Please, we beseech you, Great Mother of Dark Waters! You, whose lamp of gold holds every virtue, whose dark vessel is the well from which unquenchable despair was born.

We beseech you, Sovereign Daughter of Golden Flowers! You who danced in shining pastures, who sang before even birds knew song!

Welcome back my daughter, who lived her life as freely as she could, that she might dance at your side once more.

~Clay tablet inscription found in a tomb near Nineveh, AD 1910

~ Teng Chunhua – Infiltrating the Battle Lines ~

The Ur’Vash ahead of them had engaged with a band of disciples in gold and red robes, swarming over them and hacking at them with immense ferocity. Two cultivators went down screaming before their compatriots-

There was a terrible eruption of wood qi from beyond the hill…

It washed over her, paralysing her, and tried to reach into her body and bind her to the earth, easily invading her body as it sought to subsume her strength, draw it away and crack her dantian like an egg. Coughing blood, she managed to eat one of her strongest poison purifying pills, but even that only had a very minimal effect.

“What?” she rasped, struggling against it-

There was a vast roar and the qi flowed away from her, drawn out of the world to a distant point beyond the hill. In the same instant phantasmal black peonies bloomed everywhere, rolling out across the hill, down the slope in every direction. Ahead of them, around the camps, cultivators were looking and pointing upwards some in shock – rapidly turning to horror.

She found her own gaze drawn to the terrible cloud gyre forming over them and the golden bolts that sizzled everywhere.

Pushing her mantra to the utmost, she finally shook off the grasping chains of the wood qi to the point where she could move, looking around for Juni-

The other slid down beside her, dragging her up and helping her get moving, as she managed to pant out, “What… kind of diversion?”

“Not the planned kind!” Juni grimaced, dragging her forward, away from the epicentre-

Behind them, the world seemed to constrict-

When she recovered herself, she was lying in the dirt amid smouldering grass in a world devoid of sound. Staggering up, she narrowly avoided being incinerated by a sweeping lance of blue fire that scythed out from one of the formations guarding the camp, obliterating several Ur’Vash not as lucky as she was.

Left with no other options, she drew out her bow and shot a few speculative arrows at the nearest cultivator formation, grimacing as most of them deviated bizarrely or were blown away. Nearby, she saw Juni had also struggled up, and was also doing the same.

Other Ur’Vash were struggling up, also sending arrows-

The explosion, not aimed at her, but a group of Ur’Vash behind her, sent her sprawling, cursing.

Left with nowhere to run, she started to shoot arrows at those responsible. Juni was already doing the same, even as she became aware that other Ur’Vash behind, who had been coming over the hill… had spotted them.

Howling, they ran in their direction, and for a single, terrifying moment she thought that they actually mean to attack the two of them, until they ran straight past her, chanting and stamping with almost preternatural speed and crashed into the formations of cultivators on the edge of the camp. The Ur’Vash died in their droves, swept aside with ease using martial techniques or incinerating them with blooms of fire and blasts of thunder and earth from talismans.

Above her the sky turned pitch black as the lightning above them fell like white serpents. The cultivators on the ridge behind them seemed to be faltering as the ground surged and shook, sending her sprawling again-

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

There was a second, disrupting eruption of yin wood qi, originating from the largest band of cultivators who were falling back. This time, she clearly felt the touch of the actual art as it washed over her, clawed at her and bound her up, distorting and disturbing her qi in wholly inauspicious ways as it attempted to root her and everything else in its path to the spot.

The roar, from Lin Ling, made the world turn grey, the rage held within it, focused at those who cast the talisman, so great that she inexplicably found herself drawn to picture…

-Din Ouyeng?

Struggling up, she saw that Lin Ling, or at least the terrible primordial behemoth she had turned into, had made it over the ridge.

The disruption wave washed over them, somehow disconnecting her from her qi for a few moments. It affected everyone as she stumbled. Green fire and lightning scattered across the land around them from beyond the hill line… The cultivators…

{EXECUTING JUDGEMENT OF FIVE JADES}

The five immense, white swords almost seemed like part of the tribulation as they crashed down, blotting out Lin Ling’s roar and sending her rolling backwards.

{Devouring Land Parasol Bloom}

“Your mother-!” she barely managed to scream as another vast wave of the yin wood energy suffused the world.

Her qi, and that of everyone else within eyeshot that was not party to the art’s activation, was hungrily torn away by it, drawn out of her body like a swirling mist that streamed towards its focal point – Lin Ling.

They twisted around the younger girl’s form, becoming a vast spectral tree that had her wrapped up in its roots, pushing her down into the earth. The group who had cast it, who were almost at the camp now, were shouting triumphantly-

The roar that broke it, swept her, Juni and everyone else nearby, away. She was dimly aware of the cultivators running screaming, the formations they had been using broken even as the qi from the spectral tree fell like malignant rain over everything.

It sank into her, wormed into her flesh, tried to root itself in her. Her meridians creaking under the strain of the rampant energies attempting to devour her whole.

‘Sweet. Bloom. Red. Blossom. Jade’

Her mantra surged, its mnemonics doing what they could to refine it, drawing yang wood, yin fire… other elements from the chaos around her.

As such, it was wholly strange how her attention was inexorably pulled towards the shimmering rings above Lin Ling, watching as a bizarre white plane bisected it, shattering the space around it like it was a mirror and-

The wave of dispersive strength that washed over her emptied her whole body of qi. Her dantian nearly ruptured under the force of the impact, her core shaking and distorting and her meridians almost rupturing for a second time in as many moments before her mantra managed to stop her turning into a corpse Chunhua.

Groaning, she pushed herself up, just in time to see cultivators who had been lucky enough to be too far away from whatever that had been whooping and cheering. Snarling in anger, she sent a black-tipped arrow streaking off towards them, feeling a certain catharsis as it exploded violently after puncturing the barrier that had protected them.

Nearby, Juni had also staggered up-

She nearly fell over as a shockwave of deforming land exploded out from around the other woman, crashing into several cultivators who she had somehow failed to spot and who had been heading in their general direction. Two screamed and collapsed in shock as their footing was robbed from them while the others turned to engage, only for three Ur’Vash to crash into them from the other side, screaming in fury.

In the process of drawing another arrow to shoot, she saw, almost out of the corner of her eye, in the nearest of the camps a cultivator in slightly tattered yellow and red robes pointing at them, a glimmering talisman in his hand-

-Shit-!

She had a terrible sense of impending crisis as space cracked around her and for the second time in as many seconds she felt a deeply unsettling and warping force try to work its way into her body.

{Soul Seizing Glimmer}

An aspect of it was dealt with by her mantra, but whatever had been done still turned her consciousness fuzzy while her limbs grew cold and she felt something like a cold burn shoot through her mind. What came after was almost like a clammy, grasping hand that tried to wrap up her consciousness and seal it away, even as ‘One with What Is’ somehow interfered with that aspect of it-

-Soul Attack?

-How?

-Isn’t it sealed?

She had a strange sensation for a few seconds that there was more than one version of her speaking in her head, then ‘One with What Is’ finally repelled the worst of it.

Looking around, she saw the grass around her for maybe twenty metres was blackened and wilted, her body and those of various other Ur’Vash nearby shrouded in a faint coating of rapidly fading frost. Juni staggered and she herself only managed to avoid falling to her knees by leaning on her bow, given how chaotic and disordered her qi now was.

Ur’Vash nearby who saw them both fail to fall to whatever had been done howled and cheered, surging up and also shrugging off the effect of the talisman – charging forward with renewed ferocity. Their howls and chanting seemed to course through her, feeding her a faint strength – further dispelling the limb-ensnaring chill.

-Shit… Nameless accursed… she coughed up blood, realising that the ‘disorder’ was not just what had been done to her with that talisman.

-I have too much qi in my body?

-No… my body can’t process what I have, because I am not fully attuned, she groaned, grasping the source of the problem at last.

The Ur’Vash’s shouts and chants also drew even more of their compatriots as those who had been scattering from the chaos around Lin Ling also now began to rally in their general direction.

Several were carrying drums, even a banner, she noted as she fought to keep her qi under control and find another purification pill in her storage ring.

When they spotted the two of them standing there, they howled something and started to hammer on the drums with renewed vigour, directing those around them to start a strange shuffling dance as more and more Ur’Vash started to stream towards the camp from their left and right-

Something reached out of the sky and pushed them to the ground.

The sky collapsed above them, the cultivators, those she could see on the edge of the camp, turned slack jawed and pale, stumbling back…

Above her… an apocalypse descended from the sky.

A mountain of blazing silver-grey fire, maybe twenty miles across, shedding a trail of heavenly thunder, and cracking the very sky itself with the shockwaves emanating from its descent.

The inevitability of it was crushing, promising the doom of all things.

There was no flight…

No way to run…

Nowhere to hide…

“What even is this?”

Her own words echoed dully in her ears, likely unheard to all but herself given the all-encompassing oppression now weighting down on them.

-Black lightning? White lightning? Now this?

-What kind of tribulation?

-How… is this even fair? Is this just heaven not leaving a way?

Lin Ling apparently agreed on that sentiment, because the howl that met it, that split the very sky itself, was beyond her ability to comprehend in any conventional, rational way. It felt to her as if it contained aspects of the Dao that denied the heavens itself.

“…”

Everyone, Ur’Vash and cultivator alike, at least those still conscious, stared dully as the meteor collapsed, the sky shattered and the clouds that had built up three layers were cast into turmoil. Orphaned lightning fell like rain, cratering the ground in every direction as the meteor broke apart. A disproportionate amount of it seemed to hit the camps, only to be blocked by various barriers or deflected across the grasslands where it killed anything it touched.

After it came a scattered hail of silver-grey fire, born of the disintegrating fragments of the terrible meteor. It fell all around them – things it hit… just gained inexplicable holes as it dispersed…

“Nope… no, no way!” she screamed as she desperately selected the strongest barrier talisman she had-

Horrified, she watched as some bits of it drifted straight through the barrier of the group, hitting one of them and turning their arm into ash.

In just the same way it passed through her own barrier, but instead missed her by a matter of a hand’s width. Juni, nearby, was the same… and as she looked around dully, she found that other Ur’Vash were similar, inexplicably unscathed. Those who avoided immediate death started to howl their defiance at the dark sky, hammering their chests or raising their arms and weapons skyward and stamping their feet, as if daring the heavens to kill them.

Some did get hit, she noticed, but far fewer than should have.

The cultivators in the general vicinity, mostly cowering behind multilayer barriers now, were looking on dully, as if this was thoroughly outside any expectations they had. In a way, she couldn’t fault them on that, even if this whole mess was basically on the cultivators’ fractured power structure at this point.

She was just wondering how this could possibly get worse, when the pressure from the sky intensified.

“Yama’s Retribution Hall?”

High above them, the destabilised gyres of the tribulation clouds were rapidly forming a fourth layer. Within it was reflected a sight out of the nightmares of every cultivator who stepped onto the path.

“Stop gawping and run!” Juni’s panicked voice cut through her shock as the other woman grabbed her by the arm as she scrambled past.

Shaking her head, she nodded, stumbling after her as they tried to flee across the grassland-

It was like she was plucked up by a grasping hand and thrown physically. The ground rolled under them, scattering friend and foe alike. The hill they had just fled the slopes of crashed outwards like a tsunami off the Dark Ocean, nearly burying her before she understood what had happened.

-Not the tribulation… which hasn’t descended?

All around them, lightning fell like rain, and yet it was just ephemeral lightning – instead, above them there was a huge crash and eleven huge lightning bolts, more akin to black cracks between heaven and earth, descended.

“What is going-?” she gasped, only to find herself sent sprawling again as a near miss from a sky blue lightning bolt kicked up a cloud of charred dirt tens of metres high.

Crashing down, her qi thoroughly disturbed, she hit the ground which was roiling like an ocean swell rather than solid mass. All around her, the ground was liquefying, other bolts of lightning kicking up plumes of dirt as Ur’Vash drowned in swirling dirt all around her-

-The defenders of the camp!

Realisation sank in as she struggled to free herself – the mud was grasping and held aspects of yin that only exacerbated the poisoning she had already received from the wood qi. She flailed for a moment, before coming to her senses and realising she had a talisman that was actually useful for this kind of thing.

-Idiot! She remonstrated with herself as she pulled out a ‘Mu’s Maleficent Mountain’ formation talisman.

Pushing as much qi into it as she could, she released it right in front of her, watching as its initial activation stage started to devour all the dissociated dirt around her easily. Within moments, there was a coruscating vortex of shifting soil, loam, sand, gravel and rocks swirling up with the talisman at its centre.

Everywhere, the Ur’Vash who had been in the process of being constricted, smothered or just flat up drowned by the quagmire fell onto exposed bedrock in a manner not dissimilar to fish, starting around in shock as the talisman’s devouring power totally excluded them.

It found bedrock quite quickly, not that that surprised her too much, because there had been a lot of rock outcroppings nearby. By the time it was reaching saturation, maybe 50 metres around her had been swept up, to a depth of two metres. Rock was starting to get drawn in as well, but such was the vast destabilisation of the land around them that the ‘vortex’ of qi-infused dirt was already more than large enough by the time those in the camps noticed and started attacking it.

Three bolts of blue light bisected it at the same time: a conjured golden spear, two screaming birds of fire and a large rock all smashed into it. The maelstrom of dirt wavered, drew down on itself and vanished, scattering dirt like rain everywhere.

All around her, Ur’Vash were scrambling up, looking shaken, as was she.

“What kind of idiot actually lets you charge a talisman like that?” she smirked, slapping the talisman down on the ground and focusing on the distant barrier protecting the outer camp.

The formation swirled out around her, alignments anchoring themselves as it affixed its destination point, lifted from her mind’s eye, as they ran down the hill towards the camp. Her qi emptied rapidly, but still not rapidly enough!

-Cursed yin wood talisman, she cried inwardly, pushing even more at it, as whatever the contaminating wood qi had done to her continued to try and destabilise her foundation.

Ten seconds later, with the Retribution Hall raging overhead, the talisman finished charging and she triggered it without hesitation.

{Mu’s Maleficent Mountain}

The compacted lump of yin earth infused dirt dropped like an inauspicious mountain straight onto the nearest camp. The barrier blocked the worst of it, but two layers of it shattered and the corrosive energies of the projectile continued to work their way into it. It likely helped that the yin wood qi was also infused into the talisman.

Grimacing, she pulled herself up and looked around, seeking Juni. The other woman was maybe a 100 metres away from her now, on the edge of the new hollow her talisman had made, looking in her direction.

All around them Ur’Vash who had given up on flight now just howled or chanted defiance as they waved their weapons at the sky and at the cultivators.

She was just about to head towards Juni, when a golden bolt of lightning, one of the myriad subsidiary bolts from Lin Ling’s tribulation, bent sideways in the sky and hit a mustering swarm of Ur’Vash the other side of her. The blast picked her up – tens of purple bolts streaking down after it, greedily earthing themselves in everything that mov-

The purple bolt hit her like a serpent, smashing her into dirt, even as it tore at her body, greedily, vengefully trying to ruin her cultivation.

‘Sweet. Bloom. Red. Blossom. Jade’

All she could do was put her mantra in its way. ‘Sweet’ lessened the impact, ‘Bloom’ drew out the latent strength of her vital qi to resist it while ‘Red’ redoubled that effectiveness, briefly allowing her to convert what was trying to kill her into her own strength to repel it. ‘Blossom’, however, rather than doing what she wanted, latched straight onto the yin wood qi in her body and pushed that at the lightning as well. ‘Jade’ pulled the whole thing together and-

A second bolt of golden lightning twisted bizarrely in the sky above her, giving her double vision as it skittered crazily down.

