“We need assistance! We’re under attack! Everything is burning!”

“There’s a metal man smashing against the gates and some unknown force is backing him up. Our defensive barrier is going to fall if we don’t stop him somehow! Requesting assistance from the headquarters.”

“Can you hear me? Why aren’t the reinforcements here yet?”

The sounds of many different voices echoed through a spacious stone room. A pair of columns supported the ceiling and between them was a large semi-circular marble desk mounted with more than a dozen Messaging Jades. The chair behind that desk was currently empty, which surprised the man who just walked through the door. His clothing was far more expensive and exquisite than his Cultivation level matched up with showing he either had money to spare or had bad spending habits.

“What the hell? Where are you, Jin?”

It was only in that instant that the well dressed man realized that Jin might not just be absent from his post. His eyes widened and he reached down to touch the Storage Bag at his waist. Alas, he realized the truth of the situation just a little too late. A red line appeared around his neck and he saw the world spinning.

The now headless body tumbled to the ground, still completely unaware of the one that killed him. Behind the richly dressed fellow was only the vague outline of a person. The air rippled slightly and the unseen presence left without making a sound. The hallway full of guards standing at attention didn’t notice anything either as the air rippled above their heads. Around a corner and down a few passageways a set of large double doors opened and a grumbling fellow walked out, “What is taking Guo Mu so long! He knows we’re waiting for him to bring the report yet he still dares to stop somewhere else? That frivolous bastard is going to get it this time.”

When the man left the room he was completely unaware of a ripple in the air above him that passed through the doors he’d opened up as they were swinging closed. Inside the room was a large square table with raised edges and filled with sand. This was a Sand Table, the same sort of idea that the Lang Clan’s War Table was based upon, except it was a far less impressive Magical Tool. The War Table allowed scouts with the right Magical Tools to directly relay updates to the status of the table, while a Sand Table required many people to act as operators to manually alter the table. At this time, there were three men and one woman who wore large capes with shiny medals pinned to their chests. Three of them had a single attendant standing behind them waiting to receive their orders, but judging from the lack of anyone else in the room the Sand Table was not tied to a current battlefield. Without a dozen operators to update the table it would be extremely slow and greatly impact an army’s strength.

“You would use the Fifty Cranes Formation here? Doesn’t that leave your rear open to these archers on the ridge?”

“It does, but that is why I sent most of my scouts to the cliff over here. They will be ordered to start harassing the archers as soon as they hear the hawk’s cry.”

“Those few scouts will suffer the full attention of this archer regiment. So, you will sacrifice your scouts to break the enemy’s main formation? Hmm.”

Two of the caped people were moving things around on the Sand Table and discussing their actions while the other two were simply watching for the moment. The man’s face was somewhat neutral, but the woman seemed disdainful. The look she was giving finally seemed to be too much and the man who was making the moves barked at her, “You think my skills are so low, do you? Then show us what you would do instead, Miss Iron Flower.”

The two that had been doing the talking earlier both leaned over the edge of the table and watched the woman across from them wave her hand to reset the battle back to its start. The disdainful look on her face faded, replaced by intense focus as she reached out to start making her moves. The other caped fellow standing next to her was the only one of the four that still seemed uninterested in the Sand Table, and that was why he noticed something amiss that the others were clueless to. He opened his mouth to shout a warning as he was mobilizing his Qi, but he was too late. Before a word could leave the man’s mouth the two men that leaned over the table to carefully observe felt everything go dark.

Behind them, their two attendants were only a split second slower to react than the man across the table, but they were only in time to see a red blossom flowering on the ears of their bosses. The air rippled between the two men and the splash of blood revealed a human standing between the two of them with arms outstretched. A blade was stabbed into the ears of these two men, one to the left and one to the right. Stabbed right into their brain the tips of the blades snapped off and the Poison Qi they were made of spread into the targets to ensure they were finished. The two attendants flared their own Qi, starting to attack this sudden assassin, but they weren’t expecting their own reactions to suddenly be slower than normal. Their bodies didn’t move the way they wanted them to and they could only watch as the blurry outline zoomed towards them.

The unseen killer spun on their heels and then lunged towards them. The two Qi blades that were now missing their tips rapidly changed form. The blades first pulled in, avoiding the defenses of the two attendants. Then they extended outwards rapidly and thinned down taking the form of two long narrow sabers. The killer spun around like a deadly top, dragging the pair of blades through the waist of the two attendants. The two caped men were in the fifth rank, but these two attendants were only in the middle of the fourth. They weren’t fast enough to raise a full body defense in time to block an invisible foe and were cleanly bisected. One was holding a pair of glowing shortswords, while the other was starting to spin a staff, but they were just too slow and didn’t have any way to see their killer’s weapons rapidly changing size and shape.

Across the table, the cloaked woman was still engrossed with making moves on the Sand Table, but the cloaked man and the cloaked woman’s attendant were both moving into action. The female attendant pulled the cloaked woman away from the table and jumped in front of her while the cloaked man drew the sword that was hanging at his waist and leaped over the Sand Table. He rushed towards the rippling air, using the blood splatters that were floating in the air to predict where this enemy was and what they were doing.

The cloaked man jumped from the table to crash down towards the hidden foe, but he abruptly raised his sword and there was a loud clang as he deflected an object. At the same time there was a soft squelch and the female attendant blocked a similar object with her back. At that there was a loud pop and dark smoke suddenly spread through the room. The cloaked woman came to her senses and brought out her own weapon, a large halberd. She tapped the base against the ground and a spherical barrier appeared around herself and her attendant. The cloaked man did a similar action, except he brought out a palm sized piece of rectangular paper and the characters written on it started to glow blue. A matching blue aura appeared around his body like a second skin.

Then they heard the two heavy doors of the room creak and then swing shut. The black smoke cleared and the two of them shared a look. They moved back to back while the doors opened once again and row after row of armored guards rushed into the room. They formed row after row around the group of three that was in the room, brandishing their weapons with emotionless faces.

Was it really over just like that?