As the smoke started to clear and the cheering started, Jack dared to hope that the job was done. That he wouldn’t need to deploy his countermeasure.

Which was good, because it wasn’t ready yet, according to the bar in the upper right of his HUD.

Sure, the whole thing had been a little anticlimactic, but that was to be expected. He had guns. They didn’t. He was sitting in a prepared position with open sightlines in all directions. They were on the other side of an open field with swords. And said open field was festooned with mines.

The Marble Cloud Sect had run head first into an opponent that was completely outside their conventional understanding of the world and been completely annihilated for it.

So as Jack glanced out at the hundreds of dead - most of the Marble Cloud Sect’s army were conscripts who had fled rather quickly once the shooting started - he finally allowed himself to relax.

Cultivators were dangerous opponents, of that he had no doubt, but this fight had been about as ideal a set of circumstances as he could have asked for.

“They’ll adapt,” a voice from his right muttered, barely audible over the whooping, hollering and occasional vomiting of the militia.

He turned to stare at Gao, the shorter man staring out across the field just as he’d been doing moments ago.

It was in truth, a little audacious of the sergeant to speak to him so, especially on the tail of a great victory like this. By all rights, the man should have been bowing at his feet, proclaiming him the greatest craftsmen the world had ever known.

Ok, perhaps that’s a bit much, Jack mused.

But Gao wasn’t like that. He could be shocked. He could be awed. But in spite of those things, he never seemed to lose sight of reality.

It was part of why Jack fully expected to one day have the man replace Kang as leader of the militia. Kang was competent, and willing to adapt, but ultimately still too much of an old school thinker.

“Undoubtedly,” Jack allowed. “We had the advantage of surprise this time, but the local sects didn’t become the dominant power around here by being stupid.”

Or perhaps they did? Stupendous personal power gave one a lot of leeway when it came to making stupid decisions.

Still, Jack wasn’t about to bet on that. No, the locals would adapt to the new paradigm soon enough and start coming up with ways to neuter the advantages provided by his weapons.

Smoke. Stealth. Night attacks. Jack shook his head. No, at most I’ll be able to do something like this maybe twice more before people wise up.

Then he heard the scream.

It was a warped inhuman thing that managed to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up despite the auditory dampeners in his suit.

“Of fucking course,” he hissed as something shot out of the smoke.

No, two things.

The pair were little more than a blur as they dashed across the killing field – traveling so fast that rather than having the minefield explode under them, it exploded behind them in a line.

Shots started to ring out from the wall as people recovered from their surprise and started to fire on the two figures, but if any of the hasty shots hit, Jack didn’t see it. Hell, he could barely track them with his eyes.

At least until they jumped.

The wall around Jiangshi was fourteen feet tall. Roughly the height of two grown men. And the pair of monsters leapt up to the parapets as if it were nothing.

Still, in that moment, at the apex of their leap, Jack saw them.

Weregoats.

As ridiculous as it sounded in his mind, that was the only descriptor he could give for the two figures.

Covered in thick fur, adorned with powerful horns, and with a facial structure that should never have been applied to anything humanoid. He did note that of the two of them, one was distinctly bigger than the other.

Then the moment passed – and the two monsters were on the walls. Specifically, one was right in front of him.

The bigger one.

“What the fu-” Jack started to say, bringing up his handcannon, only to be cut off as he took two hoofed feet to the chest.

His armor was not light. Ultralight modern alloys aside, the thing was still a giant mass of metal and machinery.

But he was launched from the walls with the force of a cannon ball, breath driven from his lungs as he felt something dent and crack.

Sent flying back into the town, he ignored the pain as he reflexively fired the thrusters on his suit, righting himself before he reached the floor. He managed to keep his footing as he impacted the road surface with his heels, but he still shattered the road surface, kicking up dirt and shattered cobblestone as he skidded to a halt - thrusters firing all the while in an attempt to kill his momentum.

When he finally came to a stop, he glared up at the thing that had just hit him with a double foot jump kick.

