Memories of the Fall

Of the many supreme scriptures that have emerged across the eras, the Seven Classics; ‘Mountain and Sea Scripture’, ‘River Chart Scripture’, ‘Original Extinction Scripture’, ‘Heaven Breaking Scripture’, ‘Vast Expanse Primordial Gestation Scripture’, ‘Red Dust Scripture’ and ‘Bright Fortune Scripture’ are perhaps the most entrancing and coveted, if only to those who know little about them.

This is In part, because the scholars of this era seem to have a fascination of dwelling on the greatest of this, and the most supreme of that. These seven, abstract and basically unattainable as they are, have become the crown jewels in a strange game of hagiography and revisionism. They are coveted and highly regarded in many places where they really shouldn’t be, thanks in no small part to the desire to put labels on everything and fit everything into its place, and yet at the same time, vexatiously neglected in several where they really should be standard texts. In no small part due to those self-same scholars desperately seeking them insisting on putting shiny labels like Heavenly, Supreme, Divine or Celestial on things that have no business being anywhere near them.

From the foreword of ‘The Books of Heaven and Earth’

~By Maria Renhallan

~ Lin Ling, Cloud Forest Valley ~

Lin Ling skulked through the shadows, suppressing her qi and her aura, observing the other cultivators in the vicinity of this particular series of overgrown and tumbled down ruins. They had started encountering other groups on their way through the foothills of this mountain range about two days prior. Fortunately, between their far superior forest craft and the weird issues with qi in this place, it had not been difficult to give them wide berths, up until now at least.

Unfortunately, prior to arriving in this jungle pass, the crossings over and valleys through the mountains above them had been...mostly impassable, at face value. They had tried for three days to find ways through, only to be stymied by a veritable laundry list of hazards; terrifying qi beasts, strange mists, rock faces that repelled qi or rapidly absorbed it, temperatures low enough to make her bones ache and deeply unsettling vales and ruins that were so inauspicious they just walked the other way without looking back. So they had been forced down here, towards the lower forested valleys once more and ended up at this chokepoint where the river wound through a broad cloud forest valley. Probably they could cross back east after traversing this valley, but by the fates, circumstances were making that difficult.

While the valley itself was relatively mundane, its ruins largely just ruins, and a lot less weirdly juxtaposed for all that, it was swarming with cultivators from dozens of sects. Battles were constantly flaring to their west, with a ferocity that made her rather concerned for the nature of the suppression in this place. thankfully, the group in front of them seemed to share their disdain for this war taking place on the other side of the river. A dozen or so in number, they were huddled on the far side of the ruined courtyard of this place. As far as she could see, it was some kind of ruined outpost that had been claimed by the jungle and might even be where it was intended, unlike much of what they had seen before. It had towers, walls, two decent sized courtyards, encircling buildings and was situated on a strategic rise and partial outcropping that afforded it a good view from the towers over the river beyond it. Some of the buildings even had roofs on!

The group itself was a lot more ragtag than the previous groups they had avoided. They had, in her experienced eye, the familiar look of a bunch of people who had been rolled over a few times by the more mendacious aspects of the Inner Valleys and then not had the happiest landing in this place. They were also remarkably ad hoc for all that. The dozen individuals wore the robes and even some armour in styles of what she guessed were three different sects, at least. That said, the only one she recognised was the Teng School. Most of them were injured in some way or other, several quite badly. In her estimation, they were clearly intending to use the ruins as a place to securely shelter for the night, from the threats that would emerge once the sun went down. They themselves had been quite fortunate there, already expecting the night to be several times more dangerous than the days in a place like this, but she guessed many others, these groups included had had to learn that the hard way.

Speaking of that...

She cast an eye back to the other side of the river, where they had hoped to go before the cloud lifted enough to prove that the thunderstorm they had thought was natural was, in fact, a bunch of cultivators from rival sects doing… the usual. Landscape redesign by excessive application of fundamental forces. Basically exploding the monkeyshit out of each other with whatever was to hand and generally getting along like a house on fire.

Two more small thunderstorms were rolling along the far valley wall, presumably chasing another group or three. All in all, she was sure that there were a dozen groups in this valley being pushed along by whatever force was responsible for this. The local wildlife, which was not as amenable down here as it had been where they first appeared was also having none of this based on the distant enraged roars. The war here was drawing focus in ways that she found it hard to articulate beyond telling the others that her instincts were now starting to give her what she could only call 'bad vibes'.

Completing her circuit she paused, pushing herself deeper in the shade of some crumbled debris by the wall that were shrouded in vines. A sweep of qi sense had just rolled over the whole complex. It was diffuse to the point of being nearly useless, but she wasn't going to bet against some of those running around here to have enough strength or qi pills to brute force that issue. The bunch on the far side, for example, fighting with thunder, fire and lightning were either powerful enough to overcome some aspect of the oppression here through comprehensions, carrying around more talismans than was healthy or were somehow genuinely unhindered by the suppression. None of those were a good thing as far as she was concerned.

A group of ‘vagabonds’ at their realm, trying to leave these valleys, would be instantly targeted in case they held something of value through sheer good fortune.

-Assuming, of course, we aren't just slaughtered out of hand for being bandits or something.

She closed her eyes for a moment, stilling her thoughts.

It wasn’t a return of the voices, but her memories and aspects of her psyche could still be a bit...weird at times. Some of it, she was sure, was down to the lingering aftereffects of, well, everything. The scars she already had would take a long time to leave, the traumatic uncertainties she was still ignoring even more so.

Proving a welcome distraction from that darker line of worry, a second shadow skulked through the evening light and Juni slid silently down beside her.

“Problem left,” Juni signed.

She looked over to her left and saw nothing.

“Up,” Juni pointed.

She nodded and slipped back, even as another wave of qi sense flooded everything; battling against the diffusion of the landscape, the greenery, the stone from the buildings and the weirdness of the qi native to this place. Clambering quietly up a corner, using just her physical strength, she peered around the side of a window from the second floor saw what Juni had.

A mixed group of sect disciples, wearing more ostentatious, if still battered, versions of the robes that a third of the group in the plaza wore, were striding confidently through the far gate of the ruined courtyard.

Slipping back down, because they had entered her view without her being exposed up here, she noted that the body language between the two groups was…bad. On the part of the ragged survivors anyway.

“They are not happy to see them,” she signed to Juni.

“No… they are not,” Juni agreed.

“More, other side,” she signed noting odd movement from the corner of her eye in the greenery beyond the wall.

Juni quickly glanced around the gap in the outer wall, easily spotting the three others trying to skirt the ruin in the shrubs outside. They were trying to be stealthy, and using talismans to do it, but talismans only got you so far in a landscape this densely vegetated. Not to mention, both of them were far too used to things like Shifting Alkr or the more unpleasant solitary Wandering Spiders. Both those could have active qi camouflage and had far better reflexes than most cultivators for that kind of stalking.

“Great,” she signed, miming a grimace and an eye roll.

“Han Shu?” she asked, wondering where he was.

“Up above in case someone comes the other way, he will see.” Juni pointed back towards the higher outcropping where slumped rocks peeked through the canopy a few hundred metres away.

“He still has no cultivation to speak of” she pointed out.

“He does have that mystic sword though,” Juni reminded her, unnecessarily.

“So these are the ones?” one of the robed youths said with a sneer.

Another, a tall dark-haired youth with an arrogant manner and some vestigial evidence of having been badly burned by a Yang Lash Lamium gestured to the group. “Yes, Senior Brother Tan, these are the last of the ones who rebelled against their Seniors and brought the Sect into disrepute.”

“Oh. Great,” Juni signed sourly.

She grimaced in agreement. They were stuck with a ringside seat on a fight between two more groups of cultivators. Just what they didn’t need right now, as it was getting towards evening.

"Retreat?" she queried.

She nodded, acknowledging.

Juni was right, running at this time would likely just see them chased as well and while she was pretty confident in her ability to skulk, Juni probably wouldn’t be able to escape notice as easily.

“Betrayed?” one of the youths in the ragged group snarled, his voice unstable with emotion.

