Survival (IV)
Frankly, what the hell does that mean?
They were made, but they don't exist?
Okay, fine, I know what it means; I just hate that he got off on a technicality of semantics.
That does bring up an entirely different question--it's not that the art itself is impossible to make, apparently, but for some reason it doesn't 'exist', more specifically.
Hm.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons--maybe there's the idea of 'Dao Purity', as in never changing how 'Dao' made you. Sort of reminiscent of religions back on Earth that disallowed tattoos and piercings and such. Maybe the idea is that the 'pinnacle' could not be reached if the body was tainted with.
However, I doubt this is the reason; Long Tao wouldn't have otherwise 'requested' it if he believed using it would prevent him from reaching whatever heights he was chasing.
Maybe there's some higher court somewhere that strictly forbade the creation of such art for one reason or another?
Haah.
Guesswork, guesswork, guesswork. This ain't high school, art isn't Janie, and the question isn't whether she'd be down for skinny-dipping in the middle of November.
I glanced down at the drawn, thick tome within my robes. It's by far the thickest I've made--some hundred pages, actually. It's kind of insane, if you ask me. Those kids will have to study with their eyes glued to the pages, and I already achieved the Intermediate mastery just because.
Fairness? Of course it doesn't exist. Then again, their talents, even with my absurd cheats, are so far beyond mine that they don't get to bitch and moan.
I decided to share it with everyone, even Light and Hua. By now, I'd be a fool not to realize Light was probably escaping with me, and if Dai Xiu is coming, so is Hua. And while I could exclude him, since he wouldn't really stand out either way, I just decided to go all in.
My future depends on them, one way or another. We can dance our dance forever, where our fathers keep discovering new things continuously, and it's gonna be amazing, but whether I make anything of myself in this world is dependent entirely on them, and for that, I have to believe they won't shank me in my sleep or something.
Thus, I gathered everyone in the 'living room' and pulled out the thick tome, placing it on the table.
"In fifteen days, our sect will go to a war," I started. "I don't know what will happen then or after. In that regard, this is an art that I'd been hanging on to my whole life as a last resort." Long Tao rolled his eyes almost invisibly, and Hua perked up, while the three kids seemed rather interested all of a sudden. "However, if you choose to learn it, you must promise me to never disclose it to anyone else. Not just for my sake, but for all your sakes, too. No one outside this room can ever even know this art exists. When you memorize it, destroy it. Are you willing?"
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I expected a bit of hesitation--after all, if I were in their shoes, I'd hesitate if someone told me the art is so dangerous its very existence cannot be revealed. Alas, I'd underestimated the survival instincts of my disciples.
"I'm willing!"
"Willing, of course!" Dai Xiu and Xi Zhao shouted practically at the same time.
"I can't tell even the Sect Master?" Light asked.
"... no," I banked on it, glancing at her eyes. She seemed to smile faintly before closing them. "You have to gain initial mastery before the war's begun. It will be hard--harder than any other art I've taught you. But I believe in all of you. If you all agree, feel free to start examining it."
I scurried off to the corner and sat down, watching them all swarm the tome like a cloud of locusts. Dai Xiu pulled it open, and they all started reading rather intently--even Hua and Long Tao.
Reactions were as you'd expect; Xi Zhao and Dai Xiu were enthralled and excited, Light shared that with a touch of forced indifference, while Long Tao and Hua... well, they eyed me as much as they eyed the damned letters in that book.
Hua, especially, seemed almost... mortified at the realization of what he was reading. Long Tao, though still shocked, seemingly expected it from me at this point, and his looks were more ones of 'amusement' than anything else.
I left soon after as I saw them all be drawn in to every page, knowing it'd be hours before they were done. Without changing direction, I headed over to my little alcove and sat down by the edge, tossing my legs over. The wind was rather cold, surprisingly, and welcome, as it was quite a warm day otherwise.
Leaning back, I dug my hands into the hard dirt, letting the sunshine wash over me. Moments like these... I imagine they'll become as rare as phoenix feathers soon enough. While adventuring the world with a band of monsters does sound 'romantic' in a sense, it also offers no security. Here, I had walls, silence, and a place to quietly accumulate before feeling confident enough to spread my wings.
Or something to that effect.
"I thought I'd find you here," hm? This voice... I don't know it. Startled, I jumped up and faced the source, ready to throw hands before I saw who it was--a mute... a mute has spoken!
It would be a miracle if I didn't already know this shitter was pretending, but that really wasn't much of a comfort. The question is... why did he feel compelled to speak up suddenly? Hm?
Hey.
We're here. Just the two of us. There's a big-ass cliff to the side.
He won't, like, you know... accidentally push me.
"I'm not in the business of killing children, don't worry," he smiled strangely, as though having read my mind. Well, he's five hundred years old. He probably reads expressions as well as I read letters.
"I'm not a child."
"You are to me."
"... I thought you were mute."
"You weren't all that good at pretending to actually believe that." He shrugged, glancing sideways toward the horizon. "For a long while, I thought you were one of them."
"One of who?"
"... I assume you already know Dai Xiu isn't any ordinary girl," he added. "Then again, somehow, someway, none of the kids you gathered here are ordinary. So, in a way, this is the one place in the world where she can actually just be an ordinary girl."
"..."
"She's... hm, she's a child of the cruel fate," he added. "Bestowed upon her against her will. That's why I took us here and pulled her to that infernal hell where you found us. Because I thought death was preferable to the other outcome." My heart stirred for a moment, but I didn't dare relax. "When you 'rescued' us, I believed I'd failed and was certain you would force her into the exact same position as those I took her from.
"But..." he paused, suddenly smiling. He no longer seemed a young man--his eyes, especially, were... well, kind of beyond description, to be honest. There was aloofness and detachment in his voice that only Long Tao ever matched. "Unlike me, who merely hid her in a desperate attempt to 'save' her... you gave her a weapon. A weapon that I never could have. That's when I knew... she's in good hands."
"You... sound like you won't be there for her much longer." I put my fears into words.
"I won't," he said with rather absurdly cold indifference... to his own life. "Let me ask you a question. How much do you know about your Sect Master?"
Spirit Sage (I)
Gale blew outward, the current warm as though the lid of the cauldron were lifted. The dirt parted like gates, revealing a passage embedded diagonally into the ground.
Spirit Sage snapped his fingers and procured a mote of light that remained hovering by his side as he descended into the tunnel, his steps even and unhurried.
The passage went further down diagonally for about forty more feet before straightening out, though it remained just barely wide and tall enough to fit a grown person. There were no beams supporting it, just strange, glimmering etchings found every twenty or so feet, carved into the stone.