This time she felt the inauspicious twisting of it.

Her mind tried to deny that anyone could be that insane – before she recalled who they were dealing with.

The Jade Gate Court were the Discipline Gate of the Dun Heavens, the enforcing arm of the Emperor’s will. They were almost certainly using talismans to pull good fortune from the heavens and propel it back at the Ur’Vash, because they were ‘righteous’ and the Ur’Vash were… not.

-Who is righteous! Your grandmother is righteous!

Coughing, she tasted disgusting bile in her mouth and realised, to her horror, that the yin wood qi was now infiltrating her bones and even grasping at her Golden Core as it continued to try and eat away at her body-

A hand grasped her, hands grasped her, Juni, she realised, as a masked face appeared above her.

Her vision wavered and her qi continued to build again at a rate it was impossible for just her mantra to deal with.

A different qi was entering her body now, warm and strangely auspicious…

“Juni?” she rasped.

“Quiet, you nearly died, I think. Here, eat this!” Juni shoved a Longevity Lingzhe into her hand.

“I… don’t need more qi…” she gasped.

“No, we need to balance that horrid wood qi,” Juni hissed, before trailing off and looking up, her face turning pale.

“Ling! N-!”

Whatever Juni had been about to say was lost in noise and pain as her whole world turned purple and gold – that was the only way to describe it. With it came shadows and a sense of oppression that washed through her body, leaving it devoid of any kind of qi except…

“Ahhhssssgggggh!”

She screamed inarticulately, as much in rage and frustration as in pain as the seeds of yin wood qi bloomed again, rampaging through her tormented body, sending wicked barbs through her meridians as they clawed at the protection her mantra was providing her vital qi and again trying to seek out how to… to…

Gold and white lotus blossoms surged everywhere, including into her as her mantra continued to fight a desperate rear guard action against the dual invading forces of the tribulation lightning and the yin wood qi. In the middle of that, she was also aware of Ur’Vash nearby who had survived the strikes, dancing and chanting.

“Mother of Water…”

“Mother of Golden Flame!”

“Hallowed are the dancers…”

“Who brings the choice of prosperity?”

“The river of life! The road to death!”

In that instant she was suddenly unclear as to whether she was actually a human or an Ur’Vash, because she was aware of others all around her, a shared sense of survival and fortune being carried on their words.

-What in the fates were those symbols you had us use? she wondered blankly at the dark sky above, still confused as to how she had survived.

In that instant, it echoed within her, and she felt it touch something else, an aspect of her own intent, that lay like a shadow in her own body.

~ Kun Juni – Infiltrating the Battle Lines ~

Juni found herself somewhat adrift in the way she viewed the world as she watched the woman, painted in white and black, bearing a bow shoot Lin Ling. Strange details stood out about the scene, like how the girl's geometric warpaint seemed to represent white lily blossoms and black, lotus like flames, how the colours around her seemed too vivid, how she was the only hunter without a mask–

Something hit them… tribulation lightning, she realised, twisted from the sky above. It was like the darkness from the depths had returned in every way. The oppression that the figure manifested as Lin Ling fell from the sky was absolute, extinguishing strength, while within the lightning she found a similarly absolute, grasping, consuming greed that whispered to her, fed off her fear and her horror, dragging her down with the intent to tear away from her everything that was ‘her’.

She was barely even aware of her own screams of rage, anger and fear. They bled into everyone else’s in any case. Teng Chunhua was writhing in the grass on the edge of the crater, and all around them, Ur’Vash were held in the grip of screaming, purple, gold and even black serpents that gnawed and constricted at them.

Vast pressure pressed down on her from above, locking her in place. The lightning flayed flesh, cracked bone, sank their fangs into her body, wormed their way into her meridians, seeking to chain her in deeply inauspicious ways. ‘Heart Shifting Steps’ was screaming like a bell in her mind, while her mantra…

Scion, Devoted, I walk the Path, Lotus Gift born of the Body, Bestowed, Scion, Devoted I walk the Path of the Lotus, the Gift Bestowed upon the Body… Devoted, Scion of the Path, Bestowed, the Gift of the Lotus, Bestowed…

Her mantra’s mnemonics flowed like a river through her mind’s eye, threading in a strange, yet very auspicious way into the chant-like rhythm that was settling into her mind from ‘Bright Lotus Earthly Scripture’. However, she had no time to be shocked at that, because in the same instant the lightning arrived in her mind’s eye and grasped for the talisman-

Her scream of rage seemed to echo the symbol’s as it blazed in her mind’s eye. It shifted, and a bright lotus bloomed all around her – silver and gold petals unfurling, scattering the lightning, which her mantra and the scripture swallowed whole.

Her dantian rolled in on itself, a blazing white point coalescing that pulled in all the qi from the lightning, the yin wood qi and the herbs she had eaten to try to balance that out…

Once…

Twice…

Thrice…

It spun eight times in the end, before erupting outwards, sending flecks of gold, purple, green and white qi through her body, purging the darkness.

The pressure collapsed almost at the same time as her pseudo-core collapsed. The grass, what little remained around her, burned eerily, little white lotus blossoms dancing on its tips. Ur’Vash nearby who had managed to survive whatever misfortune had been directed at them all howled and pointed to both of them, dancing and cheering.

“Bright Mother…”

“She who brings the river of life…”

“Hallowed are the dancers…”

“The river of life, the road to death…”

A strange awareness far beyond her own, born of the shared sense of survival with those around her and their chanting, echoed in her own mind. In that instant she was suddenly unclear as to whether she was actually a human or an Ur’Vash.

Shuddering, she recovered her sense of self, and looked around. The tribulation above was still ongoing, shimmering grey-black chains, almost like serpents, surging wildly as they struck down at the epicentre. Teng Chunhua was slumped nearby, groaning weakly, with dark, nearly black blood running out from under her mask and from the lacerations all over her body.

“Shit... No!” she managed to convince her legs to move and stumbled over to the other woman, kneeling down beside her.

“No, nope,” she muttered, pushing qi into her, stimulating Teng Chunhua’s cultivation to help her recover as her divination art started telling her all kinds of bad things about the other’s condition.

The ‘strength’ of the Ur’Vash nearby, many of whom were now looking on, even as another bolt dropped some 50 metres away, also flowed through her and into Teng Chunhua as well.

“What…? Teng Chunhua gasped, her hands grasping hers.

“Careful,” she hissed, wondering how that was even possible. It was almost like they were the centre of some kind of…

-A kind of harmonious alignment?

-Well, as long as it keeps Teng Chunhua from expiring right here, in front of me… whatever!

Pushing such extraneous thoughts from her mind, she directed more of her qi into Teng Chunhua, along with the other strange quasi-intent, to help her recover-

The other woman’s eyes widened abruptly and she suddenly pushed at her.

“R-run!” Teng Chunhua rasped.

“What?” she stared dully, confused. “I need to heal you.”

“No… run!”

Teng Chunhua made to break her grasp a second time. She was just about to ask what was going on, when all the hair on her body stood up, the ground around them started drifting upwards and the silence of the world around them became even more oppressive.

Twelve purple serpents surged down and hit Teng Chunhua before she could even react. They punched through her eight gates, her dantian, and three of the bolts all focused on her third eye.

The Ur’Vash around them howled and danced even harder as she fled backwards, barely escaping implication as the space around Teng Chunhua exploded outwards with enough force to send everyone close sprawling, herself included.

Lightning bolts crashed down all around Teng Chunhua, burrowing into the woman’s body as the Ur’Vash chanted a single word, over and over again, almost frenetic now. Her connection, shared at this point, told her that it should equate to ‘Fortune’ or maybe ‘Blue’, but in a sense of boundlessness?

-Are they literally trying to ‘give’ her good fortune?

Once, she would have thought that preposterous, but having spent far too much time staring at divinations of late, and thinking about what Lin Ling had told her regarding colour symbolism and Ur’Vash, she…

“Idiot!” she cursed, and spun, looking at the wider battlefield.

The vast tribulation up above was still ongoing – even if it was only a few hundred metres away, the sense of broken distance between the epicentre and where they were was immense to the point where she didn’t even begin to try to make sense of it.

That wasn’t what was concerning her though-

‘Heart Shifting Steps’ urged her to not move, moments before a blue bolt, from Lin Ling’s ‘tribulation’ smote the ground not twenty paces in front of her.

It took her a second of post-rationalisation to realise why that was the correct answer, before realising that no other Ur’Vash had so much as glanced at that bolt. It had hit maybe ten, but none were even seriously injured.

Two more bolts made charred craters nearby, again doing remarkably little damage for their proximity, before a golden bolt, high above, bent bizarrely and arrowed straight down for-

She picked herself up, fighting numbness in her limbs as her cultivation greedily devoured more of the energies, purifying them mainly through the aid of her mantra. All around, Ur’Vash howled even harder, more pointing in her direction, even as she finally got her bearings on the nearest cultivator camps.

They were all staring in their direction – her qi enhanced vision easily able to scan faces. Many were afraid, but…

She found the group dressed in green, led by three figures wearing white masks with ‘golden’ on them. They were arguing with a second group, many pointing in their direction and also up at the sky. A third group held a compass, a strange thing made of green jade with a series of golden spinning discs above it that made ‘Heart Shifting Steps’ resonate faintly.

“Oh no you motherless bastards don’t!” she snarled, getting a very bad intuition even before Heart Shifting Steps got in on the action and a golden bolt of lightning scattered off the huge tribulation above to land in the middle of Teng Chunhua’s own smaller cloud.

In response, there was a scattering of lightning off the barriers protecting the camp, but that was about it. On the other hand, three more purple bolts spidered down, merging with Teng Chunhua’s tribulation and scattering outwards to hit dozens of Ur’Vash.

-They know that there is a shared connection? That was her first, if rather irrational, thought.

It was followed by the much more rational one: Are they insane?

The answer to that latter point was abruptly proven when several dozen bolts descended from the main tribulation overhead and scattered bizarrely striking everywhere else, but mainly at the Ur’Vash, and disproportionately in their general direction, making her have to work hard not to flinch.

“…”

Jumping on a nearby rock, she pulled out the black bone spear and pointed it at the sky.

“OI!”

Yelling in Easten with as much volume as she could muster, she pointed her spear again at the sky, and then at the nearest camps.

“Kill!”

As far as war cries or calls to action went, she had to consider, it was not especially eloquent. However, as many misfortunate souls had found over the years, pointing and yelling in context was usually all that was required to facilitate serious bloodshed in the right circumstances.

Quite a large number of Ur’Vash nearby saw her, the directions in which she pointed and almost immediately put two and two together.

She considered the distance between her and the ‘formation’ which was likely causing all the trouble, which was about two hundred metres. Already, Ur’Vash closer to it were charging towards it, but the way in which they were being mostly ignored suggested to her that those defending it were confident in it blocking anything they could throw.

That, in her mind, brought her back to the two spears. There was no way she was bringing out the metal one, having learned that lesson the hard way already. The black bone one, though, had started to give her faintly inauspicious vibes. She had been meaning to ask Lin Ling about that, given she had claimed it from one of the spider tribe leaders; however, it was just a blackened bone spear.

-A blackened bone spear that was able to injure Lin Ling’s blood raging form…

Turning back to the barrier, she watched the first group of attackers just smash their weapons against it, only to get hit by a space-shattering bolt of lightning a moment later. Those that survived…

She blinked in surprise as one actually broke through, and then felt ashamed to be considered a cultivator as a grasping strength yanked one unlucky one through the barrier where they were brutally eviscerated by a youth in golden robes who claimed the core and tossed the body to the side with a laugh.

Heart Shifting Steps warned her again of another shift in the thoroughly tormented alignments, effectively making her decision for her. Daubing as much blue and purple on the black bone spear as she could, she started to run forward, picking her spot as carefully as she could.

Casting the spear into the distance, she tried to put every shred of ‘lucky intent’, as she determined to call it, into the cast before screaming as loud as she could:

“KILL THEM!”

Ur’Vash arriving, still chanting and staring at the sky, saw her action and followed it.

The spear hit the barrier and, much to her surprise, tore through it without even slowing, dropping like a silent lance from heaven to strike the cultivator from the Jade Gate Court who had been wielding the compass straight in the chest, impaling them to the ground.

The damage to the barrier itself was distressingly minimal, but that she mostly expected. The group controlling the compass, on the other hand, all screamed and spat blood. The blow didn’t kill the user – they were probably too high a realm for that – but the backlash from having their link with the compass compromised would hopefully buy Teng Chunhua time.

The response from ahead of her was immediate – dozens of talismans blazed out at her. Fire, lightning, earth, water and more exotic ones. Most didn’t make the distance, but a few even contained facsimiles of soul attacks, leveraging yin-

A bolt of lightning hit her between the breasts-

She fought off the ensnaring strength of yin. Rampant, devouring energy tore through her body, melting her meridians even as her mantra resisted it. Even more fearful, something in it she couldn’t touch and could only feel by its absence as it passed, was trying to eat her up from the inside, gnawing at her connection to the Ur’Vash around her.

In the same instant, she was aware, dimly, that the other talismans were missing her inexplicably, as the chanting and howling of those around her, grew even stronger. Everywhere Ur’Vash died, obliterated by talismans, incinerated by lightning, just vanishing in bursts of gore, but with every one that fell, many more managed to survive and so did she. And with those that fell, those that remained only hardened in their resolution to tear down these interlopers.

Behind her, the miniature tribulation cloud over Teng Chunhua twisted and erupted outwards.

Nine golden bolts streaked downwards and in that instant she clearly understood why you did not interfere with tribulations because, devoid of whatever influence the compass had had, 9 cloned bolts hammered into the barrier, making it ripple and distort.

The thwarted lightning howled in the sky and a golden bolt edged in white fire, shedding flowers of heaven-like sparks as it fell on Teng Chunhua who desperately cast all her qi upwards to deflect it. It pulsed and then radiated out arcs of white lightning that raked across the barriers, leaving livid rents everywhere – those behind them who had started to reorganise, flinching back again, looking very uneasy.

“Hah, serves you right,” she spat, grimacing, as bolts also landed around the chanting Ur’Vash, again with a rather lesser impact.

A second pulse actually ruptured two parts of the barrier, whereupon panicked cultivators actually managed to dissipate some of the bolts and at the same time attempted to do something awkwardly inauspicious to the tribulation itself?

She got a strange twisted sensation that something-

Above her, the heavens went matte black.

Black and gold dragons rampaged across the sky as lightning of every colour imaginable swept down like rain. The barrier rippled and wavered, shrinking rapidly and asymmetrically. Those caught out, screamed in terror and fled as it moved, desperately trying not to get caught outside of it.

All around her, Ur’Vash roared louder in the face of the change, and with their determination, the strength that was flowing into her and Teng Chunhua continued to surge.

Brilliant golden lightning struck at Teng Chunhua, pulsing down with renewed ferocity, in direct rejection of whatever the talismans had just tried to do-

A nova of glittering golden lightning surged out from the epicentre like a hoard of insane serpents. It swarmed over everything and everyone, piercing Ur’Vash, piercing her, crashing into the barriers around the camp that wavered desperately again and in a few places directly failed.

It surged into her meridians, seeking out her dantian, even as she felt strength continue to rise within her, like a great strength pushing her forward to oppose it. Intuitively she grasped that this was because every Ur’Vash nearby was experiencing the same torment now.