“Brother Chen, enough.” An older… it was hard to call him a youth because he looked in his late thirties and had a ragged beard at this point, waved his hands trying to defuse the situation.

“What are you saying 'Senior' Brother, these people killed so many of us with their stupidity, angering this and that, then ran off leaving us to die after we all ended up-”

“LIES!” One of the other robed figures, a youth in a plainer robe refuted looking obnoxiously affronted.

“If it wasn’t for this idiot here, Xiaoli would…”

“Sister…Meng, Brother Wentai…” others in the group also muttered angrily, agreeing with the Chen youth.

“Yeah!” another youth spoke up from the injured ones… “You even tried to kill our guide to hide your own stupidity and save your own shitty face… and you want to call us traitors?”

“Brother Zhao?” one of the women, in the other group asked, frowning.

“Senior Ning, these people have tried to cause dissent at every turn, not respected our commands, failed to follow instruction and frequently showed improper attitudes! Is not their role as outer disciples to support the sect in every way possible?"

"WE are representatives of the sect, while they are just outer disciples!" a youth with a sleek moustache that made him look like a scammer stated a touch pompously.

"Not to mention that Teng girl gave us a lot of bad advice that killed several of my brothers and sisters and led to Brother Zhao being injured…” a third, more plainly garbed youth who was clearly another compatriot of 'Zhao' added.

“Brother Zhao has always been a good judge of character…” another tall woman standing nearby with crossed arms interjected with narrowed eyes.

“Oh not you too Roxu… you know how this place is screwing everything up,” the woman who was probably called Ning muttered. “And as I recall, you were one of the bunch of started all this teleportation…”

“Enough.” The youth who had spoken first and seemed to be the overall leader of the group stated flatly.

“Of course Senior Tan,” echoed from the others, although she noted that 'Senior Ning' just looked at him sideways without much deference.

“You all failed to follow your Senior's commands, even if we set that aside, they all state that you ran away rather than accept your part in matters, this is against the rules of the sect so you will have to be punished.”

“Not to mention..." he pointed at the injured woman who was identified as the guide, and who looked almost as badly beaten up as they were. “ I recall you...were one of those who was very keen to make difficulties before about our means of advance.”

“Yes, she was, Senior Brother Tan,” the man called Zhao scowled, absently scratching his arms where the yang poison was still presumably tormenting him.

“You have heard the rumours that have been circulating?” one of his associates, the moustache youth added.

“Yes, from the Jade Gate Court, about indigenous dissent and people having subverted the Hunter Pavilion in those two towns… the ones that sound like brothels,” another of the youths from the arrivals added 'helpfully'.

“That group has the support of Senior Tian of the Shu Pavilion and people from the Shen, Din and Ha Clans so there must be some credence to the rumours…” Roxu mused.

She looked sideways at Juni with concern in her eyes. It was a common joke amongst out of province visitors that West Flower Picking and Golden Promise sounded like Brothels, and they were the only group from West Flower Picking Hunter Pavilion who should be anywhere near this mess.

“There is no way right?” she signed.

“But this woman is from Lin Teng Town…” Senior Ning pointed out.

“Whose side are you on here Senior Sister,” the woman called Roxu pouted. “Junior Zhao has clearly suffered at their hands and through her bad advice.”

“That they have dragged a cripple like her all this way, in spite of what she has done, speaks a lot about the depth of their piety towards the sect,” another pointed out.

“She’s their only guide Qinfei,” Ning pointed out with a resigned sigh.

“What do you have to say in your defence?” Senior brother Tan asked the ragged group at large, she recognised the tone enough to know that his mind was already made up in any case.

“Now?” she signed to Juni who nodded.

The other group behind them was closing in on the ruins now as well, cutting off this group’s most obvious path of retreat, and also theirs.

“Brother Zhao, it seems they have helpers…” Roxu said with a frown

She hesitated for a split second, then swiftly slipped around the corner, followed by Juni. There was the possibility that she meant the other group, but all her instincts said that the woman had caught them somehow. She was about to leap up to the second level when the entire tower above her became a swirling maelstrom of flame. A heartbeat later the slope outside also turned into a searing conflagration as the three behind them all struck at the exits they could have taken to get to the forest with what she guessed were talismans.

“You’re quite stealthy!” Roxu declared, drawing a talisman out and activating it as well. “If this sister wasn’t an Immortal you would have escaped my notice…. Come out or we will burn you out.”

Her eyebrow twitched faintly as she rapidly appraised what she could see of the woman’s strength while she pulled herself onto the veranda on around the courtyards second story. It was inscrutable but felt repressed. The fire around them on the other hand was not that dangerous, compared to the Yang Blood at least.

“Maybe,” Juni signed, slipping onto the veranda of the second building along-

With a flash of light from the talisman that made everyone else flinch, the shadows were twisted, briefly exposing both of them. It was amusing, part of her thought, to see even Roxu, who had claimed to notice them flinch slightly, the woman had been aiming for the tower where she had been before, not the next building where they had actually made it to before being revealed.

~ Ruo Han, Ruined Courtyard ~

Ruo Han watched in shock as two figures were illuminated on the balcony above them by Senior Sister Roxu’s talisman. His attempt to diffuse the situation having come to naught, the odds of them running away from this in any reasonable manner were non-existent. The others in their group that had drifted in from other sects were already bolting for the far side of the courtyard. None of them would want to be caught up in a mess between sect disciples.

The slope behind them was also on fire, he realised, even with the suppressed environment. Immortal Grade Talismans? That seemed likely if he was being honest with himself and didn't bode well for them at all.

As he fought to clear his vision, Senior Sister Roxu, who despite her grand statement was only very barely an Immortal having broken through a few months ago, sent a wave of principle infused fire qi at the balcony. The blonde woman on it rolled through a doorway, seemingly mostly unaffected by it. The one who had just been making her way onto it threw herself back down to the ground and fluidly collected herself.

Both of them looked like vagabonds, half-naked vagabonds at that. He had thought their group pretty battered, but these two looked as if they had crawled out of an avici hell by their ruined garb and general condition. Their spiritual cultivations were...he had to do a double-take and check again even as he scrambled for cover, dragging Junior Sister Liao Ying after him. The Blonde haired, younger one was... close to peak qi refinement. The older woman was maybe mid-stage, but both of them had a fuzzy depth that obfuscated his guess somehow. The blonde-haired one especially, her foundation was weirdly inscrutable...

Having made it to comparative safety, he glanced back at the 'Senior' disciples. They were all standing there with looks of amusement, bordering on derision as Roxu lashed at the balcony. Three more who he recognised vaguely as members of the Discipline Hall, like Sheng Zhao and Senior Roxu, arrived on the wall above them looking down with amusement, holding more talismans. That meant they were the ones responsible for the huge wall of fire that had just cut through the forest beyond and was consuming the nearest tower.

The older of the two women landed on the ground and looked up at the new arrivals with a frown, then at Senior Roxu and Senior Zhao with an inscrutable expression. Neither of the two were obviously armed, and while they both had jade slates bound to their arms in a surprisingly utilitarian manner neither was wearing any kind of sect talisman or contribution jade that he could see which was odd. Add in that they had such 'low' cultivations, and suddenly he felt a somewhat ominous sense of foreboding.

“Are they actually indigenous rebels?” Hao Jun muttered from where he had taken refuge nearby.

That did seem a bit of a leap to him, in spite of that sect disciples assertion. It was very possible they had just lost them somewhere, or were rogue cultivators, calling them indigenous-

“We are not with them,” the older woman spoke in flawless common imperial that even had a faint accent that suggested nobility.

“We were just passing through," The younger woman spoke with, if anything, an even more imperial accent than the older one from the upper veranda as she eyed the newcomers consideringly. "We want no part in your conflict-”

“That is not for you to decide.” Senior Brother Zhao imperiously cut her off. “You spied on us, clearly.”

-Shit… you idiot, he cursed in his head.

He had had plenty of reason to doubt his senior’s judgement concerning forest craft up to this point, but now this was just taking the piss.