She – because the six breasts left no illusions as to the weregoat's gender - looked smugly down at him, crouched like a gargoyle atop the wall.

“What the fuck…” he hissed, wincing as the movement jostled what was definitely a pair of cracked ribs; though that pain quickly subsided as his suit introduced a powerful mixture of painkillers into his system.

Reaching down to his breastplate, he frowned at the rather sizable dent he found there – though his self-inspection was cut short as gunfire and screams started to ring out from the wall. Looking up, he scowled as he found that the smaller of the two weregoats had started tearing apart the members of the militia closest to them. Horns, hoofed feet and clawed arms lashed out without a hint of grace or style as the thing engaged in a ruthless massacre of his people.

Yet all the while, the larger one simply stared at him.

“An. Ren.” He hissed into his radio. “Get up here. Now.”

It was an agonizing minute for him, as he waited for them to arrive. Part of him was tempted to take a shot at the still beast, but that could make it attack him again immediately. And as the pain in his chest proved, the thing was more than capable of cracking open his armor with ease.

More to the point, it seemed that so long as he didn’t make a move, it wouldn’t either.

In other words, by doing nothing and waiting for reinforcements, he was keeping fifty percent of the enemy force locked down.

Maybe more, he thought as he compared the nine-foot monster staring at him to the six foot beast slaughtering his people.

And it was a slaughter.

If the militia’s earlier conflict with the Marble Cloud Sect was an ideal set of circumstances for him, then the ongoing fight was a worst case scenario.

A cultivator was in amongst his people – and they couldn’t shoot at it for fear of hitting their fellows.

Or rather, they were shooting at it and hitting their fellows – despite Kang’s bellowing attempts to restore order.

His internal sensors informed him the moment Ren and An touched down behind him – in that unnatural weightless way they did. He also knew that the rest of the reserves were on their way, which was good because massed fire from street level would have a less obstructed angle and thus a better shot of hitting the second weregoat than those stuck on the wall had.

“Instinctive cultivators, here!?” Ren gasped.

So… that’s what they were, he thought. He’d honestly not considered that. To him it had just been some kind of funky cultivator technique.

“We need to call a ceasefire with the Marble Cloud Sect to deal with this,” An said hurriedly. “The Great Enemy’s forces should be thousands of li away.”

“I doubt that would work.” Jack muttered. “For one thing, they’re pretty much all dead. For another, I’m pretty sure that’s Yin staring at us.”

And smirking, the creature’s inhuman features twisted back into a foul approximation of a grin. One that had only grown once Ren and An arrived.

Yet it still didn’t move.

Was it taunting them? Luxuriating in the power it held over them? In forcing him into inaction as its colleague slaughtered his people?

Both women next to him gaped, before paling.

“Traitor…” An hissed.

Ren looked even more shaken.

“How?” she muttered. “I sensed her ki but minutes ago, nothing felt off.” She turned to him. “We need to inform the magistrate. The entire Marble Cloud Sect could be corrupted!”

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off ‘Yin.’ “That’s a problem for later. Focus on the here and now. We need to make a move before even more of my people are killed by that… thing!”

He was not a man accustomed to helplessness. Even as a youth fresh out of the orphanage. He’d always been the type to act before thinking. That was how he’d ended up in the Red Dogs, and later in the Canary Core when it was a choice between that and an extended stay in incarceration.

Yet here and now… some long dormant part of his brain was screaming at him that acting recklessly would only get him killed.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t wait any longer.

His blood was boiling.

He was fucking furious – and that was rapidly overriding his usually well honed sense of self preservation.

Because he’d never had people before. He’d always been either a lone wolf or a follower.

And he found he didn’t much appreciate people killing them.

Sure, Men had done the same, but that had felt… muted. Distant. Perhaps because he’d always known that in the back of his mind, he had the means to mend his broken soldiers?

As reckless, wasteful and stupid as it was, he’d never not considered using the Panacea to save his people.