She felt them die, snuffed out and added to the vast tide of rage that was rolling forward, of which she was both part and focus now. Some became so crippled they could no longer stand, but others advanced amid flickers of fire and that also seemed to drive the others on.

Six more were hit by deep green pulses of lightning, just within her line of sight: two fell, incinerated, but again others leapt up, dancing with delight.

The lightning found her, raging through her again, making her cough up dark blood as her mantra and the cultivation law both seemed to roar in their own right.

'…Devoted, Scion of the Path, Bestowed, the Gift of the Lotus, Bestowed…'

The refrain resurfaced, if it had even left, the two meshing amid some strange strength from the talisman, drawn out by the mantra. The words grasped what came and consumed it, using it to forge the raging qi in her body, short cutting thousands of cycles of purification in a single instant-

-Can you cultivate using tribulation lightning?

That idea alone was… insane, except she was doing just that, right here and now.

Ur’Vash were not the only ones advancing either. To her left, she could see a second gyre of clouds on the far side of the cultivation camps, flickering with purple lightning, while off to her right was another twisting of space associated with focused emissions of lightning that were swirling like tentacles of some sea beast.

Those cultivators on this side of the barrier, though, were thoroughly besieged. Hundreds of minor bolts sizzling off the barely holding barriers, testimony to how badly whatever they had just tried to do had backfired.

The sky above her groaned and the miniature tribulation cloud gyre collapsed upwards as the last pulse of golden lightning twisted, darkening to become a black line that crept down and touched Teng Chunhua’s forehead.

In that instant, she felt a remarkable manifestation from the other woman, akin to what she had achieved with her own mantra fighting the group from the Argent Justice Sect.

All around them, the unnatural, greedy twisting returned with vengeance. Almost opposing it, the strength of the Ur’Vash that was focused on Teng Chunhua, and her, intensified.

A second Teng Chunhua was suddenly wavering in the air, wrestling with the black lightning as it pulsed erratically, blurring shadows surging at her from every direction.

There were hundreds of Ur’Vash nearby now, chanting, dancing, cursing the sky, beating on drums or just cursing the lightning as it fell.

Extra black bolts, scattering out of the clouds above, became terrible spears, punching through the barrier the cultivators had erected, but failed to kill any – that she saw, anyway – though several were terribly injured.

Abruptly, the lighting twisted, turning in on itself, black becoming white, turning the whole world silent, before scattering like pillars of breaking glass. The barriers around the subsidiary camp wavered right as pulses of lightning twisted to grey and black, multiplied horrifically and scattered everywhere in an expanding shockwave of misty grey fire.

It washed over them, Ur’Vash falling, screaming in agony – a few even had limbs explode, even as most kept on with their challenge of the sky above. When it hit her – for there was no evading it – the pain was excruciating. Her qi almost evaporated away, turning into mist and expanding chaotically. Her mantra managed to keep a grasp of the worst of it, but she could see why those unlucky Ur’Vash had exploded.

When it hit the remaining barriers around the camp, they were obliterated completely. Before she could wonder about what kind of casualties that had caused though, a new barrier flared into life around the inner camp. A series of twisting hexagonal shields bearing insignia of the Imperial Court.

Just in time as well, because the lightning descending for Teng Chunhua twisted and became dozens of black and gold dragons, in a terrible facsimile of the battle above.

“Oh shit!” She barely had time to react before a clone dragon surged for her, its maw opening wide and its claws, golden lightning bolts in their own right, grasping for her with a vengeful hunger.

She threw everything she had at it, her mantra, her divination art, the symbol, and the strength of the Ur’Vash. The dragon met it, smashed into it and scattered like smoke, swirling through her, trying to rip her whole body to shreds. She barely resisted it, mostly thanks to the Ur’Vash she was sure, as above Teng Chunhua the last vestiges of the tribulation clouds emitted a singular silver and black flash before dispersing outwards.

The Ur’Vash fell silent, watching them both…

The drums in the distance thrummed, barely audible over-

Above her, the last three dragons were gone, and with them, an oppressive silence fell upon the battlefield as the darkness above seemed to deepen further. Within it, the 99 shadowy elders pointed as one and another 11 black bolts rippled across the horizon, bending the very world around them with their passage.

For a brief, disturbing instant, it was like she was stood on the lip of a shallow bowl, or staring into the edge of a pit, able only to watch as the bolts surged around Lin Ling and through her, forming some kind of bizarre and deeply inauspicious cage.

A moment later, 33 sages descended from the sky in a huge swathe of ephemera that became a net cast at Lin Ling as well.

In the same instant though, the cage and net seemed to… conflict, according to what Heart Shifting Steps suggested, and as Lin Ling raged, the sages were smashed apart on the very walls of the cage they had made.

In the next instant, the world turned multi-coloured. That was the only way to describe it really. An immense, vengeful intent that carried within it the promise of sweeping away the whole world fell like a curtain to silence the whole world. After it, out of that silent void, came 66 heavenly generals leading legions of demons straight out of Yama’s hells, born of heavenly lightning.

Fortunately they didn’t seem at all interested in anything other than Lin Ling, from her perspective anyway. The cultivators, those outside that inner barrier anyway, had gotten new shields up in a few places, but were now just stood frozen, staring along with the rest of them.

Pausing, she narrowed her eyes and looked again. It was hard to see what was going on with the main barrier, but areas of the barrier was slowly expanding in size and several areas had been opened. There also looked to be fighting going on the far side.

-Nothing good will come of that, she grimaced.

Getting a grip on herself, she searched in her storage talisman for her bow and sighed, because it was nowhere to be found. Looking around, she saw an injured Ur’Vash nearby who did have one and pointed at them.

“You, give me your bow!” she asked in Easten.

The hunter bowed and handed it to her without question.

Sighing, she pointed at the other cultivators outside the camp.

“Kill them.”

The Ur’Vash nearby turned almost as one to look at the ruins of the camps and the re-organisation going on. They all then largely looked back at her, which was singularly unnerving, before, almost as one, they uttered a huge roar and, with much stamping and cheering, started to advance towards the camp.

Making her way over to Teng Chunhua, she found the other woman sat, mostly naked, looking... fairly inscrutable actually, because of the mask she still had.

“Clearly some aspect of the fates are looking out for us, even if they have a horrid sense of humour,” she sighed, offering a hand to the other woman.

“Yeah…” Teng Chunhua said, sounding shaken. “That was… I hope I never experience something like that again.”

“I can’t believe that they actually escalated a tribulation like that,” she muttered, watching as Ur’Vash skirmishing forward reached the first areas of tents and started to fight with those survivors who while stranded there had been lucky enough to survive.

Chunhua looked back at her dully, then nodded. “I… I broke all the way through from Golden Core to Nascent Soul. Not to mention my Mantra Seed broke through to Soul Meridians.”

“I… see,” she blinked, that was quite shocking in its own way.

Counting it back on her fingers, she guessed, “Purple… and three waves of gold?”

“Yes, then it got caught up in the big tribulation… I think. The black lightning came because of whatever that was,” Chunhua shuddered. “Horrible. I had to fight a bunch of versions of my own Nascent Soul, but all of them felt really wrong. That whole Nascent Soul tribulation was all kinds of wrong, in fact. It felt more like a punishment beating disguised as a tribulation than anything else.”

Meanwhile, above them… the battle was intensifying. Lin Ling was now some terrible ancient beast, armour plates and lashing tail, breathing Yang Fire and crushing swarming demons with every move as she tore down legion after legion.

She nodded. That was what tended to happen when you messed with tribulations. She had only known of it happening once in the immediate influences of the Kun clan in her lifetime, but that cousin had been lucky to escape with his life through the intervention of an old elder for daring to use a Fate Shifting Talisman to influence a Core Formation tribulation.

“We’ll worry about that later,” she said decisively, looking about again. “I assume you are fully attuned now?”

“Uh… yes, as it turns out,” Teng Chunhua muttered, looking sideways at her. “Although I think I still have some residual poisoning from that horrible yin wood talisman. That was the catalyst for it anyway, I think.”

“…”

To that, she could only nod again, sweeping her own talisman to see if she had any good pills left. The combination of tools she had at her disposal had dealt with most of it, but just like Teng Chunhua, presumably, she was left with a feeling of grasping corruption on the unrefined qi in her body.

“My core is close to forming as well,” she noted, before adding, “Sorry, I don’t have anything good enough to deal with what I think that might be.”

“As in…?” Teng Chunhua blinked and trailed off.

“Ah, yeah, that is sealed knowledge for those at nine star or higher,” she scowled, still not sure whether it was fortune or calamity. “That talisman should have had some aspect of a Parasol Tree within it.”

“A… say what?” Teng Chunhua blinked. “As in... Phoenix lives for 100 years? That Parasol Tree?”

“That Parasol Tree,” she nodded affirmatively. “The main pavilion has a few records about them that they keep rather tightly controlled. I saw the majority of what Blue Water City has though.”

“And it’s okay to just-?”

“Share that information?” she laughed darkly. “It hardly matters at this point. You don’t have to swear a heavenly oath or anything. Rather, an old elder goes with you to view the records and stares at the back of your head the whole time. That way they know exactly who has seen what.”

“In any case, if you have a bow, grab it, or get one from someone, we should get moving towards the camp. It would not to do have a bunch of angry Ur’Vash kill Han Shu and the others.”

“True…” Teng Chunhua grimaced, taking out a Longevity Lingzhe and eating it in three bites. “And I guess it wouldn’t do for the Ur’Vash to start questioning their circumstances more… closely either.”

“No. No, it would not,” she agreed.

Looking out over the battle ahead of them, the cultivators had mostly rallied now – lightning was still falling, but their barriers were…

“Wow…”

They both shaded their eyes as a black bolt split off from the sky above and eradicated a barrier over a camp, striking at something on its western edge, leaving only afterimages in the sky to mark its passage.

“Yep, the cultivators are thoroughly implicated,” she nodded.

Two more bolts, black and a web of gold, tore down into the Ur’Vash, scattering one of the groups mustering around a barrier.

“And so are we,” she sighed. “Or at least the Ur’Vash are.”

“Wonderful,” Teng Chunhua hissed in disgust. “Are they trying to take us with them?”

“Likely they were trying to make the heavens do their dirty work…” She scanned their lines again and narrowed her eyes as she saw another two of the compasses visible within the inner camp.

“And they haven’t given up either.”

Teng Chunhua’s gaze travelled in the direction she was pointing as she fixed her clothes and checked her war paint, and sighed deeply. “That, they have not. I guess we do have a trait for doubling down on problems as a society.”

“Suddenly I…”

“RUN!” she screamed, grabbing the other woman by the arm and exerting Heart Shifting Steps to the fullest.

The purple bolt nearly caught them, even with the shadowy forewarning.

A few Ur’Vash still moving up nearby were not so lucky, two crashing down as smoking corpse, but to her shock… another one broke through!

“Have I ever said how much I hate lightning?” Teng Chunhua gasped, picking herself up.

“Preach that dao,” she spat, hefting her bow and dragging another quiver out, having lost her other one somewhere.

Checking it quickly, she was relieved to see that she still had black bone tipped arrows left.

“Let’s move up. The closer we are to the cultivators’ lines…”

“The less likely we are to get randomly hit?” Teng Chunhua observed with a scowl.

“Maybe,” she sighed, nodding in agreement, “but that way at least they might get hit as well!”

Chunhua gave her a long look… then nodded, drawing a bow out of her storage ring and nocking an arrow as she started to move forward, dashing from rock to rock.

The cultivators had mostly rallied now, and were fighting Ur’Vash in close combat. It was gratifying to see cultivators major realms above hers find them every bit as vexatious to deal with as she had in the burning, swampy ruins of the forest.

Arriving at the edge of the outer camps, she almost immediately had to duck for cover as a fireball talisman exploded against a ruined carriage. Grimacing, she found the perpetrator, a bearded youth in a silver robe, and shot a more ‘normal’ arrow at him. It hit the barrier protecting his retreating group and exploded with enough force to make it ripple.

Almost immediately a dozen more arrows smashed into it from every direction as other Ur’Vash, seeing her pick a target, immediately focused on it. The miserable cultivators scrambled down into the cover of broken ground, even as two more talismans directed attacks in their direction.

Ignoring them, she led Teng Chunhua on, guided more by Heart Shifting Steps now, both to know when to dive for cover from the lightning, but also to-

Amid the scattered tents, she saw a shadow of a familiar figure in a silvery-grey robe and sent a black bone pointed arrow drifting after ‘Sheng Zhao’ without even really thinking about it. Whether it found its mark, she couldn’t say, but Teng Chunhua’s arrows caught another of the silver-robed figures, tearing through the talisman barrier and embedding in their shoulder before they made it through into one of the inner barriers and relative safety.

“They are certainly good at running,” the other woman scowled as she determined that there was no sign of anything remotely like prisoners in the camp they had just moved through.

She was about to nod, when her divination art pulled her to dodge to the side-

She moved, but the strike, from a spear, still somehow found its mark. The combination of the looted immortal hides she was wearing for armour and the omnipresent ‘strength’ of the Ur’Vash blunted the worst of the physical damage, but it still sent her sprawling-

“Watch out!” Teng Chunhua yelled suddenly.

A second spear dropped from the sky, which Teng Chunhua attempted to block with a barrier – not that it did much good.

The peerless Martial Intent shredded everything around them, scattering tents, splintering wood and rending flesh. The injuries themselves healed rapidly, but the qi that came with them held…

“Soul Intent?” she gasped, as the symbol in her mind’s eye for Bright Lotus Earthly Physique and ‘One with What Is’ both worked with her mantra to mostly blunt the damage after several agonizing moments of inner struggle.

Teng Chunhua grabbed her and helped her up, even as Ur’Vash around them screamed in renewed fury and charged forward once again.

“Yes. It seems that it is no longer sealed!” the other woman grimaced.

“Shit,” she resisted kicking the carriage next to them as she scanned around for the perpetrator.

The qi had felt oddly familiar, in a sort of distant manner?

Grimacing, she managed to push the last of the cold in her limbs away and then groaned inwardly and started running-

A green lightning bolt hit the ground and surged after them, twisting into the form of a ravenous serpent to pick both of them up and send them sprawling along with tens of other Ur’Vash.

“This… thrashed… lightning!” Teng Chunhua screamed, in Easten thankfully, staggering up and sending three arrows at random into the distant barriers.

That sentiment was clearly shared by the others nearby, because they were also swearing and sending arrows, spears, rocks, tent poles and anything to hand really at the barriers as they started forward again. She had no words really; her lungs were still recovering from the ravaging damage of the green serpent.

The furious strength was still welling up, dragging everyone along with it. It was almost like every blow that did not break them, made the connections between the survivors greater.

It certainly continued to deepen her understanding of how they could fight with strength and numbers and not suffer any obvious morale issues despite the terrible ferocity of the battle ahead and around them at least.

Picking a target, she shot an arrow at a small group of cultivators who had been advancing out of the barrier towards one of the camps. They had robes she didn’t recognise, but she didn’t care at this point. Her anger at their circumstances, no doubt fed by the ever-strengthening links to the Ur’Vash, was close to overwhelming.

Two of her arrows exploded, distracting the one carrying the barrier talisman, who was immediately assailed by three Ur’Vash adorned in tattoos of blue serpents and carrying hand scythes. She moved on immediately this time; standing there in full view shooting arrows was just stupid, really.

-If we are going to pretend to be sneaky, holy Ur’Vash, we might as well be more sneaky!

With that thought, she paused to add more purple triangles and blue swirls to her arms war paint.

-Not that we can even hide from the lightning! she complained, as two more blue and white bolts found a nearby group of Ur’Vash.

