Crown of the Starry Sky: Book 11 of Painting the Mists

by Patrick Laplante

  A black-cloaked man threw a sword at her head, which she smacked away with curtain of misty gray water. She ran him through with a lunge before he could retrieve another weapon. She kept her domain tight, but it still encompassed a good quarter of the ship.

  Help the guards as much as you can, Cha Ming sent. I’m in the cabin, and I’m fighting off a strong Dao Lord. Not Silver Fish strong, but close.

  I’m also tied up, Silver Fish said. I won’t be able to help the caravan guards.

  I’ll take care of it, Mi Fei replied. It was a simple exchange, but a gratifying one. She wasn’t useless here. She was needed. In hindsight, it was a good thing that Cha Ming had come. She was still a bit miffed, but she could live with it given that they were under attack from all sides. She had worth here, one that wasn’t exaggerated or filled with false smiles.

  Six months ago, she’d returned to her family. They’d tried to bully her like normal, but the moment she’d shown her true worth, the smiles and pampering had begun. They hadn’t meant any of their insults. They’d made a mistake in throwing her away.

  Since then, she’d avoided them like a plague. With Xiao Bai’s help, she’d joined the Kingfisher Guard. She became a silver-ranked guardswoman in record time and participated in over a dozen missions. And until this mission, she’d encountered nothing but success.

  She might have failed in her encounter with Silver Fish, but this mission was not over. She would atone for her failure. Against small fries like these, she was devastating. She grinned as she waded through a battlefield of blood and steel, relishing in her superiority. Here, she was not useless. Here, she was appreciated. Every moment she fought here meant that lives were saved.

  A ball and chain spun around at an odd angle, threatening to crush in her skull. It missed her head by millimeters due to a well-placed cloud of gray mist. She didn’t bother cutting the chain but simply swished a hand. Crystalline Grandmist erupted from the floor and pierced the sorry demigod wielding it a thousand times. He tried to regenerate, only to discover that doing so was nigh impossible—Grandmist Dao scars were difficult to recover from.

  Her actions caused the bandits to scatter in fear. She advanced, summoning a second sword, and began to hack away with impunity. One of her gray swords stabbed a young woman through the chest while another formed a whip of gray water to crack someone else in the back of the skull.

  They were distractions. A late-grade cultivator unleashed a burning salamander. Mi Fei summoned a shield of Grandmist to block. It caught the salamander and enveloped it, completely removing it from existence. Much of the energy dissipated, but some of it was absorbed by the gray water that wrapped around the frightened woman and crushed her like a bug, leaving no body or blood, only broken treasures.

  The bandits were in full retreat. She debated chasing them down or heading to the front to help Cha Ming. Wouldn’t that be fitting? But no, she had a job to do, so she walked at a confident pace toward a group of bandits positioned at a gap between the ships.

  “Which one of you wants to die first?” Mi Fei asked.

  A figure hesitated but stepped up. He summoned an icy greatsword and a large shield. But what were shields against Grandmist? She took care of him by imitating her favorite barbarian—Cha Ming. A gray staff of mist bashed down onto the shield, which cracked under the pressure and shattered, its splinters entering his body. He was a Dao Lord, just like Silver Fish. But against her, he didn’t stand half a chance. His body didn’t recover.

  “Next!” she called out. The group exchanged hushed whispers. This time, it was a woman who came out.

  “Look at what we have here,” she said from beneath her cloak. She spoke in a motherly fashion. “A child that only knows how to throw her weight around.”

  Mi Fei’s eyes narrowed. “If it works, don’t fix it.” She had a style, and as much as Daoist Burning Blade had tried to change her habits, she knew what worked.

  “Then prove it,” she said tauntingly. “I won’t even need a weapon for this. She walked away from the others and raised her hands. They were a bit wrinkled. She either had a strange cultivation method, or she was pushing close to a thousand.

