Chapter 42- Slaughtering in Eight Directions

Tian had never really wanted to understand how the magic of the Heretics worked. There were gu cultivators, with their awful amalgam of curses and insects. There were necromancers, refining corpses, chaining ghosts and driving zombies. There were sorcerers, curse masters, plague gods and blood baptized marauders. There were those who summoned demons, who ingested strange drugs and potions, and those who swallowed the smoke made of burning sacrifices. Many used methods derived from daoism, but they weren’t properly daoist for all they spoke of yin and yang or the five elements.

They were heretics, all shoddy foundations built from cruelty and desperate measures, and their arts reflected it. They were beings driven by envy, fear, resentment, desire. They had never learned to control their darkest instincts. They considered them sources of strength. To be satiated was to be weak. Only the hungry strived, so no matter how much heretics ate, they made certain their bellies never filled.

Every mortal knew grudges over food were the most frightening. A hungry person hated anyone who stopped them from eating, and could do anything to fill the hole in them. Even if all they could fill it with was vindictive pleasure. These were things Heretics understood, and used well. The cruel winnowing of a heretic’s life seemed to prove the truth of the rule- Strength is situational, and relative. It was the most vicious, most avaricious, most decisive, who survived.

Tian never really understood how Heavenly Demon’s Aura worked either. It was some sort of combination of qi and shen, formed into a unified whole. The body had to be refined so that it could contain and direct that strange energy. He was fairly certain that the power wasn’t really Heavenly Demon’s. He was a vessel, or more precisely, a channel. He was one of the favored sons of a cult that could sweep away the entirety of the Wasteland of Song with a slight effort. One of their orthodox line. His foundations were transcendent, refined to the peak of perfection, and his arts reflected it too. He just needed the hostility, the envy, the greed, the lust, of others to display them.

The flying tiger pounced into the midst of a clump of heretics, crackling with lighting and pale blue fire. It lashed out, and its long claws dragged back pieces of flesh once quite dear to those who wore it before.

“Insects! No, it’s insects sending more insects. Pathetic. See how this demon crushes all of you!” Heavenly Demon spat the words as spectral demonic hands reached out and squeezed clouds of hornets. Tian’s golden pupils could see them clearly, monstrous insects refined from curses of fire, metal, acid and the murderous hatred that was every hornet’s birthright. A swarm like that was a life’s work for a gu master. They would be proof of his wealth, and his strength.

Such pitiful wealth. Such pitiful strength. The Gu master didn’t survive his hornets by more than three seconds. A finger the size of a banyan tree, forged of starlight and alien runes, descended from the empty blue sky and ground him into the red sands.

Heavenly Demon’s hair flew around him, glowing red. He glared at the dozens of heretics before him, and slowly clapped the non-existent muss from his hands. “Cowards, weaklings and fools. Mere prey for this Demon. A single bauble from This Seat’s purse could buy your whole wasteland, and everything in it. A single art, a single skill from His storehouse would dominate every sect in the eight kingdoms. A whisper from His lips, a touch from his finger, and no lover is faithful. No heart is free from lust. All worship and adore this Heavenly Demon, as they should. For this Demon is supreme. AND YET YOU DARE CAPER ABOUT BEFORE HIM! REGRET YOUR LIVES AND DIE REPENTING YOUR BIRTH!”

Tian could see ripples in the air, carrying faint touches of aura to the listening heretics along with Heavenly Demon’s words. The Heretics paused. Then some rushed forwards, and others buried their knives in the backs of their comrades. Their faces were masks of mad ecstasy and mindless avarice. They were thinning the competition. Then Tian had to look away, because some had decided to snatch a ‘safer’ prize- the two youngsters and a crane, carefully staying out of the fight. Highly visible in their resplendent blue and white robes.

Arrows came from below, each a yard long and heavy with spells. Burning Heaven was not the most nimble bird, but the White Peacock knew his student. Each flap of her mighty wings hammered down the air, knocking away any arrow that was even slightly lacking in qi or spellwork. The ones which came closer, and there were many, were intercepted by traceries of multicolored lights streaming from her feathers. The shimmering colors landed on the arrows and, to Tian’s eyes, overloaded the enchantments. The arrows exploded yards below them.

Burning Heaven wasn’t one to take a one-sided beating. Her snowy white plumage grew brighter and more brilliant. A beam of lightning-bright light, hot enough to melt glass, fell from her white belly and slammed into the desert. A heartbeat later, the column narrowed, before sweeping in a short arc.

“Three down. I don’t know how many dozens more to go.” Her voice was a snarl. Tian patted her neck to calm her. Was this her first time fighting heretics? It… wasn’t, exactly, she had fought assassins and bandits when they were traveling with the Censor and Little Treasure. But it was definitely her first time in the middle of a large-scale cultivator battle. She came to the Red Sands even younger than he had.

“Well done. Let Brother and Sister show you the way from here.” He kept his voice steady, a veteran's calm as he picked his target. “Liren, straight up from the lone rock front left, two hundred feet. He’s behind a concealment spell.” The heretic seemed to be weaving an uncommonly nasty bit of sorcery, and he didn’t intend to let him complete it.

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Liren didn’t say anything. She pulled out a throwing spear and in a single explosive move, launched it at the hidden sorcerer. It was in her hand, then smashing apart the concealing spell of the sorcerer. It didn’t seem to cross the intervening space. The sorcerer’s robe blazed with a deathly blue-black glow. To Tian’s shock, it stopped the spear dead.