“None of it is hitting that accursed barrier!” Teng Chunhua signed, as three more bolts literally bent before their eyes, scything off through the landscape all around them.

-And I bet that is where any prisoners are, she added in her own heart.

Almost in passing, she pushed her qi into the Ur’Vash who was slumped by a rock on the inner edge of the camp, using her divination art to help him heal. He had been badly injured, burnt and hit by lightning. In doing so, she thought she vaguely recognised him as well.

“Was he the one who led the warband from the Golden Grass village?” she signed to Teng Chunhua as the other continued to send arrows mostly at random towards groups of cultivators.

“Maybe?” Teng Chunhua muttered.

Shaking her head, she dragged the lucky Ur’Vash behind the rock, which was less rock and more tumbled down wall she was starting to realise, and shoved a Longevity Lingzhe into his still burned hands before moving on.

“There!” Teng Chunhua snarled suddenly, pointing.

Turning, she saw a group of maybe ten, all in silver and grey robes with various trim, standing on the edge of the inner barrier, directing people?

“Sheng Zhao!” Teng Chunhua sneered, pulling out one of the black arrows and sending it straight into the barrier.

To both their shock, it went straight through and nearly hit the cultivator who had tried to kill Teng Chunhua in the head, only to be stopped at the last second by a tall youth with an arrogant expression in a silver robe with golden trim.

“…”

“Suddenly I regret throwing the spear when I did,” she sighed, quickly checking her quiver for more of those arrows.

Finding one, she added extra purple and blue to it…

{Heart Shifting Steps}

Letting her eyes rove over those visible to her, she hunted for the most ‘auspicious’ target in regards to breaking the barrier. It took a moment, but she finally alighted on a group who were a bit farther back, in green robes mainly, focused on a shimmering orb.

Pausing, she added white, red and yellow to the arrows, effectively making them orange with white points. It was hard to say why she even did it… However, it just felt right in the moment somehow.

{Kun Jumps for Heaven}

Affixing the orb and the person using it in her mind’s eye, she executed one of only three moves from the Kun Archery Manual she had ever been any good at. Archery was the hardest of the lot, requiring attainments in soul intent to get anywhere with. In this instant, all she could do was trust to the strange strength of the Ur’Vash and the divination art.

Exhaling, she sent the arrow high into the sky, watching it arc down, passing through the barrier, even as she sent three more after it. Two missed, burying themselves in the ground; however, the third hit one of those maintaining the barrier. That one collapsed like a puppet that had lost its strings and the entire barrier section wavered and vanished in a crack of destabilising space.

The last two arrows both managed to hit the same stumbling cultivator, who again collapsed like a broken puppet.

“So put red, white and yellow on our arrows,” Teng Chunhua observed dully.

“So it seems,” she nodded, already running from where they had been.

That act, though, was enough, because the lightning above arrived, twisting unnaturally as it hunted for the gap. Two smaller barriers shattered like glass before tens of bolts rampaged into the inner camp, vengefully seeking everywhere.

She ducked out of the way, grimacing as indiscriminate lashes of fire and spear principle hammered down in their general area and wrecked a terrible toll on the skirmishing Ur’Vash around her who were now all rushing for the gap.

She aimed at one of the disciples wearing the grey colours of Argent Justice Sect and shot one of the arrows at them. This one was black and red with two bands of yellow, and it travelled stupidly fast as she watched it, hitting the unfortunate cultivator over the heart and exploding with enough force to send them flying backwards.

As they were busy considering their next move, the battle against the tribulation legion above them reached a sudden, shocking conclusion and the Retribution Hall roared again as the oppression intensified yet again. Above them, a great golden lattice – 99 golden and black lightning bolts resembling terrible heavenly chains tipped with devouring black hooks – streaked down towards Lin Ling.

The vestigial shadows of the barrier she had briefly damaged also started to shift back into focus over the gap she had made. However, those protected by it were just as stunned, if not more so, than she was.

-Weird, that I am basically inured to it… is that because of the Ur’Vash?

Staring up at it, the darkness there whispered to her, called to her. Shuddering, she turned away from it and back to the fight below. Likely there was symbolism in it, but focusing on it with Heart Shifting Steps felt like the ‘baddest’ of all bad ideas – especially because the darkness seemed to want that.

“Seek us out…” words like a clarion call shook her mind suddenly.

“We are the only path...” grasping, greedy…

“Righteous…” overbearing and tyrannical…

“Become ours…” hungry…

-Please overcome it quickly, she shivered, wishing Lin Ling all the good fortune she could.

Banishing the whispers of the void as best she could, she wondered if it was just her, or if everyone else was also experiencing them. The descent of another barrage of lightning, half a dozen bolts in red, blue and green, reminded her that there were more pressing worries.

To her right, a mustering formation was scattered, the hillside around them ravaged – however, by comparison the cultivators were now being thoroughly pelted by them. She could see various groups using talismans or artefacts to lessen the barrage, but that was clearly a short term strategy, because for every bolt they shifted or dispersed, usually two or three more came back a moment later.

The tribulation on the far side of the camp seemed to have finished, but as she watched two… then three and finally five different bolts of various colours arrived, tearing into the barrier. Rather than scatter though, they recoiled and hit a second time, their colours deepening, even as those in the camps tried to use talismans to blunt the barrage.

They managed to delay it a third time, by which point she could see clearly that green-robed figures were racing for one side of the-

A golden bolt hit the broken part, ripping it apart like gossamer. The shockwave of its passing threw her – and everyone else – flat as it twisted into a camp and…

“What?” Teng Chunhua stared dully as the bolt scattered backwards.

“It failed,” she replied. “The person it was targeted at… died.”

She could guess what had happened in all likelihood. Someone had made an advance, their tribulation got messed up and then likely a senior within the camp had killed them to maintain the integrity of the barrier as a whole. As a solution to the problem it was rather drastic, but she could see why they would be willing to risk the lesser implication of interfering with a tribulation to preserve the greater barrier, given they were already invested in more directly manipulating the tribulation above anyway.

However, on that side of the camp within the barrier,there was now outright anarchy. Two of the groups were suddenly fighting each other and the Jade Gate Court, she realised, even as another section of the-

{NINE LUMINARIES CELESTIAL LANCE}

Nine silver lances of yin qi so profound they made her body cold just looking at it, hit another weakened section of the barrier from the direction of the lake, shattering it directly and consuming a large area within in silver fire.

A second section of the barrier crumbled away, even as soul senses tried to scour outwards and various talismans worked to ‘blunt’ the attack. Two more arrows came after it though, crashing down into the weakened barrier until a third did what she could not and scattered another section thoroughly.

“The cultivators are fighting each other?” Teng Chunhua turned to look into the distance.

“I guess,” she nodded, not that surprised in truth. “What is surprising is that it’s taken this long-”

She was in the middle of searching for a new target to torment when the final chain collapsed and she felt a boundless tyrannical pressure press down on them like an immense boot.

Unlike the previous permutations, this one went for them, even as her divination art drew her attention to the middle of the camp, where she could now make out a small, scattered ruin that was the focus of whatever formation was being used to attempt the manipulation of the heavens above.

Several groups of cultivators did choose that opportunity to cut and run, she noted. A bunch in white robes, mainly women slinging some deeply inauspicious talismans behind them as they went, talismans that consumed two camps of green tents in silvery blue fire.

She had no time to worry about that though, because above them the sky was literally dropping – twisting and warping as a spectral silver bolt descended from the emperor enthroned in the clouds.

Within that, she saw a shadow of a youth, born out of her nightmares.

An impossible thing, because there was no rational explanation for how it could be there, in the middle of such a vast tribulation, yet it was undeniable.

'A hand grasping her neck, pushing her back against a stele-'

'Blood burning her naked body-'

'Cold hands in a dark pool, grasping her, dragging her down-'

'White mist, five eyes, deathless, peering at her through eternity-'

'Words, barely remembered, echoing as they greedily caressed her-'

She tried to scream, to shout, to reject, anything-

The world froze, colours becoming far too vivid for her comfort.

The barrier ahead of them dispersed; in fact, every barrier within her sight dispersed, allowing her to see the small ruin. In the middle of it was a tree, growing out of a rock on which someone had painted a series of faded spirals of blue and gold like flowers and suns amid a swirling sky.

A few offerings might have been there once, on a faded white slab, but they were scattered away. In their place stood a circle of ten cultivators in green robes with white masks, a small jade and gold compass hanging in the air above them.

Something about the rock, the ring of twelve stones and the withered tree, now blooming with golden flowers within the collection of ruined foundations, was oddly familiar, but she couldn’t place why.

Beyond it, a smaller lake glimmered, even as the peonies blossomed.

Every plant of grass, remaining shrub, trees, the reeds by the lake, and the plants within it – everything bloomed.

The cruel denial and executing intent within the silver and black edged bolt dissipated, fading away like a bad dream.

In its place…

In its place, the flowers held a gentle aura of prosperity and good fortune.

The land around them twisted and changed. The tree and its rock were within a shallow pond in a clearing between the ruined buildings, now subsumed by the shallow lake. Upon the waters, a white silhouette of a female figure stood, holding the compass in one hand, considering it, even as she looked beyond it to the ‘emperor’ in the sky-

Their eyes met, even as the peonies continued to bloom and the land twisted. Blue eyes, boundless like the sky, gazed through her, through her life… not judging, just… appraising, somehow, before the sense vanished. What lingered, though, was a strange sense of ‘completion’ within the symbol in her mind’s eye and an intuitive understanding that the figure she had just seen and the talisman had some kind of ‘link’ and maybe also a link to the ‘Maker’s Dancers’.

The clouds intensified, the frozen figures around the compass shaking. The emperor in the sky howled in fury, and grasped down for the white shadow-

In that instant, the figure closed her hand around the compass and it shattered like glass. In the depths of the bloom, a terrible shade rose up, a promise of catastrophe and misfortune beyond heaven and earth for anyone or anything that crossed their origin.

The darkness above deepened and for a second, familiar stars resonated. The clouds twisted, and the emperor howled in denial and fury as a grasping, silver hand-

The sky was overturned; that was the only way to describe it.

Colours just swapped places. Black becoming white and fading to blue sky. To see it happen was like watching a conjurer’s trick. One minute they were amid the terrible storm clouds with lightning hammering down, then the flowers swept it all away.

The titanic rolls of thunder, the vast oppression, the darkness, the greed… all were just memories in her mind, a nightmare now awoken from.

The pressure vanished, even if the world still did not move.

The barriers shattered, swept away with the last vestiges of dark clouds.

The flowers bloomed everywhere and the landscape shifted around her.

Amid the golden flowers, the grass regrew, hills reformed, the lake sparkled, the lingering traces of lightning in the sky dissipated.

The sky was blue, birds chirped, the sun shone down and in the distance a horned jaguar howled.

When they finally faded away, they left a strange trace within her qi – and, she realised, within Chunhua and the qi of every Ur’Vash and cultivator she could see nearby.

It felt like the faint glow of the summer sun, the breath of fresh air, the vibrancy of a renewed world – in fact, she saw that resonance in some cultivators as well, which was surprising. However, in many, mostly those who she would bet spirit stones had been proactive in messing with the tribulation, it held a faint, almost unseen shadow.

-The depth behind it… she shivered, wondering what kind of curse they had just, in truth, invoked.

Within a heartbeat, the obviousness of the signature vanished as if it never was, allowing her no time to dwell on that.

The strength stopping the world released and she slumped to the ground, barely able to support herself with her sword-staff.

Everywhere, Ur’Vash were prostrating themselves in silence. The drums and the distant fighting were gone...

Nearby an Ur’Vash mumbled dully, “Today is bluest day of whole life.”

Another, drawing out a pot of yellow dye, muttered, “Now is Golden Flower tribe… See revelation from ancient ancestor…”

-Somehow I don’t think the cultivators who were just at the epicentre of whatever that was would agree, she thought to herself.

Undulating chants were starting to pick up in the distance as Ur’Vash elsewhere came to terms with their survival and this apparent good fortune that fell from heaven for them.

Others were weeping, or just shaking in silence as they held their weapons, mumbling about signs of ancient gods or good fortune walking the world. Many were daubing themselves with golden flowers, either over their hearts or on their faces, using yellow ochre – passing around lumps that they had acquired from somewhere.

Looking around, she stared at the cultivators. With the land reformed and no barriers to obscure her sight, they were now looking down the shallow slope towards the camp, which was sprawled through the foundation ruins beside the shallow lake.

Everywhere was chaos, recriminations and shouting. The Jade Gate Court was still somehow in control, but many different groups were already looking in the direction of the epicentre of the tribulation with undisguised greed visible on their faces.

Among them, she recognised both Din Ouyeng and Hao Tai, among others.

Wordlessly, she pulled out another of the black bone arrows and dunked it in her pot of the beast blood, before adding purple and gold to it, and aimed it at Din Ouyeng.

{One with What Is}

{Heart Shifting Steps}

Releasing the arrow, she watched it lazily slip through the air, tracing the arc to its target.

Sadly, he noticed it just a fraction too early for the hit to land. It scraped past his temple as he turned his head and landed in the chest of a silver-robed cultivator who clutched at it in shock.

Moments later, his scream of agony split the relative calm of the moment, reminding everyone within earshot that there were a bunch of interlopers who they had a possibly religious duty to kill at this point.

She also found herself the unfortunate epicentre of a dozen enraged soul senses, thoroughly vindicating her decision to actively manifest ‘One with What Is’. Even so, the force of the retaliation was shocking and immediate.

In truth, as a Qi Refinement cultivator, any one of the dozens of Immortals below would have been able to wring her out like a bloody rag, or should have – let alone those at higher realms.

She staggered like a drunk and felt blood rising, sobbing inwardly as she narrowly avoided vomiting up half her stomach. Even with the support of her mantra, her inner organs were ravaged by the waves of cruel intent.

However, their soul attacks hit both the mnemonic Lin Ling had taught them and the attack made her the immediate focus of every Ur’Vash around her.

It was that latter element which likely tipped the balance in her favour and probably saved her life, even as she cursed, getting pulled up in their flow and shooting without any preparation for the aftermath. Fortunately, the worst of the injuries were hidden by her mask, or the dye and war paint, and seeing her fail to fall, the vast Ur’Vash howled, raising their weapons.

A second wave of soul attacks arrived furiously. Making her limbs grow cold and her mind fog – however, they abated almost instantly, because a swathe of explosions from arrows tore through the camp, targeting those who had tried to kill her.

With an enraged scream, several hundred enraged Ur’Vash surged forward at the camp, with a berserk fury that was, if anything, even stronger than it had been before. In the same instant, she saw Din Ouyeng’s group and two others shoot off over the hillside in the direction of Lin Ling, even as Teng Chunhua arrived beside her and started to drag her backwards, pushing her own qi into her to help her heal and stabilize the injuries.

In truth, she had to acknowledge that her situation, of her own making, was really not good. While she had managed to disperse most of it, two of those threads were still trying to rip her body apart, continuing to wear down the increasingly feeble shell of protection that her mantra was providing with the support of the symbol and her stealth art-

However, just as they broke through, surging with triumph for what she was sure was her mind’s eye, the tiny seed of golden qi, which had been fusing with the symbol in her mind’s eye shimmered-

‘Bestowal’ surged and the qi throughout her body acquired a momentary sense of obfuscation.

In that moment, the situation in her body overturned like a flipped talisman. The two probing, violating soul intents were scattered – smashed as if they were hollow pots, as if their realm had no meaning at all.