  “Get lost,” Mi Fei said. She flicked her sleeve, and a gray whip of water splashed at the woman. She dodged ever so slightly, but it was enough that she could avoid the spray. She’s good. Mi Fei realized as she manipulated her domain. She summoned a column of Grandmist just beneath her, only to have the woman step to the side and once again dodge by the slightest margin. Mi Fei grinned and formed hand seals. The column snaked around to encircle her and crushed inward.

  “Not this time!” the woman said cheerfully. She’d appeared just outside of the Grandmist prison. The telltale ripples she’d left behind were all Mi Fei needed to confirm her suspicions.

  “You’re a space cultivator,” Mi Fei said calmly.

  “Slow, aren’t you?” the woman said. “You took a good five seconds more than I thought you would to realize it.”

  Mi Fei stepped in with swords in both hands while simultaneously attacking with whips of gray qi. Her opponent still refused to summon a weapon. She dodged and wove away from the swords, calmly jumping over the whips and blinking away whenever she was about to get overwhelmed.

  “Eventually, I’m going to get you,” Mi Fei said.

  “I don’t see you catching me anytime soon,” the woman said.

  We’ll see about that, Mi Fei thought. She summoned pillars of gray crystal out from the ground, and the woman leapt. A shield of void energy sprang up just as a Grandmist crystal pierced toward her back. She jumped forward, but as Mi Fei moved to entrap her, she spotted needles of void energy cutting toward her.

  I can’t dodge, she realized. She had to defend. Her domain shrank, and her surroundings became heavy. Time slowed, and her Grandmist crystals disappeared in favor of a defensive Grandmist field. Though she moved at a normal speed from her perspective, the woman and the needle were slow as molasses. Her eyes opened wide with surprise as Mi Fei closed the gap, her sword piercing toward her chest.

  Space rippled and formed a shield, but the shield barely materialized before she struck it, destroyed it, and summoned a second blade. She was winning. She felt so alive. Only she could move, as everyone else was trapped in her web. She’d end these bandits, help her comrades, and together, they’d finish this mission. They’d return home as heroes, and her family would be forced to recognize her. She’d—

  Her Grandmist domain flickered and withdrew. Her opponent summoned a new spatial shield and deflected the second sword with ease. “About time,” the woman muttered.

  Mi Fei flicked her sleeve and reached for her Grandmist. Nothing came. Only the faintest of domains remained, and it clung to her body with everything it had. “What did you do?” Mi Fei asked.

  “Is this your first mission, or are all guardsmen so incompetent?” the woman asked.

  Mi Fei reached for her Grandmist again and realized a horrible truth. She’d run out of energy.

  “This is where you die, little girl. Such a shame, really. Alas, there can be no witnesses.” The woman held out her hand, and a black sword appeared. Two of her companions surrounded Mi Fei.

  “Maybe it’s just her first time fighting someone who knows what they’re doing,” a grizzled blade wielder said.

  “Let’s just finish her and get on with this,” said another man. He wielded no weapon, but a cube of runic light floated in front of him.

  Xiao Bai? Mi Fei sent. I’m going to need you to hurry up. She summoned a black talisman and slapped it on her chest. Lightning surged into her limbs to speed her up. She popped an alchemical pill, and her core devoured it. Despite being an expensive late-grade pill, it could only recover a tenth of her full qi pool.

  I need to recover, she thought. I need to economize. She expanded her domain to full range and began pillaging heaven-and-earth energy. Using it defensively was out of the question. As she struggled to recover, her opponents stepped forward to e
nd her.

  Silver Fish couldn’t help but notice how loud the raiders were as he ran across the deck. Blasts of elemental qi threatened to deafen him as he waded through the darkness, and clashes of moonlit steel made his ears ring. He couldn’t help but hear the sounds. He was a fish in the water, after all, and that was where sound traveled best.

  He ran through the darkness, and on his way, he passed guards fighting bandits. He ignored their pleas for help. They cursed as he moved past them, but they couldn’t see like he could. They were not as helpless as the others.

  He reached the first gap between ships. He leapt, tumbling across the ground and interrupting a battle between two fire cultivators. He summoned black waters on both sides and forced his way through the burning air. As he moved, he used something akin to echolocation to sort through the chaos of battle.