It was rather chilly yet warm at the same time, as though two contrasting energies were dancing an eternal waltz for supremacy, neither winning the battle.
After about five minutes of casual walking or so, the passage opened up rather abruptly and with no warning--it was as though there was a veil hiding its end, and one would only know they'd reached it by reaching it. The narrow tunnel opened out into a rather colossal, domed chamber.
Eerily, the walls here were not smooth or jagged, but rather they twisted and contorted counterclockwise, as though someone had pinned them at their core and then coiled them. Scars were etched into the rugged facade like claw marks, almost pulsing invisibly.
Though it all appeared rather chaotic and unfocused, there was a pattern to it--the angle at which the dirt twisted and bent and twined grew increasingly aggressive as the eyes wandered the circle, eventually flattening at a near eighty degrees, forging into an eye--and within that eye was a glowing, emerald gem as though an iris, pointed directly at the center of the chamber.
There, branches like arms undulated upwards, like in a huddled prayer, curling out and back in as though being woven by invisible hands, cocooning something within itself: a tiny, fingernail-sized seed.
Its surface was veined and pulsating repeatedly like a heartbeat, each pulse tossing out a feeble shockwave.
Spirit Sage slowly walked up to it, his body standing a full two feet shy of the seed itself. He craned his neck and stared at it, his slightly reddish eyes turning full crimson. Before long, trails of scarlet blood gushed out from their corners, forming a strange, symmetrical pattern across the aged skin; like someone pulled a mask off, the old face rippled back like cloth and revealed beneath a smooth complexion of a young man in his twenties, handsome if a bit unusually cruel.
He reached out toward the seed, his fingers mere inches from the webbed cocoon before they came to a halt, a pulse of electricity pushing them away.
"... not yet?" he mumbled, sounding strangely tired against his youthful face.
Just then, the room shook as the ceiling began to 'bleed' odd, inchworm-colored miasma. At first it looked like a fog descending, sparse and detached and hazy, but it quickly began to coalesce into singular streams that curved out and back in, all flooding directly toward the seed.
It seemed to come alive for a moment as it took it all in, ballooning to twice its size before returning to the original one a mere two seconds later.
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The entire chamber quieted down as his eyes veered up from the seed and toward the ceiling--and further beyond it. About a hundred feet up or so, the ground ended and the small, decrepit, rundown corner of the sect came into view. Young and old lay sprawled on the streets, barely breathing, Death Qi swirling around them.
"Not enough," he said as the youthful face began to wrinkle back up. "Soon. I'll feed you more soon."
**
"What about the Sect Master?" I asked cautiously. I mean, I already know that the dude's probably a Demonic Cultivator... but is there a chance that there's more to it than that?
"He's not a Demonic Cultivator."
"... say what now?"
"The young girl that you've taken in on his behalf," Hua continued. "She may be a Demonic Inheritor, but Spirit Sage himself has no connection to the Demonic Cultivators--outside of wanting to use them, I suppose. Despite being young, the girl is full of Life Qi. Her breath is worth as much as the breaths of ten thousand ordinary disciples.
"No, he is... something far worse."
"... " Okay, I'm officially getting scared as all hell. What do you mean he's something far worse than a Demonic Cultivator?!
"How much do you know about Alchemy?" Nothing. You know that. Why do you even bother asking?! "Ordinarily," he looked away yet again. "Alchemists use the treasures of Heaven and Earth to forge essence pills to enrich any one part of us. Our flesh, or our blood, or our Qi, or our spirit, or our soul... anything. They are vastly respected anywhere you go, as it's not just a matter of understanding the correct concoctions, but far more than that.
"However, as with all callings under the glowing firmament, there always emerge those who desire... more. Who reach the phantom limits of the ordinary and are still not satisfied--so they push onwards. Why just use the treasures of Heaven and Earth, they asked." Oh. Wait a second. "Why confine ourselves to the conventional understanding of life and death themselves?" I kind of see where this is going.
He paused for a moment and strangely chuckled, more so to himself than anything else.
"They are called Inverse Pill Masters," he said. "Nì Dān Shī. Some call them 'Hollow-Qi Walkers'. Some yet 'Yearless'. And your Sect Master is precisely that--an Inverse Alchemist. He'd been so for quite a few years now. When I learned about him in my youth, he was already an ancient monster."
"..." hmm.
Right.
Okay.
Ignorance is bliss, indeed. Holy shit, is ignorance ever a bliss!
"Rather appropriately, however," he added soon after. "His talent is... well, it's worse than yours, actually. That's how he knew precisely what to feed you and in how many doses in order to 'safely' accelerate your realm despite your rotten talent. Because he'd done it to himself--repeatedly. Even after several millennia of living, he just barely reached the Void Transformation Realm. For most of his life, he was merely a monster sacking mortal villages for the Life Qi. As he was still a rather talented alchemist otherwise, at the price of 'gifting' some pills, Holy Lands simply just ignored his actions.
"However, he rather suddenly disappeared about a thousand years ago. Most assumed he'd finally reached the natural end of his life and forgot about him. By the time I was born, he was merely an old legend. It just so happened that his disappearance perfectly coincided with the thievery of the Soul Dao Seed. For others, the Soul Dao Seed is a powerful, powerful artifact that, with the right host, can serve as the Origin Artifact--the last bastion of protection for the sect. By drawing upon the power of all consumed souls, it can turn its host into a war machine for a brief period of time and possibly even a fully realized Emperor momentarily in the right circumstances.
"Naturally, after the Seed is sapped of its power, the host dies, while the former goes dormant. For an Inverse Pill Master, however, the Soul Dao Seed is an elixir like no other--it can open up a path for the perfect rebirth. A full melding between the two. And, after nearly a millennium of feeding it, the Seed is just about ready. I was content merely dying, but now... I know what I must do. And what you must do," he finally looked at me again, his gaze firm and unbending. "When the day of the war comes, take the kids and run. Run as far away as humanly possible. Change your faces and your bodies and your voices, and remember that, if you are ever found, the full might of all Holy Lands will be upon you. Until you are confident in being able to take all of them on, never reveal yourself.
"Just keep running, on and on into infinity."
Sage (II)
Before I could so much as conjure up a question (and I had more than plenty), Hua turned around and left, leaving me rather befuddled.
First off: what the hell do Holy Lands have to do with any of what he just told me?! No, seriously. He didn't mention them once in that lengthy-ass expository monologue of his, and he just drops them at the end like a random P.S.
'Oh, right, by the way, besides all that, the sovereigns of the entire continent will hunt your ass down if they ever find you. Why? I won't tell you. Figure it out!'
Fun.
So, so, so much fun.