“What the hell is that robe?” He breathed. Liren just snorted and threw a second spear. The sorcerer frantically tore a talisman at the instant the spear arrived. What happened next was, charitably, a case of poor timing. The blood escape talisman tore as the spear struck the sorcerer’s head. While the heretic had intended to escape as a streak of lighting-quick blood, he had probably intended to move as a cohesive stream, rather than in chunks.

Liren smiled slightly. She had gotten lucky. The storage ring survived. Her spears and the ring were both recalled to her hand. Tian smiled slightly too. The range of her qi manipulation had gotten exponentially larger, and her control, already quite good, had gotten finer still. His eyes kept sweeping the wastes, looking for his next target.

Ah. A gu master. He slapped out three quick palms, hoping to catch the deformed heretic by surprise. No such luck. The heretic saw the blows coming, and dodged with precision. It countered with a long spray of acid, then leapt up from the desert floor where it had been hiding. Six transparent wings burst from his back, and beat the air in an eery drone.

“Burning Heaven, fly us clear of here.” Tian kept slapping out palms, and despite being quite certain he was reading the heretic’s movements properly, the heretic kept evading his blows.

“Doing it.” She had picked a direction ninety degrees from where Heavenly Demon was reveling in his new-found power. It was carnage, and flashy as hell, and he drew over the heretics with every arrogant declaration. For all that, Tian had an itchy feeling on his neck. The array had been potent, but the heretics had weeks to plan and organize. Ambushes was what they did, they were masters of the art. Was this really the best they could manage? He sent out a palm and watched the heretic almost casually dodge it before spitting out another stream of acid. Tian struck out again and blocked it, watching the cursed acid and the righteous qi obliterating each other.

An array filled with odorless poison. They had broken it very quickly, and Tian kept a close eye on Liren and Burning Heaven. They weren’t poisoned, none of them were. This wasn’t right at all. He checked them over again, this time carefully examining their skin and clothes. He swore.

“The poison is still on your skin and feathers! It’s not been properly activated yet, there is another layer to the trap. This is just the probe. The ‘test animals.’” He silently messaged everyone.

“How do we get rid of it?” Liren asked.

“Working on it. Just running my qi over it doesn’t seem to be doing it. If anything, I’m only making it stronger.”

Tian was testing a patch of his robes. The poison on his skin had been thoroughly absorbed and consumed, but that wasn’t something he could practically offer to anyone else. The gu master wasn’t helping, launching spray after spray of acid and distracting him. The heretic had stopped targeting Tian directly, instead aiming his volleys where Burning Heaven would fly. Tian was having a hard time blocking them, and Burning Heaven had to use her own magic to defend against it. Since she was also attacking heretics on the ground and trying to fly at the same time, this was not ideal.

Liren was focused on picking off any incautious heretics who got too close. After the first couple, her effectiveness dropped sharply. They were staying back and launching their own long range attacks. Keeping the pressure on, without going for a decisive blow. Tian’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Could it be for tracking? Wait for us to split up then pick us off one at a time? Maybe track us back to confirm our origins?” Liren asked, then shook her head. “Doesn’t seem like heretic thinking. Why track, when you can torture the information out of us directly.”

Tian grunted. “Take over on this Gu bastard, would you? I want to have a proper look around.” He dug into a storage ring, and pulled out a formation plate. Sacrificing two spirit crystals would distort their qi signature and make them appear to be about twenty feet from where they were. It couldn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but he needed a little time.

He used the trick he had learned in the hidden realm, guiding vital energy into his eyes. The golden pupils dilated, and the world burst into chaotic color and meaning. It all meant so much! There was so much to see and understand here, nothing like the simplified world presented in Palace Lord Song’s cultivation ground. He forced himself to look all around them, trying to peer as deeply as he could into the madness of colors.

There were a hell of a lot more heretics hidden than he thought. And, more concerningly, there was a distant ring of lights around them. Not an array, not yet, but he could sense there was more behind those lights. Something so huge, how could it tell friend from foe? Paranoid as heretics were, how could they dare to fight inside a giant array if they didn’t have heavy assurances of survival?

Memories of the wasteland, and his travels with Elder Feng, started snapping together. One of the greatest horrors of the war, for Tian, was knowing that the Ancient Crane Monastery was essentially funding it, backing the salt trade that helped make Black Iron Gorge so rich. But the Wastelands touched eight kingdoms, and the Broadsky Kingdom was ordinary amongst them. There were other, far richer, powers. The Five Elements Courtyard, for example. The array masters had come into a massive windfall towards the end of the war too- a giant sky barge full of array making supplies worth more than a mortal kingdom.

Tian didn’t know what contacts they had with the heretics. Given everything, it would be insane to think they had none. Almost as insane as thinking the orthodox sects wouldn’t take steps to secure the secret realm for themselves.

There would be no need to wait ten years before opening the realm again. The backbone of any regional power in the Wasteland were the Heavenly Realm cultivators. There were too few Human Realm cultivators idling around in the region, and fewer still healthy enough to take the field for anything less than a sect destroying calamity. Heavenly Realm cultivators were beasts of greed and obsession. The hidden realm was simply too tempting for them to ignore. A fresh war was brewing, and this time there would be no grand alliance of the orthodox against the heretics. It would be all against all.