-These two are ahead of us, somehow… and while they appear to have 'low' cultivations, they are so low as to be almost implausible. Their Foundations are fuzzy, they were sneaking around and Roxu failed to spot exactly where they were, neither of them is obviously scared...Even after Roxu started throwing words like Immortal around. Nobody is that ignorant having made it in here, and you want to make them antagonistic?

“Do they have some kind of mass brain defect?” Jin Chen grimaced, clearly sharing his train of thought.

-Probably, he reflected in his own head.

He been in the sect as an Outer disciple a good few decades longer than most who were still scattered around this side of the courtyard. His prospects were actually not terrible either, he would probably make it to Immortal, though as an Outer Elder, not a disciple. He also already held a Junior Elder position among the outer disciples. As such he was sure he was much clearer than most others here on the kind of preferential treatment that even Sect Disciples, nevermind people like Sheng Zhao who were being fast-tracked to Inner Disciple-hood got. Most were all but promised the best possible crack at Immortality from their earliest years. That kind of environment did tend to warp the mind a bit when compared to those who had to claw their way up through the Outer Sect, or who joined through their own means. It had occurred to him before now, that the sect elders might be trying to make a point to their current crop of Immortals, one which they were, mostly, willfully failing to see he suspected.

Before anyone could do anything else, those up above triggered another two talismans. The blonde woman just chuckled as the fire talisman washed over her, making her clothes char, but barely registering on her skin beyond burning away some muck.

-Yep, definitely suppressing their cultivations, he thought grimly.

The second talisman was an earth one, however, sending a wave of rolling spikes to try and snare her. With a grimace she flitted off the veranda and landed in the plaza to some derisive laughter from the group above and a sneer from Sheng Zhao.

“Now… Now, Brother Zhao, Brother Fu, don’t be so domineering,” Roxu smiled, blurred, and arrived in front of the younger woman.

As she smiled he felt the air constrict faintly and grow warmer as his senior sister properly put forth her principle to try to oppress the other woman.

“If you give us your storage jades and let us scan your memories we will let you go. Indigenous or not.”

The younger girl narrowed her eyes as if calculating something, then swirled her hand revealing she had a storage device tied to the inside of her wrist beside her enchanted jade armguard. “Sure, take the jade, but...”

“Ohhh poor child, you think this is a choice?” Senior sister Roxu smiled prettily, her voice dripping with mocking amusement now. “We need to be sure you aren't some traitors, spies, bandits or rogue cultivators who mean us harm… We have to protect all our sect disciples you understand… it is an Inner Disciple's respon-”

Roxu crumpled backwards spitting blood and making a sobbing sound as the young woman flickered on the spot and punched her in the stomach. She was halfway to the roof before his senior sister had even finished rolling away.

The other woman, who was actually quite a beauty, with dark brown hair, just shook her head… and smiled. She charged for Senior Brother Zhao in a blur that was comparable in speed to a Golden Core Cultivator. It was slower than he expected, but not that much slower than Roxu. Common sense said that that difference was the limit of what a normal cultivator was capable of in this strange, qi constricting, oppressive environment.

His senior brother stepped smoothly backwards and lashed out with a sword that had appeared in his hand, clearly intending to cut her from-

A sword-staff of all things appeared in the woman’s hand, meeting the flicker of sword light and the lazing arcing blade with a sonorous chime. What was shocking though, was that despite the weapon appearing simple and well made, it took a chunk out of the edge of Sheng Zhao’s blade and easily blocked the guileless sword light.

The explosion on the rooftop made all of them taking shelter flinch, even as bits of masonry and roof tile rained down around them. Up above, the rooftop had turned into a sea of flame, courtesy of another talisman. He observed, still protecting himself from the blast of heat, with some small bit of satisfaction as 'Senior Fu' was caught by the blonde woman somehow and smashed into the tower. The others scattered, suddenly looking a lot less jovial and amused.

“Well the fates have eyes,” Teng Chunhua laughed weakly as he helped her down into cover beside him.

“They do?” he asked, wincing as Senior Roxu finally recovered herself and pushed out her principle even more rampantly.

“The blonde girl is a Mantra Seed Physical Cultivator,” Chunhua judged, glancing through the ruined gap of the building wall. “I can faintly feel the oppressive resonance from her Mantra in her qi. It’s of higher quality than some of the Elders in the South Grove Hunter Hall, and her physical capabilities in this environment are well above expected…”

“What does that mean?” Jin Chen said scrambling in beside them.

“It means your ‘seniors’ might have kicked another sheet of iron. I have a Golden Core and a Physical Cultivation at early Mantra Seed and despite that girl only being close to the top of Qi refinement, she’s stronger right now, than I would be uninjured and unsuppressed.”

“Oh,” that was… encouraging so long as this pair weren’t also hostile to them as well.

Most of their spiritual capabilities were little better than those of Golden Core cultivators in this place, notwithstanding the phenomenal durability of the landscape. All the 'Seniors' out there, even those in the Immortal Realm, who were able to use principles, were basically Golden Core Cultivators with benefits right now, unable to properly manifest their Immortal Souls. As to those below? he could only dream of pushing his Nascent Soul out beyond the confines of his body in this strange oppression, and his ability to replenish qi was non-existent except via pills.

The staff-wielding woman exchanged several blows with Zhao as he watched. Her use of the weapon itself wasn’t great, but it was... familiar; the Military Authority Standard Martial Form for Sword-Staffs, with another Sword Art, her family's he guessed, thrown in occasionally. However, her physical strength and her movement were excellent. She had none of the florid movements of someone who focused on practising with magical treasures and their cultivation to execute martial arts. Someone trained by an expert in the Military Bureau at least. Zhao screamed and staggered back as she drew blood from his arms. Despite his superior speed, he was clearly unused to having to fight with a sword in this way, and her weapon could damage his, blade to blade, putting him somewhat at disadvantage from what he could judge.

Roxu, now back on her feet and panting hard... was actually sweating. He could see a large hole had been burnt in her robe and the skin of her stomach beneath was red and blistering. Glaring at the blonde woman for a moment, Roxu instead turned and went to help Sheng Zhao, casting an art as she did so.

{Argent Phoenix Blaze}

Fire qi infused with Roxu’s principle enveloped the middle of the plaza as Sheng Zhao flitted back, laughing and trying to look confident.

“How... do... you like that...” Roxu snarled, panting from the exertion of manifesting that much qi he guessed.

The other woman was sent sprawling in the fire from the force of the impact. She looked panicked for a few seconds as it rapidly blistered her skin and started burning into her flesh. However, after a moment she just stood up and just looked at it as it rolled around her and over her, looking somewhat amused. They all stared dully as the brown-haired woman started to laugh in the middle of the blazing maelstrom of principle infused fire, apparently uncaring of the damage it was doing to her.

{~BODY~}

The intent rippled outwards from her like a wave, washing through his mind and making him spasm as his qi became disordered. From the gasps of those nearby, the others all perceived the same thing.

“She… can do Intention Manifestation with her mantra without being at…” Chunhua whispered dully beside him, there was... fear in her tone now.

The woman's wounds didn’t vanish, but they didn’t get any worse. She walked towards the stunned Roxu, ignoring the fire as if it was an illusion. The intent from her was still rising as well, smothering everything. The gloaming half-light of dusk and the shadows cast by the fire were both growing deeper. The building around them was suddenly dark and creepy and his sense of the world dimmed disturbingly.

"This... intent... she has been into the depths!?!" Chunhua hissed beside him, looking around with proper fear in her eyes now.

His nascent soul fought the invading intent desperately, losing ground with every second. It was a lower realm than his, he could feel that clearly, but the quality of it was impossible. With it came a crippling, inexorable, creeping darkness that was seeking out the scars from that abominable tree, from their panicked flight, prying them open against all the odds, and crawling into it, invading his mind slowly but surely.

"What... do you mean?" Jin Chen whimpered from nearby, holding his head and shaking uncontrollably.

Roxu screamed and drew out a qi focusing fire element treasure even as Senior Brother Tan was finally stirred to movement.

