by Tao Wong
She stared at Wu Ying at her last words, as if she knew it was him who needed that warning the most. He snorted but accepted her well wishes and sent her off with thanks. Together, the group headed to their assigned position, where they stood in line, forced to wait.
“I still don’t think we have the full picture,” Yin Xue complained. “There’s no need to throw away so many lives.”
“You think they’re rushing this for another reason?” Bao Cong asked.
“Yes. What worries me is that there might be a second army, one coming for us.” Yin Xue looked away, eyes raking over the looming mountains surrounding them. If they were caught in here…
“There are no armies coming,” Li Yao said. “I’ve checked with the scouts. No signs at all. Anyway, you remember your father’s map. The closest army was the Wei reserve, and that was nearly a month away.”
Yin Xue nodded, but that pensive frown did not leave his face.
Wu Ying glanced at Tou He, who offered him a shrug and mouthed, “Amitabha.”
It was true. What would be would be.
***
A rock soared through the air, banking gracefully before it smashed into the wall. Stone crumbled, and the rock itself bounced off, landing a short distance away from where the siege ladders were rolling forward. As if the artillerymen foretold the distances, no additional fire appeared. Instead, soldiers from both sides exchanged fire, crossbow bolts and the occasional arrow winging between both armies.
Like the previous battle, a wave of assault covers had approached first, allowing infantry and crossbowmen to near the city. This time, the second wave of assault covers had approached as well, bringing with them a larger number of fighters while the assault covers were drawn back. In turn, the defenders sent fewer volleys of talisman arrows, leaving a larger number of the assault covers intact to make it back to the lines.
All this, Wu Ying watched from the safety of the fifth wave. The constant creak of ropes twisting, the twang of bows, and the shrieks of falling men resounded through the air. He watched as the brave and foolhardy threw themselves forward, attacking intact walls, firing arrows and killing the occasional defender. Infantrymen, crouched in their holes, dug furiously as they extended and built up their defenses, propping up shields while the crossbowmen and archers exchanged fire with the defenders.
The sky ladders had moved forward, but this time, they held back just outside the range of the trebuchets, just outside retaliation, as if the general taunted the defenders. Daring them to sally forth and destroy the ladders. Instead, the trebuchets fired, wearing away at the walls.
For long hours, the army stood, baking in the heat of the midday sun. Others ran back and forth, offering liquid refreshment and later on, chewed hardtack for meals. The soldiers in the army began to rotate, each wave moving forward to take the vanguard position.
During the fourth hour after noon, as the sun slowly banked toward the horizon, the battle changed. Already, the soldiers who had been attacking had wearied, many having pulled back under cover of the assault covers as replacements arrived. As the assault covers returned with the latest wave of weary soldiers, the cultivators came.
The Six Jade Gates Sect members dropped from the walls, some kicking off in midair, others using ropes to help break their fall, while a small number—like Wu Ying the day before—just dropped and absorbed the fall. They rushed forward, launching chi-filled attacks at nearby assault covers, flames and earth erupting and tearing apart the siege weapons. A rotating whirlwind of metal and air flashed over to a cover vehicle and wood shrieked as it was torn apart, exposing the soldiers within to the metallic storm.
Their attacks destroyed some of the covers, wrecked roofs and shattered wheels. Other attacks were more obtuse, still green wood warping and growing, twisting as they drew upon the remaining nutrients in their forms and the chi infused in the attacks to trap and tear apart their occupants.
Those with less destructive elements and styles assaulted the remaining soldiers directly. They rushed toward fixed defenses, jumped into foxholes, and killed without remorse.
Horns blew, drumbeats changed, and flags rose and fell, signaling their own army’s response. Cultivators from the State of Shen threw themselves from behind their lines to meet their enemies in combat. They charged across the open ground, riding horses or dashing across no-man’s-land with barely a tap of their feet. Even so, hidden enemy archers who had been waiting rose from the walls, leveling bows and crossbows at the charging cultivators. They fired, some of those attacks bursting into flame, others gleaming and wrapped in other elemental chi methods.
