course he wastes your defensive formation just to try to stop us, only for the spirit of the lake to show up and kill thousands of you. And now he’s brought you all here, to risk your lives just so he can get petty revenge on me for basically just existing? Wouldn’t it be easier to just choose a new leader and try to salvage the situation?”
Nyla’s cool yet soft voice immediately followed his, even as her slender fingers drew out a fresh arrayment diagram with such speeds that her hand left several afterimages.
“If you remove yourselves from this fight, we’ll replace the Desolate Spirit Tower with dozens of our own! You don’t need to join sides with us; simply leave this area and we’ll do exactly as we promise. Otherwise…”
Punctuating her sentence, her golden ring that was studded with black gemstones suddenly let out a heavy rush of energy that was roughly akin to the entire capacity of both of her high-quality dantians, or about a third of its capacity. Energy flooding into the iridescent schematic, a vibrant flash of golden light preceded the appearance of thousands of real-looking blades of the same valuable shade. These were each the length of an adult man, their tips sharpened to a fine point while their edges gave off devious glints as they reflected the afternoon sunlight. These swords gave off tremendous amounts of oppressive pressure that stirred the surrounding air and riddled it with snaking lines of lightning.
Sensing the chaotic Origin Energies in the surroundings, Nolan was yet again surprised by Nyla’s prowess as an arrayment practitioner. He could summon just as many swords with the same arrayment, sure, but his could only harm cultivators at the second level of Genesis at most, while hers could easily threaten those in the middle levels. What was more, the moment she activated the arrayment, she immediately began to work on a replication of the defensive arrayment that she’d recently cast on everyone in the group, clearly intent on doubling up their already overwhelming defences.
Seeing the hesitancy that the Falling Rain Sect members were showing, Nolan recognized that Merchant Lord Kalvin and the leading elder of the Nightshadow Sect’s present forces were hesitating to make the first move lest they become the initial targets of the intimidating force that Nolan and Nyla’s formation—Uncle Grey’s formation, really—had just added to their ranks. Of these enslaved lingering spirits, over fifty were at the middle levels of Genesis or above, with the majority averaging out between the first and third levels. Despite the fact that they were ounumbered, Nolan’s words of assurance were entirely justified. For all intents and purposes, both sides were evenly matched.
“They’ll make us new towers?”
“Don’t believe their words. Look at how many of us they’ve killed already.”
“You know how Drasin was—his master too. Are their words really so unbelievable?”
No matter where in the large sprawl of floating cultivators Nolan looked, he saw disciples and elders alike openly debating what their next course of action should be.
“What do we have to lose? You heard Sect Master; he’s already agreed to hand over the tower. The moment the world learns about this, we’ve got maybe a decade before we’re targeted by foreign sects? You know what happens to those that lose sect wars.”