All of this is very much fun and not at all anxiety-inducing. Yeah, right! I honestly just wanna curl up in a ball, close my eyes, and pretend this is all a dream! It was bad enough when I thought that the most powerful man in the sect was a Demonic Cultivator, but nooo, it turns out he's a genocidal maniac with stacks of bodies so tall they could build a sky-reaching pagoda!
Right.
Calm down, just calm down.
Seeing as he told me all that, it's safe to assume he won't be escaping with us. No, his parting words practically confirmed it. If I were a betting man (and I'd become one in this world, to be honest), I'd bet on him triggering that singular moment of superstrength or whatever to either severely hurt or outright kill the Sect Master.
And as he's by far the strongest (at the moment) of all of us, it's not like we can stick behind and quickly rescue him. He'll probably cause a massive scene to offer up a cover and distract the world from us.
Haah.
Headache. Such a massive headache. I mean, I knew it was coming halfway through his goddamned speech, but it's times like these I really miss aspirin. Why don't I use Qi to quell it? I don't dare! I'd be shoving Qi into my brain! What if I accidentally touch something I shouldn't?! Nope, I'd rather suffer the pain.
Though it may be more fun to panic right about now and start weeping uncontrollably, it actually might be more useful to plan ahead a little bit. Like, where the hell should we go after? Well, we'll go to Desolate Cliffs first, I'm assuming, but what about after?
I gather it's best if we head eastward--from all the literature that I read, it seems that the east is seen as a more 'prosperous' region, especially beyond the Heaven-Piercing Peaks.
North, supposedly, leads into a harsh hellhole; south leads into a literal 'redacted' area that's only ever talked about so vaguely it was like someone was trying to describe C'thulu or something; and west... well, there's literally not a single word written about west that I could find. This was the west, far as I could tell, and there was nothing west of it.
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Save for the Desolate Cliffs, of course.
My biggest worry is the finances, to be honest--even if I'm currently loaded up, more so than anyone else in the sect, I'm sure, it won't last forever. Heck, now that I'll also have to supply Light, I'm guessing I'm gonna go broke in like four months.
And I certainly have no idea how to make money--no, wait, isn't there Long Tao? My very own tomb locator? Yeah. Let's just hope he becomes my ATM.
Gathering myself the best I could, I returned to the house, where I saw everyone besides Hua hard at work. Even Long Tao's brows were knitted; evidently, the art was far harder to master than I anticipated.
While the '???' were alarming, I'd seen them before and had the kids reach at least Minor comprehension relatively quickly. From the looks of it, however, this one won't be... that simple.
I can only hope that Long Tao figures it out quickly and then helps others.
I couldn't help them, actually, despite having technically reached 'Intermediate' comprehension. Why? Because that comprehension wasn't my own. Think of it like this--if somebody on Earth knew for certain that the universe was a 3D hologram projection of a 2D plane, would they be able to explain every minute detail of how that's possible?
Maybe, but probably not.
That was me, sort of. I understood, almost inherently, how to do it--but couldn't explain it to save a life. Sort of like how native-level speakers of a language just know how to correctly write it, but if you asked them to logically explain why, unless they studied it, they'd be lost.
So, yeah. All I could do was make them tea and buy them lunches and dinners and watch over them silently.
Days passed rather... emptily. The entire sect grew strangely quiet as it seemed everyone retreated to their abodes in order to increase their cultivation as much as possible. I, too, started to feel nervous; I mean, what the hell did I know of anything in this world? I spent the first almost seven months huddled up on a mountain, venturing out only once, and now I'm supposed to take three kids (and an old monster) and make runaways of us?
Haah.
Whatever. What must be done and all.
Even Elder Qin didn't actually come and visit for the duration, but he did continue sending supplies--even more than before.
Staggeringly more.
Scarily more.
No, seriously, by the week's end, he'd sent over 20,000 mid-grade Stones alone, alongside a whole heap of other crap.
Oh, and did I mention that he delivered them in a spatial ring? That's right--I got a spatial ring! It was rather ordinary, as though copper-made, with no special markings but a few carved-in lines that would glow when I'd put something in or take it out.
Unlike the satchel, it was quite roomy, big enough to fit all my current wealth and with enough leftover that I didn't have to worry for the foreseeable future.
With his actions, however, it was clear that even he believed I'd be leaving soon. It was also then that it truly gripped me one last time--I'd soon be freakin' homeless!
On the ninth day, a notification rang out, telling me that Long Tao gained initial mastery of the art and rewarding me 200 points for it as well as 1% body purification progress.
Honestly? I kind of expected... more. I mean, it's a Mythological art--them mastering Earth-level arts used to reward me 100 points, and a Myth art is just double that?
Anyway, with him helping the others, on the eleventh day, all three had finally also reached the Minor comprehension, awarding me 250 points and 2% body purification (as Light wasn't technically my disciple, I only got 50 points from her).
At least we made it in time, with four days to spare, in fact!
We can now relax, calm our hearts and minds, and carefully plan out a route--
There's a bell.
It's ringing.
And the clouds on the horizon? Yeah.
"ENEMY ATTACK!! ACTIVATE THE SPIRIT SWORD FORMATION!! ALL ELDERS GATHER AT ONCE!"
Hmm.
Maybe I should start a sect of my own when we leave? Call ourselves 'Lupins' and secretly thieve tombs and sects and taunt the Holy Lands--
HOLY SHIT, DIDN'T YOU SAY THAT THE WAR WOULD BE A COMPETITION?! WHY IS THERE A LITERAL FREAKIN' WARSHIP BARRELING TOWARD US LIKE A MISSILE?!
When the Heavens Weep (I)
I was just about to tell the kids to get back inside while I went down the mountain and to the Elder Hall to investigate when the space itself seemed to warp in front of me and a figure stepped in.
Shockingly, it was Spirit Sage.
I froze up a bit, uncertain as to what the hell he was doing here, but he seldom paid me any attention. Instead, he merely glanced at the house for a moment, nodded, and... disappeared.
Eh?
What was that?
It sort of felt like a farmer checking up on the chicks or something. Creepy.
Alright, fine, keep thinking they'll be yours, you old bastard. I still have to descend the mountain--
Oh, for the love of God!
Elder Qin appeared at the top of a flying sword as he quickly descended from the skies and kicked up a small whirlwind of dust. I just barely avoided inhaling a lungful of it, though I did get a nice, brilliant covering of brown all over my robes. So, yeah, thanks for that, old jackass.
Yet, I couldn't even put up a voice of indignation--the old man's expression stopped me. It was heavy and dark and so somber that it pressed down on me.