{Argent Dawn Pillar}

A blazing lash of brilliant green-gold fire shot out from her hands at the woman, who effortlessly blocked it with the blade of the sword. The weapon itself suffered no damage at all from the Immortal Art. The woman’s arms, however, burnt to the bone for a second before restoring themselves just as rapidly.

“What the fates is with this… intent…” Hao Jun shuddered.

-You ask me, but who do I ask? He muttered to himself.

"The depths..." Teng Chunhua muttered, looking pale and still not really explaining what she meant... "It's from the depths..."

The Darkness all around them was intensifying rapidly and starting to whisper ominously. Unless that was just in his head, and the injury caused by the tree was playing up.

“What kind of heretic arts…” Roxu’s voice was lost as Senior Tan waved his hand and a corrosive palm of earth qi crashed into the woman.

“Die!” Sheng Zhao roared, striking out himself and sending an intent infused shimmer of sword light slashing towards the woman.

The three attacks sent the woman crashing into the building wall.

“I was kind of worried when you said you were an Immortal and all…” the woman said standing up and dusting herself off, her wounds already healing. “But it turns out that this horrible oppression and that ordeal we endured is finally good for something at long last.”

“Eh?” Roxu just said blankly.

Both Sheng Zhao and Senior Tan were both shocked as well, neither had really held back with their strikes it appeared.

“Compared to the fate thrashed rock sludge’s your acid is weak!” the woman said with an out of place sense of amusement, inspecting the damage done to the remnants of her robe.

It wasn’t going to save any modesty, even if it appeared to be very durable. With the rents in it from Sheng Zhao’s sword, nothing much was concealed anymore. He gulped, not because she had a stunning figure, but because the punishment on her body was visible to his qi vision even if the scars were almost non-existent. If you didn’t understand what you were looking at you might think she had a skin disorder. Huge swathes of her skin were paler, and the qi density across her shoulder and breasts was much higher than it should be naturally. A head-sized swathe of discolouration and more qi scarring across her stomach spoke to a wound that should have ruined her dantian. One arm was entirely pale to the elbow and both her legs had pale lashes across them where new skin had regrown that implied she might have suffered bone-deep flesh wounds several times. In normal light, this would have been close to invisible, but between his own perception and something in the woman’s own intent, it was clearly accented for all to see.

“Ummm…”

“Oh…”

Exhaling, all three of them attacked together. Roxus’s sword blazed with white-red fire, while Zhao’s took on a purplish hue and Senior Tan conjured blade that was surrounded by an eerie green blaze.

~ Kun Juni, Ruined Courtyard ~

Dancing backwards and deflecting Roxu’s sword, she exhaled again. She was slower than any of the attackers in the anomaly and clearly unused to wielding her sword like this. Her qi exhaustion from those arts was also quite noticeable. Zhao, the man with the purple sword was better she acknowledged, as good as her older brother, but his style was florid and totally not designed for this kind of brawling.

She chased after him for three moves, keeping Roxu between her and the only really dangerous one, who was called Tan.

He waved his blade and Roxu tried to get away as he sent a shockwave of blade light through the air.

Devoted, Path, Lotus, Body, Bestowal

{Kun Skips Upon the Pond}

She used the evasive sword art and her mantra in tandem, letting one offset the other. Her own intent was no match for the green blade light, but her durability and the suppressive oppression on qi here meant she got off with minor flesh wounds and forced her opponent to hastily dodge. Her attack flowed seamlessly onto the entry attack of what she recalled of the Spear Staff art

{Kun Overturns the Water}

Her blade swirled forward forcing 'Tan' back a second time, as he deflected the intent again while ensuring she didn't ruin his weapon like she had that treasure sword. Behind her, Roxu and Zhao had both sorted themselves out and were darting towards her again. She thanked the fates that none of these three were remotely capable of working as a team. As they approached both managed to cut each other’s attack angles slightly, allowing her to spin away and execute a spear art.

{Kun within the Maelstrom}

The anger, that was still welling up within her intent, flowed outwards tugging at everything. Zhao was forced to beat a hasty retreat and throw a talisman at her-

The Immortal Strength water talisman might have been the single worst thing they could actually throw at her from their perspective, she had to consider. Not necessarily for any elemental reason but simply because the arts she was using came from the Kun Family and were derivative of a rather famous Law that did a lot with water manipulation through intent. Corrosive water and spear form met in a swirling mess. The corrosion within it was enough to be an inconvenience but she was already clear of it, the talisman cut by her before it had properly manifested. That was the downside of using talismans in this kind of situation. Military doctrine, according to her brother, was to always put them on something, and if all else failed slap them on yourself, to avoid that happening.

“You IDIOT!” Roxu screamed from one side as her own fire principle was also weakened by the upwelling of Yin Water.

Taking advantage of the distraction, she charged forward, using just pure speed and physical condition to cover the distance, striking between her opponent's breasts.

Roxu barely managed to deflect the strike, damaging her sword in the process and falling backwards. The blade of the staff took a large slice out of her pretty robe as well but failed to draw blood.

Vaulting away, the woman used her movement art to make distance even as the blade wielder appeared beside her in a blur of movement. Rather than block his attack directly, she spun away and stuck with the staff at his knee. He ignored the attack and promptly paid for it as she hit the weak point and the suppression did the rest, making him stagger slightly, his attack deflecting off into a nearby building.

In her head, she sighed in mild disbelief. He had to be ten times her age and got hit like that?

-That was just arrogance on his part.

Despite this promising start though, she knew that this was basically unsustainable. She could fight three on one like this, but her qi was half-gone already. Even with the recovery from the mantra and relying mainly on martial intent she was losing far more than she gained. Holding her ground was only really possible so long as they didn’t take this completely seriously, by for example, like burying her in talismans. It was what she would do, and she had a lot of experience fighting things with sketchy ability sets. She was still looking for an opportunity to break for the forest, where it would be a lot easier to lose them and fight a much more controlled kind of battle.

Another crash of masonry and a male scream behind her told her than Lin Ling, on the building was at least doing somewhat better than she was.

Spinning away again, she got a quick overview of that combat as one of the three cultivators attacking her clambered out of the ruined wall where he had been thrown. Another was struggling with a smoking red scar on his robe that was clearly Yang Blood, while the last was trying to chase after Lin Ling who was easily leading him around despite being slower. None of them were used to this kind of brawling combat.

The other half of the equation had mostly fled into the buildings or fled properly at this point, which suited her just fine. The two hangers-on with 'Zhao' were also nowhere to be seen, maybe they had left after the others?

Roxu had scrambled up now and was making distance, having decided corretly to use Arts. She tried to gauge the age of the woman, she claimed to be an Immortal and nobody here had countered that and she was using a Principle. That could mean she was just a Quasi-Immortal though, at the Peak of Dao Seeking and was just trying to intimidate her. Certainly, the woman felt a lot weaker than she expected. Was the oppression here even fiercer on Immortals than Mortals?

Zhao surged in from her left, yelling and sending a wave of martial intent and sword qi after her, fusing it with another earth type art.

{Rolling Earth Storm}

The intent within the attack rolled over her even as the paving slabs of the courtyard rippled upwards and became a wave that tried to snare her movement.

{Thunder Light Slash}

The echoing boom of the yang lightning qi from the blade user washed through her, picking her up and hammering her into the middle of the maelstrom of roiling earth and intent infused qi.

'Devoted, Path, Lotus, Body, Bestowal'

Outside here, either of these attacks would have turned her into a red smear or a pile of sparks, she was sure. However, as she had somewhat joked before, for once something was playing in her favour as the environment suppressed the elemental power of the arts to an almost unnatural degree. Her mantra ruined the remaining intent that entered her body. It was weak compared to the worst even a five or a six-star spirit herb could do. Part of that was also whatever was going on with this place, independent of them, but part of it was also absolutely related to the way Valash had changed her mantra. She was also starting to realise that the scars of the long dark, below, had permeated her in stranger ways still. much like Lin Ling and the Yang Blood, something seemed to linger in her intent, giving it an edge that was close to disturbing.

