We had to get past the defensive fortifications to get inside the house, so there was no point in hiding our presence now that I had explained the situation to my House members.

They moved to take up positions to surround Ja Fiat’s home. She might have a bolt hole, but I had enough people so that every point of escape was covered. I’d also had Storm had her avian flock circling just in case. If Ja Fiat managed to break free, they would continue to track her.

I sent one extended ping as a warning across the Gestalt before I launched my attack.

A barrier empowered by Cultist energies was raised the second I released my killing intent and began my battle dance. The barrier was strong enough to rebuff my attempt to enter, so I continued my dance, releasing Qi-powered attacks as I swirled, leaped, and maneuvered my Tessen in a deadly ballet of devastation.

[White Crane Opens Wing]

[Spin and Dive Into the Ocean]

[Dragon Sweeps the Tail]

[Catch the Moon]

[Dancing Wind and Rain]

[Thunder Strikes]

[Falling Cherry Blossoms]

[Dragon Tail]

[Moon Opens]

[Wind Over Water]

Each martial technique bled into the next. Each movement released powerful Qi bursts fueled by my affinities with water, lightning, ice, fog, and wind.

The barrier was robust enough to withstand attack after attack, but when I cycled through each movement, increasing the energy I released, it began to flicker. With the third iteration of martial Katas, the barrier broke.

Ja Fiat had planned well because the barrier falling was only the first step. The house had been seeded with a combination of attack arrays that were triggered once the barrier fell. Attacks using death and demonic techniques that released curses and hellfire randomly, making it necessary to track and react to the type of energies being used.

The attacks did not only focus on me and seemed to have been created to do as much damage to the surrounding area as any possible invader. The entire neighborhood would have been destroyed if I had not gathered my House members.

I was not so focused on destroying those arrays to appreciate how well each member was doing. How flawlessly their execution of defensive techniques had synergized with each other. I stored that information away to consider once Ja Fiat was dealt with.

They meshed well as a team, worked together, and supported each other effortlessly. And they had done so without the benefit of training, planning, or orders. Perhaps, my idea of training teamwork would need to be rethought. It seemed that once a Cultivator reached the Qi Gathering Realm, the speed with which their minds processed information was enough to react quickly, to consider the variables in play during a battle and react.

The attack arrays were actually more challenging to deal with than the defensive barrier had been. They had been scribed within an interlinking matrix that absorbed Qi and shared it across the matrix. That would have been bad enough, but that absorbed Qi was then funneled into a type of capstone that worked as a battery. Empowering the attack arrays and allowing them to produce stronger and more potent attacks as more Qi was absorbed.

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I quickly realized what was happening and changed the pattern of my martial dance. Forgoing most of my techniques and concentrating on [Falling Cherry Blossoms]. That technique had an insidious area effect component that allowed me to flood every array, the capstone, and the matrix that allowed the arrays to siphon power to be targeted en mass.

With each [Cherry Blossom] placed in a logical pattern to disrupt the matrix and destroy the rest, I infused them with the full power of my expanded Qi and Dharmic energy pools.

Nascent Soul Realm Cultivators were rare across the population. And they were feared. Feared for a reason. The forces that were released when I triggered the [Falling Cherry Blossom] technique to explode would have leveled half the city if I couldn’t control the energy that was released.

A Qi Gathering Realm Cultivator would have had no chance to withstand those forces and would have needed to rely on protective talismans or arrays to contain the energy and survive.

I didn’t have to worry about those energies. The Qi and Dharmic energies that were released when the [Blossoms] exploded still contained my energy signature, so instead of trying to contain or withstand the blast, I began to cultivate.

[Transcend the Heavenly Footpath] was almost instinctive by this time. I still had to be careful not to deviate even the slightest from the proscribed pattern the technique required. Still, I was adept enough to embrace cultivation and reclaim the energy from the explosion that was mine.

This method of using [Transcend the Heavenly Footpath] as a defensive technique was something new. Something I had only been able to accomplish now that I had reached the Nascent Soul Realm. And something I hadn’t realized I could do until Clement explained it to me.

I wouldn’t say I responded instinctively to the knowledge that Clement had shared, but I did respond. And at that moment, as I transitioned from attack to cultivation, I experienced a minor epiphany on the nature of [Growth]. In that time between seconds where my understanding of the [Minor Dao of Growth] expanded, I understood more about the nature of that [Dao]. This was the first time my cultivation impacted my understanding of this new [Dao].

It seemed a contradiction that energy released because of an explosion would have any noticeable impact on a [Dao of Growth], but the energy released was not contained. It grew from that initial point of contact to expand, to grow in all directions, and that growth was as much a part of the [Dao] as the growth of biological material.

The building was defenseless now, but that didn’t mean it was safe to enter. I found that out when I moved to enter the house, and the very ground the house sat on began to rise to form a buttress of protection, a berm of earth and stone that denied me egress.

I had already been barely containing my fury, but having the land used against me broke the flimsy chains of control I had been using to restrain that anger.

“NO,” I whispered. That whisper echoed and vibrated louder and louder until it became oppressive.

“This land is MINE,” I shouted. My voice was infused with a new command presence, an authority that was just as potent as killing intent. I wrestled control of the earth from the grasp of the Cultist energies it had been infused with, reclaiming what was mine.

I had placed the Kingdom stone. I had paid the price in pain and suffering to claim this land. And I would not have it corrupted or used against me in my own Capital City. And as the earth responded to my voice, as my Qi signature that infused that very earth acknowledged my claim, it receded.

But my anger was not spent, and in my anger, I decided I would not be denied entry any longer. My Tessen snapped open as I began the creation phase of [Reap the Wind]. I limited the cyclones I created to four, and once they were formed, I directed them to the four corners of the roof.

The vortex of wind that each cyclone controlled ripped every shingle and board from the roof of the building. The material that each cyclone consumed was ground down, becoming a powder so fine that as I finished the technique and allowed the cyclones to collapse, a cloud of powder from the dust was released.

A powder of dust that had been funneled into the bowels of the house. It took only a spark of the alchemical fire I controlled to ignite that dust into an explosion so powerful that the house was utterly destroyed. A destructive force I had to contain using a Qi barrier.

The house was gone, but Ja Fiat was yet to be captured. I knew she was not in the central part of the building itself. She was under it. Toi had informed me of this when she had scouted for me. Ja Fiat had created a tunnel deeply enough into the earth that there was no chance of the vile energies she was dealing with being noticed.

It had saved her from the house’s destruction, but it had also trapped her, I hoped. She had nowhere to run unless she had carved an escape tunnel within the confines of her basement. And as I commanded wind and water to clear a path, I stalked down the staircase that was revealed.

Ja Fiat had already earned a death sentence by engaging in Cultist and Demonic cultivation. But that death sentence would have to wait. She had dared to target my brother and sister, and I would find out why.

I would know every one of her secrets before I allowed her the release of death. And if that meant I had to break her mind in the process. So be it!