  Most of the bandits were focused on the middle three trains. As such, that would be where most of the defenders would be. He knew this from experience. He also knew that they were a diversion, which was why he only stopped to crush two cultivators before stepping from the fourth ship to the fifth.

  Once there, Silver Fish turned around and waited. His opponent was coming. She always did. And this time, he was stronger. He would fight her and win. Cha Ming is in the frontmost ship, Silver Fish thought. The girl, Misty Sea, is fighting on the second ship. That should be enough to stop us from being overwhelmed. He wanted to help them, but if he did, he would need to abandon the most vulnerable ones on the ship. And as much as he would have liked to explain it, communication had never been his strong suit. It was better just to take care of everything himself.

  Had Cha Ming thought he was a bandit when he’d caught him? In hindsight, it was a logical conclusion to come to, given what he’d said. Still, the implicit accusation hurt. He was a vigilante, and he had principles. Even if he wasn’t the best at explaining them.

  He didn’t have much time to stew on his thoughts, however, as a hooded figure soon landed on the deck. She looked around and spotted no one. She walked right past him as she headed toward the stairs that led into the ship’s storage, and he waited till the last moment before throwing his anchor at her back at point-blank range. He was disappointed but not surprised when she glowed with a golden light, jumped backward, and flipped overhead, landing behind him on the middle of the deck.

  “I wondered if you would be here,” the woman said, summoned a dark-gold spear. The spear of a Golden Dragon.

  “I was personally hoping you wouldn’t come,” Silver Fish said.

  “I told you last time that if I saw you again, I would kill you,” she said. “But I’ll give you another chance. I’d hate to kill a fellow demon.”

  “Ironic, given your line of work,” Silver Fish replied.

  The air around her changed. Golden energy poured in from her surroundings. As it did, the floorboard creaked and groaned, and the air took on a metallic scent. Silver Fish summoned his own dominion, and while it was smaller, it was more efficient than hers. He was under water, and she was not, but her movements still made ripples he could see and feel.

  Silver Fish responded by throwing up his anchor, forcing her spear upward, but the butt of it swept up beneath him. The move caught him by surprise, but he didn’t use anything fancy to counter. A slight ripple of water pushed away the spear and bought him the time he needed to dodge. This was a fight, and efficiency was key. A great painter used the smallest of brush strokes, and a storyteller no more words than necessary. Fighting was an art, and all who used the Dao of Inky Sea were artists.

  His opponent was also an efficient fighter, he noted. She was an interesting combination of both strength and weakness, and wherever she struck, she left devastation. Her strikes corroded while Silver Fish’s painted the air with inky water. As she slashed diagonally, he summoned a swarm of inky fish to attack her unprotected flank. She spotted the attack and spun her spear. It crashed through the inky creations, and where she struck, they disintegrated. Just as they had when he was a whole level weaker.

  “I don’t want to kill demons,” she grunted as her spear clashed with his anchor. It took all his strength to stop her. “Leave now, and I won’t be forced to kill you.”

  “You don’t want to kill demons, but you seem to have no problem with capturing them,” Silver Fish said.

  “You know nothing,” she spat. It was an old argument. They’d had it many times. They were oil and water, and their words didn’t mix.

  Silver Fish pushed hard against his anchor. His muscles strained as he forced her back. Inky jaws appeared behind her, but she simply laughed and cut his summoned image in two. Wherever she cut, the image broke apart. That fact alone made him wary. He’d fought dragons before, but they were stable and refined. She was the honed edge of a well-practiced knife. Not even Misty Sea’s strange gray mists were as effective.

  In a sense, it was foolish to fight her. Then again, he knew her secret. Her limiting flaw. The truth was that she never used more strength than she needed, despite being two sub-realms stronger than he was.

  “I would have expected more from a peak-initiation demon,” Silver Fish said.

  “I’m strong enough to kill an arrogant fool,” she replied. They both jumped backward and continued their dance.