She managed to extricate herself and barely dodged the sword that glided through the air, aiming for her head. The youth who had wielded it, Qinfeng she thought, drifted to the ground and spun his blade parrying her strike expertly

Of course, there had been two more. She glanced towards the last woman, Ning, who was still stood watching on the side-lines with a frown, making no move to join in so far.

Four on one, all of them possibly Immortals was where she had to concede she was really overplaying her hand.

Roxu, who had stopped… to recover her modesty of all the fate thrashed things, sent another lashing attack of fire with the same art she had used before. She noted a discarded pill jar on the ground near the other woman and sighed... this was the advantage they had.

Dodging backwards swept the spear towards the art intending to block it, only for it to bloom like flower petals and scatter around her blade, reforming as tendrils of light that tore into her arms. The pain that came with them was intense, the principle of fire surged into her meridians, rotting them from the inside even as her mantra fought tooth and nail to allow them to outlast the damage. The woman’s strategy wasn’t bad actually, but the pain was not enough. Nowhere -near- enough now, not after the torment of surviving in that dark. And now, unlike then, she had an idea of how it could be used.

{~BESTOWAL~}

She screamed. It wasn’t just pain, but also anger and frustration, at everything that had led to this point. The mantra took it all and made an intent out of it that melded with the shadows of the rising dusk, the flickering flames of the fires on the roof and in the courtyard. It took all of the ambience and twisted her frustrations through it, making everyone recoil. Even Lin Ling paused after hurling a piece of masonry at one of her opponents who, now stunned, took it to the face and was thrown off the roof.

Ignoring Roxu, she pulled herself together and executed the strongest art she was confident of being able to use, aiming for the youth who had just attacked her and was now stranded for a moment with a glaring opening.

{Double Dragon...}

The world around her slowed as the mnemonic combined with her mantra to guide her body through the requisite motions. The youth's eyes widened in surprise, then shock as she closed on him in a moment. The dragon's claw strike he managed to block with his sword, only to find she had reversed the staff at the last moment. The tail, this time using the sword blade tore into his knee vertically opening up half his leg. Stepping through the strike as both the blade user and the other sword user charged for her with truly shocking speed, she spun around, dragging her target with her, severing his leg entirely in the process and smashing him into the ground. Flipping the sword back over she used it to protect her body from the blade that smashed into her, aiming to bisect her across the breasts, collecting the momentum and tumbling with it.

{…Sundering Surge}

The sword strike that arrived took her through the side even as she spun in the air, ripping open Zhao’s clothing with the blade. Her own attack left an arc of his blood in the air as she cut him to the bone and barely missed decapitating the youth on the ground thanks to the blade user intercepting her strike, with damage to his blade, sending it back towards Zhao, who barely dodged this time, having learned his mistake.

Landing and rolling she came up and instinctively blocked the sword strike that was aiming for her dantian that originated with Roxu who had lunged forward to exploit the opening. She recoiled and succeeded in catching the other woman out by sweeping her legs.

Probably that had to be some kind of lauded achievement, what quasi-golden core cultivator ever tripped up an immortal?

In any case, she was now nearly out of qi, so flight was all-

Roxu blurred, exerting tremendous burst of speed. The sword blade took a slice through her side as she barely pivoted clear-

The talisman exploded and flattened her into the ground. She had the presence of mind to store the staff so as not to be disarmed, as she was thrown into the air. All around her, the courtyard became a twisting conflagration of fire and qi, with her caught right in the middle of it as she crashed to the ground. Roxu blurred again and attacked her, untouched by the raging maelstrom around them. Grimacing, she feigned weakness and then materialized the sword staff back in her hands right as the woman attacked her with her sword. The blade ripped open the other woman’s side, even as Roxu's own stab ran her through the shoulder, barely avoiding her blade in the process.

Ignoring the pain as best she could, she swept sideways, forcing her attacker to withdraw her arm or lose it. The sword in her shoulder vanished in a flicker of light and Roxu darted away, suffering only a flesh wound on her arm that rapidly healed.

Behind her, she felt Zhao closing, the rage in his intent palpable…

-Yet it was so… mediocre, insincere even, she couldn't help but judge.

Compared to her own intent, there was no substance to it, no core to reinforce it. Her own rage was still rising, swirling like a dragon beneath the waters, within her mind's eye. A dark distillation of all her past experiences, cast onto the moment at hand. It had still been forming in the anomaly in many ways. There her fear, uncertainty and confusion had kept it at bay... and her determination not to die. A desperation to get to the end, to be the one to lead them out of there, sustained her.

Now… here, she was just angry that nothing was changing.

From one disaster to another... They were just staggering forward, like drunken cripples, ruined by life, enduring misfortune begot by disaster abetted by ill omen and then this. The anger was at everything, directed at the totality of this whole endeavour. At how it was refusing to let up. It was at the pain, the torment and the frustration. Day after day. This insanity had killed Ling Luo in all likelihood, nearly killed Han Shu, claimed Arai, Sana, broken Lin Ling in ways that were... maybe never going to heal, haunted her like a spectre of ill omen and broken some part of her as well. One after another they struggled to just stay afloat in this green leafy mausoleum that brought nothing but directionless death. That stupid proclamation. The corruption that led to them being out here, hunting things so their town wouldn’t fall into difficulty over some noble power play.

In weeks she had experienced a lifetime of torment, or so it felt.

-Compared to all of this?

She had nothing but contempt for his mediocre, vain attempt at anger. The righteous fury in his eyes, tinged with a faint hint of desire. She could nearly see the thoughts in his head, how, if he showed anger over her flesh wound, anger for the scratch she had dealt this bitch who had been born to privilege, feted with power and given the best of everything, might look on him more favourably somehow. It was just... empty. Slight tricks before a master, and if there was anything at this point she could claim to be a master in, it was inner rage.

Rage over her spirit root, rage over her lack of opportunities, rage about this place, about the politics of West Flower Picking Town, rage about Arai and Sana’s death, about what had been done to Lin Ling, about how Han Shu had been so lucky, rage about how he had nearly died, rage over Di Ji, about the Darkness, about her lost clothing, about how this whole thing just would. not. let. them. go.

It surged up in her like a torrent, flowing out of her body, carrying her as much as she sent it. She saw his eyes widen in confusion as her intent properly grasped him, dragged him down into that darkness she had clawed her way out of, as she had experienced it. He staggered before she ever got there, shadows snaring him, the gloaming vault of the sky above someone pressing in unnaturally. In his disorientation, he barely deflected her strike, probably succeeding by fluke as much as design. with a desperate roar the blade user, Tan, charged forward. His own intent pushing against the darkness in her heart that was howling at the world at large. On the ground, the other youth screamed and tried to scramble back as well, a bolt of lightning fizzling out of a talisman in his hand, tearing through her body like a white-hot lance. Her mantra met it and her rage devoured it, even as the blade, partially deflected by the haft of the sword-staff crunched into her arm.

{~Devoted~}

Somehow, instinctually, she succeeded in doing a weird thing with her mantra. The qi from the lightning cracked through her body and her mantra twisted it. She became slightly more attuned to it and it fed her rage, becoming a physical manifestation of her own frustrations.

{~BODY~}

The blade severed her arm as it passed through, but her mantra healed the damage even as it passed through. The qi in her body and bones flowed weirdly. She had an awareness that she had still suffered a serious wound to the vital qi infused in her upper arm bone, but she still had an arm, which was the important thing, and her meridians were somehow undamaged. Even the damage to the bone itself wasn't permanent as her body was already shifting refined qi into it, to replace the lost vital qi. Her mantra shifted again, greedily stealing from the lightning that was trying to ruin her. Rooting itself even deeper in her bones.

As it did so, her rage opened up a new possibility.

A means to maybe bury this blade wielder and all the others.

"I have no intention of dying here!" she snarled, her sounding harsh and alien to her own ears. "Not after everything we overcame."

Casting her mind back she let the bone freezing terror of the thing that had taken the Sar’Katush reflect in her mind. Compared to that, this pain that they were trying to inflict on her was mediocre.

The blade wielders eyes went saucer wide as her intent clutched at him.

“DEVIL!” he fled backwards, like a coward, even as he screamed, using an actual movement art for the first time.

