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3.18 - Stand and Fight
🕑 Added 2024-05-23 22:00:01 +0000 UTCThe wave of beasts slammed into the barrier. Tan Xiaoling and Yan Shirong both used their ranged techniques to thin the initial assault. Tan Xiaoling’s spear took aim at the larger and stronger Third Realm beasts, while Yan Shirong sandblasted away the weaker foes with his spray of black thorns.
He Yu, Li Heng, and Chen Fei stood just inside the barrier, manning it like the wall of a fortress. He Yu had the most advantageous position because of his weapon’s reach, but Chen Fei and Li Heng were both able to step across the formation, deliver a blow or two, and then retreat to safety. At least at first.
It only took a minute or so for the Fourth Realm beasts to join in on the assault. As soon as they came into sight, Chen Fei fell back to pour all the qi she could muster into reinforcing the main formation, while also franticly making incantation gestures to add additional barriers where needed.
In a significant display of skill, she would form smaller barriers to blunt the initial attack and let them shatter once they’d done their job. The blows and techniques of the Fourth Realm beasts would then slam into the main array, significantly weakened. The other four cultivators would then lash out with attacks of their own in the opening provided.
Despite their efforts, the futility was clear. No matter how many lesser beasts or spirits they put down, there were always more. The stronger beasts continued to beat on the barriers while shrugging off any attempts at retaliation from the cultivators inside.
He Yu glanced around him. Tan Xiaoling had stepped up to take Chen Fei’s place at the barrier. Her paired dao flashed as she cut down dozens of lesser beasts, and struck at the Fourth Realms where and when she could. Li Heng had shifted back into a more defensive style, taking whatever attacks he could to fuel the silver light of his Lunar Mirror Sword Art. From behind, Yan Shirong continued to rain techniques upon the horde.
They were all rapidly flagging. He Yu could see it etched into each of their faces. Feel it in the sputtering qi of their presences. The moonlit field, the stalwart mountain, the cloak of darkness, and the bleached desert sands—they all faded. He Yu’s own presence wasn’t in any better shape. His qi reserves were lower than he’d ever felt them before, and the promise of a coming storm had become a mere memory of the same.
This wasn’t how he’d imagined dying—falling to a horde of beasts, deep in the wilderness where he’d never be found. Never remembered. At least he’d do so on his feet, and with friends. Judging by the others’ posture, they felt the same way. He Yu poured everything he had left into his techniques, activating them all for one final push.
The Fourth Realm ape slammed both its fists into the barrier. This time, Chen Fei couldn’t muster smaller ones to blunt the impact, and the protective shield she’d been maintaining cracked. Glancing behind him, He Yu saw her slumped to the ground, her presence flickering on the edge of going out completely. She’d spent herself fully, and he guessed the barrier could only take one more blow.
Tan Xiaoling stepped forward, and her paired dao glanced off the ape’s hide. When it swung at her in retaliation, she didn’t manage to completely dodge, and the blow clipped her shoulder. She lost her grip on one of her weapons as she tumbled across the stony ground back toward where Chen Fei struggled to stand.
Li Heng was the next to take serious wounds. He’d gotten too far outside the barrier as he tried to fend off a pack of rime dogs. A golden tiger of the early Fourth Realm had gotten behind him and pounced. Now he struggled to stand as the beast’s claws dug into his back. He had one arm shoved in the tiger’s mouth—the only thing keeping the tiger from biting into his neck.
He Yu fought his way to his friend and managed to get the tiger off his back with support from Yan Shirong. He dragged Li Heng back inside the barrier. Yan Shirong did his best to provide cover by distracting the Fourth Realm beasts as best he could, but he was in as bad shape as the rest of them. Li Heng fell as soon as He Yu stopped supporting him, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Outside the barrier, a boar the size of a house lowered its head in preparation for a charge. He Yu readied his guandao. Looking at his companions, only Yan Shirong and himself were in fighting shape still.
As he prepared to go down fighting, a meteor slammed into the middle of the horde.
Hundreds of beasts were simply obliterated, turned to ash on the blackened, scorched ground. The blast wave of fire qi that accompanied the impact was what finally caused Chen Fei’s barrier to shatter. Fires erupted all around. Trees burned to ash in an instant and even some of the smaller rocks cracked from the heat.
At the center of impact stood Ren Huang. He wore only a pair of belted trousers and leather boots, and flames licked at his torso’s bare skin. As the ape turned to face the new threat, two female disciples appeared in the sky above the group riding on a peacock feather.
One of the disciples leaped off the feather and landed lightly in the center of the group. She had brilliant green hair and wore a gown of matching silk. The disciple that remained above—the most powerful of the three at low Sixth Realm—gazed down over the fight, her hands folded within the sleeves of her brilliant white gown.
The ape leaped at Ren Huang, bringing one massive fist down in a mighty blow. Ren Huang met it in kind. Two fists slammed into one another in an explosion of power and the ape shrieked in pain. Ren Huang grabbed its head and slammed the ape into the ground. A column of flame erupted into the sky, and when it cleared the ape was simply gone, leaving only ember and ash.