In the distance, two cultivators emitted piercing screams, their soul intents running out of control as they crumpled, vomiting blood from all their orifices.

Gasping in pain, she pushed herself to her feet, grabbed for her bow and, fixing one of those cultivators in her mind’s eye, planted an arrow with red, blue and yellow in their face, watching it explode. Sadly, they were well over the Nascent Soul realm, so it was just embarrassing.

Several talismans exploded nearby, but such was the coalescence of auspicious energy in the vicinity that she doubted anything other than a direct soul attack, like she had just experienced, would even score a meaningful hit.

Snarling in inarticulate rage, she made her way forward, shooting another arrow, rather arbitrarily, at a woman in fancy robes from the Argent Justice Sect. It hit her in the leg, making her scream and curse.

{Nine Exterminations Star Fall}

A further silver arrow dropped out of the sky, scattering into dozens of smaller ones onto one of the main camps with green tents, throwing everything into chaos.

Her third arrow nearly hit a youth in the chest as he fled from that, before inexplicably deviating to turn a remnant of a pale tent nearby to tatters.

A fourth didn’t explode, making her realise she had just wasted a precious arrow, which only deepened the antipathy she felt at this point. Snatching a bowl of yellow ochre pigment from the hands of a passing Ur’Vash who had been daubing flowers on other Ur’Vash, she poured it all over the arrows in her quiver.

Passing the bowl back to the stunned Ur’Vash, who had yelped and jumped backwards when he noticed her presence, she shot a cultivator in a green robe in the back of the head, smirking as it exploded, before sending two drifting arrows after the last group heading for Lin Ling’s probable location.

A normal lightning bolt arched over towards her-

In comparison to the horrible bolts she had endured before, it barely did more than blister her skin.

-Also, probably because the Ur’Vash are doing something, a part of her observed.

That shared connection was, if anything, even more profound now.

“What look like prisoners, that way!” Teng Chunhua pointed, drawing her attention abruptly towards a group of figures in green robes who were extricating several clearly bound figures from the ruins of a tent in the middle of the camp, even as a further silver arrow dropped out of the sky on a camp resisting the Ur’Vash on the far side.

“About time,” she hissed, nocking another arrow and sending it arcing over at that distant group.

~ Lin Ling – A pond, adjusting to her circumstances. ~

Lin Ling opened her eyes and briefly wondered, for a brief, confused moment if she had died. The world was a sea of golden flowers and she was floating in a small pond, very much not in a smoking, glassed crater in the middle of a shattered battlefield strewn with corpses and lightning.

Sitting up, she flailed, momentarily, then stood waist deep with her feet in cool mud and froze again.

She stared at herself, splashing into the water she had just tried to sit up on. All around her, the colours were vivid, real in a way that she had never experienced before. The qi of the surroundings almost sang with life, and her connection to it was…

“Oh, right, of course, that array is still active,” she mumbled.

She stared at herself from two different angles as she picked herself up out of the pond, and could only acknowledge that the experience was quite odd.

She, both in body and soul, looked older now, which confused her a bit until the memories helpfully supplied that her Nascent Soul was now the ‘controlling aspect’ of how she looked. Because she had always been annoyed at being short and a bit underdeveloped…

She stared at her new body, not sure whether to laugh or cry, because she was truly an idealised version of herself, given her body had completely reformed in the course of the tribulation – nearly as tall as Juni, much more reasonably proportioned in her own mind, rather tanned and toned.

Her core, which spun in her dantian, also spun in her Nascent Soul’s own dantian. There was also a shared link through her Sea of Knowledge, her spirit root, the symbol…

Looking at that, she felt her perception twist again and grimaced. Closing her eyes, the moment of dissociation passed and her Nascent Soul was back in her own body.

Exhaling, she examined the connection again, and found they made much more sense now. The main link was in fact the symbol, which was in her Sea of Knowledge, her Golden Core, her body and also, strangely, what the memories called the ‘root of her potentia’, but which she manage to parse as her ‘spirit root’.

The second link, was the new set of meridians which were held within her Nascent Soul, which was floating in her dantian, arms outstretched, surrounded by a faint halo of yang qi. Her Nascent Soul also had a copy of her skeletal structure and her inner organs, she realised, which was downright bizarre.

The memories themselves were now residing in her Sea of Knowledge, almost entirely divorced from the yang blood. That was thoroughly melded into her vital qi at this point, laws and all, though she could barely touch a fraction of the strength, let alone wield it easily in her current form.

From them, though, she was able to synthesise roughly what her situation was in a manner that could be considered broadly rational.

She was no longer a half blood Ankalderon, at least not in the primordial sense. The ‘beast’ within the blood had been removed by the events of the tribulation, along with a bunch of other ‘issues’ she had been battling with, mainly related to the younger ‘bloodline memories’ – apologetically now foregrounded.

In short it seemed like the prideful rage and some weird personality traits that could arise from it had been severed rather fortuitously.

She wanted to be angry at them; in fact she was angry at them, because in a few cases she could see how, like ‘Alexios’, they had tried to use her. However, for the majority, it was like trying to be angry with a small kitten – cute lizard, in this case – staring up at her with tear-filled eyes, asking for understanding.

The older memories, largely unchanged she noted, suggested that this was good fortune their wastrel descendants didn’t really deserve and the way it had dropped out of the sky like that was something you could not plan for in the slightest.

Thanks to that very ill-judged use of essence from an ancient parasol tree, her previous brushes with the blood rage allowed her to get a bit too close to some very interesting ancestral memories. She had managed to profit in a way that should make sages spit blood with anger and envy. They also suggested that something else had played a part, but even they could not really pin it down – related to the complex she had explored… and the toys she had replaced in the chest.

The final ingredients to the whole mess had been the way in which her memories had been put back together both for good and ill, and what was done to the tribulation itself, along with the connection to the land via the array.

The end result, though, was that she had created a perfect storm of sorts and, by sheer dint of not dying horribly, had formed a Mortal Physique.

{Yang Bearing Shield Mortal Physique}

As she looked at the transformed symbol, which hung like a small, glittering crystal lattice in her Sea of Knowledge, the memories suggested, rather obnoxiously in fact, that it was neither strong nor weak.

An interesting interpretation on Ancient Shield Bearer True Physique with hints of Pure Yang Heavenly Physique, meted out from her combined experience.

-Can’t you at least be a little bit supportive? she complained-

In that instant, two memories assailed her.

The first was a shadow in the heavens, a black hole in the void that devoured all, breaking everything it touched and raising its bearer up to the highest of thrones. Her gaze alone was enough to shatter the heavens, her strength unequalled, a rival to…

A dark lotus, booming amid a sea of stars, vast, untouchable, within it was all – The Beginning. Without, was all – The Ending. Stars glittered, worlds spun within it, heaven and earth reforming eternal.

-Heaven Breaker Mortal Physique, the ancient turtle sighed.

-Lotus Incarnate Mortal Physique, a dark serpent murmured, awed somehow.

-These are of the apex. You dare to call your little spark great before such as these? Another chuckled.

-We do not demean. Even we are not so great as these… and we have seen others just as fearful.

Other images swirled in her mind, conjured by the memories.

‘Five Rivers Mortal Physique’, a thing of the samsara, before mortals even knew what it was, as ancient as the first two…

‘Absolute Yang Mortal Physique’, the furious strength of the resurgent cosmos, bound as a living seed to become a gate between what was and what might be.

‘Gift Bringer’, ‘Abyssal Ocean’, ‘Red Dust’ and more besides… each had carried their bearers beyond the very heavens themselves… and those were just the ones they knew of from their own lifetimes.

They also noted that while those were basically unique there were other equally fearful aspects amid the True Physiques and Heavenly Physiques. Even Earthly Physiques were absolutely not to be underestimated.

-No weakness here, only eyes that cannot see, the old turtle snickered.

It was a sobering reality check to see images of some of them in action. Purifying Yang True Physique was… particularly shocking, allowing its user to draw strength directly from yang suns, almost without limit, strengthening their body beyond what she would have believed as she watched a phoenix rise above a world, consuming the entire sun in the process.

Apparently that one was possessed by the Vast Mists Heavenly Clan, while the Ancient Mo Clan apparently possessed another two True Physiques called ‘Binary Ruin’ and ‘Red Harmony’. The former did something similar to the Yang Physique, but fed off the strength of their collapse, while in the latter, a woman painted in red walked through worlds, turning unjust war to peace and stolen peace to war, leaving only ruination in her wake without ever lifting a finger.

Exhaling, she pushed the rather disturbing scenes of a power able to induce slaughter even in the absence of it, because such a force ‘had’ to exist – along with the incidental and rather terrifying glut of information that came with most of those scenes and their context – to the back of her mind.

Instead, she considered her principle.

{Yang as a Shield}

Under its impetus, all around her, the field of golden flowers was dissolving away. The symbol, which was gently guiding her qi around, was breathing the petals as they transformed into qi around her, incorporating them into her body and letting the quiet strength within them cleanse and bathe her meridians, flesh and bones, as well as her soul with the power held within them.

The ‘Principle’ was still nascent in many ways, but it was incontrovertible proof that she was a Dao Seeking cultivator.

The memories laughed at that, actually amused at the title, instead stating that she could be considered as a ‘Quasi-Immortal’ by her terms. It was still complete and stable, they pointed out, nothing to seek, only to refine… and prove.

She wondered how preposterous that was… and the memories just laughed again.

-Little child, born in her pool, open your eyes and see the sky, the old turtle laughed.

-These worlds are not weak like your withered skies. This is a reflection of the pure land, a treasure born of ancient days, where all strove day by day. Struggle is etched into its bones, another hissed.

-Indeed, these places have only one path, no kingdom or glory here, no walls to hide behind, no thrones to bow to.

-Here you can only fight and struggle and strive, and make your own way.

-Here there is only the wild, and no matter what later generations have wrought, that is its true heart!

-This land, even if it is just a reflected echo, is truer than your stolen skies and warped thrones…

Their words made her shiver, a little in fear, but actually, mainly in anticipation, because there was a terrible truth in their words, she could feel it intuitively. The strength of this place was a test, a thing to push against, to truly seek your limits.

Here, in places like this, you could forge yourself into means that were greater than the sum of their parts… and at the same time, not for the first time, she found herself wondering why they had picked her.

-Because our foolish descendants succumbed…

-Our path was hampered, cut off by greed.

-Cut off by the curse of future heavens.

-Seized by vengeance…

-You are human; your malleability is why you are.

-We had that once, but it was shriven from us…

-Also, the last of our line was male… another snickered, a bit cheekily.

“…”

She wasn’t sure what to make of that, although the implication was profoundly disagreeable given her recent experiences.

They shrugged and she got a much more diffuse explanation that ‘biology’ was what it was…

-Biology?

They ignored that question, proving that some things did not change it seemed, and went on to relay in a sort of patchwork way, that it had more to do with the innate and transformative differences between male and female on a much more metaphysical level than just having lots of children.

-In any case, your children could not inherit us… or the power in your soul, the dark serpent hissed.

-Indeed, the old turtle agreed.

-That was our curse, the most ancient one that had crawled out of the water and ‘become’, added. We could not pass on our strength, not in a pure way, and every generation had to find their own way.

-Until they became lost, and relied on others, one of the bird-like ones sneered.

That at least cleared up that, she considered. Her ‘True Physique’ could have been seized or stolen. They functioned on ‘Lineage’ which made them strong, but also vulnerable to being diluted or torn away.

-If others take what you have wrought, it will become damaged goods… Beyond that, we cannot really explain, another murmured.

-Dangerous, hollow, the dark serpent agreed, its words carrying the implication that somehow the knowledge itself was problematic?

-It is enough that you have achieved this, the turtle added, all but confirming that suspicion.

Shaking her head, she looked around. Her storage talisman was there, a dull pull in her head about ten metres to her left, buried in the mud of the pool. Recovering it, she waded to the shore, checking that it was undamaged as she did so.

Annoyingly she had tipped out the entire talisman in her haste… so her clothes gotten from Chunhua were now likely ash and scraps somewhere else. She was also very human-looking, which amid a large group of angry Ur’Vash activity targeting anyone who looked not like them, was not a good thing.

What she did have was a crude grass cloak, which she quickly transformed into a tunic of sorts and put on for modesty. She was just contemplating what to do about a mask, when several soul senses swept over her and locked onto her location.

Turning, she narrowed her eyes as she found a dozen figures standing on the hill beyond the shallow pond.

“Well, isn’t that convenient,” she murmured, as she set eyes on Din Ouyeng, wearing a half face mask, amid them.

They were looking at her in… confusion, although her principle gave her some interesting reads on that.

“Little sister!” one of them, wearing a golden robe, called over. “It is great that you survived!”

“Yes, where is the beast? Did you see it?” another added, as they moved rapidly across to stand near her on the shoreline, looking about with ‘earnest concern’.

“…”

-Ah, of course, she put on her best, neutral face. My aura is totally changed, my body changed, I have a principle and my spirit root is entirely different from when Din Ouyeng last laid eyes on me. Not to mention I was barely Qi Refinement.

Likely Din Ouyeng knew what ‘Lin Ling’ looked like, but as she was now, she looked nothing like that old Lin Ling.

She was currently scruffy, tanned, wearing a grass smock and despite it only being… well, maybe two months since they were last face to face, a person could change a lot in a few months of hardship.

The second reason, amusingly, was that she looked older.

“Oh… umm… I think it died,” she replied. That wasn’t really a lie; it had actually died in the tribulation, from a certain point of view anyway – if you were talking about the ‘beast’, which was what they had asked.

“I don’t believe I recognise you…” another frowned, looking her over a bit impolitely, truth be told.

“…”

“And you are in the process of ogling every lady in our group that closely?” she shot back sourly, clutching her tunic around her.

Probably these bastards did and had, and had such status that most of the eligible ladies available to them had been all over them in any case. That likely meant they were just stalling for time for some reason, knowing or suspecting full well who she was. That was fine by her as well, because her power was still stabilising.

“Haha…” One of them laughed, shaking his head. “Little sister…”

“Who is your little sister, you could at least give me a tunic, given the sorry mess our fight with those demons has become,” she pointed out, pulling the cloak tighter again.

“Ah, of course,” another, dressed in the green of the Jade Gate Court nodded. “Where are our manners?”

-Violently dead somewhere, their locations known only by your mothers, I suspect, she muttered in her heart.

“Our sincere apologies,” the grey-robed youth nodded and passed her a dress.

She stared at it, because she recognised the design, and the motif – it was one of Liao Ying’s.

“…”

She resisted just ending them all then and there, and instead reached out and took it. In the same instant, her soul sense shivered as ‘One with What Is’ and her symbol both blocked something. The soul attack vanished like a rock into the void-

She stepped backward-

Din Ouyeng, his face half hidden by a white mask that read ‘golden’, stood before her, his hand lightly resting on hers, locking her in place, or at least trying to. His soul strength also barely touched her, the symbol dispersing it even as his touch gave her arms goose pimples.

Her memories supplied that mortal physiques were… tricky, when it came to soul attacks, not immune, but far more durable – the other art was also helping, as was her mantra. Also, they had grievously underestimated her resilience in the first instance.

That last point, she had to concede, was really funny.

“What are you trying to do?” she quavered, stumbling back.

“You think you can disassemble that easily, beast?” the grey-robed youth smirked, also moving to stand beside her, even as Din Ouyeng just grinned at her.

If she hadn’t seen Di Ji, she would still have been taken in by the roguish charm in how they presented themselves. However, in their every movement, she could only see that darkness of those unpleasant memories.