He didn’t have that option now. Not anymore.

Anyone that was injured here was more than likely going to die.

And that made him see red.

“Engage the weaker one.” He grunted. “Kill it before it kills anyone else. I’m going after the big one.”

Ren nodded uncomfortably. “Be careful. Whatever fell power technique she has tapped into… she’s strong. Stronger than even Lady Cui was.”

Then they were gone. An had her pistols in hand rather than her glaive, while Ren’s swords were drawn, the cannon he’d built for her strung across the buxom blonde’s back.

A little insulting that unlike An, it was clear that Ren favored her old weapon over the one he’d provided. But he wasn’t about to complain. The merchant knew her own fighting style better than him. Hell, the merchant would know more about combat in general than him.

God knows I didn’t train for this, he thought as he stared up at the beast.

And she stared back at him, the tension slowly building to a boiling point as they each waited for some unseen signal.

A quick mental command had a video feed open in the upper right of his HUD. Inside an empty room, a writhing humanoid shadow stood in a pose identical to his. The only difference was that it lacked hands. And as Jack shifted, the creature shifted in turn.

There was no delay to his eyes. It was a perfect imitation of his movements.

He knew it wasn’t though. There still existed a zero-point two percent deviation. A margin of error large enough to shred him from the inside out.

Snorting in disgust, he closed the video feed.

Then he fired up his jets, enjoying the look of surprise on Yin’s face as he launched into the air – right at her.

Not that said microsecond of surprise kept her from leaping back at him. Fortunately, jet thrusters beat leg power.

Unfortunately, said thrusters were not rated for nearly five hundred pounds of ornery goat meat.

-----------------------

Cao had never been important. Not as a peasant. Not when she’d become a cultivator. And not when she’d joined lady Yin’s conspiracy. Too quiet. Too malleable. Too plain.

Always a face in the background. A part of the crowd. Even when she and her brethren had been allowed to cast off the shackles of Imperial Cultivation, she had not truly stood out. She was more aggressive and louder, more free with her desires, but so were her fellows.

Now though? Those fellows were all dead – blown to pieces or perforated by the strange explosive techniques of the hidden cultivator.

She alone had survived. Well, her and Lady Yin.

It seemed that for once, her habit of fading into the crowd had borne dividends, as the corpses of her fellows had sufficiently protected her from the force of the hidden master’s technique. And when she had felt Lady Yin reach breakthrough, once more her habit of blending in had her follow along through her ki, as if guided by the divine hand of the Maker itself.

Now she was remade, in flesh and soul.

And it is glorious, she thought as she lapped the blood from her muzzle, throwing a screaming man from the wall, even as she snatched his discarded ‘tube’ from the air and shattered it over the head of another.

Base and crude as the killing of mortals was, there was no denying the catharsis she felt in slaughtering them for daring to be party to her wounding.

The mortal she’d struck was armored, but that proved less than no defense against the sheer force of her blow, as the peasant’s head snapped to the side with a delightful crack.

In the opening created by the death of two of their allies, the other mortals on the wall tried to aim their peculiar ‘tubes’ at her, but it was as if they were moving underwater to her senses. It was child’s play for her to scoop up the falling corpse of her most recent victim with the tip of a cloven hoof, chuckling as one bolt struck her impromptu shield while the other went wide.

Then she kicked the body into the pair, bowling them and the mortals scrambling around behind them over.

She leapt, intending to flatten them all beneath her hooves – only for a flare of killing intent to warn her of an incoming threat. With a speed she would never have been capable of before her transformation, she raised an armored gauntlet to block the blow.

She enjoyed the look of confusion on Lady Ren’s face as she stopped the woman’s sword cold, forcing the merchant to skip back, nimbly hopping over the corpses strewn across the wall by Cao’s earlier handiwork. The Instinctive Cultivator was about to pursue, when another made herself known, the tiger woman from before landing deftly on a rooftop across from the pair.

