“What is winning?” Jess had asked Grace earlier.

“Is it saving everyone? Or no, it’s living to fight another day?”

“It’s saying, five million, and not one more.”

Grace had not understood what Jess was saying at the time. Jess had said something about some disease that had hurt children in her home world, and how they had eradicated it at long last.

There were slain cultivators all around as they moved into the large outer sect area.

Fa Za kept moving, his dogged stiff posture looking like a show. Grace didn’t know how he was holding up. She had bawled for days following the attack.

In fact it hadn’t been until they left on this trip, when she felt like she was actually doing something about the divine beast that she’d realized it.

Her eyes didn’t tear up any more.

Sure she felt the loss of her friends, but now, she was fighting in their memory. And she was accomplishing something.

Stone Fish would be saved.

The line of spiritual beasts behind them still continued to follow as the Cold Steel Sect made their way across fields of grain and rice.

Occasionally they would hear the sound of an exploding sandal hitting its mark, but otherwise the monotonous sound of rocks ‘running’ kept them going.

Ahead of them, a hill crested and Grace was nearly flattened by a wave of pressure.

“This has to be one of their elders,” She yelled to Jess, as they got to the base of the hill.

“I can only hope,” Jess replied.

Grace looked back, as only three aunties were behind them. With Fa Za on point in familiar territory, they needed to slow their pursuers.

“Once we hit the main Sect area, we will need to get them moving immediately, if this pressure is any indication of how close the divine beast is.”

Grace nodded, remembering how crushed she had felt before. How it wasn’t even that she wanted to fight, she just couldn’t get up out of the catacombs. The beasts strength was massive and she’d felt like a fly in comparison.

Now, at the cusp of the fifth realm, she was ready. Not to fight it, of course, but to actually move. She wasn’t able to move her legs under her own power.

Grace never wanted to feel that helpless again.

Behind her, the closest beast was half a kilometer away. They’d been following at a farther distance as the students got closer to the center of the massive jade garden that was the Heaven’s Mountains grounds.

Arriving at the top of the hill, Jess had stopped, and Grace noticed the carnage in front of them.

A large battlefield full of cultivators fightin beasts dominated her view. Hundreds up to thousands of them were taking on the spiritual beasts.

“Judging by the amount of dead men and women, they are only delaying the inevitable,” Grace said dryly.

An equal number of dead or grievously wounded warriors were just lying around. Few rock beast corpses were about and the earth looked scorched.

Grace looked in closer, and realized that the ground wasn’t black, it was red. She shuddered.

A few spiritual beasts had turned to look in their direction, zeroing in on them.

Fa Za was taking their students around and to the left, in some brazen attempt to avoid the battle.

“Get them to disengage,” Jess said, cracking her knuckles, “and bring Blue. We’ve got some work to do.”

There were no battle lines, and Blue didn’t need any. He was certain that given some down time that he would be hittin the fifth realm very soon. Already he sensed so much around himself that he could fight with his eyes closed if he'd wanted to.ht and drain that he was giddy with expectation.

In the back of his mind, he remembered that he wasn’t here to steal all the qi, just to save as many Heavens Mountain disciples as possible.

It would be a shame if he didn’t steal all of the qi he could on his way to the goal, though.

And there was a lot of it to be had.

He hummed to himself as his skin crackled with blue energy. The qi pulsed and his palms felt ready.

He was in a stabby mood.

Ahead of him, Fa Za was forming a line of cold steel cultivators. He was calling the Heaven’s disciples to come to him.

Blue was going to hunt and seek the ones that needed help.

Ahead of him ten spiritual beasts attempted to run through a spear cultivator. His green robes marked him as a senior disciple.

Blue marked him as a rank amateur. The man was letting the rock beasts attack back.

Blue pressed his own attack, in an attempt to extricate the first disciple.

Thankfully none of the ten spotted him until he blurred onto the first ones back, extracting a snack.

"Mmmm. Rock candy."

Nine beasts looked up, stopping shortly as their comrade fell onto his face. Behind them the cultivator fumed. Blue did his best Jess impression trying to get the stubborn man to leave.

The nine beasts turned to him and Blue reached out, trying to get a sense of how strong they were. Only one was the equivalent of a fourth level cultivator.

Blue activated his blur again, rushing to encircle the strongest beast. Then he dumped a mountain of qi to create a circle of absolute zero.

Around him, the beasts slowed to a near halt and began to collect icicles on their slowed limbs. Frost covered them as each tried in vain to break free.