"Here," he stopped by my side and handed me yet another ring. This one was even smoother and more adorned, and before I could even offer a refusal, he closed my hand for me. "Hide it. Take the kids with you and go back around the mountain. You will find a strange illusionary barrier--the key to breaking it is in the ring. Once you're past it, continue through the thickets of the woods and up the mountain, descending only when you reach the plateau with the statue on it.
"Keep straight during the descent. Once you emerge on the other end, travel north. After about six days of travel, you'll come across a mortal town. There, you can rest for a little while. After that... find a way, any way, to get over the Heaven-Piercing Peaks and go as far east as your legs will take you. Do you understand?"
Uh, yes, I very much understand that you're giving me direct instructions on how not to die, but it's all happening too abruptly!
"Yes, I--"
The bright flash of light was the first. Well, just 'bright' is vastly underselling it--it was the brightest thing that I'd ever seen in my entire life, and I accidentally opened a light-themed website on my phone at 3 A.M.
It seemed to erupt from nowhere and consume everything in its path, like a maw awoken to devour the world.
After the light came a slight treble, and after it came the sound.
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I immediately felt my ears pop and burst, and pain the likes of which I hadn't experienced in a long, long time shot through my entire body. Like an invisible sword being repeatedly jammed in every inch of me.
After the sound came the shockwave.
It was so brutally overwhelming that I saw rooftops being ripped from the frames and tossed any which way like they were made of sponge. The trees were dug out of their roots, the stalls dismantled down to the tiny pieces of fabric, and the entire mountain was seemingly being lacerated from inside out.
Just as I thought the invisible wind would split me in half, I saw Elder Qin move in front of me and rapidly erect a barrier of light that repelled the surging energy with seeming ease.
"How dare they...!!" He grunted at the same time as I felt my knees give out... yet I forced myself to stand.
It hurt.
Jesus Christ, did it hurt.
Despite him blocking the brunt of it, the tiny pieces of debris were still flung everywhere, and quite a lot of them cut me. Wounds were tiny, sure, but once there were like a thousand of them, they burned like a bitch. Not to mention the pain from my eyes that had already climbed up into my brain.
I caught the glimpse of a thousand arrays of light erupting suddenly down in the valley. Some were made of fire, some of misty haze, but they all started flying out and clashing as though in perfect harmony. The ensuing explosions were marvelous in ways that I cannot even begin to describe; the colors they produced, the sheer capacity for destruction... they all left me awed and dumbstruck.
"ELDER LU!!" Elder Qin's voice finally got to me as he shook me awake.
"Y-yes...?"
"Pull yourself together! Ah, dammit!" Yet another explosion blew out, collapsing an entire mountain.
No, that's not an exaggeration--I watched a mountain that was easily four thousand feet tall slowly crumble and fall, like a sandcastle on the beach.
Holy shit.
It's finally hitting me.
I... I didn't really have a good idea of what a 'war' would entail. I mean, you hear 'war' and you think 'bad', sure, but this... this is akin to watching your city be pelted by bombs over and over again, and yet somehow even more terrifying because at least there was a finite number of bombs they could toss at you, but this... it feels like it could go on forever.
"DUCK!!" He pulled me down just in time to dodge a sweltering piece of a roof that had been torched ablaze and hurled toward us, whether by accident or intention.
It blew into the mountain behind us, causing a rumbling that saw the cracks web out from the point of collision. I knew that the damned thing wasn't long for this world and finally came to.
This wasn't the time to be terrified or to be in awe or to shit myself--this is the time to run.
"Dammit," I stumbled to my feet and quickly popped a healing pill from the spatial ring. "Is everyone alright?!"
I rushed over to the house and saw the three youngbloods huddled together while Long Tao and Hua seemed to have kept any straying debris away. The house was midway through the collapse, its left side entirely torn down.
"We're fine," Long Tao voiced.
"Okay, come on. We're going."
"We're leaving?" Light voiced out. "Aren't we going to fight?"
"... no, we're leaving," I said, wondering whether I'd have to have someone knock her out. Oh, do I so not want to ask anyone to knock out a six-year-old child...
"Okay." Oh, thank God. She just nodded, seeming fine either way.
"Come on, come on," I ushered them out of the collapsing building and into the open, glancing back in horror.
There, I saw Elder Qin fighting six people--all old stooges not unlike himself. His sword flashed madly in every direction, ripping through the spacetime itself and suddenly finding its way to the head of one of the people he was fighting, lopping it off clean.
"YOU BASTARD!" somebody cursed, and I just about rolled my eyes. I thought cliches like that wouldn't actually exist, but apparently I was wrong. How dare we defend ourselves, am I right?
Elder Qin suddenly pulled back, and I watched Qi form visibly around him like tendrils, pulling toward the sword that started to glow and buzz.
"... run." It wasn't me that said it--it was actually Long Tao.
He tossed Light over his shoulders, Hua did the same for Dai Xiu, and I, not wanting to be left out, did the same to Xi Zhao--despite his protests.
I had no idea why he told us to run--but if Long Tao said it... then I really don't want to stay here and bear witness to it.
When the Heavens Weep (II)
Flames roared like beasts from every direction--the walls of the Spirit Sword Sect began to radiate a red glow, veins of fire throbbing across their surfaces, heat bleeding into the valley itself, distorting the air as it passed.
Screams of pain and agony joined the symphony of the crackling fires and explosions and the swords being drawn from their sheaths. The battle was less so a singular charge and more a splintered set of skirmishes. Young versus young, old versus old, blood was spilled as though most natural.
"Dammit, retreat! I'll cover!"
"Get into the Seven Sword Formation!"
"The flank is falling!"
Voices were barely audible in the cacophony of other sounds, yet remained heard by all as everyone's ears were perked up for the next command.
Bit by bit, bodies were piling up--on both sides. There were just as many crimson robes of flames sprawled and ridden with cuts and holes as there were white and black robes of the Spirit Sword Sect.
Daoist Mu took charge of helping the young kids retreat from the front line as they got caught up on it by accident before they could run away. He wielded the sword rapidly, deflecting the whips of fire falling toward him by the two Deacons of the Fire Sun Sect that he clashed often with in his youth.
His body was riddled with wounds, yet he endured, ignoring the pulsing pain.
An array of flames suddenly shot from behind the two of them, surprising him. He had a choice of dodging, which would let the array hit the kids behind him, or hurriedly putting up a barrier that wouldn't hold up--but he had to try.
Gnashing his teeth, he summoned as much Qi as he could and slashed downwardly, roaring at the top of his lungs.
But it wasn't enough.
He barely stalled the ten-foot-long array of flames for a moment before his sword shattered. The last thing he saw was the world consumed by flames, and he could only mutter a single thing: "Run..."