“Lady An! Lady Ren!” One of the peasants cried, sounding a little unhinged as she cradled one of her downed comrades. “We’re saved!”

“Retreat.” The cat woman’s voice was clearly audible across the ten-meter gap between them. “This Young Mistress shall vanquish this abomination.”

“…No mention of me, cat?” The merchant said, her own gaze not moving from Cao as she spoke.

“This Young Mistress will not need the aid of one such as you to vanquish one such as this.”

"Fools!" Cao bellowed back, her new voice box warping her voice. "I am remade! Reforged by the Truth! You are as insects before this young mistress’s might.”

"Ugh." The one named An recoiled. “It’s like listening to a cow trying to talk.”

“On this alone, I’m afraid we must concur.” Ren frowned.

"You dare!?"

The cat dared not even approach her, standing at a distance. So, Cao leapt at the ravenette, determined to punish her for her impudence.

“Too easy.”

The words from the girl confused Cao. Then her eyes widened as, in a motion so fast that a mortal would surely have missed it, An pulled two… tube shaped devices from her back.

And in midair, Cao was unable to dodge.

The two devices turned in her direction and made that hateful banging sound – and Cao shrieked in rage and pain as something struck her in the shoulder and thigh.

…Fortunately, her new form was tough. The projectiles punched through skin and buried deep into muscle, but went no further.

Damaging, certainly, but not immediately debilitating.

Which was why, for the second time in as many minutes, she got to watch an Imperial lackey’s eyes widen in surprise as their weak attempts to hurt her failed them. The girl started to raise her arms in a pathetic attempt to ward off Cao’s outstretched claws-

Only for something to strike Cao in the side.

It was no more powerful than the strike from the cultivator, but the angle and surprise were such that Cao rolled in midair against her will, her outstretched claws falling short of her foe as she impacted the roof in an ungainly mess.

When she came back to her feet, the cat was gone, leaping to another roof.

Nickering irritably, pain echoing out from the two wounds in her side and one in her thigh, her eyes landed on the cause of her failure.

A mortal…

Older and dressed more ornately than his fellows, the man had the audacity to stand tall before her gaze, the smoking barrel of his ‘tube’ aimed in her direction.

“You dare-”

She started to speak, only to be forced to dodge as the man fired again, along with the cat cultivator. Hissing in frustration as she ducked under both shots, she scooped up two roofing tiles, throwing one at the old man and the other at the cat.

The cat dodged, but Cao still felt a smile tug at her lips as a wet gurgle came from the old man’s direction – then she could give it no more thought as Ren jumped the gap between them.

The woman’s sword work was more heft than skill, as she used the increased strength provided by her cultivation to try to bull through Cao’s defenses. And though the Instinctive Cultivator was without a blade – and much of her clothing now hung off her like rags – her enchanted gauntlets had survived both the earlier battle and her transformation.

And they were all the defense Cao needed against a merchant.

Sparks flew between them as Ren struck with her sword while Cao defended with her gauntlets -and lashed out with her claws, horns and hooves. It was clear though from the opening moments of the fight who held the advantage.

Cao was stronger and faster, her recent breakthrough to the profound rank of cultivation – a level most cultivators never reached - gave her that edge. The only thing holding her back was the additional reach provided by Ren’s sword and the wounds she’d already sustained. That advantage dwindled with each exchange though, as the goat-woman both healed and adapted with startling speed.

It didn’t take long for the blonde to make a mistake, overreaching with a thrust, giving Cao all the time in the world to bring around her claw and-

Pain blossomed in her shoulder, accompanied by another hateful bang. She stumbled back with a snarl, gripping at the wound.

Ren looked just as surprised as Cao felt, glancing toward where the cat girl now stood on another roof across from the pair.

“You saved me?”

Somewhere beneath the smouldering rage that came from once more being denied a kill, Cao couldn’t help but notice that the blonde woman had lost her Imperial accent – instead, a hint of the guttural tongue of her baseborn Northern origins had slipped into her speech.