“It was unexpected that you would be able to attain a purely human form like this,” Din Ouyeng mused. “However, you are the right realm, and nobody with a soul signature close to yours has ever been present within the group, ever since I met up fortuitously with that old blustering bundle of arrogance Cang.”

“…”

She sighed, looking at them. “If I didn’t know you were travelling with that Kong Ji I’d be surprised, given how elegant you all comport yourselves…”

“…”

Din Ouyeng blinked.

“Brother Ji is here?” another of the green-robed youths asked, surprised.

The others looked mostly confused as well, which a part of her thought was kind of cute.

-Oh, if only you knew how big a pit your buddy here has planted you in, she giggled.

Pushing her principle out, she tried to use it to free her hand and also pressure the others – curious mainly to see what impact it would have. As she expected, it was easily rebuffed.

“Little beast, you want to show your meagre principle in front of a Peerless Golden Immortal?” the purple-robed youth snickered.

“Just accept that you are now in our hands!” the green-robed, dark-haired youth chuckled.

“…”

Sighing, she decided to wrap this up without any more messing about.

“Stop”

The word, supplied by her memories, made her wince as it emptied out her soul strength completely, took away a good portion of the refined qi in her body for a brief moment and put a strange pressure into her Sea of Knowledge that was akin to a warning not to do that too many times in a row.

For that cheap, cheap price though, all nine of them were frozen, locked on the spot by the focus of the worldly principles that had moved to make her words reality. Because they were merely principles, their constraints wouldn’t last long, but they would give her maybe…

“…”

She stared dully at their frozen forms, because she had expected to have a few seconds at most, but had in fact gotten almost 20 to work with.

-Hollow seeds, the memories whispered.

-Strange, their strength is not their own, the old amphibian mused.

-The question is why though?

Looking at them, even their perception was robbed, which really should not have been the case if they were the same realm as the purity of their qi suggested.

Two held swords, treasure weapons in all likelihood; the rest held talismans, except for ‘Din Ouyeng’ who was still frozen before her, eyes blank. Stepping away, she grasped the hand of the nearest one and pulled off their storage ring.

“Divide”

The word split his qi from the ring, also erasing the soul seal using the momentum of the world around her.

Such a method only really worked because she was still drawing on the accumulation of the land through the array. While still linked to it, she could basically unbind the weapon of anyone who was merely at the principle step, the memories suggested.

Sending her soul sense into it, she tossed it away with a hiss, watching it fragment then freeze as the locking of space took over, constraining even the trap that had been triggered with the removal of the mark. There had been nothing in it anyway, beyond a few talismans and spirit stones to power them.

Looking around at the others, she didn’t bother with the weapons and instead just took the talismans.

-One is a restraint talisman aimed at fire attribute beasts and the others are all designed to disperse my soul power without harming my ‘foundation’? They really are trying to capture me alive it seems, she mused.

She frowned, looking at the nine again, keenly aware that time was ticking away, but more and more convinced that something was off here. Walking back to the green-robed one, she put her palm over his heart.

“Devour!”

His body convulsed as his qi roiled out and flowed into her. Her Yang Principle devoured what it could and the blood dealt with the rest, easily replenishing all the qi she had just spent.

“…”

The ease with which it was pulled out of his body was surprising – also, the quantity. From the memories she had a pretty good idea of how much qi a being at the strength of a Golden Immortal was, and it should have filled her up a hundred times over. The words did not have efficiency issues either, like if she was devouring it from a core where the foundation might be damaged.

-It could be a very crude version of what ‘blood rage’ is able to do, the old turtle suggested.

-So they have Golden Immortal quality qi and Soul Intent in their bodies?

As such, she had just absorbed what amounted to the qi reserves of a rather weak Immortal that happened to be of a quality and purity to be a Golden Immortal.

Narrowing her eyes, she took in all of them and then whispered the lesser version of what she had intended to use before.

“Soul Break!”

Before, she had had to burn quite a bit of longevity and rely on the latent soul strength of the blood to use such a phrase, but now, she only had to sacrifice a few centuries of her 25,000 year odd lifespan and a third of her qi to reach the same effect.

The echoes of the word hit all of them simultaneously. With no way to resist, and likely not expecting a soul attack in any case, she got to watch as blood welled up from their eyes and their qi turned chaotic under the impetus of the words.

Looking at them, she sighed in her heart as the freezing of the space ended. All of them were Dao Seeking or Immortal Cultivators. Their latent qi was ruined and they had no soul foundations to speak of, just phantasmal ones that smashed like brittle crystal at the slightest blow.

“Absorb”

She pulled in all the orphaned soul strength and qi, using it to recuperate what she had spent while she pondered what to do. Walking back to ‘Din Ouyeng’, she took the mask off and stared at his face.

“You are definitely the face I recall from before…” she mused, staring up at the lip of the nearby hill, then around at the pond and also at the two small rock outcroppings.

-Someone controlled them to look like people from the Jade Gate Court and Argent Justice Sect, to be led by Din Ouyeng…?

-Did I make a mistake when I called out Din Ouyeng by name, or is he really here?

Standing up, she looked at the others, and then turned to look around again, narrowing her eyes, because the instincts within the blood were now certain there was a ploy here-

Nine figures appeared, in a rough ring around her, each holding a talisman attuned to the qi and soul strength she had just ‘absorbed’ from each body. Among them, she recognised the 'real' Din Ouyeng, and also, noted that another, a pretty faced youth wearing silver robes had Han Shu's sword slung across his back.

Each one sent out a silver chain that punched through her body, binding her in place, body and soul.

“Ha!” the silver-robed youth laughed.

“It is as you said, Brother Tai. A beast is still a beast,” the purple-robed youth chuckled, addressing the silver one.

“Greedy, even if she is quite pretty in that form,” Hao Tai nodded, smirking.

“I am sure you can have fun teaching her tricks and feeding her little treats later,” the other green-robed youth snickered.

The others just looked amused, while Din Ouyeng, the real one, just looked at her with narrowed eyes.

The nine bodies around her were now just empty puppets, as far as she could see.

-That explains why they baited such a trap. It was to make me absorb their qi unawares and use their principles to cage me?

It was also likely that they didn’t want to deal with her ‘other’ form.

Truthfully, she grimaced inwardly, she would have a serious problem were she a normal cultivator. The chains were locking her connection between her physical body and her Nascent Soul, effectively sealing up her dantian… except, she had a unified body and soul, and the Mortal Physique had an extra set of meridians that flowed from her core to her soul directly, bypassing the chains and their suppressive effect entirely.

The second reason they were not really taking seemed to relate to the way she had crossed the final tribulation, near as she could tell. In removing those chains, she had somehow lessened the agency of worldly sealing techniques of all types on her physical form.

-So that kind of method has such a surprising benefit? She shook her head admiringly, before turning back to look at her nine captors.

“Not bad,” she conceded. “But I feel like you are underestimating me.”

“You think you have words to speak here, little beast? That tribulation was indeed a bit shocking…” Hao Tai sneered.

“But a fruit is best plucked fresh,” a purple-robed youth grinned.

“…”

“So I have been told,” she nodded, smiling brightly. “I should actually thank you. Had you just let me break through normally, you could have wrapped me up in a parcel and fucked me far better than that monster ever managed to.”

“Brutal Reversal”

The words hit them like hammers, not targeting their souls, because that word set was annoying, and she didn’t have a lot of soul power to catalyse it a few times.

Instead she leveraged the connection she had to their qi directly via the seals and used the word to attack their meridian channels. Smirking, she watched the nine scream and vomit blood as their own cultivation foundations ran backwards, their qi running out of their control under the impetus of her words as they wrestled with what amounted to a full blown qi deviation.

That was her real advantage here. She didn’t have to fight with their rules, but could use most of the methods available via the memories.

The beauty of that was, as the memories had pointed out to her, that qi or mana deviations were dangerous irrespective of realm. They had the same cumulative effect on someone in who was in the 7th circle as they might in the first. A Golden Immortal would spit blood just as easily as a Qi Condensation neophyte.

Sighing, she stepped through the chains, which shattered like glass, given how brittle their hold on her was, and darted towards Din Ouyeng, intending to-

Rather than collapse, the nine talismans became the eight corners of a cube, with the ninth in Din Ouyeng’s hand.

“Break”

Her yell washed off the iridescent wall to little effect other than making it ripple a bit, proving that it was as spatial as much as spiritual. The chains, still trying to grasp her eight meridian gates, were now anchored to the corners. The last one, anchored into her third eye, even if it didn’t do much when faced with her Mortal Physique and ‘One with What Is’.

She watched as it compressed inwards on her, exerting pressure on her by collapsing the air within to put pressure on her. At the same time, she observed that some hidden aspect, entirely separate from the ‘chains’, was also compressing and twisting her qi – attempting to slowly force it out of her body.

It might have been effective, eventually, if the chains could actually get purchase. However, she was still able to draw qi from the array she was linked to. Unless they managed to cut that off, she could just sit here, recovering her strength as far as she could see.

“So… now what?” she asked, sitting down on a handy rock within its limits. “You all just plan to sit here for the next week and try to suppress me?”

“…”

The four on the corners, all from the Jade Gate Court she noted, had annoyed or confused looks on their faces. Din Ouyeng was also looking puzzled, which made her feel a bit happy inside.

“Can you even afford that?” she needled. “There’s a small army out there after your blood? They will give your juniors a big beating if you don’t take them seriously, especially now that this place is basically a holy land for them.”

“Very funny… you think it matters what some demons think is a holy ground?” the purple-robed youth grinned.

Hao Tai laughed. “They won’t be a problem for long. We have several talismans we can use if necessary to get rid of them once they have done enough damage to those people who need to be humbled. After that we can always go eradicate some of their towns and recoup our losses.”

“Quite,” the green-robed youth added. “No idea why such a bunch of savages decided to pick a fight with us, but it is impossible for them to win.”

The one wearing greenish travelling robes just nodded, and added, “That is just more reason to eradicate them. Such savage creatures have no worth in regards to the true purpose of this place and what it will mean for our Eastern Azure Great World.”

“That’s a dangerous view to have, given the history of this place,” she replied with a smirk, as her instincts at that point gave her a bit of a nudge.

-Shit, I was going to obliterate these morons, but now something else is peeking in? she complained in her heart.

She carefully took in her surroundings, suppressing annoyance at this development.

“Who are they then?” she asked, eyeing the ‘copies’

They said nothing, just looking at her with amused expressions.

-Ah well, it was worth a try, she sighed inwardly. Let’s see if I can’t shake the other problem out of the tree then.

Reaching into her storage talisman, which was hidden in her grass cloak now, she swept her gaze over all of them with a smirk. “Your optimism is almost cute, but if you think this is all these ‘Orcs’ have to offer, I must disabuse you. There are ones out there capable of making things like this, and they lack this lot’s… reasonable charm and good grace.”

She pulled out the ruined robe from her storage talisman, where it hung malignly in the air within the cage, in full view.

With its reveal, she got a further faint flicker of something, a shift in mood so faint she would likely have missed it if not for the memories.

-So, it really is an old Ur’Vash, she grumbled.

That made things more complicated, because the memories were pretty clear that there was at least one 8th circle mage on the battlefield and none of them were simple to deal with.

“I will admit my little eyes aren’t the best… but based on my instincts, I’m pretty sure that several of the bodies making this up are a major realm or two stronger than all of you… not a pretty fate.”

The nine cultivators eyed the abominable remnants of the robe, made of stitched female cultivators. Several looked a bit uneasy but Hao Tai just looked bored and Din Ouyeng was inscrutable.

She made to put it away, when all of her garments were ripped off her body, and they and the purple robes all landed in the grasp of the one wearing purple robes.

“Oh…” the one in green travelling robes stroked his chin admiringly.

Last to leave was the horrid robe though, and when it did finally leave the cage, all of them took a step backwards and the four controlling the talisman looked a bit pale.

-Ah, it did have that kind of aura, even after we purified it, she recalled. Some evil never washes out, it seems.

More concerningly though, they now had her talisman.

-That said, it was surprising it took them this long to strip me of all my stuff, she sighed inwardly.

“FATES…” one of the Jade Gate Court hissed. “It’s vile… They… were still alive somehow?”

“Even destroyed as they are?” another mumbled.

“It’s also a formidable treasure,” the one in a golden robe muttered. “A pity it’s so badly destroyed.”

“Or what, Brother Shi?” one of the others said sourly. “I know your Glittering Dragon Sect is a broad pagoda, but anyone who uses a thing like that is going to become an enemy of all righteous sects.”

“Still, you could sell it anonymously at auction and make a fortune,” one of the others said with a shrug.

“Yeah,” the one in green travelling robes sighed, looking contemplative.

“Monkey-motherless-bitch!” the purple-robed youth holding the robe suddenly screamed inarticulately, dropping it and pulling his talisman out to stare at it with shaking hands.

“…”

She had to work really hard not to fall over laughing. Even at this distance, she could see that there was a new ‘high score’ on the talisman – Bei Funglao, with a score of over eight million, outstripping both ‘Juni’ and ‘Han Shu’ to become the new trial leader.

“…”

“…”

The others not maintaining the barrier were staring at the talisman dully. Even Din Ouyeng now looked shocked, at least until he turned back to look at her with narrowed eyes and then grasped her storage talisman from the pile of woven grass.

-Right, I guess we can do this, she sighed, mustering the words to break out of the barrier and basically incapacitate all of them.

“I am glad to see the morality of the cultivation worlds’ ‘luminary’ juniors is so easily swayed by riches and greed,” an urbane voice mused.

Curiously, none of the group looked really that concerned at the ghost-like arrival of the spear wielder who had fought against the old Ur’Vash.

“You know,” the new arrival mused, strolling towards them, his spear resting over his shoulder. “I had an interesting conversation about crime and punishment a few minutes ago.”

“Senior Di,” the golden-robed Shi smiled a bit wanly.

“It is great that you have survived… Senior Cang,” the one in green travelling robes added, with a slightly effusive nod.

“We have captured the dreadful beast responsible for all this…” one of the others added, rather self-evidently.

-Cang… Di? As in that Cang Di? Tian Cang Di? she pondered.

“Hm, I am sure your sect elders will thank you, Daoist Shi,” Cang Di nodded urbanely, if rather dismissively.

He then looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “You seem remarkably unconcerned with your predicament… miss?”

“Well, I don’t know if I should thank you all or curse you for using that talisman that held the essence of a 1000 year old mature parasol tree flower to try and refine me into a fruit basket,” she replied, putting on her best ‘pretty smile’. “However, I cannot help but notice nobody from the Vast Obscurity Heavenly Grove here?”

“…”

She was pleased to see all their expressions flicker uneasily for a second at that.

Her main objective was not to get pegged as ‘Lin Ling’ by Din Ouyeng or anyone else here, for now at least. The linked knowledge regarding Parasol Trees, Yang Physiques, Vast Obscurity Grove and a dimly recalled connection to the Meng had given her a really useful out to lead others astray there.

“So, I wonder if you do not have bigger problems?” she added as she also rapidly interrogated what she knew of Cang Di from her memories.

That, sadly turned out to be precious little that wasn’t rather propagandist tales aimed at young men and women of a certain age. He did, however, have a reputation of being a just arbiter in matters – unless those tales were all hokum. And I know that Din Ouyeng does not get along with him, she reflected.

“It seems our cultivation realm has caused you some problems,” Cang Di frowned, looking at her deeply.

“Hmm…” she nodded, smiling more wanly now. “Tell me, have you ever heard of the cultivators called Di Ji or Ji Tantai?”

The youths blinked, because that was likely not the question they had been expecting.

