A brief celebration of being alive was something everyone had needed. Anton especially found himself being reinvigorated. It wasn’t just physical fatigue or energy needing to refill, but mental fatigue from seeing so much destruction everywhere. Something that had been missing was that while many had survived the last harrowing weeks, it hadn’t felt like anyone was really alive.

No doubt the celebration had been the idea of the Glorious Flame Palace, as the Frostmirror sect would have written it off as unnecessary. Though their viewpoint was being shifted by the upcoming generation, many of which had chosen to keep their emotions instead of fully cutting them off.

The next few days still found the combined armies overfilling the Glorious Flame Palace, as scouting groups were sent out in all directions to gather support and search for enemy forces. At the same time, the Frostmirror Sect and some of the other smaller sects from Ofrurg began their interrogations of captured prisoners. The goal was to learn numbers, locations, and overall combat strategy.

Very little information in that vein was forthcoming, not because their techniques were insufficient to extract information… but because it appeared that nobody knew. It wasn’t just low level cultivators being kept in the dark, but rather nobody was really aware of the full extent of anything. Some were able to approximate numbers. Estimates of the total number of Ascension cultivators involved in the invasion were somewhere over one hundred, but not many more. As for locations, nobody knew any more than what they had already learned. The strategy was nothing, which in its own way explained the other things.

The invaders had come without a clear strategy in mind. They knew where they were landing there would be sects with resources, and they set out to plunder them. After that, it would be pretty much a free for all based on who could get to resources first. There was no strategy, because they didn’t even consider the local cultivators as a possible threat. The weaker ones among them might die, but that was the case with any sort of training exercise. And that… was basically what this amounted to.

They were able to confirm some important pieces of information. The ‘upper world’ as they considered themselves didn’t have the same resources available to them, and the cultivators below the ‘Integration’ stage cultivated more slowly without access to ‘lower energy’. The Integration stage was basically synonymous with Ascension, with the caveat that it was the first step where only upper energy was used. It seemed there were more stages beyond that to reach what they understood as the true peak of cultivation.

The most revelatory information was about the deal with the Exalted Archipelago. By piecing together what everyone said it was determined that the invaders were all part of an overarching faction- in the loosest sense possible. They weren’t unified like a sect and still had conflicts among each other. They were called the ‘Trigold Cluster’. The Exalted Archipelago was tied to another faction- simply called the Exalted Quadrant- and thus was off limits. The two continents were fair game for invasion by the Trigold Cluster, but had to be left alone by the Exalted Archipelago since otherwise there would be nothing for them to steal.

It was a pretty morbid setup where they were treated as nothing more than something to be hunted or lands to be plundered, but it was not outside anyone’s expectations given what they already knew. There were various reactions to this knowledge, including the Glorious Flame Palace declaring how they would hunt and plunder this ‘Trigold Cluster’. Their enthusiasm was immediately quashed by the Frostmirror sect pointing out they had no way to get to the upper worlds to plunder them. Even if they could, fighting Ascension cultivators in their home turf was bound to result in tragedy. Though the Frostmirror sect did begin putting together a list of grievances against the various groups involved just in case there was ever something they could do. Perhaps if enough cultivators ascended they could band together to defeat them… or at least join up with factions that would fight against them. Though first everyone had to survive the war before thinking about ascension.

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Scouting reports indicated invading forces were amassing to the east, specifically in the area of the border between Ofrurg and Facraona. They weren’t amassing on either side of the border as if clearly moving into one country or the other, but instead seemed to find it a convenient place to convene. Much of the area was filled with mountains, providing them some defensive advantages, so it wasn’t terribly odd that they would choose that area. The question was why they would hold their position at all instead of pushing for more looting.

The easy answer was that they ran into more troubles than expected. Since they expected no resistance, that wasn’t especially odd. Facraona was a strong enough country, but it would have made more sense for the invaders to congregate north towards that coast or be pressed further south into Droca. Either way, the army combining Graotan and Ofrurg forces was preparing for some sort of assault.

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Sometimes, Erin felt bad taking advantage of Paradise. She was safe atop his back and the Island Tenders seemed to not be contributing anything to the war. Other times, she rushed into nearby coastal towns and villages to assure them that the giant turtle was on their side. She hadn’t been sure at first but Paradise’s bombardments with huge jets of water were targeted specifically at the invaders. There had been times that unfortunate innocents had been caught in the frankly massive blast radius of some of the attacks, but Paradise at least avoided cities. The one exception being one that had fully been taken over by the invaders and was now an inland saltwater lake.

There was one time that Erin had actually contributed to Paradise’s defense. One group had gone on the attack, charging Paradise with two Ascension cultivators at the head. While the Ascension cultivators kept his head busy and most of the others fought against his fins, some had snuck around to the tail to try to slip in under his shell and attack from the inside. They had actually caused some real wounds, and the Island Tenders followed them to chase them off. And then Paradise finished eating the two Ascension cultivators. The rest of the attackers were probably still buried in the depths of the ocean where he had slapped them to.

