Fates Parallel Chapter 367 - Grueling

On the ground, Jia followed Sukarto’s rapid bounding strides to the best of her ability. His way of moving was reminiscent of her own Lightning Steps, the way he darted from place to place without an apparent pattern. However, his quadrupedal body and lithe musculature let him twist and bound in ways that would strain Jia’s body—much less those following behind her.

On top of that, though he was trying his best to lead the group through optimal openings, a clear gap for him didn’t necessarily stay clear after he’d crossed it. Thankfully, by leaving the bulk of the navigation to Sukarto, Jia was instead able to focus on more immediate dangers.

“Left!”

The injured cultivator in her arms clung on for dear life as she swerved left to evade an incoming blade of qi. To their credit, the rest of the group followed her lead fast enough to escape unharmed. All but Yue, who dodged on her own, relying on her own style rather than Jia’s orders.

It wasn’t a matter of pride or insubordination. Yue had her own task, and it required her to be able to move freely. She snapped one of her fans shut and thrust it towards a distant farmer. A beam of light formed between her and the farmer, but didn’t do anything. It was just a signal.

Eui swooped down from the air and swung her sword down at the farmer. His retaliation was swift and brutal, immediately twisting around and swinging his scythe up to meet Eui’s blade. But she’d already aborted her attack, flying up out of range and twisting to the side to avoid the qi strike that followed.

The small delay was enough to create an opening for Jia and the others to catch back up to Sukarto, only for the entire delicate dance to begin anew.

Eui scowled as Yue marked three more targets in rapid succession. Melati and Ruiling were already moving to respond, so she saved her strength for the next one.

“Zheng Long, this would be a lot easier if you helped.”

“I am not too proud to admit my own weaknesses. I don’t maneuver as easily as you or the natural fliers. I’m watching the scarecrows and the bird as you asked—though they haven’t moved yet. Is that not enough?”

“Not really. Are you sure you wouldn’t be able to move faster without a certain monkey on your back?”

Bai Lin squeaked indignantly in protest.

“Who are you calling a monkey, you foul beast?!”

Eui stared flatly.

“Yeah, I don’t think you get to take exception to people calling you names, Bai. Right now you are worse than useless because you’re canceling out one of the strongest cultivators here. Walk on your own before you get all of us killed.”

She didn’t have time to wait for a response, as Yue had marked another target. Whatever was going on with Bai Lin and Zheng Long, it was pissing Eui off. She had no love for Zheng Long, but he wasn’t weak—when he wasn’t desperately trying to conserve qi while carrying Bai Lin around like she was his—

Oh. Eui nearly gagged. There was no way. The next moment of reprieve she had, she immediately approached him again. He was looking up at the sky with a frown.

“Miss An, I think the bird might be getting closer, but—”

“Screw the bird, Zheng—are you two fucking?!”

Zheng Long cringed, but Bai Lin blushed and sputtered.

“Wh—how crude! I should have expected no better from you.”

“Answer the question!”

Zheng shook his head.

“We are engaged, Miss An, to answer the crux of your question.”

Eui leveled her sword at Bai Lin.

“Drop her. She can run with everyone else.”

Bai Lin went pale and shook her head.

“I don’t have the constitution for that! I’m a spiritualist, not some craven barbarian!”

“You should have thought of that before forcing yourself into this expedition without being prepared. Even the Awakening Dragon Sect had the sense to make sure their representatives were omnidisciplinary.”

Zheng Long sighed.

“Miss An, our truce—”

“Fuck the truce! Either put her down in one piece, or I’ll send her down in two.”

“Please, think—”

“UP ABOVE!”

Ruiling's shout was just in time, Eui and Zheng Long split apart to avoid a black speck plummeting toward them. It swerved after Eui, but she quickly raised her blade to deflect it with a loud ping.

“What the hell was that?!”

It had been moving too fast, and was much smaller than she’d expected. How had she spotted something that small while it was so high up?

She got her answer as she looked up to see that what she’d thought was just one bird was actually an entire flock of tiny winged creatures, each smaller than a single handspan. They had black feathers, tinged with the slightest hint of rust red around the tips.

Eui was distracted by a sudden change in the weight of her sword. Half of the blade had fallen off, while the rest was rapidly crumbling away into reddish-brown dust. She tossed it aside before the effect could spread to her—she wasn’t taking any chances with Corrosion essence.

“Don’t let the birds touch you!”

Zheng Long gave her an incredulous look.

“There must be thousands of them!”