The green-haired core disciple sat down in the midst of their group, a ruan appearing in her arms. As she struck the first note, vital wood qi bloomed out from her, expanding to cover all five of them. As his wounds began to knit themselves back together, He Yu could feel the potent protective properties of her technique.
“Be still,” she said. “I am Su Meifeng, fifth-ranked core disciple. I will protect you while you rest and recuperate. Stay within my technique while Brother Ren Huang and Sister Yi Xiurong do battle.”
As Su Meifeng’s presence expanded and her technique poured revitalizing qi into them, He Yu couldn’t help but feel the similarity in her spirit to that of Elder Wen, the cultivation instructor back from when He Yu had first joined the Shrouded Peaks Sect.
She was a deep forest, ancient and full of mysteries. Unlike Old Guo, she carried a sense of serenity, growth, and protection with her. He Yu felt as though he could lay down for a nap, and not have to sleep for a hundred years once he awoke, so powerfully life-giving was Su Meifeng’s spirit.
Outside the protective shell of Senior Sister Su’s technique, Ren Huang had fully released his own presence. He was a massive black wolf, as tall at the shoulder as a full-grown man. Flames sprang up from his every step, and heat rolled off him in waves. All he touched turned to ash. Whatever survived the inferno, he turned his blazing, hungry eyes toward it. Senior Brother Ren had clearly been holding back before, on that first day of formal training. A wolf-tooth club of scorched, blackened iron appeared in his hands.
Yi Xiurong stared imperiously down from atop her peacock feather. When she revealed her spirit, she became a brilliant star, bathing the world in her radiance. Her light was painful to look at, but even turning away gave no escape. She revealed all, and she burned away impurity. Nine golden discs appeared over her head, each one blazing with empyrean power.
Even from within the protective barrier of Su Meifeng’s technique, He Yu could feel the crushing power of the two core disciples. Ren Huang swung his spiked club, and a wave of flame consumed everything before it below the Fourth Realm. Yi Xiurong lifted her chin, and nine beams of radiant light simply erased nine Fourth Realm beasts.
He Yu was as grateful for the reprieve as he was for the rescue. Leaning against a nearby rock face, he closed his eyes and simply let Su Meifeng’s technique do its work. As his wounds closed, a dozen little aches and pains that he’d collected over the past day vanished.
Li Heng, who’d gotten the worst of it, by far, sat down next to him. They remained like that in silence as their physical wounds healed. He Yu didn’t need the judgment of an emperor to know that whatever had prompted Li Heng to speak to him as he had was something they’d have to deal with eventually. Not now though.
He couldn’t deny that whatever influence he’d fallen under had worked on some part of him that was true. Whether or not he’d even realized it, he wanted that authority. Why else had he stepped so easily into making decisions on behalf of the others?
Which meant that whatever resentment Li Heng had voiced was also real. Hopefully not as strong as it had sounded then, but real nonetheless. It would have to wait, though. Neither of them was in any state for a serious talk about their friendship after what they’d just been through. He Yu would simply take the gesture of Li Heng coming to join him for what it was.
He Yu turned his attention to the two core disciples outside. With only a few techniques, the battle had turned. The two of them effortlessly destroyed the horde that had harried He Yu and his friends for days. Even the Fourth Realm beasts were nothing before the two of them.
Once the main group of beasts and spirits had been dealt with—a process that took only a minute or two—Yi Xiurong’s peacock feather descended into the group. As she stepped to the ground and sent her treasure back to storage, He Yu and the others pressed their fists into their palms in salute.
“Sect Brother Ren will venture forth and deal with what remains of the Empress’s forces,” Yi Xiurong said, clearly speaking only to Su Meifeng. “Once you’ve finished caring for our juniors, I will require your assistance in repairing the damage they’ve done.”
“Of course,” Su Meifeng said with a kind smile. “Their wounds are trivial. I will be finished shortly.”
He Yu didn’t particularly care for what Yi Xiurong had said about damage. Hadn’t Elder Cai given them his blessing? As his wounds closed and the ache in his dantian subsided, He Yu found the core disciple regarding him with an intense gaze. Even with her spirit restrained, she still felt bright.
“I see Sect Sister Zhang chose well,” Yi Xiurong said, turning to He Yu and the others with an appraising eye. “I wouldn’t have expected a group of Third Realm disciples to last as long as you all did. I am not worthy to question Elder Cai’s judgment, but I will say that I don’t know why you were allowed to venture out here in the first place. What you did was foolish, as I’m sure you all know.”
The five of them remained silent as Yi Xiurong admonished them. He Yu didn’t exactly think they deserved it, but he wasn’t about to make a fuss. Instead, he was focused on her praise, faint as it was. As the last of their wounds closed up, Yi Xiurong tilted her head as though listening to something far away.
“Elder Cai will see you now,” was all she said as the world turned white.