He was still too late, her intent was the darkness here. The others stared dully as he collapsed to his knees, panting, blood running from his eyes...

“...W-What... are you…” he gasped even as Roxu staggered up and threw a talisman at her.

She dodged and cursed because it wasn’t a-

White light bled into everything, pain exploded in her stomach and she smashed into something hard… a wall.

Colour bled back into the world and she realised she was stabbed.

Brother Zhao had arrived in front of her and stabbed her through the Dantian. He was no longer sneering, his eyes were wide and his skin pallid.

“You think this is enough?” she hissed at him, grabbing him by the neck even as he tried to pull back.

-What a bastard, he was so arrogant before, and now he’s pissing himself? In front of a Golden Core brat?

"You think your meagre means are comparable to the things I've seen?"

He tried to say something, straining against her, his innate strength barely overcoming her own physical prowess as he slowly withdrew the sword from her. Behind him, Roxu was helping the other sword youth up and the other woman was tending to the blade wielder, giving him a pill or something?

A second word rose, unbidden in her mind.

-A part of her mantra that had changed according to her rage somehow?

-Or maybe it had always been able to do this and she had just never had the eyes to see it?

Leaning forward until her face was a fingers width from his, she hissed..."Let. me. show. you. Why. We. Fight."

{~Lotus~}

The word no longer calmed her own mind and made the world clearer. Instead, it clouded her attacker's mind and drew him down into a hell that her own intention had etched within it. The devouring, crushing suppression of eternal dark deep below that was forever stained into the deepest darkest parts of the nightmares she would surely have if she ever had to sleep again.

Zhao screamed.

It was the kind of scream that spoke of something breaking in his mind and it made her heart go a bit warm and fuzzy just to hear it. Finally, someone else could understand what she had endured… and it was breaking them in ways that it had never managed to break her. Laughing, she tried to push qi into her hand to pierce his neck, however, it was as if she had hit some of the qi repelling rock.

-Ah, of course, he must be close to Immortal.

Even with the suppression, his body was realms higher than hers. And yet, he was still screaming like a stuck pig as the shadows of her ordeal dug at his mind.

-Such a weak person, she sneered.

It was spreading to the others as well now, bleeding through the shadows, pushing out from her. A part of the darkness from below welling out, intent on dragging down the others. Roxu was screaming something, dragging away the other legless idiot, and the woman, Ning, who had been helping the blade wielder was desperately sorting through… talismans?

-That wouldn’t do.

She grasped for an alternative word as she tried to draw in qi from Zhao who was insensate now. What could heal could just as easily torment, Di Ji had shown them both that. and what could torment could just as easily kill.

{~BESTOWAL~}

Even as it echoed in her, the mnemonic no longer meant vitality and healing but mortality and demise. Grasping for an Intent or an idea that encapsulated what she was seeking, those claws stretching out of the darkness rose in her mind's eye. The sense of something always just behind, ready to drag her into darkness. Suppressed as it was, that was still with her, faintly. That same feeling of horror she experienced when the clawed arm had reached out of the darkness. It was the closest thing she had ever experienced to a sense of absolute end.

It sank into him, grasping him, just as she remembered it grasping for her, making his screams echo horrifically, enhancing the darkness in their own way, as the others fell back. Even then, it was not… enough.

{~PATH~}

His qi revolted, his vitality spiralled away from his control. While he might be able to innately resist her qi, his own qi was the equal of his body and fuelled by her rage and now with his mind collapsing, his own strength was turned in on itself. His flesh desiccating under her intent as vitality raged from his body into hers, devouring his cultivation and flooding her with so much qi she couldn’t take it in.

Her flesh was paper-thin now.

Her bones were molten.

Her dantian creaked as it started to collapse under the strain.

She pushed her mantra towards it desperately as the other woman whose name she never got blurred and arrived before her: landing a crushing attack that broke the wall around her, even as she plucked her attacker away from her.

It wouldn’t really matter, his foundation was dead or as good as. She had finally grasped his realm faintly, Dao Seeking. With his body ruined his prospects to become an immortal were non-existent unless he could replenish the vitality that was still boiling into her from him.

“What did you do!” the woman screamed at her, as she realised that her compatriot’s vitality was still collapsing away.

Ignoring her, she forced her Mantra around her body, trying to tame and compress what she had and discard the rest. Trying to move, she remembered that her dantian was still ruined and there was a sword through her stomach.

She tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge, lodged as it was in the stone behind her and still bound by her attackers Qi.

-Hah… she thought bitterly.

-After all that… am I going to kill myself like this? That’s kind of pathetic.

-IT IS PATHETIC! A TRASH LIKE YOU SHOULD JUST DIE!

The voice, not her own, roared in her mind as something else erupted through the sword.

-Ah… soul force… shit… of course he would have a nascent soul.

Vengeful intent flowed out of it, destabilising the qi in her body, intent on making her… explode!?! Alongside it, the woman’s qi was also working on her inexorably, she had thought her unassuming, but the quality of her principle was so much more than the blade wielder.

Cursing the worthless bastard and that woman’s nine generations, she pushed her mantra to its fullest.

‘Devoted. Path. Lotus. Revere. Body’

Using the words to force the intent from her. The sense of suppression, hunger to not die, and the darkness all around her suddenly associated itself with ‘Revere’ which didn’t seem quite right?

The rage connected with ‘Devoted’ and the desire to push the invading qi from her body somehow matched ‘Path’. The world calmed, she got control of her bod-

The lightning bolt wasn’t cast from a cultivator, it smashed out of the sky, like an Azure Lance edged with deep blue, striking her directly and turning the building she was impaled to into scattered chunks of broken rock and molten rock dust. The sword warped and wavered, the intent within it and the presumed soul force was incinerated in the blink of an eye by the fury of heaven.

Her shattered dantian and the ruins of her meridians wavered amid the torrents of energy and became twisting mist, coalescing and pulling together into a pool of liquid, even as her foundation crumbled.

The howling bolt of lightning pulsed again… and again… The corona of blueness turning ever denser around it with each surge, even as she desperately focused on her mantra and tried to quell the rage which was now running totally free of her control somehow and in danger off overcoming her body.

In the ruins of the building, lotus flowers bloomed around her and the shadowy oppression of her rage that was flooding out into the evening light totally unfettered now grasped the lightning directly. She was dimly aware of more lightning, green and white-blue? Scattering down all around. One bolt scoured the side off the still burning tower while another scattered off into the forest and cut a wide swathe of devastation.

The tribulation rolled and the darkness that was within snarled and grasped for it, only for the world to grow still and silent. Everything was paused in agonising tableau as the tribulation fell away bizarrely, even as the qi inside her kept welling up and running out of her control. People fleeing were stopping blankly to look around.

The rage turned on her in the same instant, opening up its maw to show its true face. At the same time, the woman who had hauled Zhao clear drew a talisman out her body blossomed like a fairy goddess in white and gold. A spectral form reached towards her with one hand even as she threw the man away from her as his vitality began to roll into her once again, like a torrent, only this time it wasn’t under her control, but the darkness'.

Mutely she stared as the shadow of a four-armed lizard slipped out of the darkness, apparently invisible to all but her, reaching out its hands, devouring eyes burrowing into her mind's eye, grasping for her, trying to command her.

{~REVERE ME~}

{~Vulgtlagln Ya~}

The words, mirrored and rippled in her mind, tearing at the mantra in her, trying to twist it, made the world around her shake. The woman, whose ghostly form was now quivering and unstable, materialised a green jade bladed sword in her hand and shot towards her, her face pale and her pupils dilated even as her own killing intent desperately clawed against the rising dark, intending to end her directly-

In the same instant, she found her gaze drawn inexorably, unwillingly from that attack she couldn’t dodge… to a black crack that was spidering down from the sky. It was a tiny thing, but it drew everything towards it. Others saw it as well and as one turned and fled. It connected with something in the sky and the sky shattered.

Dusk bled into dusk, the barrier over their ruin that someone had placed collapsed and she saw several other cultivators who had been fleeing before, collapse back into reality, take one look at the sky and then all blur off in different directions like terrified rabbits.