“I know about Ji Tantai… and that trash,” Cang Di nodded, curtly. “The question is – how do you?”

“Hmmm…” she nodded, wondering how best to go about this. Unfortunately she had no easy way to work out whose side Cang Di was on. His reaction there had seemed genuine, but according to Teng Chunhua he had still tried to kill Han Shu…

-Time to see how good some aspects of my ‘Yang as a Shield’ principle really are, she sighed.

“I met some cultivators: a youth with a sword, a girl with a spear and another girl. We travelled together and provided each other some assistance on the path and became friends on our journey through this place. They spoke to me of how a party of three and a group from an influence called the Ha clan both forced them to take part in a grand expedition as guides. In the process of being forced to aid that group, two of their friends were killed by a youth who travelled with this Din Ouyeng.

“Both young women who died had led blameless lives beset by difficulty who sought to better themselves by becoming what they called herb hunters. The one responsible for their deaths called himself Di Ji. The spear-wielding girl and her friend fled, but he marked them, pursued them, mistreated the girl with the spear and ruined her friend, who later had a psychological break as a result.”

“I see, that does sound like Di Ji,” Cang Di nodded, looking sideways at the others, who having been somewhat caught off guard by her short tale, were now all looking at her in outrage, or like she was a weird mushroom.

“Hah,” one of the Jade Gate Court sneered, just shaking his head.

“Such a silver tongue,” Hao Tai sneered. “I wonder what other tricks you do with it?”

“You think to sow dissension like this?” the purple-robed youth scowled. “Brother Cang is a hero of our generation; are you trying to shame us all?”

“Your words shame all cultivators if you think we are so gullible!” another of the Jade Gate Court added

“…”

-How shameless, she rolled her eyes.

Cang Di affected to ignore them, and instead spoke to her again. “However, it has been somewhat established that Di Ji has been dead for quite a while?”

“Ji Tantai was someone who was widely ‘known’.” Din Ouyeng scowled. “Have you already forgotten how many oaths you all asked me to swear?”

“Very true,” the purple-robed youth, Bei, nodded.

“Is it not more likely that this person, given the faction he was affiliated with, led others to believe ill was done and framed it on our righteous court?” the golden-robed Shi agreed.

“Perhaps,” she nodded “But clearly someone got a parasol talisman from somewhere after all…”

“…”

Cang Di nodded, his eyes narrow and his aura inscrutable.

“And so what relevance does your tall tale have?” Hao Tai sneered.

“Nothing really,” she grinned, glancing back at Cang Di. “I just feel that anyone cultivating a righteous path would not have ambivalent feelings about Di Ji.”

Cang Di blinked and properly looked at her now.

-Not to mention it’s bought me a little extra time, as well as sowing a few seeds of doubt perhaps, she added to herself.

“Space Break.”

She winced a bit because that had cost her almost a 3000 years of vitality. The cage surrounding her rippled and warped outwards, the broad, shallow hollow between the hills with its pond turned into a cauldron holding a whirlwind of cracking space.

The nine talismans themselves were all ruined, collapsing into dust as the worldly principles directed by the intent in her words ravaged them.

All of the cultivators, except for Cang Di coughed blood and turned pale as the shockwave washed over them and the damage she had done earlier was exacerbated. The four maintaining the cage were the most miserable, however, as they had the barrier collapse right on their noses.

“BE STOPPED!”

-No way I am letting you bastards run now, she groaned as her vitality evaporated, taking her down to less than 500 years of lifespan in the blink of an eye.

The others were frozen in the act of using divination talismans or barriers to avoid damage. All of them had a degree of awareness, even if their ability to move or interact with the world was eliminated without a proper comprehension of spatial and more importantly temporal principles.

She enjoyed the very green expressions on their faces at seeing what were presumably more very expensive talismans get wrecked.

“You really… are… an… Earth… Dragon…” Cang Di gasped, from where he was frozen in place.

She didn’t bother to reply, just rolling her eyes, and stepped forward to grasp the nearest disciple, which happened to be the one on the corner, whose name she had never gotten.

“ABSORB!”

His strength surged out of his body, flowing into her.

“You… you…” he gasped, straining desperately against his restraints as her vitality surged.

However, it didn’t rise anywhere near as much as she had hoped. She had been expecting maybe 600 or 700 years… but all she got was 150 years at best.

“What kind of… you are only 150 years old?” she didn’t bother to hide the disgust in her voice now as her smile slipped.

“How can you be this ‘powerful’ with such a crap accumulation?” that question came from the memories who were actually embarrassed for the youth.

“I’ve seen spirit herbs with a better foundation than you?” she added, enjoying the look of utter confusion and horror clouding his eyes as the last of his vital qi flowed into her, leaving him looking like a wizened, desiccated old man covered in pale, paper-like skin.

“Shatter”

She used some of the excess qi, to deal him a further injury, pressing her hand against his chest and watching the word ripple through his body, breaking his tormented meridians like they were glass rods and inducing a second deviation in his qi in the process. As an afterthought, she reached down and pulled the storage ring off his hand.

“Divide”

Her words attacked the now-fragile link, breaking it easily. However, to her annoyance, it wavered in her hand and vanished in smoke, clearly enchanted in some other way.

Stepping on, she grabbed the second youth, also from the Jade Gate Court, who had been thrown down by the breaking of the barrier.

“Absorb”

He, to her disgust, was almost as meagre a means of recovery, barely possessing 200 years of vitality for all that his qi was so pure.

“Break.”

She turned her exclamation of disgust into another cry, sending the excess qi back into his body to wreak its terrible toll and also sent his ring away… then paused and turned to look at the other one, finding it back on his finger.

-Oh come on? What kind of enchantment is that?

Scowling, she turned to the next target, because she didn’t want to waste two attempts on Din Ouyeng – and alighted on the golden-robed youth from the Glittering Dragon Sect, Shi. The memories, also pondering her problem, actually provided a rather ironic solution at this point.

Grabbing him around the neck, she grinned wolfishly as he stared at her with wide eyes.

“IMBUE!”

This time, she sent a fraction of the excess yang blood and qi in her body that was not yet refined directly into his body. As a Golden Immortal, his capacity was far greater than hers and he had also absorbed some draconic blood, albeit much less pure. The two sources of blood met, and the yang blood catalysed rapidly inside Shi’s body, easily devouring the impure draconic heritage.

Yang fire blazed out of his orifices and turned the ground around them to ash as he became a cauldron for her to better refine what she already had while also abusing her victim’s higher realm to refine longevity back by sideways means.

“DEVOUR”

Letting her hand run down until it sat against his burning chest, she was amused to see even Cang Di’s eyes were wide now as she consumed all the orphaned qi in his body and ripped away his vital qi, which this time was a much more reasonable 4000 years’ worth when catalysed by the blood.

“You all wanted to refine me, turn my being into your strength. This seems quite fitting,” she grinned, staring at the last two, Hao Tai and Din Ouyeng.

It was annoying that Din Ouyeng really had been right at the back, taking no risks at all. Arriving before the pair, she looked first at Hao Tai, who was sweating hard now.

-Trap, the memories suddenly hissed.

-Dangerous thing, predator hiding amid pretty flowers, another murmured.

-He had a Ghost Fire in his soul, one of the bird-like voices murmured, one of the few feminine ones and strangely familiar. Dangerous, it will give you issues when you leave. Even injuring him grievously may see you marked.

Nodding, she stepped past him, and grasped the sword, drawing it out of its scabbard on his back. The blade was no longer broken, but the hilt was cool in her hand. The designs on it, the shifting, yantra-like designs of stars hidden within the black, were also gone.

-Empty vessel, the memories murmured.

-Empty? She asked.

-Her power has left it. All that remains is the thieving ideas of greedy men.

“…”

Smiling, she stepped on towards Din Ouyeng, even as he tried to retreat in the sluggish, broken space. Her qi armour reached him first, its grasping, clawed arms gripping his. With her qi armour now moving autonomously in accordance to her intention, she let it flow around his armour, corroding it with Yang Laws, constricting his forearms as they sought to recover her storage talisman.

“Jiong, act now, or else,” Din Ouyeng suddenly muttered, his voice emanating in a way that was not really spoken but more sent-

The constraints she put on their surroundings scattered as a figure wearing a deep green robe and a white mask that read ‘Ancient’ on it appeared like a ghost beside her, grasping the hilt of the sword hard enough to almost pulverise her hand in the process.

“…”

She tried to shout, but there was no sound. She rolled her eyes, even as the memories sneered. It was a ‘smart’ idea, but she was no rank beast, relying on ‘manifestation’.

“Imbue!”

Her Nascent soul, mirroring her eye roll, used the word instead. Yang laws raged through the connection, turning her assailant charred to the bone in the blink of an eye-

The blow from his other palm nearly made her body explode as it connected with her breasts-

“Don’t kill her!” Din Ouyeng snarled.

That blow had nearly dispersed all her qi with a single strike; however, her storage talisman was now grasped in her hand, along with the charred remains of Din Ouyeng’s hand, so that was a minor victory, she supposed.

-Close to the eighth circle, the memories growled.

“You idiot, this is all because you over—”

Whatever Senior Jiong had been about to say she didn’t catch because, snarling, her Nascent Soul stimulated the transformation in her blood, her mantra and principle drawing the strength of the yang laws she couldn’t refine into a shell around her, even as her hair flowed across her body beneath becoming iridescent golden scales.

The colours of the world saturated as she exhaled all her anger in a singular, silent, yang-infused howl that originated in her Nascent Soul.

“BLAZE!”

Half the hollow became a tsunami of catalysed yang strength, pulled forth and ignited from everything. Grass blazed, rock melted, air exploded, water exploded—

“Someone grab that accursed lizard!” someone, Din Ouyeng she thought, screamed, infusing their qi into it—

There was a sense of distortion and something picked her up in the chaos and sent her crashing across the ground. The chaos around her was scattered in a wave of strength she couldn’t feel except by its absence. Rolling up, she gritted her teeth as it tore at her flesh and armour, ripping scales off and even putting a few cracks in her bones before she managed to draw enough strength to resist and the confusion cleared.

“What are you?” Senior Jiong snarled, looking in her direction, holding a fan.

Shaking her head, she pushed herself up and then rolled to the side, cursing as a sword stabbed into her, a strike from the youth in green travelling robes.

“Stop!”

She grunted as she spent most of the longevity she had recovered to use the cry again, just focused on him. He froze in the air, a few paces away from her, allowing her to tackle him-

“Imbue!” she snarled, even as the constraints on him already started to break.

“Brother Gu!” one of the others yelled.

A hand grasped her, only to vanish a second later amid a bone-rattling impact that made her ‘Brother Gu’ scream even more miserably than she was tempted to.

“Daoist Cang!” Senior Jiong snarled.

“My apologies, I was aiming for the beast,” Cang Di said blandly.

“…”

She stared at ‘Brother Gu’ who was barely moving and then noticed that the blow had also incapacitated three new arrivals as well, all in grey robes, who she had not even seen arrive.

“You… this is just!” Hao Tai’s mouth was opening and shutting in confusion.

“BE DEVOURED!”

The rest of what they said was lost amid the roar as the unfortunate ‘Brother Gu’s’ foundation was absorbed by her, flowing into her body.

“You dare, beast!”

“Just cripple that beast already!”

“You…”

“Shit!”

Abruptly, a green lightning bolt in the form of a five-headed serpent ripped open the whole area around them.

One head wormed its way into her body, sending her crashing into a rock, her mantra, the symbol and the blood all working at their limit to diffuse it.

A second swept through the already injured Brother Gu, who was burnt to a crisp, left barely alive before it obliterated the three new arrivals Cang Di had ‘accidentally’ hit.

A third swept through two of the Jade Gate Court disciples, blasting them in different directions before skittering off a barrier disciple Bei had summoned.

The fourth hit Jiong, who staggered back, cursing, protecting Din Ouyeng and Hao Tai as well.

The last was blocked by Cang Di, quite easily in comparison to everyone else.

The source of it, much as she expected, was an old Ur’Vash seated on the nearest rocky outcropping by the smoking pond.

-So even he is just trying to incapacitate? she sneered inwardly, finally expelling the last of the rampant qi and using her mantra to stop her limbs twitching, letting the yang strength in her body blunt the lightning bolt.

“You are very durable,” the old mage chuckled, staring at her not moving from his rock.

“And you are weak, compared to those old Ur’Vash who praise their original ancestors,” she snickered and deliberately pitched it like that, because she was still nursing a grudge over what the memories called a ‘disjunction scroll’ that he had used to break her array.

“…”

The old mage narrowed his eyes, but he still kept his aura contained, looking across their groups.

Nobody with any actual means made a move, which was to be expected really. The Ur’Vash had the advantage of the surprise attack and, despite being a major realm above the cultivators here, had barely finished off four of them, of which only two of any real consequence were-

The two other Jade Gate Court disciples pulled out talismans only to have them somehow snatched straight from their hands by the old mage who never moved and was still fixated on her.

“Should you really be worried about me?” she scowled. “When the humans here have thousands of those?”

The Ur’Vash mage looked at the two talismans with a frown before they abruptly vanished.

“Ha!” he barked a laugh and grasped at thin air, once again holding the talismans.

The youth, who had tried to reclaim them, stared in fright before Bei stammered. “D-Dao Immortal?”

“They have thousands like those?” the old Ur’Vash mage frowned.

“Not individually,” she replied blandly. “Most of these cultivators are like your young chiefs – valued. They have thousands of talismans like that, some maybe even capable of 10 or 11 circle magics.”

“Ten…” the Ur’Vash mage narrowed his eyes, peering at her.

She nodded, again praising the memories for words to inspire terror in those with knowledge.

“You do know they want us to fight? They tried to set a trap for you here, did they not, and a trail was set to lead me here from the jungles,” she added, grinning nastily.

“…”

The old Ur’Vash mage continued to stare at her pensively.

“They are trying to pick us off, letting us fight, using me to weaken you, guiding the hand of good fortune this way and that. If you let the rest of them escape now, or don’t take them seriously, they will splinter into bands, use artefacts to rob whole cities blind and torch the remains without a care.

“They will make you bleed and scream in rage and then vanish with everything you hold dear, and you will never catch them unless you can break the shackles of this place and travel beyond its constraints.”

If actual looks could kill, she would probably be a dismembered corpse by now, for Senior Jiong was staring at her with genuine venom, while Din Ouyeng, Hao Tai and the purple-robed youth were nearly as angered.

“…”

Cang Di, however, was just looking at her as if she was some kind of strange beast.

They acted with remarkable uniformity in the end. Senior Jiong used a talisman on the old mage, while Din Ouyeng cast one at her, the others all focused on Cang Di.

She was prepared to break the attack, but actually, it was Cang Di who moved first, using an Artefact of all things.

{Mystery Seizing Lamp}

The glimmering strength of the small lantern swept out and every talisman but one that was being wielded was simply drawn into it, burning up in the little lantern flame.

The one that did trigger, was the one Senior Jiong used on the old mage, who found himself trapped in a faintly twisting multi-coloured cube of frozen space with an angry look on his face.

Storing away the lamp, Cang Di stepped forward and sent his spear out with a flash, only for it to be blocked again by Senior Jiong-

She and everyone else blinked as it was the purple-robed youth who was pierced at the last instant rather than Senior Jiong who was left blocking a mirage like phantom.

“Foolish, I had no quarrel with you all, yet all you have done is try to injure me,” Cang Di sounded almost sad as he punched Bei in the head.

“Consider this as me showing face to your sects. If they want you back they can come bow to the ancestral gate at Bronze Peak,” As he spoke, Bei’s body vanished in a whorl of twisting space, drawn into a small jar.