"Hey! Idiot! Rub to your elder! We can't fight them all!" Blue yelled at the spear cultivator.

"There is no honor in running!"

Blue punched through the frozen fourth realm beast, supping on its qi.

Once again his core overflowed and he needed to use it to do something. Anything to relieve the feeling of being so completely overfull that it felt like it would burn him away.

"Don't die like a fool! Stronger and stronger ones will come and they will flatten your Sect. You can’t rebuild if you are all dead!"

The senior disciples paused for a minute. Inside the circle of absolute zero, all was silent. Outside, Blue knew the battle was a loud, raging event.

The calm inside of his storm held onto him for long enough to pick another suitable cultivator to save.

Blue spotted three junior disciples with their backs against a wall, barely surviving against two spiritual beasts. These beasts were cobbled together trees, an altogether different force of nature.

He sent his spiritual senses out, probing for a weakness.

Grace killed beast after beast, hoping against hope that she could save one or two more, trying to give them a chance to escape. This battle felt different- different from the pagoda, and when she’d killed the few beasts that had harassed them on the way to Stone Fish. She felt alive. Killing spiritual beasts? That wasn’t it.

She felt a purpose, she understood what Jess was trying to accomplish. And she wanted to protect them. She would fight, and she would drain their qi, killing countless more if she had to. Especially if it meant defending someone that couldn’t defend themself, and as she looked down to a line of shell shocked cultivators, some that wouldn’t. Half of them looked like they would embrace a quick death, and the other half looked like they were already half dead.

Blue might be able to kill for fun and games, but that wasn’t enough for Grace.

And Grace would say to them, Not one more.

The rock dust clouded around her vision as she kept yelling for the cultivators to join them. Ahead of her, Fa Za slipped into and out of shadows, trying to grab a cultivator with each movement.

His motions looked like an illusion, a mirage of a man ducking into and out of shadows, pulling near death cultivators behind him.

Ahead of Jess, the most inner part of the Sect’s land lay.

She prepared herself for the hardest part.

Already, the pressure from the divine beast felt like she was wearing a winter coat in the summer, and she didn’t appreciate it. She knew that her people would be suffering.

With her empowered Nascent soul, she knew that the largest remnant of Heaven’s Mountain lay ahead. She also felt a small core of strong cultivators ahead.

Her battle lines folded back further, as she tried to buy Fa Za, Blue and Grace more time.

They were running out of it.

On her right and left, aunties threw countless sandals, beating the rock and tree beasts back.

A little voice in her mind was telling her that she needed to run. She pushed that voice aside.

Not one more.

The other voice roared, the loudest whisper she’d ever heard. She embraced this one.

“We have to move,” she roared above the noise of the battle behind her, “there! Those are the last large group that has any chance. We don’t have time to get bogged down!”

A chorus of groans hit her as she watched a spiritual beast fly from the inner sect to the rocky ground that they held.

“Move! They can catch up!”

The Aunties started their retreat, giving up ground to the spiritual beasts that tripped over several of their dead comrades.

Jess sighed and turned her eyes to the sixth realm cultivator who was making a show in the inner sect area.

“Let it go!” Jess yelled.

“This is my Sect!” Ling Za yelled back.

Jess was side by side with the stubborn woman.

She speared a tree beast in the chest, leaving a frozen hole where it’s core had been. Next to her Ling Za parried a thrown boulder away from her face.

“They are getting too strong! You can’t stay and fight!”

“Like hell I can’t! I will defy the heavens! This is nothing!”

“This is nothing for you! Let it go!” Jess yelled, “You can lead a Sect of corpses!”

This had precisely the opposite effect that Jess had wanted.

Ling Za flared with anger and for a second Jess feared that she would rage against her.

“You’re exactly the stubborn type of woman that I always wanted for my son!”

Jess blinked.

“Really?” She punched a rock creature, sending it flying, “We’re doing this now?”

“Yes, now! He needs a wife!”

Lina Za pummeled a rock beast, throwing it into a line of moving spiritual beasts. Behind them, hundreds of Sect followers were retreating.

“He doesn’t need a wife! He needs direction!”

“Like hell he does! A mother knows these things, Jessica!”

Jess caught a tree arm right in the ribs, knocking her off balance.

“A mother,” Jess smashed a rock beast into bits, “needs to let her babies leave the nest! I’m not here to argue with you! I’m here to save your people!”