Wu Ying’s breath caught as he noticed a pair of familiar figures riding alongside other cultivators from the State of Shen. Chao Kun ignored the arrows for the most part, only acting to catch one as it moved to strike his face before tossing it aside with a casual motion, impervious to the chi imbued into the attack. On the other hand, Liu Tsong took a more active role in her defense, using a trio of apothecarist’s cauldrons, each smaller than the one she had showcased yesterday, and wielding the cauldrons with her chi to block attacks. The cauldrons had a strange gravitational effect, where arrows that seemed to be about to miss them would swerve, attracted to strike the cauldrons. As he watched, Wu Ying noted how Liu Tsong had taken much of her recent fighting techniques from her master. Still, as they neared the first of the cultivators, Liu Tsong drew her staff from her storage ring and swung it, warding off a few of the more dangerous attacks.
An elbow to his side made Wu Ying turn to look at Li Yao, who gestured at the walls. There, a familiar armored figure stood, staring down at the cultivators who fought. Wu Ying frowned, curious to see if the man would jump down, but the armored cultivator just watched. All around the front of the city wall, the cultivators from different sects battled, clashing in explosions of elemental chi. Water and fire turned to steam that was blown aside or collected into ice by another cultivator and thrust at an enemy. Earth rose from the ground, formed into a grasping fist that clutched at a cultivator, only to be shattered apart by a kick. And these were all the low-level, almost mundane attacks.
More exotic attacks were showcased occasionally. Chao Kun’s Star-Spangled Fist, now having reached Greater Achievement, made the light around him congregate into pinpoints of energy, his fist moving so fast that the defending cultivators couldn’t block them. Each strike shattered armor, weapons, and bodies, the energy within the attacks blasting through the defensive auras conjured to protect the others.
On the other side of the battlefield, a roaring turtle head formed, its body made of chi, its legs drawn into its shell. A gesture and it went spinning, head withdrawn as it bowled over the Verdant Green Waters Sect fighters who opposed the powerful Energy Stage cultivator. Spotting the difficulty his sect members were having, Chao Kun turned and ran forward, only to be stopped by an ominous door. As it opened, tentacles sprouted from the door, attacking Chao Kun.
A flash of light tore Wu Ying’s gaze to the side, where formations appeared, locking down a half dozen cultivators on both sides, pressing them into the earth without care of side. The weakest of that group screamed, his bones shattering under the pressure.
All around, chaos reigned and bodies fell. Wandering cultivators, Verdant Green Waters Sect, and Jade Gates Sect members fought, while smaller sects clashed against one another on the edges.
“We need to help them,” said Wu Ying to Li Yao.
“Don’t be an idiot!” said Yin Xue. “We have our orders. We stay until we are ordered to do otherwise.”
Wu Ying shifted angrily, but Li Yao placed a hand on his arm. “He’s right. I know you don’t want to hear this, but that’s what they teach us as martial specialists. We follow orders, because otherwise plans will be disrupted. I want to go too, but we cannot.”
Wu Ying’s lip twitched, but motion to his side made him spot Tou He moving unopposed through the ranks. The soldiers glanced at the ex-monk, some calling for him to stop or quest
ioning his actions, but none tried to stop him.
“Tou He!” Li Yao shouted.
“I’ll get him,” Wu Ying said. He pushed ahead, brushing off Li Yao’s hand as she tried to hold him back. He was not going to let his friend go out alone.
Wu Ying caught up with his friend at the edge of the first wave, grouping up near a sky ladder that waited for orders. Beside them, an assault cover made its way back, a pair of soldiers holding up the axle of one set of wheels and trotting alongside the cover to bring it back. Wu Ying laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder as he looked to enter the fray. Ahead of them, the chaos of clashing cultivators continued.
“Are you here to stop me?” Tou He looked unhappily at his friend.
“Stop you. Join you. All the same thing,” Wu Ying said. “But you do know that they’re not going to be happy with us.”
“People are dying.”
Having said his piece, Tou He took off, his staff appearing in his hands. He angled himself toward the nearest group while keeping a close eye for arrows that might attack him.
