“You plan, I’ll follow,” Silver Fish said.
“And you?” Clever Dusk asked the black-haired phoenix.
“Call me Graceful Twilight,” the grinning girl said. “Let’s be good friends.”
Before burning his bloodline, Lord Dripping Blade had been elusive. Now, he was practically unfindable. Cha Ming knew he was nearby, but the ink in the air made him impossible to track. He could only use area-of-effect talismans and random strikes of his staff to fight him off, but he couldn’t avoid everything.
Dripping Blade’s blade began drawing blood as it pierced through the inky air surrounding Cha Ming. Cha Ming, distracted by the painful attacks, screamed as an inky shark bit into his thigh, devouring a piece of his body. He regenerated it almost immediately, but the wound still hurt. The toothmarks left Dao scars that reduced the limb’s strength. His vitality stores plummeted.
He can’t do this forever, Cha Ming thought. But he can probably fight for longer than I can. He saw it with his Eyes of Truth—demonic energy flooding out from the nearby Burning Lake and into the prefecture lord. The man wasn’t a Dao Lord, but he could somehow use these natural energies. Winning would be difficult, especially if he kept back some of his trump cards.
Cha Ming dodged and teleported continuously, evading waves, the dripping blade, and creatures of ink as he tried to think of a solution. It was a limit-break technique, yes, but it was also dependent on certain factors. It seemed that Lord Dripping Blade’s abilities were less like an investiture and more like a dominion’s ability to plunder energy to strengthen the user.
If that’s the case… Cha Ming thought. He split the Clear Sky Staff split into six parts. He kept a violet staff but sent the others out a hundred meters in every direction. Cha Ming poured energy of all five elements into the pillars along with the violet mist hovering outside his core. They glowed with violet demon-subduing light that suppressed all demonic energy in the area. Dripping Blade was immediately forced out from his hiding spot, looking pale and weak.
He tried to flee, but Cha Ming teleported beside him, striking at him with the Demon-Sealing Pillar. The lord defended with his dripping blade, but this time, instead of coming out evenly matched, the blade screamed.
“What is this?” Dripping Blade said.
“Everything has a weakness,” Cha Ming said.
“Anti-demon properties,” Dripping Blade hissed. “Very well. It has come to this.” His aura grew once again, and this time, it was unstable. It burnt away not his bloodline, but his soul. This was a genuine limit break, and the consequences for executing it would damage both his spirit and his blade. “Let’s end this.”
Huxian hated working for others. Not because they were unreliable, but because they were often late. “No respect for time,” he muttered as he nursed his cup of tea. The woman in the room bowed her head apologetically.
“This has been our home for decades, Lord Eight Directions,” the woman said. “It is unthinkable to simply drop everything and leave.”
“Yeah, well, what other choice do you have?” Huxian said. “You have no idea where this matriarch of yours is. She won’t respond to messages, and the army claims they killed her. What do you think they’ll do, given how many in the army she’s killed?”
“You’re right, of course,” said Vereniz, the old matriarch of the Golden Dragons and now their de facto leader. “They should be done soon.”
The door burst open, revealing Shneraz, the future leader of their clan. He walked into the room and bowed to his aunt, who nodded in turn. “Everyone has been accounted for,” Shneraz said. “We’re ready to move on your mark.”
“Finally,” Huxian said, pushing past him.
“Eight Directions,” Shneraz called out, following close on his heels. “A moment?”
“Walk and talk,” Huxian said. “We don’t have all day.”
“I just wanted to thank you for giving us a way out,” Shneraz said, struggling to catch up.
“Yeah, yeah,” Huxian said. “Whatever. You’ll be paying me back soon enough.”
“Right,” Shneraz said. “I’m a little apprehensive about this mission to storm the Mi Clan. It’s dangerous. Suicidal, even. But it does buy time for our most helpless members.”
“Why are you dragons all so melodramatic?” Huxian said. “Gimme a second.” He poured the vast majority of his space-aligned demonic energy into a rift, which he expanded and connected to a distant point. He staggered, and Shneraz caught him.