The purple lightning bolt came onwards without sound, directly to her, punching through the shadows that were rising and scattering them like they were leaves. It pierced her dantian, raged through her meridians and swirled for her consciousness in a single unavoidable instant.

~ Han Shu, Ruined Courtyard ~

Cursing how fast things had developed in the… thirty or so seconds it had taken him to get down the slope from his high vantage point where Juni has left him to keep an eye on the mess over the river, he ignored the fires and just hurtled straight for the ruins. Holding the sword they seemed to have no effect on him-

The world shattered like glass as if he had just run through something utterly invisible. There was a hair raising sensation of inevitable doom hanging over him for a second before the sword almost seemed to sigh and it dispersed with a warm flow of energy through his body. He didn’t stop, but did gulp, his throat dry. He hadn’t even detected anything untoward there. The barrier-

The barrier scattered as a skittering bolt of purple spidered out of the sky and struck at something in the courtyard. Even three hundred metres distant it made his hair stand on end. Something fled from it, through the dusk, swirling around him, seeking the hole he had just made…

The sword properly hummed in his hand and the darkness recoiled somehow and faded away.

Totally unsure what the fates had just happened, he charged straight for where Juni and Lin Ling had been. Using his movement art to jump up the wall, he caught flickers of distant metal on setting sunlight to the north and west. Others, arriving to see what was what he guessed. Certainly not a good thing for them.

Below him, Lin Ling, was struggling out of the ruins of a building that looked like it had been hit… by… lightning? Staring around quickly, he noted far more lightning damage than expected, there had been fire, but he recalled observing no lightning as he was making his way over, at least until that black bolt that-

The sky twisted faintly and a second spiderlike black line started to skitter this way and that.

Below him, one of the other people here, a youth in very badly burned robes and holding a mace was advancing on Lin Ling. with a snarl the youth waved his hand and a blurry shadow of blue-green, like a small child, shot out towards Lin Ling.

-A nascent soul?

He was nearly stunned immobile as it emitted a keening wail that made his mind shake. Something slid through him, trying to separate him from the warmth of the sword. The sword broke whatever it was with an ease that came across as distinctly contemptuous.

-Time for a gamble, he grimaced.

There would likely only be one shot at this as well, per person anyway. The sword had had no difficulty cutting those spider shadow things, and he was sure they were way above the realm of anything here. It also had that strange property of always seeming to cut the things he intended to cut, even if they might have otherwise missed.

Hiding his aura, he dropped down between the youth and Lin Ling.

The youth broke off his attack on Lin Ling and diverted it straight towards him instead and in response he stabbed straight through it, aiming for their dantian.

The youth easily evaded his very mortal looking strike, then screamed as the sword inexplicably made the distance in a way that was entirely natural-seeming pierced his dantian and passed out his back.

Reality reasserted itself and the youth stumbled backwards as he pulled the sword out, trying to swallow a pill with a horrified look on his face. Stepping forward he struck for his hand. As he expected, the youth smashed at him with the mace, clearly intending to break his sword. What really happened was the sword sliced through it effortlessly, ruined the weapon, lopped off his hand and gave him the opening to cut upwards severing his opponents arm and a decent side of his head with no resistance at all.

Lin Ling had gotten up and signed to him. “Go help Juni.”

Nodding, he ran out of the building and into the scene of carnage.

People were fleeing in every direction. He ignored them and quickly found the woman about to attack Juni. It was hard to miss her when she had a hazy, red and golden garbed clone that had some kind of talisman floating above it.

“STOP!” he roared as loudly as he could.

The woman ignored him, smashing down the spectral palm on Juni, who was writhing on the ground, blueish sizzling across her body, which was surrounded by melted masonry and unnatural shadows.

Juni’s tormentor didn’t even look in his direction as her clone reached for him with a third spectral arm, all the while a fourth was doing something with a talisman as the next bolt spidered down with a soundless roar.

The hand grasped for him even as he ran straight towards the other woman. Without thinking about it too hard, beyond enunciating a determination to cut the hand, he slashed through it. The hand collapsed and dispersed into sparks of red and gold, even as the woman properly turned to look at him. With three more strides, he covered the distance and stabbed straight at her.

She shook her head and he felt something tighten around him, only to be dispersed by the sword. Cold settled in his temples a second later trying to separate him from the warmth in his body only to totally fail to gain any purchase thanks to the sword.

A lifesaving treasure, a golden jade talisman that read ‘Argent Sovereign’ blazed before her before shattering like glass. Somehow she made distance with some weird teleport ability and then staggered backwards, coughing up blood and looking pale. To his surprise, he realised he had somehow still managed to cut her left arm, almost from hand to shoulder. With a hiss of anger, she palmed a pill… which did nothing.

She ate another as he moved towards her, which also did nothing.

“W-w..hat..” she gasped.

“Honestly?” he grimaced, “You should never have attacked Juni like that.”

A flicker of intuition warned him of the incoming strike, allowing him to turn and raise the sword with the intention of blocking. It met the blade of the man attacking him, sliced it clean in two and severed his arm without even stopping as he fled backwards.

A blue and brown garbed youth and another young woman in a blue-green robe with flames on it both threw talismans at him. The barriers they spawned swirled around him, trying to constrict and crush him directly. Again there was a chill in his temples, this time originating from another, tall ‘youth’ who appeared to be badly drained of vitality.

Shaking his head he waved the sword through the barriers and they dispersed like mist. All of them stared at the weapon, then the woman who had attacked Juni waved her hand and crumpled an ancient yellow talisman.

A wave of strange distortion swept out over everything. The bizarre lightning above twisted and scattered, striking down here and there as lightning of various different colours. Now he could see it up close, far closer than he was at all comfortable with, it was a deep inky blue-purple. Somehow, whatever the talisman had done, seemed to keep twisting everything, making the directionless lightning go even more frantic. At the same time, that distortion flooded into him, and he was hit with a very definitive instruction that all he could do was drop the sword and give it up.

He opened his hand, and the sword fused itself to his hand with what he almost thought was a feminine sigh in his head, but the way things were going he would be happy to admit that he had imagined that.

The four stared at him and at the sword, still very much in his hand, then as one all turned and fled.

~ Kun Juni, Ruined Courtyard ~

She fought the darkness trying to surge out from some hidden place inside her. The rage that twisted her was being hunted by the lightning. The only reason she was still alive was because the massive amount of qi in her body was somehow acting as a buffer between their conflict and hers. A three-way battle in which she was a fourth unfortunate party. The inexplicable lull in the tribulation had only exacerbated matters from what she could see. It had enraged the lightning in a way she didn’t think was-

[REVERE]

[Vulgtlagln]

The mirror mnemonic and word resonated horribly in her mind’s eye as the abomination that had seized the Sar’katush tried to grasp for her mind again. Its route of attack was terrifyingly effective. Rather than try to subsume her mind, it was trying to subvert her mantra, replace ‘Bestowal’ with ‘Revere’.

She desperately struggled against it, against the chill in her bones as she fell into darkness. If it succeeded with this attempt, she would be gone, she knew intuitively. It would truly have the key to ‘her’ and she would die its thing, thoroughly abandoned by the Heavens. This had stopped being a tribulation as she might have vaguely understood them. It was no advancement tribulation that was for sure. Instead, it felt like a three-way battle for her existence. Between the devouring shadow, the ruinous, suicidal qi and the imperious, destructive lightning. Her own self caught, like some tiny insect, between behemoths that just happened to have picked her body to war it out inside.

Even so, the mantra, taught by Old Ling, and enhanced by Valash was all that was keeping her body alive. Setting aside ‘Revere\Gift/Bestowal’, ‘Devoted’, ‘Path’, ‘Lotus’, ‘Body’ and ‘Scion’ was somehow still a workable mantra and so long as she used it, excluding ‘Gift’, there was no route for ‘Revere’ to creep in of its own accord. It seemed obvious when you thought about it, except it wasn't.

-But… mantras aren’t…shouldn’t that malleable?!? A part of her mind wailed, even as she focused on it desperately.