Now Erin’s job was to take some of the medicinal herbs that grew on the turtle’s shell and make poultices to help accelerate the healing of the wounds he’d sustained in the battle. The Island Tenders were quite glad that Paradise seemed to recognize they were helping, because none of them really wanted to be crushed to death.

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A strange orange moss grew all along the tunnels of the Cruhull sewers. Leo felt entitled to saying it was strange even if he was familiar with it, because he constantly felt the urge to remove it. Yet it was there on purpose, the result of a long chain of herbalists wondering what to do with it before it finally came to Kit.

It was apparently from the moon at some point, though presumably it had been taken there by Everheart and had once been local. Either way, it had some properties helpful against ascension energies. A few weeks ago the exact scale of that was mostly speculative, as those few who could tap into ascension energies were limited in that capacity. After the invasion… Leo wondered if they would have survived without it. Oh, sure, they still needed every man and woman who fought against the invaders, making use of their hard fought cultivations. But the enemy cultivators were severely weakened as they entered the city.

The reason the moss was being grown in the sewers was because it required a warm, moist environment- and there was none better for that. He’d basically planted the first bit to see if it was a good fit, and then it had spread on its own. Now it was part of the area… but still weird.

As for how it actually affected ascension energy, it was unclear. The effects had clearly been weaker until the ground started cracking from the battles at which point some sewer tunnels were opened up. The concentrations of the moss were much higher in the sewers than what they had taken to try to use actively, the clumps they had gathered not doing much more than a handful of regular moss on its own.

Kit said it probably had something to do with the buildup of spores or something, but either way Cruhull had been lucky in many ways. And now, looking at the daylight streaming into the sewers, Cruhull was quite unlucky. Though Leo would rather be alive and smelling sewage than not alive at all. If he couldn’t handle it, he would have let himself die long ago.

So now they were reconstructing the collapsed sewers- but with vents. Would they ever need them? Only if the invaders came back. But if they didn’t have them, the concentrations of whatever it was wouldn’t be able to be built up or be directed towards their enemies.

The damage to the sewers was on the scale that would have taken years- maybe decades- to replace. At least, in the world Leo was born into. Now with everyone cultivating, work involving manual labor was much more efficient. It wasn’t just hauling and placing bricks but even the ability to repair cracks and breaks on the spot. There were some who had the ability to work with fine details that meant they weren’t just patching bricks and stone but basically recreating them. That saved a lot of trouble with waste and carting heavy loads into and out of the city, though some bits and pieces were hopeless and there weren’t enough people who could actually repair the damage.

Still, Leo found himself working his same job that was truthfully one of the least desired but extremely important. He just hadn’t expected it to be defensively important to the city, except perhaps where the sewers exited the city- and nobody had tried to infiltrate that way. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe they realized they would die if they tried it.

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Godslaying steel as a head, a leadwood shaft, and fletching from an emperor eagle made one of the best arrows Nthanda had ever had the pleasure of using. Technically the Ascension cultivators weren’t gods, but the name godslaying steel rolled off the tongue better than anything else they could come up with.

She carefully nocked it on her bow, focusing her energy to create a string on the bow made from the bones of some ancient creature. Then she pulled, focusing on her muscles as she did so. Her arms did some of the work, but much of archery was in the back.

Nthanda carefully selected her target, then fired. If she was lucky, they would underestimate her shot as it carried only a relatively small quantity of energy. The quality was high, but they might think she was a weak Essence Collection cultivator or perhaps that it was a casual shot. If she was unlucky… they would take her attack seriously and still likely find themselves injured. This shot was one of the former, as it went straight into the heart of a cultivator who thought their defensive energy would be sufficient. That was optimal, as while these invaders might notice what happened to others, they could really only experience the effects on themselves once… and then they would be dead.

She felt her quiver, sighing as she realized she only had a handful of the crucial arrows left. For a moment she wished she had the abilities of Elder Anton, able to create arrows from her energy, but she knew immediately that it simply wouldn’t work. They were on different paths, and hers was most suited for her. Especially with the refinements that Western Steel Body had gained from the Exalted Archipelago.

Across the battlefield, others were having similar success. The people of Ambati were not weaklings to be trampled on like these invaders might have thought. They were thought to be a bunch of scattered tribes with a few large clans and cities, and while that was technically true on the surface it had never been the full picture. Now with everyone’s cultivation surging, they were far from the perception.

A certain village couldn’t be defended? It was abandoned. Not the people, but the place. Even those who weren’t nomads understood that their lives were more important than remaining in one position. And after the war, those who survived could return.

Ambati as a whole did not necessarily agree on many things, but this was something they came together for. This scourge of invaders would be removed from their world.

Nthanda traced a finger along the feathers of another arrow. They would fall, one at a time. Or two, if she could get some to helpfully line up.