“Do you require aid?” Shneraz asked.
“Nope,” Huxian said. “This is a throwaway.”
“Throwaway?” Shneraz asked. “You confuse me.”
Huxian ignored him. “All right, listen up!” he said to the gathered men, women, and children of the Clockwork Clan. They carried large bundles that held all the possessions they owned. “No more than five at a time. Don’t stop when you get to the other side. Keep moving, or you’ll be left behind. Keep going until you see a wide-open field, and after that, keeping moving until someone tells you to stop.” They blinked, looking at him. “Well? What are you waiting for? Get going!”
“You heard the man,” Shneraz said. “Move!”
The hundreds of clan members began to file through the doorway, starting with a full half their strongest warriors and then proceeding to their weakest. Shneraz, as their leader, would guard their rear. So would Vereniz and Hershah.
It took around two minutes to get them all out. By then, Huxian’s body was almost spent. They walked through the portal together, where they met another copy of himself.
The portal slammed shut, and Huxian was no longer forced to maintain this clone. It collapsed, joining with his other selves. They walked through the next door, where they found another clone and continued the process another ten times. It was only when they were in a field far away from the city that color returned to Huxian’s face.
“Ingenious,” Shneraz said. “You are a prodigy. A Godbeast among Godbeasts.”
“You’re flattering me,” Huxian said, then waited. “I didn’t say stop.”
“Thank you,” Shneraz said, looking back to the distant city. They would soon take note of their absence. “Do you think… no. Never mind.”
“What?” Huxian asked.
“Is there a way to help the others?” Shneraz said. “There are so many demons in the city that are being trampled on and abused.”
“Oh, that,” Huxian said. “Already on it.”
“What?” Shneraz asked, confused. Then he turned around and saw them. Dozens of other portals. Dozens of other demon clans streaming out of the city. Each of them was led out by one of his many clones.
“If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right,” Huxian said. This might not be all the demons who wanted to leave, but he’d gotten around eighty percent of them. It also made up for a shortcoming of plans—unreliable people. As long as you had enough people, it didn’t matter if a few of them flaked out. You’d have more than enough for your purposes.
“This plan no longer seems so suicidal,” Shneraz said, taking in the large army of demons at their disposal.
Huxian nodded. The Mi Clan wouldn’t even know what hit them.
Cha Ming and Lord Dripping Blade collided again and again, exchanging qi and life force in a war of attrition. It was Cha Ming’s strong body and demon-subduing powers against Dripping Blade’s laws and soul-linked blade.
The man wasn’t young. He’d lived a long time, and his battle experience showed it. I knew I wasn’t the only one with a limit break, but it’s one thing to know, and another to experience it, Cha Ming thought. He was used to fighting above his power level and had yet to fight those who could do the same. The only counter he had to the man’s cunning was his superior instincts via the Crown of the Starry Sky and his boosted speed and reaction rate thanks to the Clockwork Boots of the Golden Dragon.
Even then, he was much slower than Dripping Blade and his constant teleportation. His s
taff strikes were weaker, and his defenses full of gaps. If there was one thing he had going for him, it was the Demon-Subduing Pillar he wielded. It not only inhibited Dripping Blade’s bloodline, it harmed his soul-linked weapon whenever it and the Clear Sky Staff collided.
Due to the prefecture lord’s much larger domain, Cha Ming was losing out on qi regeneration. His powerful cultivation technique could only do so much. The deciding factor in this battle was which one would last longer—his qi stores or the prefecture lord’s soul.
“The key to fighting at the rune-gathering level is mastery of space,” Lord Dripping Blade said. “Which you are sorely lacking in.” He clenched his hand, and Cha Ming found himself incapable of moving for a split second. Cha Ming struggled, preparing himself for the usual blade strike, only to find it plunging downward from above. Lord Dripping Blade wasn’t attacking him with the weapon itself, but with a projection technique.
Cha Ming summoned his world projection as a last-minute defense. He held up the Clear Sky Staff to block it, and though he could defend against the physical blade, he couldn’t block the projection.