“Body Seizing Jar!” the golden-robed youth, who had also mostly recovered she noted, screamed in the instant before he too and the other Golden Immortal beside him were also pulled away into it.

-They sure are hard to kill, she complained inwardly.

Din Ouyeng sneered. “Senior Cang, this is enmity. I hope you do not come to regret antagonizing our-”

His reply was cut off as Cang Di’s hand nearly closed around his neck, before two more figures appeared.

Cang Di grasped for Din Ouyeng, in the same instant that two more figures appeared, one in a green robe the other in a grey one.

“Brother Cang!” the green-robed one snapped, looking around with a severe expression.

“You dare harm my juniors?” the grey-robed blade wielding one glowered, pointing his blade at Cang Di.

“Daoist Kong, Daoist Jiao,” Cang Di sighed. “Your juniors have tried to kill me three times already; at what point does this just become farcical?”

“What Kong does, you think Shu can oppose?” another green-robed, masked figure murmured, stepping out of nowhere.

“Yung Fei as well?” Cang Di muttered. “Are there any left defending the camp at all?”

“Your bitch Dongmei is being dealt with,” the new arrival shrugged. “In any case, unlike you, we-”

“Aii….” Cang Di sighed, spun the spear in his hand and just stabbed out with it.

She flinched, because the strength of principle he wielded was better than some in the eighth circle, the memories murmured admiringly. Within it, she caught traces of the same strength that had both broken the array she had used to forestall the tribulation and also from the terrifying final figure amid the 11 bolts of lightning.

“S-severing-!” Daoist Jiao gawped, stumbling back.

Kong Bo also retreated rapidly while the unfortunate new arrival, Yung Fei, was enveloped thoroughly in the spear strike. With a wretched scream, his body was torn apart and scattered in a bloody smear across the hillside. Jiong barely evaded, his robe shredded to the point where she realised he was actually a... she?

Hao Tai barely blocked with a talisman but coughed up blood while Din Ouyeng also had to resort to using a talisman. The only one to evade entirely had been Daoist Jiao somehow.

{One with What Is}

She used the stealth art while Cang Di was the focus of all the others and watched Cang Di round on the others who were already backing up. At this point she was quite clear in her mind that something was attempting to subtly interfere with her ability to ‘get’ at Din Ouyeng. Playing things back in her mind, the memories agreed, pointing out that he was almost always flawlessly positioned to be furthest away from any real point of danger, even the ambushing old Ur’Vash.

“I am disappointed,” Senior Bo scowled, pulling out a sword and a shield and moving forward.

“I’m crushed,” Cang Di sneered, striking forward again with the same strange, cutting absence.

The blow hit the shield, making Senior Bo stagger and turn pale. In that instant of distraction, she saw Cang Di dart past him like a viper, his spear slicing past Senior Kong, even as Senior Jiong found herself on the wrong side of the fight, as did Senior Jiao.

However, in the instant before that vast, severing wave washed over Din Ouyeng, a shimmering talisman shifted out of nowhere and met with the tip of the spear.

Cang Di stared for a moment, even as Jiong arrived at his side, sweeping her fan.

Cang Di let go of the spear and kicked her in the midriff, sending her flying with enough force that she actually skipped on the surface of the pond.

While this was happening, she had been quietly creeping forward, making sure she wasn’t really noticed by any of the remaining combatants, trying to get within reach of Din Ouyeng as she pondered whether there was some kind of ambient alignment or manipulation going on.

Her intuition said that there should not be, both because Mortal Physiques were hard to manipulate successfully and because she was quite clear on the strength of the aspect responsible for the golden flowers.

-Unless it’s more general? Did they set up something before?

In the meantime, Din Ouyeng had grasped the spear and was looking at it happily. “So it is true. This is a Quasi-Dao Weapon, not awakened, but still a remarkable thing. This will be a suitable recompense for your crime, I think-”

She was tempted to try to freeze him then and there, but the idea that there was a more general problem affecting the local alignments was hard to shake. In any case, before she could act, Cang Di rounded on him, and in the same instant a vast, furious slaughtering intent oppressed the whole hilltop. To her surprise a faint seal appear on his forehead that read ‘Celestial Bronze Earthly Physique’.

“Eh-!” Senior Kong barely had time to move before Cang Di punched him in passing, leaving a fist imprint in his armour as it sent him like a meteor into the distant hillside.

{Executing Jade Lance}

Din Ouyeng spun the spear and thrust it at Cang Di, at which point she decided to finally play her own part in this, having been slowly moving forward to the point where she was merely ten paces away.

“RUPTURE!”

The word, used by her Nascent Soul and focused mainly on the local ‘alignments’, sent a wave of twisting yang qi imbued with a bit of the radiance of the golden flower through the entire landscape for maybe a mile in every direction.

As she observed her handiwork, she sighed. The local feng shui alignments were fairly radiating inauspicious intent now, focused on the nine bodies which held some kind of formation etched into them.

In the same moment, chaos unfolded.

Cang Di’s blow connected with Din Ouyeng, sending him sprawling, spitting blood as he easily recovered his spear.

Above Din Ouyeng, she could see the swirling black and gold talisman shift into focus as the world around her continued to shake in very odd ways from her cry.

Jiong spun, looking between her and Din Ouyeng, even as Cang Di made to stamp on the blonde haired youth. Senior Kong and Senior Jiao both raced in her direction-

“Stop.”

She roared the word, already beginning her bodily transformation to gain better efficiency with the use of the words. Jiong attacked Cang Di, sweeping out her fan and sending a wave of something at him that tore up the land between them with ephemeral green fire she recognised from the forest in its aftermath, only for the chaotic yang energies to disperse it to the point where it nearly rolled back on her.

In that moment, Cang Di added a wave of sundering absence that washed over all of them, badly lacerating both of those she had locked briefly in place.

Hao Tai snatched up the sword and sent a lashing cut at Cang Di, which the latter easily deflected with his spear, also cutting a talisman that Hao Tai had been about to use in the process.

Jiong blurred towards Cang Di now, striking at him, likely to cover for Din Ouyeng who was still struggling up. Watching as Cang Di met the blow with another wave of sundering absence, she urged her bodily transformation to go quicker, because she was sure Jiong was going to come for her, and without it she would be hopelessly outmatched-

Jiong appeared beside her, grasping for her like a ghost out of the darkness, vindicating her paranoia.

“RUPTURE!”

She rolled into the surprised woman, even as she roared, her body reforming in a blur of surging qi as it did so, drawing the land up around her with her principle as she did so-

Two immense blows crashed into her, nearly turning her physical body to mush and ironically enough releasing a nasty shockwave of unrefined energies from the blood into the surroundings in a nova of white death.

It passed after a few moments and she found herself in the middle of an iridescent barrier. For a hundred metres in every direction beyond it, glimmering golden flowers burned on the top of every bit of vegetation.

“Come on, do they have no limit to these things?” she complained, sitting down and slowly starting to recover her strength, yet again.

Jiong, Din Ouyeng, Hao Tai and the remaining survivors were already gone from sight.

-So they ran immediately? she complained. I guess I should be flattered? Sweeping out her soul sense, she found that it ended arbitrarily about 3 metres away, slightly inside the edge of the barrier.

-So, not just a spatial barrier? She frowned, staring at it.

Cang Di was also stuck in one she saw, staring at a lotus which looked quite put out.

With a disgusted expression on his face, Cang Di pulled an ancient, yellowing talisman out of his storage ring and used it on the barrier he was stuck in, which manifested a crack large enough to put an arm through. He had to use the talisman four more times to finally open a gap wide enough to hop out, before the talisman’s symbol fully faded and the barrier itself repaired.

He gave the two of them a long look, and then turned to head after the others.

“Wait,” she called out, making him stop. “Is Han Shu alive?”

“You know his name?” Cang Di frowned, agitating to chase after them.

“I travelled with him,” she snapped.

Cang Di looked conflicted. “They bound him prisoner, so their elders can interrogate him about treasure I assume,” he replied succinctly, from the edge of the twisting mire of pure yang turbulence that surrounded her barrier.

“Also, I… probably can’t get you out of that,” he added, looking awkwardly at it.

In truth, she had guessed as much already – although that would have been nice.

The unrefined energies from the Yang Blood came from an apex beast and were not at all suppressed. Considering how thoroughly inauspicious the alignments here now were, the area around her barrier was, for now, a death trap to anyone but her in all likelihood.

“You tried to kill him,” she remarked.

Cang Di, who was still looking at the energies pensively, now stared at her with narrowed eyes. “So it really was you in the forest?”

She just looked at him, and he went on. “I did, but only to call their bluff. They hid theft behind righteousness, framing him with the circumstances of wider politics regarding this trial.”

“And you didn’t try to prove his innocence?” she asked.

“I did, but they used various heavenly oaths and have silver tongues,” he sighed. “Most wanted someone else to blame for this whole mess anyway, so the allegations took easily.”

“I see,” she said, sighing sadly inside. That… made a lot of sense really, based on what she knew already and could intuit.

Cang Di glanced away in the direction the others fled for a moment, and in that instant she was sure he was going to leave, but for some reason he turned back to look at her again, and continued speaking.

“They took him into custody claiming he was a criminal that deserved death in the eyes of heaven, so I tried to kill him to force them to stop me and expose their ‘justice on behalf of heaven’ for self-serving, empty words.

“You saw how a fight against nine of them went; all I could do was resort to that method. He also has a graciousness with my sect. The sword Hao Tai had was with him as well… I intend to make good on that.”

“The sword is just a hollow thing now,” she shrugged, pondering why he remained… “If it were not, anyone without its acknowledgement, who harbors greed towards treasures, would die the moment they tried to lift it.”

“…”

Cang Di blinked, and she saw for a second… a flash of certainty in his eyes before he spoke again, remarkably similar to what she had seen in Juni on occasion. “You know about the sword?”

-Did he just use a divination art to see if the conversation was worth… continuing? She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Some things. How badly do you not want to sleep at night?” she grinned wanly, filing away that information – that he dared use such an art when the alignments were this warped was… impressive and spoke to having real skill with divination and feng shui.

Sighing, she walked over to the nearest point to him. “Just understand this – for what was done to Han Shu… If he dies, I will hunt down and offer the lives of every cultivator remotely responsible that I can find as offerings for his passage to the next life.”

“…”

Cang Di frowned at her, again looking pensive. “You have a grudge with Din Ouyeng as well?”

“He is a person who makes grudges widely I suspect, although they seem hard to make stick. Those he wronged had not the strength to even think of touching his shadow. I… can do something about that, so I have,” she shrugged.

It was as good an explanation as anything, while not revealing openly that she was Lin Ling.

“Well, I suppose I can tell you something useful,” she added, thinking again about Din Ouyeng and why some of the talismans they used had not ‘worked’. “Two things actually.”

“What Han Shu told you was certainly the truth.”

Cang Di nodded, looking vexed. “I suspected so. However, Din Ouyeng still swore Heavenly Oaths…”

“He led the framing?” she asked, thinking that over.

The memories were very clear on the strength of ‘Heavenly Oaths’. Such things had to be anchored in worth. In the eyes of the world here, her heavens outside had no word worth speaking of being an invading power without any legitimacy in comparison to the real roots of this place.

“Hao Tai, actually,” Cang Di mused, “but he was also involved, yes.”

“I see,” she mused, before just sighing and deciding to go for it. “What I said before, regarding those events Han Shu was party to is true. Ji Tantai was Din Ouyeng’s companion and stated he was Di Ji, then later also identified himself as Kong Di Ji – This truth I offer to the golden peonies that bloomed here.”

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, a small ring of golden peonies bloomed in the grass around her, dispersing a moment later. The sense of conviction that that was a suitable offering to whatever was beyond the flowers was surreal and passed in a second.

“…”

Cang Di stared in shock at the vanishing flowers, before looking back at her, then again into the distance, this time with a very contemplative look. “And the second thing?”

“You said they swore oaths to your heavens?” she asked.

“Yes,” he nodded, “that was what swayed the masses in the end…”

“Oaths to the heavens outside this place are not worth the words spoken in here,” she replied.

“They are not?” Cang Di said dully.

“They are not,” she nodded. “Doubly so after what has happened here I suspect.”

“That is quite… concerning…” he muttered.

“You thought this world weak? This is but a shard, but it is a supreme shard,” she snickered, amused that even he doubted that. “You are attuned to it, so you should know that, surely?”

“…” He stared at her again, before nodding slightly.

“Do not underestimate the things that left traces on this land when it was in full bloom,” she sighed. Because the Ur’Vash mage was still there, she had to be careful about what she said there.

“I… see,” he stared at her for a long moment before offering her an actual salute of thanks. “Thank you for being so forthright. If I can, and you have not gotten free, I will return once I have dealt with those wretches and helped those it seems I must. That Jiong will certainly have a means to unseal your barrier.”

“…”

She nodded and watched as he shot off after the others in a blur, no doubt using some manner of treasure, and tried not to sigh. There was honest intent in his words, but she was pretty sure that it would not be that simple. Looking at it again, she had a sense she might be able to get out, but likely it would require some coordination with an outside source – so Juni or Chunhua.

“Ha, very funny, you play the part too well. They not want to let you run free,” the old mage, who had been sat on his rock, eating a piece of jerky and sipping a drink from a jar at his waist, sneered. “Though you swear on old god, and know things. The more I see of you, the less sense you make.”

“…”

She turned to look at him, scowling.

“They think you are a beast… but I see your soul clearly: you are a ‘human’, and one with a fearful physique, touched by the karma of the old gods. None of those who have come here since this place fell into ruin and was lost have had such… interesting interactions.”

Seeing no reason to deny it, she nodded.

“The girl who had the psyche break… that was you,” the Ur’Vash said abruptly. “I see the mark of a greater restoration and a mind mending spell upon your soul.”

“Your eyes are a bit too sharp, old mage,” she said dryly, again thankful that the symbol was… able to make some interesting conscious adjustments to her outer emotions.

“You are not concerned about escape?” the Ur’Vash mage said after a while.

“…” She again had course to curse his sharp eyes, but hid it.

She was starting to understand just how comprehensive the conceptual ideas around ‘Yang as a Shield, and ‘Shield Bearing’ actually were. It was a formidable offensive and defensive principle, but its ability to conceal and deflect through direct action in circumstances like this was, she was starting to think, its real strong point.

Nothing she was saying here was… untrue, or a deliberate misdirection, but something about the delivery, the mannerisms, the forthright action and the way she was interacting with them, was all an aspect of the Yang as a shield principle.

“Not really,” she shook her head. “Someone will be coming to free me in due course.”

That was an educated guess, assuming that Juni and Chunhua weren’t dead or unconscious or captured by the cultivators.

In the distance, about four rolling hills over, a massive burst of green fire exploded, followed by several bolts of multi coloured lightning seconds after.

“The other mages are… energetic,” she commented dryly.

“She lacks control,” the old Ur’Vash nodded glumly.

A shadowy spear scythed down in the distance, carrying with it the same strength of cutting that she had felt before.

In the distance, the wind changed and she heard drums more clearly. More lightning bolts shot down. Annoyingly, she couldn’t actually send her soul sense past the barrier now. So all she could do was sit here and watch her qi flow around her body and hope that Juni’s spear or the black spear could poke a hole in this barrier.

“Did you really kill that vile excuse for a living thing?” the old mage asked after a while.

“The one with the robe…?” she frowned… and looked for it, before face-palming. “Oh for fuck’s sake, they actually walked off with it.”