Wu Ying chased his friend, drawing his own weapon. “You could have at least warned me before running off.”
They made it about three quarters of the way to the nearest group before the enemy archers spotted them. At first, only a few arrows, unenchanted and unskilled, targeted the pair. But soon enough, the cultivators who had chosen the bow as their weapon of choice fired on the pair. After all, these two were not engaged with their friends in combat. There was little chance of them hurting a friendly face.
A single arrow exploded into flames, creating multiple fire sparrows that flew in an arc toward the pair. Tou He stopped for a moment, his staff spinning, enacting the Sixth form of the Mountain Resides style. The chi of the world responded to his cultivation, the earth itself forming into an image of the cliff face that he’d conjured from within. The fire sparrows struck, flared, and died upon this unyielding wall of chi.
Wu Ying stepped around his friend, trusting that Tou He would stop any additional attacks, and cut. Once. The arrow, hidden almost to all sight and only sensed by Wu Ying due to a shift in the environmental chi that he had been drawing upon, was cut apart. As it broke, the skill-formed chi formation around the arrow shattered. Wu Ying grunted and ran, knowing that if they stayed still, they would continue to be attacked. At least this way, the attackers would avoid attacking the rest of his Sect mates and focus on them.
“Thank you,” Tou He said to Wu Ying as he caught up with his friend, striking at arrows.
Now that he had been alerted, Tou He paid a much closer eye to his surroundings, picking out the hard-to-spot attacks from the defenders on the wall. The pair ran on, hopping over a rise in the ground and finally reaching their targets. By this point, only a single one of the initial four Verdant Green Waters Sect cultivators was still standing. Even as Wu Ying watched, one of the opposing cultivators thrust his spear into a prone form, pulling one last groan from the cultivator before he died.
“You twice-cooked rotten egg,” Wu Ying cursed as he drew upon the chi within his Woo Petal bracer.
He unleashed it, along with his own chi, in a single crescent of power, the Dragon’s Breath attack sending green-and-white metal chi arcing forward. His opponent managed to raise his spear to block the attack, suffering only minor injuries as the attack dispersed around the solidified aura his opponent formed.
In the meantime, Tou He skipped past Wu Ying, his weapons striking out, only to be blocked by the cultivators he was fighting. However, the distraction helped the lone standing cultivator, buying him time to recover and fall back to Wu Ying and Tou He’s impromptu defensive line.
For a moment, both parties stood facing one another, hesitant to launch another attack. It was at that point that Wu Ying and an enemy cultivator shouted at the same time.
“You!”
To Wu Ying’s surprise, he recognized these opposing cultivators. They were not random enemies, but the same individuals who had accosted him and Tou He on the road.
“Lying cultivator dog. You’re no gatherer!” the cultivator accused Wu Ying. “I should have known. You people have no honor.”
“What do Six Jade Gates scum know of honor? These people killed my friends,” the surviving cultivator snarled back, taking advantage of Wu Ying’s and Tou He’s presence to launch himself at his opponents with renewed vigor.
Not to be left behind, the pair followed. As if they had an unspoken agreement, Wu Ying and Senior Cai paired up to fight.
But in short order, Wu Ying found himself retreating constantly from the barrage of attacks he faced. He had a better grasp of his weapon, especially now that he was wielding his own jian, but his opponent was of a higher cultivation level. That meant he was faster and stronger than Wu Ying, able to react more quickly to changes in position. The difference was not much, but a small amount could make a big difference when one was fighting for his life. Fighting was always about inches, the millimeters of difference that made a successful dodge, a good parry, a lethal strike. Worse for Wu Ying was the fact that the enemy cultivator still had a lot of chi in his body, being able to release energy-filled attacks at Wu Ying constantly. More than once, Wu Ying had to reinforce his aura with his own chi, only to feel his aura shatter under the pressure and the attacks dig into his armor, his clothing, his skin.