The blade invaded his body, cutting him apart continuously. Blood dripped from every pore in his body, and when he tried to escape, waves of black ink forced him back into the weapon projection.
“This is what you get for challenging your betters,” Dripping Blade said, clearly exhausted by the technique. The amount of qi required for something like that was staggering. “You put up a good fight, but in the end, you lose.”
The destructive blade energy intensified, to which Cha Ming replied by pulling his domain back inward, giving up on contesting the arena’s energy. The cautious prefecture lord jumped back, and that was what saved him from Cha Ming’s destruction-infused strike. It swept through the dense field of blade energy, effortlessly cleaving through Dripping Blade’s spatial restrictions.
“Impossible,” Lord Dripping Blade said, banishing his technique and pulling his blade back into his hand.
Cha Ming pressed the attack. As he advanced, Lord Dripping Blade summoned waves of black ink to defend. They crashed into Cha Ming’s undefended body as he struck the prefecture lord’s soul-linked blade again and again. An attack like this was sheer madness, and Dripping Blade predictably summoned dozens of inky blades and sent them plunging toward Cha Ming’s exposed flanks.
They never made it, as a transparent energy formed a bubble around Cha Ming. It was his dismantling domain, and it allowed no coexistence. While much smaller than Cha Ming’s base domain, only fifty meters in diameter, it didn’t drink energy like a normal domain would—instead, it dismantled it. It cut apart its connections to everything and rendered it unusable to anyone. Even himself.
Lord Dripping Blade’s techniques hit the domain, and it vanished. In fact, Lord Dripping Blade’s inky-black domain and his powerful world projection held no sway here. No matter whether he reached for qi or for his connection to space via his runes, Lord Dripping Blade came back empty-handed.
Dripping Blade was at a loss. He tossed up his soul-linked blade, but it refused to move remotely. He could only grab it and swing it with his body and clash with Cha Ming. Fortunately for him, Cha Ming could not sever the intimate connection his soul had with his blade and the power he gained directly from his runes.
The man was still a three-rune cultivator who’d broken his limit. He couldn’t use his domain anymore, however. Neither could Cha Ming. Neither of them could use spatial energy to teleport or use spatial cages. They could still fly, but now there weren’t any pesky traps or techniques. It was just Cha Ming and Lord Dripping Blade now, trapped in a bubble of emptiness.
“How?” Dripping Blade growled, but Cha Ming didn’t answer. He wished he could use Dazzling Light of the Weeping Flame to wear away at his will, but unfortunately, in this place, using qi was impossible even for Cha Ming. He could only rely on his body and divine abilities, and whatever laws he could imbue into his weapon. In this case, he filled it to the brim with black destructive energy and the Concept of Dismantling. It struck Lord Dripping Blade’s soul-linked weapon over and over until cracks began to appear, and finally, the blade shattered.
Dripping Blade’s weapon let out a dying wail when it broke. The prefecture lord died then and there. The backlash from losing a soul-linked blade was far too great for Dripping Blade’s tattered soul. Only his corpse remained, leaving Cha Ming the last man standing in the arena. There was no cheering from the crowd. Only horrified silence.
Captain Xing flew down and landed in front of Cha Ming. “As agreed,” he said, “there will be a one-hour break between this fight and the next one. All of Daoist Dripping Blade’s possessions are now Clear Sky’s, and the title of prefecture lord has been transferred. Everyone, please welcome Prefecture Lord Clear Sky!”
The audience could only clap politely.
Huxian watched as the demons raided the Mi Clan estate for supplies. They caught bestial demons, packing their corpses into storage treasures, and harvested whatever medicinal plants they could. They pillaged storehouses and scared away farmers. They avoided killing as much as possible.
The Mi Clan didn’t take this lying down, of course. These holdings were their lifeblood. They couldn’t just let a horde of demon migrants stomp all over them. Even if most of their elders were in the city watching Cha Ming’s duel.