  There were wasted movements. Whenever he trapped her, she sped up ever so slightly. With every exchange, he confirmed his hypothesis. She was injured. Weakened somehow. She didn’t fight this way because she wanted to. She fought this way out of necessity. Therein lay his chance.

  Force her to fall into your rhythm, he told himself. This is your masterpiece. Your story. You can drag her into your currents. He may only be a middle-initiation Dao Lord, but she was wounded. All he needed was for her to make a mistake. Silver Fish swung his anchor. She caught it with her spear. He turned and hooked upward, bringing her weapon just high enough for him to execute the second part of his plan. Now!

  He let go of his anchor, and from it, he pulled a thick chain. Inky-black water oozed out from him and wrapped around her body, tying her up. The problem with demons was that they always expected you to fight using mostly your demon weapon, since literally half of their demonic energy was bound into it. Well, he happened to think that was stupid. He pulled out a dagger from his hip sheath and stabbed at her torso. She was exposed and vulnerable. Let’s see you dodge now.

  Turns out, she didn’t. The metal blade shattered as it struck and broke into a thousand pieces. They sank into her bloody skin, which was already healing. The unusually pale skin she exposed flushed golden in that moment, and he felt a worrying surge of power. That was when his weapon’s chain broke.

  “I was wondering if you’d give me something to snack on,” she said, licking her lips.

  What in the… He barely had time to think before her image blurred and she appeared behind him. He brought his anchor up out of instinct and blocked the blade before it hit his back.

  “Come on, try something else.” She grinned.

  “You’re not a Golden Dragon,” Silver Fish said, pushing away from her. “What the hell are you?”

  “I’m hungry, and you’re going to feed me,” she said.

  Silver Fish shivered as he looked at his demon weapon. It was an anchor made of black metal and etched in silver runes. It contained a full half of his demonic power. It was indestructible—or so he’d thought. Where he’d blocked her spear moments prior, a small chip of his power had gone missing.

  She’d damaged his demon weapon.

  Cha Ming had never fought an opponent with a whip before, but this was no time to regret not doing sparring simulations at the guard station. The Origami Clan’s whip-blade was a blur, and even quick and incisive strikes from the Clear Sky Staff could barely keep up with it. Meanwhile, his Temple Sand Clone fought against paper cranes that came in all colors of the rainbow.

  It was only after defending for a full minute that he managed to summon a second and a third sand clone. Both were reinforced
by the Concept of Radiant Construction, and with the help of his tri-element domain, they were barely able keep the origami cranes away.

  Cha Ming had a few powerful techniques at his disposal. If he had to, he could use Words of Destruction or break his limit using Thirty-Six Heavenly Transformations. He had access to Searing Sands of the Sacred Desert but didn’t dare activate Raging Waves of the Inky Sea. His opponent was taunting him, daring him to use it. It was the stronger of the two techniques, which begged the question: Why was that? Why were they so interested in it?

  As he fought, he spread out his senses to other parts of the ship. Mi Fei was exhausted and on the defensive. Silver Fish was in a stalemate. The caravan guards were slowly being overwhelmed. They needed help, and none of them were in any position to give it.

  Huxian, how is everyone doing? Cha Ming sent. I can’t send or receive messages to the others. It was only thanks to their bond of equals that they could communicate. Apparently, Mi Fei could also do the same with Xiao Bai.

  The fighting is intense, but we’ve got this, Huxian replied. No one’s dying. I sent a message telling everyone to back you guys up when they’re done. Still, the shield thing worries me. Your talismans might not work.

  You mean the shield could block you all from teleporting to my spatial anchor? Cha Ming sent. He pulled his head backward, dodging the white blade-whip and summoning three earthen pillars. They didn’t so much block the whip as slow it down as it crashed through them, buying him enough time to go on the offensive. He lashed out with Searing Sands of the Sacred Desert, summoning the Clear Sky Staff in pillar form. He infused the Concept of Erosion into the technique, and the Origami Clan member, surprised at the power he unleashed, summoned a white scroll. A golden pagoda appeared and blocked his staff. He couldn’t block the aftershocks, however, and many origami cranes were destroyed.