Not being in the Energy Storage stage, Wu Ying was projecting energy out of his body in a manner that was unnatural for him at his cultivation level. Even if he had experience doing so, training from his aura control exercises, this method of defense was wasteful. The Energy Storage meridians not only stored energy but also allowed one more control over the chi they wielded.
Again and again, the pair clashed. A high block turn into a low cut, the lunge and sidestep twisting into a disengage, then a swift cut toward an offending leg. Wu Ying tried all his tricks, ranging from the Dragon’s Whiskers to Paws snatching Claws. None of it worked. Even the minor strikes he managed barely did more than leave scratches on his opponent. Still, as they danced across the ground, Wu Ying could not help noticing his opponent was holding back.
A twist, a disengage, and Wu Ying jumped, sending a kick at his opponent’s face. To his surprise, the attack landed, sending the cultivator to the ground. Unfortunately, Senior Cai rolled and came up onto his feet, a wave of energy reaching out. Wu Ying jumped back, dodging the attack as realization arrived as well.
His opponent was wary of Wu Ying. He probably thought Wu Ying was an Energy Storage cultivator too. Wu Ying’s initial attack with the Woo Petal Bracer had likely convinced his opponent Wu Ying was holding back, waiting for an opportune time to release his attack. In truth, that was a part of Wu Ying’s plan, though the conjuration of energy from the bracer required more concentration than he would care to use in such a frantic battle.
In the gap of time offered to him as his opponent rolled away and recovered, Wu Ying looked around, taking in the battle. Tou He was in the process of beating down his opponent. That he had not one but two archers targeting him was the only reason Tou He had not finished his own opponent. On the other hand, the cultivator they had come to rescue was in a deadly struggle, grappling his opponent and rolling on the ground like barbarians.
As for the larger view, Wu Ying had no time to check as his opponent finished recovering, sending another arc of energy at him. Wu Ying dodged, getting ready to lunge in.
As the pair readied to reengage, a new series of notes rang out from the city. Senior Cai hesitated, then glared at Wu Ying before he turned and ran. As Wu Ying gave chase, a glint in the ground made him hesitate, just before it exploded into flames. He hopped back, wiping his face, as the trapped ground continued to expand, forcing him to retreat again and again.
As he angled away, Wu Ying did his best to move toward where the grappling cultivator was, but he failed to get there in time. Through the flames, Wu Ying glimpsed as the cultivator choked on his own blood, his throat crushed by an elbow as his oppone
nt stumbled away. A glance to the side saw Tou He being the only successful member of their group as he deflected an arrow aimed at his leg before he finished his opponent with a strike to the head with his staff.
Another change in drumbeats, this time from their own lines.
All around them, the cultivators were leaving, breaking away to return to either the defensive walls or the army’s lines. Wu Ying checked over the fallen bodies around them, but none breathed. To his surprise, Wu Ying noticed that Tou He had lifted the body of the cultivator he had been fighting.
When Wu Ying raised an eyebrow, his friend clarified. “He is still alive.”
A quick nod, then Wu Ying turned to pick up the weapons of those left behind, sliding them into his storage ring. None looked particularly special, but decent was decent. Once he had looted the fallen weapons, he took hold of a pair of corpses and set them on his shoulders before taking off for the safety of their lines. He left Tou He to watch their backs as he bounded away from the fight.
Luckily, it seemed that the opposing cultivators had stopped targeting the pair of them. Whether it was because they had better targets now or because they had been told to stop firing, Wu Ying was uncertain. Either way, he was glad to not be shot at anymore.
Together, they retreated, bearing their prisoner and the corpses of their sect members. When Wu Ying reached their lines, he saw one extremely upset female angling her way to him. He could only wince, knowing that he was in for it. Especially when he saw the pair of soldiers standing right behind her, hands on their swords and glaring at them.
Actions had consequences. And worse, they’d managed to do nothing actually useful. Not a single life saved. Cursing himself and Tou He, Wu Ying continued to run.
Chapter 17
“You know, all things considered, we got off quite easy,” Tou He said this as if to the air as the pair of them stood on guard, watching over the soldiers beside the riverbank.