Huxian, also hiding on the manor’s rooftop, watched as the Mi Clan elders came out to bring the fight to the demons. Though these elders were powerful, there was only so much they could do against tens of thousands of initiates.
“Where is the city watch?” one of them asked, which led to the obvious question: “Why don’t we live inside the city limits?”
Yes, at this moment, the Mi Clan probably regretted doing everything they could to avoid high property taxes. The army naturally couldn’t do anything to help them either—they were absent due to the war in the demon lands. Things only got worse when the elders tussled with Shneraz, Vereniz, Hershah, and the few members of the Clockwork Clan that had joined the Kingfisher Guard. They were summarily routed, and the elders could only call for support. Even more elders of the Mi Clan left the estate to pursue them, marking part one of Huxian’s master plan a success.
Your turn, the Huxian who was standing next to Wei Longshen said. The man’s upset-looking fiancée glared at Huxian. She didn’t trust him, and she kept a powerful-looking brick close at hand. Were those legitimate runes on that brick? It looked like a rune-gathering-grade weapon to him. What a curious woman.
No time for distractions, Huxian reminded himself. He focused on the music Wei Longshen played. It was a song of loss and fury, a song of three families, a song of discord and broken agreements. It was a silent and insidious song that worked its way unnoticed through the walls of the Mi Clan estates and into the manor proper. Almost instantly, those inside began to bicker and quarrel.
The man continued playing in the shadows, ready to pull out at a moment’s notice. He wasn’t part of the main rescue operation. Not only was he contractually forbidden from ever speaking to Mi Fei again, but his being there would only cause trouble. Still, he was there, and he was helping. He’d completed part two of Huxian’s master escape plan, and now it fell to Huxian to do the rest.
“Cha Ming is sorry for what he said,” Huxian said to Wei Longshen as the infighting reached its peak. “He was just angry. He didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” Wei Longshen said. “Tell him to get her out of here and keep her safe.”
Huxian’s clone disappeared, after which he focused on another of his selves, which opened a spatial door just outside the estate’s inner wall. Yet another clone appeared from the city and dragged a bruised and bloodied man through the door.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Daoist Crying Toad said. “I thought we were friends, Eight Directions.”
“Friends” was, of course, a bit of a stretch. They’d been on a Kingfisher Guard mission once. A mission and a half.
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“Use the poison,” Huxian said. “Use it now.”
“Here?” Crying Toad said. “Where are we? Why are we here?”
“You don’t need to know that, and you don’t want to know,” Huxian said. “I’m paying you, and you know the consequences of backing out. If you refuse, I’m robbing you and teleporting out to sea, and you’ll have to swim back to the prefecture.”
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” Crying Toad said. He summoned a large black sphere. “Here? Now?”
“Obviously not!” Huxian said. He teleported Crying Toad to the other side of the wall. “There. In the middle of that garden where all those annoying girls are talking.”
“If you say so,” Crying Toad said. He manipulated the sphere, and it slowly floated overhead. The girls shouted when they saw it, but by then, it was too late.
The sphere ruptured, and gas poured out of it. Poisonous gas of the worst kind filled the garden and the surrounding areas. The girls choked and gagged when they breathed it in, and even Huxian’s clone, who’d shielded himself, started to feel its effects.
“Done. Now get me out of here,” Crying Toad said.
“For your trouble,” Huxian said, tossing him the agreed-upon payment. He then summoned another door and kicked Crying Toad through it and immediately dismissed the clone before the poison could take effect.
Elsewhere, a stronger clone did his best to control his bodily functions. He fared much better than the poor ladies in the garden and the people in the nearby residences. They would seclude themselves for the next few hours due to uncontrollable diarrhea. People thought you needed to paralyze people to incapacitate them. Gua had taught Huxian better. Tying up their bowel movements was much easier to do and much more cost-effective.
Part three of the plan complete, Huxian moved on to part four. Another clone spoke to a group of eight rune-gathering cultivators. “Preparations are complete,” Huxian said. “Go in there and do your thing.”
Claddings of Light : Book 12 of Painting the Mists Page 60