Yet… it was all that was keeping her alive. That and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that after all this, she was going to die via a forced explosion of some bastard’s vital qi. That would be pathetic. Even so, she was losing ground. Both lightning and shadow were gnawing away at her inexorably. If nothing…

Somehow, unbidden the words that -real- Valash spoke to her in that brief moment she had been shaken clear of the thing's intent the first time resurfaced in her mind.

She grasped for them. That feeling… it wasn’t a mantra… it felt more like a flat command…

[You should not die in this place.]

Remembering that moment, something was subtly different about it as well, but she didn’t let that bother her too much right now, as this was exactly what she needed. Not the words, but the intention that came with them!

The terrible battle flagged for a second and then all three parties refocused on her body, apparently reminded by that action that the unwilling fourth party was vital to all aspects of success be they capture, explosion or possible obliteration.

She screamed in near incoherent rage as vengeful lightning, devouring shadow and the rampaging qi from Zhao's sword all tried to take control of her mind.

-How is this fair? she screamed in her own head.

-Heaven, do you not have any fate thrashed eyes?

-Is it not already enough that you are doing all those things?

-You’re not wrong, this 'Heaven' of yours does indeed lack eyes…

Something intangible somehow agreed with a voice in her mind…

For a horrible, mind freezing, moment she thought it was the abomination by another path. It was with relief that her enraged memories placed it. Both the tone of the voice and the presence was similar to the shadow from that time. From when Di Ji had...

A pair of gentle paws touched her temples and a fifth party entered the fight for her body and life.

Simultaneously, from the depths of the sky and shadows below, a shadow-like presence arrived within the moment. Not villainous and vile like the others, not greedy and demeaning like the intent in the qi, nor cruel and denying and… oddly covetous from the lightning. It held a gentle and distant strength, that was at once ephemeral and also quietly tyrannical. It put her in mind of the deep currents beneath calm waters, or the vast expanse of the starry sky. It swirled within her mind's eye, somehow sheltering the core of her own self directly from all oncomers.

The sky overturned, that was the only way to describe it. In a single breath, it went from evening to dusk. Clouds flowed away and the world went millpond still. The warring forces in her body all receded into insignificance. The qi within the world itself fell away and she felt as if she was drifting, a leaf on the surface of a vast still pond. The forests became dappled shadows reflected within midnight waters. The ruins, half-seen shapes in broken dreams and forgotten memories around her. The stars above spun and wavered mysteriously, as if hearing some ancient chord or sonorous command and beyond them... beyond them she saw...

They stood there like immovable, celestial mountains. Yin Eclipse Great Mount seemed minuscule in her mind's eye compared to them. They dwarfed the heavens as shadows behind the sky, vast, monolithic, absolute, and yet also here, in this place inexplicably.

Comprehension failed her, even as the gentle strength from the squirrel held her fast, prevented her from falling into the abyss that was the shadow beyond the sky. Even the nearest were so immense that she was sure she was almost within them somehow. Their forms were impossible to make out in the immensity of their presence. And then, as she watched, their incomprehensible forms settled, inexplicably, becoming titanic forms silhouetted by the stars that foregrounded them somehow. Merging with the sky itself, becoming... constellations, or perhaps constellations were illuminating them in some harmonious way; a sword, a spear, a bow… a great pagoda, a tree of stars, a moon - like an eye, a bell echoing in the firmament, a mountain picked out by stars and shadow, a serpent between shadow and light and more, stranger shapes besides.

In this shadow world, she realised, she was now the only thing with qi. In the same instant, she arrived at that realisation, the shadow of the great pagoda, picked out in the sky above, moved and focused on her somehow. The gentle paws that held her consciousness somehow intensified subtly, instilling within her a sense of profound safety and stillness. The world shifted again and suddenly she was the focal point of every shadow. All her qi vanished like morning mist. The qi in her dantian, in her bones, and, the world around her.

Above her, a star fell, from beyond the peak of the pagoda, beyond the sky itself.

It distended, twisted and elongated until it became a serpentine bold of white and black, seeming to waver between a serpent and a sword point. She could only watch as it split nine times and hammered down into her body.

{Evil Dividing Extinction}

The sensation that arrived with it was simultaneously so immense yet so subtle that she could believe she imagined it, and it had somehow fallen away from her memory even as it arrived in any case, leaving her to wonder only at its mysterious echoes. The bolts flowed into her body through the nine gates of her principle meridians and her spirit root. Wherever it passed, the three warring forces in her body went berserk, totally ignoring her and turning on each other in their entirety, ruining each other in mere moments as they went all out. Her cultivation shattered, her heaven augmented vitality melted away and her meridians wavered and crumbled. That should have killed her she knew, but whatever the squirrel was doing to dissociate and shelter her, it also extended to the fallout from the tumult in her body. She could only watch as the battlefield that was her body was swept completely clean.

At the last, the blots swirled through her and dragged something else out of its depths, which they then swept deep into the darkness of the void below her. The unspeakable mark that the abomination had left within her fell away. She couldn’t see it, but she felt its final passing like an ominous shadow off her mind she never knew was there until it was pried away. The white and black wave flowed out through her body, fusing every remaining fragment of her meridians, disarticulating every aspect of her foundation and scattering it like dust, so that it was as if it had never been, before finally dissipating harmlessly.

As suddenly as it arrived, the starlit other world faded away, leaving only a strange sense of dreamy dissonance behind it. Above her, the clouds were mostly gone, the first stars now visible amid a purple-blue evening sky, devoid of thunder.

Gasping for breath, she tried to move and realised for the second time in such circumstances that something odd-shaped was poking at her, this time in the back of the head. She wasn’t sure how she still had arms and legs to move but apparently she did, even if they were asking for a new Juni to take ownership, as the current one was clearly unfit for purpose.

She reached for her qi and had a moment of dissonance and deeply unpleasant emptiness as the expected sensations and information didn’t appear.

“Oh… No qi,” she moaned under her breath.

She tried again and closed her eyes for a moment.

-So that was real, she thought in her head because much of the last possibly few minutes that she could remember with the shadows and the black and white lightning were very weird in her memories.

No echo, no sensation, no additional impetus, nothing. She had no qi at all it seemed. Not in her flesh, her bones… her dantian?

She managed to move her hand into a seal. It was such a long time since she had had to do this, she was amazed she could remember how. A little spark of qi flickered in her mind’s eye and flowed through her body, revealing its condition. Her dantian was…

-Okay, that’s weird, she thought to herself.

Her meridians and dantian were there, barely. Any trace of her previous spiritual foundation was gone, wiped away completely and what remained was nothing but ghostly threads and shadows, on the verge of collapse and held together with gossamer and memory. She gulped and carefully relinquished her control over that spark of qi, letting it disperse so as not to do any damage to what remained. She might cultivate again if she was careful, but it would take a lot of recuperation and therapy.

It took what felt like an age to shift over on her side and then roll over on her stomach. Once was able to move a bit more freely, it became clear that the crater she was in was rather large, encompassing a lot of the ruined courtyard and several buildings.

The two-tailed squirrel, snow-white rather than brown, with purple eyes was sat about a foot away, watching curiously. As she stared at it, it hopped forward to where she had been lying and scooped a palm-sized talisman out of the soil where her head had been lying. It was a kind of strange misty blue-grey stone that looked akin to jade but wasn’t quite the same thing. It turned it over in its paws for a moment and then wordlessly looked at her, then at the talisman once again.

Whatever she expected it to do, it wasn’t to throw the talisman straight at her. Hissing in shock and annoyance as it scarpered off without a second look, she realised too late that her reaction times were such that catching-

It hit her in the temple hard enough to draw blood and make her vision swim.

Groaning she caught the talisman as it dropped down in front of her, as much by accident as anything else.

-Really that fate thrashed squirrel is…

It was covered in her blood now, wincing she wiped off the blood from the surface almost as a matter of reflex and froze as words sank into her mind, accompanied by a soothing chime and sense of calmness.

{Bright Lotus ~ Earthly Scripture}

“W...what?” she stuttered out loud as the talisman melted into her palm and vanished without a trace, the words still ringing in her mind’s eye.