Elder Swordlight zapped backwards, his silhouette a trap for six of his attackers; he wove between the raging inferno gracefully, stabbing rapidly six times in a row and swiftly killing them all.
Yet, his downcast and angry expression hardly showed any respite.
The Sect was burning.
His home was turning into an ashen graveyard, being buried under the rubble of the same mountains they used to worship.
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"ANCESTORS ARE HERE!!"
A roar seemed to kindle some strength in the souls falling back as they stood their ground stiffly. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw sixteen shadows descend from the sky in the flurry of swordlight.
He wasn't relieved.
Rather... it was the opposite. They'd come out too soon.
"Allow us to test the blades of the Spirit Sword's legendary figures!" On the opposite end, ten figures emerged. However, they weren't robed in the crimson and flamed robes of the Fire Sun Sect, but rather wore robes of obsidian black, with a sigil of a single sword embroidered on their backs.
"A Holy Land!" Elder Swordlight exclaimed in shock, and he was seldom the only figure to recognize the sigil of one of the most famous sects in the known world--Immortal Sword Zenith Sect. "Why?" he asked aloud, the question everyone pondered.
It would have been one thing had it only been the Fire Sun Sect to attack them. The animosity between the two sects went back generations, but this... this was more than that.
No, it felt as though the entire world was condemning them to death. That warship that obliterated the sect-wide Formation, Spirit Sword Annihilation, didn't belong to the Fire Sun Sect. Elder Swordlight couldn't recognize who it belonged to, but it was likely another Holy Land.
Two Holy Lands helping a third-rate sect deal with another third-rate sect...
"Humph," the time suddenly seemed to freeze as a scoff erupted from the ancestral mountains. It was loud yet quiet, cold yet warm, emboldening yet terrifying.
Every fight stopped abruptly as all eyes veered to the horizon, where everyone caught the glimpse of a figure emerging from the hazy shadows. It was an old man, dressed in tattered, brown monk robes, appearing wholly unassuming and like someone who certainly did not belong in a battle between sects.
And yet, everyone held their breaths--especially as he drew the sword from his waist.
The Spirit Sword! One of the sect's greatest treasures was finally drawn after almost seven hundred years of slumber.
The shimmering blade cried out like a phoenix, its cry causing a resonance of all swords on the battlefield, triggering the second greatest treasure of the sect--Blade Resonance.
"Vermin dare come down to my domain and cause a stir?" A calm voice spoke into the sky as the old figure began to walk in air, step by step, casual and undeterred. "Are you not ashamed of your Dao Hearts, you unholy rats?" he cursed at the suddenly reddening faces of the differently robed figures that had retreated to the rear.
"Ho ho, to think you are still alive, old Ru," from the silence another voice emerged, lofty and almost playful, and with it a figure. Not unlike the man, the woman in question was also simply dressed, with a singular sword strapped to her waist, and she similarly walked 'on' air, with her arms behind her back.
"Hah! Of course it's you, you deplorable whore, ha ha," the man laughed suddenly as the woman's face distorted. "I always regretted only killing one of your bastards. Had I known you would have turned into such a snake, I would have killed them all."
"Old bastard, I promised I would hang your head on a pike and parade it in front of the world for all to see!"
"You alone are not enough," he said. "Who did you entice into coming here to serve your old grudges? No, I already know who. Holy Lands, hah. Your Ancestors are rolling in their graves, seeing what you've turned their blood and sacrifice into."
"Silence, old fool! How dare you talk about our ancestors?!" Seven more figures abruptly emerged from nowhere, all seemingly as strong as the woman, though rather youthful and quite lavishly dressed.
"... my sect may fall today," the old man said, slowly drawing the sword up in front of him. "But I swear upon my Sword Dao, I will have all your heads to accompany all my children to an early Nirvana."
"Hah, I would like to see you--"
Nobody quite saw what happened, just the result of it--a head flew out in a spray of blood, and a body tumbled from the air to the ground rather limply.
"That's one," the man said, slashing out the sword to clean it. "Clean those filthy necks of yours, you inbred animals, so as not to stain the Spirit with your grime."
When the Heavens Weep (III)
I was just about to begin admiring the badass gusto of that old man that seemingly came from nowhere when the sky started exploding. There's really no other way for it, I don't think; thunderous sounds, one after another, and blinding flashes of light interspersed with leviathan-like flames... it was hell.
Or, well, it started raining hell.
Again, not a metaphor--literal chunks of flesh began to rain from the sky, burning, all while the battles across the sect resumed. I watched countless pavilions begin to crumble, their walls webbing and shattering under the excruciating pressure of undulating Qi.
"Come on, hurry!!" Elder Qin ushered us abruptly, and we followed.
The old man had a nasty laceration across his left shoulder, flesh around it corroding at visible speeds.
He stopped suddenly and stepped to the side, deflecting a string of attacks. His robes fluttered as Qi surged once again, his sword crying out as he swung. I couldn't quite make out what happened after--it was all too fast, to be honest. Flashes and blurs married in a strange, yet oddly beautiful, symphony of destruction.
Fires came and through them cut the light, splitting them like the sea, before more heads began to roll and more limbs began to rain down.
In the end, an old, haggard figure emerged from the bundle of destruction, far worse for wear than when he went in.
Elder Qin was missing an entire limb--his left arm, to be precise, cut cleanly at just below the shoulder. He suddenly let go of the sword and pinned the pair of fingers rapidly across the surface of the shoulder, stopping the bleeding.
Staggeringly, the sword he let go didn't fall--rather, it continued to hover in place, seemingly waiting for him.
"Go, go!" It seemed that was the only sentiment he had left in him as he ushered us outwards.
I glanced back over toward the sky, where I caught fading glimpses of human-like silhouettes flashing across the blinding haze. I wonder... will I ever be like them? Capable of something so... well, many things, really, but the first word that comes to my mind is 'terrifying'.
We ran just down the mountain and cut it short by going left, avoiding the direct path and breaking through the scant few trees that remained. All the while, the ground continued to shake, and the screams of agony grew louder and more numerous.
I stopped abruptly as I caught, from the corner of my eye, the sight of the Martial Hall erupting--a staggeringly wide pillar of flames jutted out at its heart, crashing through the walls and sending a shower of debris in a spherical direction. Velocity varied, but they all left hazy trails of fire, and, for a moment, it looked hauntingly beautiful, almost like fireworks.
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Thus, I continued to run, my feet carrying me.
We ducked and weaved between the flying debris the best we could, with Elder Qin stepping in frequently to shield us from the enemies. It all felt quite surreal, to be honest; the world was falling apart around me, but it was as though my brain didn't let me recognize that, from fear I would just go catatonic.