“I guess I did.” The cat girl said, sounding more than just a little surprised herself. “Just as Kang saved me.”

Ren frowned. “Is he-”

“Focus on dealing with the abomination first, dog.” The cat’s words were cold and clipped.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Ren shot back, though it seemed more out of reflex than because she meant it.

Having had enough of this insulting byplay, Cao went to speak. “You cowardly-”

Only for pain to explode across her left side as more shots to rang out, not from the direction of the cat, but from the wall itself. Hissing in fury and pain, the goat woman leapt back, arms raised in a futile attempt to protect herself from the deluge of little metal bolts that dug into her hide.

When it finally ended, and the bloodied, but still standing changeling uncrossed her arms, she found indignance only stoked further by the sight of a group of peasants, of all things, on the wall across from her.

A mere twenty or so – the rest having fled or died during her earlier slaughter – they practically shook in their boots as they stared down the smoking openings of their tubes at her. The sight was made all the more pathetic by the fact that a number were clearly injured, either crouched, sitting or favoring limbs.

The only balm to the whole situation was that the old man from before clearly wasn’t amongst them.

She moved to attack, to punish them for the audacity of daring to interfere in a duel between cultivators, when the merchant struck at her again.

“Relying on mortals, merchant!? Have you no pride!?”

Cao’s movements were more sluggish now as her wounds continued to bleed freely.

From between their clashing limbs and the red haze that had formed over her vision, Cao saw the cultivator cock her head. “Are you stupid, traitor? Duels are for people. You’re just an animal that needs to be put down.”

“Gah!”

Cao was a cultivator – a truer cultivator than this blonde harlot could ever claim to be.

She swiped aside the woman’s blade with a rush of strength – only for her raised arm to once more be intercepted by a hateful bang and a blossom of pain.

The cat had taken the opening to shoot her in the shoulder.

Again!

Her limb now useless, Cao tried to back up, only for a deluge of shots from the wall to force her back in close to Ren again, where they couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting her.

“Guh!” The changeling winced as the blonde struck her first blow of the fight, slicing into her side with that pathetic blade of hers.

Wincing, Cao ducked to the side, only for a shot from An to hit her in the thigh. Then Ren stabbed her again. And again.

“Cowards!”

“Shut up!” The blonde’s barbaric origins were in full display as she used her incredible strength to shove Cao onto her back, leveling her sword at the downed monster.

Cao was beaten. She knew it. They knew it. Hell, even the mortals on the wall knew it. However, if they expected her to beg, they would be disappointed.

Their underhanded tricks may have allowed them to triumph against her, but Cao knew her mistress would triumph over such petty inconveniences as easily as one might turn over a hand. Everyone here would suffer before the end.

“She’s mad,” An said, disgust in her voice as a wet chortle started to issue forth from Cao’s warped throat.

"Imperial lackys, you are blind." Cao tittered. "You think you've won something here?"

The pair said nothing.

“My mistress will kill you all. Then she will return home and show the entirety of our sect the light.” She stared at them. “Then Ten Huo will burn. A pyre for the righteous”

“Your mistress is powerful,” An allowed. “Twisted and warped by a power beyond her means, but certainly strong.”

“I can feel her from here.” The blonde added.

Vindictive hope flared in Cao’s chest. “Then-”

“But I can feel that strength. Measure it. See its peak.” Ren continued. “Something I’ve never once been able to do for the master of this town. The summit of his power is so beyond the clouds that this Ren Delan cannot even see the base.”

An smirked. “Your mistress will fall by our master’s hand. And all her schemes will come to naught. The tool you see in my hand? Sister to the one ‘mortals’ used to defeat you?” She twisted the bizarre ‘tube’ she held. “They are but the smallest expression of his power.”

Cao hissed, rage giving new life to her limbs as she moved to stand – to tear these blasphemers limb from limb.

The object in An’s hand made a strange clicking sound – and then one final hateful bang.