I don't blame it, 'cause it's probably right, but it's also kind of frustrating to feel so damned numb to everything. Well, not to everything; screams still cut like a knife, and any time a flaming scrap would come whizzing by like a bullet, my heart would stop for a moment. Exhilarating, just not in the right way.
We made it to the backend of my mountain, where I thought there wouldn't be any battles--but I was wrong. There were battles everywhere. It seems that there were far more spies among the Elders than just Elder Zhang, and they were all backstabbing the Spirit Sword cultivators the best they could.
And thus, the corpses were piling up.
It went beyond description in more ways than one, especially for me, a sheltered kid from the modern Earth. The closest I got to the pileupof corpses was that one summer our neighbor got a pair of goats, which seemed to spawn about eight billion flies that we used the spray on.
Any time we'd leave the room sprayed and come back in half an hour, the red carpet would literally be black with uncountable flies.
It's just a smidge different, though, now that it's people. Especially when a good number among them were kids. Like, not even kids to me--but literal children, age ten and under.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry, Elder Lu?!!" A voice interrupted me as I came to a halt--a vaguely familiar face came from the haze of flames, staring daggers at me. I think it's one of the Elders I made a bet with, but I could barely remember more than a few of them, honestly. "You think you can run away after robbing me?! No, no, you must be punished! You must suffer!"
The words barely left his lips before he was sandwiched by a pair of swords dissecting him into dozens of pieces while blood sprayed as though from a geyser. The two who saved me didn't so much as halt to offer a nod, as they themselves were quickly killed by a hurtling ball of flames.
Elder Qin grabbed me and ushered the rest of us further out; there were still buildings here, old and decrepit, and I quickly realized this was where most of the servants lived. The flattened ground, though, was now host to an ever-growing river of red, with the surrounding trees all torched in a blaze.
"That way," he pointed as we let the kids go in first, sneaking into the side of the cliff--where the array started. They seemed to morph into the stone as they vanished--rather eerie. "Why aren't you leaving?" Elder Qin asked, hurried.
"Come with us," I said.
"What?"
"Leave with us. This place--"
"--is my home," he interrupted, smiling. He was already pale and seemed to have aged a few decades since we left the mountain peak. Though he'd stopped the bleeding from his missing arm, on the way over he'd accrued a few more (dozen) wounds, and he couldn't stop them all from bleeding. "I cannot go. My Master is waiting for me."
"..." I knew it was pointless, pushing any forward. That steely gaze... I don't know how I knew, but I did know that those were the eyes of a man who's prepared to die. "I'll find out why they did this, I promise." I offered the last bit that I could.
"Just keep them safe," he said. "Nothing else matters."
An aged, gentle arm pushed me back into the stone; as the view began to darken and fade, I saw his back stretch out across the horizon, tall and stalwart like a shield made to hold back the inferno from consuming the world. Old, missing an arm, wounded, tired... yet, it didn't matter.
Even in death, he was larger than life.
Weep (IV)
The tunnel I found myself in was rather long, dark, and cold.
No, not cold. Not it. It rather seems that... I am cold. You know that tingling sensation that starts in your fingertips and that dread that coalesces in your stomach as your feet, for some ungodly reason, go cold, no matter how hard you rub them together? And the ever-so-slight mist in the mind that seems to make it just that much harder to get through a thought?
They're all here, like the soldiers awakened.
I've seen death more than a few times by now, and though I could hardly say I'd grown numb to it, I've never had someone close to me die in this world. And however suspicious I was of that old oak, and however misaligned his title of 'Just' was, I... did care for him.
He was always kind to me, from the day I met him.
And, yes, I didn't see him die--but I may as well have.
The reality of everything is catching up to me, but now isn't the time. It may not be the time for a long while, but especially now when I need to bolt and run.
It took me about a minute to emerge on the other end, where everyone else was waiting; Dai Xiu and Xi Zhao sighed in relief, Long Tao and Hua barely reacted, and Light already seemed assured I'd come out.
"Are you okay, Master?" Dai Xiu asked, walking up to me.
"Just fine, just fine," I forced on a smile and patted her head gently, looking around.
We were still in the mountains, surrounded by jagged rocks and steep cliffs and trees marrying the slopes. Oddly, however... it was silent. Well, not wholly--there was the chatter of the occasional bird and the whistling of the fading gale, but I couldn't hear the hell unraveling behind us.
No thunder.
No explosions.
No agonizing wails and cries.
No scent of the scorched flesh or the red rivers digging canals.
... how is it possible?
"We should hurry," I said, recalling Elder Qin's instructions. It wasn't time yet to swap our appearances; I figured we'd do it once we leave the mountains. "We'll have to run a long while without rest."
"Well, this is disappointing," A familiar voice startled me as I gazed sideways, where I saw a ripple in spacetime contort into a twisting deconstruction of the world, from which a silhouette emerged.
An old man with hands behind his back and a seemingly kind smile on his face.
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"I always knew you were a coward, Elder Lu," Spirit Sage said. "But to think you would run away while your home is being destroyed. How shameful."
"..." I instinctively pulled the kids behind me, standing at the front--not that it would do much good. If that guy wanted me dead, I'd be dead in a heartbeat. "Aren't you the same?"
"Hoh? Talking back?" He chuckled. "I've had my suspicion for a while, but... aah, poor Lu. He was a good kid. Perhaps it was the karmic ties to me that finally got to him."
"Shouldn't you be reaping the rewards of your labor?"
"Hm?"
"The Seed. It should be drowning in souls now."
"Oh?" he arched his brows in surprise, seemingly not having expected me to know. "Looks like Elder Qin may have shared more than he should have. It must be that you think all those attacking us are here for the Seed."
"Well, I imagine some of them are here for you."
"... hm. You know far more than you should." Gone was the surprise, replaced with strange malice that seemed less born of anger or hate and more of just... calculated apathy. I mean, I get it.
The guy's survived for thousands of years not by being lucky or strong, but by being cunning and calculating and cold.
"Thank you at least for bringing me that demonic child," he said. "It would have been hard to extricate her from the mess unseen. Come. Return to me," he snapped his fingers as a tendril of Qi rushed toward Light.
I couldn't react in time, and it hit her... but then, nothing happened. She tilted her head in confusion, as did I, and as did Spirit Sage himself.
"What?" he snapped them again, and the same thing happened. And then again, and again, and again. "What did you do to her?!" Okay, forget calculated apathy--now he's just pissed off.
I glanced at Long Tao, who barely smiled with the corners of his lips, and I understood. Whatever happened to her in the Antechamber erased whatever it was that Spirit Sage was using to 'control' her. I still don't have the full picture there, actually--how she came to be here, anyway, and why he got her.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I shrugged.
"Ha ha ha, good. If I had known you would come between me and my means so decisively, I would have buried you at birth." Hm? "Well, not you. Only the heavens know who you are. Alas, it doesn't matter. Time is running out, I'm afraid, and I must return if I am to, as you said, reap the rewards of my labor. So, I will ask you all kindly to simply die."
"It's time you left." Hua suddenly stepped forward, surprising everyone except for me. "Remember your promise." He glanced at me.
"... can't you just kill him and come with us?" Was I being too greedy? Of course I was! He's a Demigod! Oh, how much more secure would I feel in travelling this freakin' world if I had a Demigod trump card by my side?
"He's just one part of the puzzle," he smiled. "Go, now," Qi began to surge and stir, and I felt my soul gnaw at itself for a moment. "Run... and don't look back."
Long Tao grabbed Dai Xiu, heaved her over his shoulders, and started sprinting as though his life depended on it.
No, not as if.
I grabbed Light immediately, did the same, and started executing the movement art, with Xi Zhou right there by my side.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?!" We heard a roar from the back, but nothing stopped us. There were no obstacles; there were no tendrils of Qi ripping out of the ground and tying our feet.
Just... nothing.
"They're going away." However, there was something behind us--the kind of energy that made me realize that all any of us have been doing thus far was more akin to playing at being martial artists, cultivators in pursuit of immortality.
Comparatively, really, we are children, blindly staggering about without a guide.
What I felt... was so greater than anything else that I found myself short of breath. Spirit Sage? Elder Qin? It didn't matter. Even that old guy who came from the Ancestral Peak... all of it was irrelevant.
Beneath this sensation, there were tiny pebbles adrift on the raging waves of an angry sea.
Take all the people, living and dead, within the sect, and combine them into one, and I think they'd still fall short.
"As are you, I'm afraid." That was the last I heard of the two, as we made it into the forest and continued our rapid descent.
The last I ever heard from either Spirit Sage or Hua.
The last whimper of my first ever home in this world.
Weep (V)
His soul was shaking, he realized.
Under the weight of something ethereal, something that could not be grasped, he found himself small. An ant staring up at the peak of the mountain that he will never climb, forever condemned to stay in its dark and long shadow.
Yet, amidst the curling flow of fear, there was... anger.
This.
He was denied precisely this.
No matter how hard he worked, no matter how many Seeds he carefully consumed, no matter how many years he suffered... he was nothing beneath this.
A mere servant of a young girl was a Demigod, a sovereign of life and death, and he was a pitiful nothing.
How was it fair?
Who dared proclaim that there was nothing fairer in the world than Dao and the Heavens? Perhaps those Ancient Sages whom the Heavens favored. Only they could proclaim something so false as true.
The servant in front of him changed--from the appearance of a boy to that of a thirty-something man. The somewhat emaciated appearance was filled out, the sallow cheeks were now jutting out alongside the square jaw, and the pair of listless eyes were all but glowing under the washing of Qi.
Ah, for how many thousands of years did he suffer under the weight of his own failed talents? In eternal pursuit of the realm of separation, the one that marked the end of Mortal Ends and marked the beginnings of the Heavenly Path.
"... who are you?" He squeezed the words out, using the scant few artifacts he had left to shield himself from the pressure.
"It used to be that I was one of the Eternal Guard," the man said. "You should be familiar with them, no? Kang Lei, the Inverter. That's what they used to call you, no?"
"Hah. Eternal Guard. Should you not be out there with your brethren, chasing the Seed?"
"No. I'm precisely where I need to be. We were on the run for a few years before I heard of this place--a third-rate sect in the middle of nowhere. Thought it was as good a place as any to lay down our roots and die. It was the last thing on my mind, that I'd find the Seed that was so viciously thieved from us right here. But by the time I realized it... we got caught in its clutches. Dai Xiu had yet to fully awaken her physique, which meant that she couldn't contain it."
"She didn't deserve it," he spat out.
"Yes. I've caught your scent a few times, when you came down to ensure she failed. It was, I think, the fourth time around that I finally realized who you are. Beneath that wrinkled skin and the sagacious appearance, I recognized the monster who, unable to contend with his own failings, went against Dao. And that's when it all made sense--how someone managed to steal the Seed and how it was possible that we hadn't found it in all these years."
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"Heh. You say you left the Guard, but you certainly still speak as though you are one of them."
"I left the Guard because they wanted to sacrifice cities upon cities to forge a new Seed and use Dai Xiu as a transient host. The old Guard had grown greedy and, well, old. It turns out that even the most benevolent can falter in the face of doom. They wanted to do exactly what you were planning to do--use the young girl as a vessel to undo their aging. So, I grabbed the child and left. Not without having to do certain things, thus breaking my Seal."
"Ha ha ha. And now that you have a new lease on life, you decide to end it here? Do you really hate me that much?"
"... no," the man said. "I seldom feel much for you, to be honest. You were well before my time, after all. While I don't hate you for what you did to the Guard, I do… resent you, perhaps, for what you did to this place. It was you, wasn't it? Who leaked the Seed's location to the Holy Lands?"
"... all the mystique about the thing," Kang Lei chuckled oddly as he began to reminisce. "The myths about affording the powers of the heavens themselves. All lies. It took me two hundred years to charge it the first time. And all it offered was twenty years of lifetime in return. Barely any progress in cultivation. I thought it was just a matter of the quality of the souls I was giving it, so the next time, I was patient. Six hundred years I've spent carefully curating souls for it, taking the old monsters from the Ancestral Peaks and having them die in the chamber rather than in their homes.
"But it changed nothing. A few extra years, a few bits of Qi. A useless thing. That's when I met that prick who called himself Demon God. Made him a pill that saved his life, and he shared the few things he knew: the Seed is like a sword, useful only for those who know how to wield it. And to wield it... I needed to host it. Host it? Ha ha ha!! He was mad! Insane, I thought! To host that thing within myself?! It would suck me dry in a day!"
"..."
"And then, three years ago, I... sensed something. A disturbance within the Seed. I hurried over, thinking it had finally awakened, only to recognize it had reacted to a newcomer. A young, shy girl accompanied by a boy servant. The Seed seemed to... desire her. Not her soul, no. But her. It didn't take long to put pieces together. That's when I realized how the Guard wielded it--they bred a unique physique, stuffed the Seed in the child, and then activated it whenever they needed to win. The child would die, of course; there isn't a physique under the heavens that can contain a fully erupting Dao Seed. But..."
"That didn't matter."
"That didn't matter," he nodded at the man's words, smiling bitterly. "By the time I realized it, however, the Seed had trapped her. And try as I may... I couldn't free her. It wouldn't let me come close. When I saw her liberated, when I saw that dull child carrying her up the mountain... I couldn't believe it."
"And that's when you spread the word."
"I needed to charge the Seed fast. And the best way to do it is to wage a war in its vicinity, which you should know already, no doubt. Something went wrong, however. I didn't expect so many of them to show up. This isn't a war at all--but a crusade for extermination."
"Do you regret it? Any of it?"
"... only that I let the two of you live," he said, closing his eyes. He felt the fingers cradle his heart, invisible fingers, ethereal in their make. Put up a fight? Struggle to survive? It was pointless. There was a greater distance between the man and him than there was between him and a random mortal.
"One last question. Who is Elder Lu?"
"... originally," he said. "He was my son. Who he is now? Truly, only the heavens know."
The fingers squeezed, and the life perished, the body molting into ashes adrift in the passing gale.
Nothing remained but silence... eternal and cruel.
Hua appeared deep underground, enduring the sonorous songs of death coming from far above as he sped through the tunnel.
He had limited time--just a minute left, at most—and he couldn't waste even a second of it.
It took him less than a few seconds to arrive in a wide and round chamber, at whose center he sensed an awakening heartbeat. A tiny seed, clutched within the so-called Fingers of Soul, was pulsating as though being born. With each death above, the souls that should have entered Nirvana instead were dragged here, mutilated, and twisted into an unholy creation.
Not unlike his brothers and sisters, he was a devout Guard for most of his life--he was born there, too, his father a centuries-long deacon of the place.
All his life he was taught that the Seed was sacred and beautiful and that the guard were the blessed chosen for having learned the ways of conjuring and remedying it. Such a powerful relic, after all, should only ever be wielded by the noble creations, he thought, just like the rest.
Yet now, as he stood before it, something in his heart grew cold; watching the gray motes of life twisting and trying to free themselves, only to irrevocably get dragged into it... it seemed less a noble, holy relic to be wielded by the noble creations and more a demonic artifact made by those who took a rather callous approach toward life.
And to think, at some point, it would have been inserted into the Young Lady.
The Eternal Guard was desperate for the Seed... but only so on the surface. They had more of them, stashed away in the dark, velvet depths of their sinful existence. As they had more than one child groomed for the exact purpose of being the vessel. Dai Xiu may have been the most 'perfect' physique they've had in centuries, but they would find another one.
They always do.
He walked up to it and stopped, staring emptily at the thing that had spun its yarn across such vastness of space and time. There were so many artifacts and relics of Dao littering the Seven Heavens that it was difficult to believe such an inconspicuous thing could be a star around which a thousand others orbited.
As he reached toward it with his fingers, the tendril-like branches reacted, prohibiting him from touching it.
He had no means of controlling it--he was just a Guard, after all.
He had no means of naturally destroying it, or forcing it into slumber, or much else of anything, really. There was only one thing he could do--merge with it and end them both.
Even with his current strength, it would be a marvelous feat to succeed, yet he had to try. He couldn't let anyone get their hands on the fully realized Seed, not when Dai Xiu was still so close. Though he trusted the art Lu Qi procured, it was better to be safe than sorry. Once the Seed disappeared, there'd be seldom more than a few interested in finding the host.
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He ignored the lashing of the branches as they tore away at his skin, deeper and deeper the closer he got to the seed. By the time his fingers were curling around it, his skin was all but gone, the clear white of the bones shimmering.
He ignored the pain and grasped it tightly.
The recoil was violent--as though a cauldron of explosive Qi was detonated directly in front of him. The sheer quantity of energy released rivaled ten times his current Qi reserves.
Yet he endured.
The tsunami-like energy began to corrode through his meridians, spilling into his veins and blood vessels. Blood began to spray out, and skin began to peel back in a ghastly horror show as he kept the firm hold, repeatedly regenerating his hand as he continued to tear through the surface of the Seed, trying to inject his Qi into its heart and merge together.
Before long, his entire right arm, up to the shoulder, was just a long stacking of bones, with the repeatedly burning hand at the end.
His eyes began to glow with radiant green, the corrupting energy of the Seed slowly infecting him whole. He was already dead, just from this alone--if he let go, he'd fall and die within seconds.
But he endured.
Voices began to wail--voices of the dead seeping from the seed. They pleaded, begged, cried, and wept to be let go, but his grip only ever tightened. It was all a lie.
The souls consumed by the Seed became Qi, nothing else. Their entire selves were erased; only the remnant energy remained within the hard surface.
It was then that he felt it--a crack. A tiny little splinter in an otherwise smooth and perfect surface; like a tiger who'd been waiting on its prey all this while, he lunged at the opportunity and blew the tiny opening wide by injecting a mass of his Qi that he'd been keeping tightly locked within his fingers.
The seed suddenly disappeared as he felt his chest catch fire. Robes burned away, his sternum glowing in blistering emerald. Veins became visible as they pulsed and writhed like worms, pain suffusing every inch of him.
"Gui yu si tu." He mumbled just as his eyes shot beams of luminescent, volt-green light, and his body began to fall apart at its seams.
A pillar of emerging energy erupted like a dormant volcano, tearing through the ceiling within a nanosecond and shooting up toward the sky in the next. It expanded rapidly and violently, like the howling winds of the abyss, tearing out and up in a cascading, noiseless existence.
It consumed everything in its wake--flesh, dirt, and stone—ripping it clean from existence.
From within the pillar, tiny, translucent silhouettes swept out and tore free, scattering in the vast skies, ethereally invisible.
Within a second, half of the sect was gone, leveled into a cirque.
Within the next second, the other half joined it.
Within three, the pillar disappeared, the sky turned wholly azure, and life... was extinguished.
The chamber that housed the seed was now buried underneath dozens of layers of rubble, buildings, and corpses, though it still shallowly remained.
A pebble-sized, colorless rock dropped and rolled against the dirt, seeming wholly unremarkable, stopping by a half-shattered skeleton of white bones.
It spun in place for a moment, rattling in the silence and the dark, before stopping, turning wholly silent.
Up above, there was nothing.
Not life, not death. Not ashes, not breaths.
Some distance from the sect, those who'd stayed behind, as they were too weak to join the invasion, stared in awe, horror, and silence at the now flat land bereft of everything. In one second, they watched their Masters and Seniors forging ahead, just inches away from victory.
In the next, there was nothing.
Not even a blade of grass.
Just dirt, an eternal grave that none would ever know.
All of a sudden, the clear skies turned ashen with clouds, and it began to rain. Yet, horribly, the rain was as red as blood. And even more horribly, it only fell upon the flattened cirque, and nowhere else, as though the heavens themselves were marking this as a place no living thing was allowed to reach.
Forever silent.
Forever alone.