“Then you’d better get a lot more maneuverable in the next thirty seconds.”

Jia felt a bit hypocritical, giving Zheng Long such a hard time about Bai Lin when she was also being weighed down, but Yu Xiang had lost his leg—it was different.

“Yue, is there any way you can help spot those birds? We’re going to have to avoid them too.”

“I can try, but I’m being stretched thin as it is...”

Yue began to sing a quiet melody, opening a fan and sweeping it across the sky above her. Jia felt the Darkness essence empowering her song and let it pass through her domain unimpeded. To her eyes, the sky appeared to darken, while each individual bird sparkled like a bright star.

“Thanks Yue!”

The illusion helped, but as more and more of the tiny birds began to dive out of the sky, it felt like trying to dodge raindrops. Their progress slowed to a crawl as it took every ounce of their concentration just to stay alive.

They lost another of the Awakening Dragon cultivators as one of them tried to fend off a bird with a gout of flame, only to lose his footing and fall into one of the fissures the farmers had been plowing into the ground.

Ja Yun was stuck hunkering down behind her shield, unable to effectively dodge the birds. Thankfully it held against their corrosive magic, but it was only a matter of time before she would be caught by a scythe blade.

She had to do something.

Eui called out to Ruiling as she descended.

“Long, take over up here, I’m switching places.”

“What?”

Without a word, Eui dropped next to Jia and took Yu Xiang from her, while Jia shot into the sky with Lightspeed Traversal.

“I’m going to try something, keep going without me!”

She didn’t wait for a response, flying straight up into the cloud of deadly shrikes. Thanks to her new technique, she was actually a better flier than Eui. Yoshika had only chosen to have Eui take to the air because she’d be slower on ground than Jia.

The birds tried to retaliate as she flew into their midst, dive bombing and pecking at her like an angry swarm of bees. None of them could touch her as she twisted and dodged, blinking out of the way when need be. It was expensive to move so fast, but not so bad over short distances.

Her distraction let the others make more progress on the ground, but that wasn’t why she’d done it. The birds were tough—she vividly remembered the weight of the first bird’s impact on Eui’s sword, but they weren’t wearing the face of a man proud enough to create a place like this. They weren’t untouchable.

More importantly—they were beings of Corrosion. Jia was very familiar with Corrosion essence. It was the element of her Corruption of the Fetid Bog technique, but more than that, it was the opposite of Lightning. And Lightning was Jia’s specialty.

As she dodged back and forth among the birds, Jia charged a talisman. It was the first spell she’d ever created herself. A simple derivative of the basic lightning talismans that she’s started out with. Her first attempts to use it had backfired on herself, and by the time she’d completed the spell she was rarely in a position to use it—she tended to fight among allies.

So it was with more than a little pride that Jia unleashed the full power of her now-perfected signature spell—Lightning Nova.

Brilliant arcs of lightning flashed in every direction, striking out unerringly at anything nearby and jumping from one bird to the next in a nearly endless chain. The sound of thunder was loud enough to shake the ground, and the flash was nearly blinding.

When the spell subsided, not a single bird remained in the air. Just a few charred remains, crumbling to ash before they even reached the ground. Sukarto stared up at the sky for a moment before turning to Eui.

“She probably should have led with that.”

Eui rolled her eyes.

“Shut up and get moving, we’ve still got a long way to go.”

With the birds taken care of, progress went back to a slow but steady pace. The fiends were all extremely competent. Sukarto’s speed was unparalleled, and his reflexes let him guide them safely through most of the hazards, while Melati’s ability to harass multiple targets at once was invaluable for creating openings for the group to move through.

Ruiling herself was the most interesting. Her flight was effortless, and she used a technique that created numerous multicolored orbs around her, which homed in on targets with unerring accuracy. The farmers were unperturbed, but whenever she hit one its attacks were weakened for a moment. Long enough for her to block a reprisal and make her escape.

Like martial artists, the fiends relied mostly on their physical abilities, with only Ruiling displaying any sort of magic. The strange part was that Yoshika couldn’t tell what sort of magic Ruiling used. The way mana moved around her suggested arcane arts, but she used no talismans.

Yoshika herself had a few spells she knew how to cast without talismans, but they were extremely simple ones, and her method was to essentially brute force a formation in the air out of pure mana.

Ruiling's spells didn’t channel mana through talismans or formations at all. It reminded her of Seong Haeun’s bizarre way of using magic, or the old Onmyouji Hattori and his shikigami spirits.

Zheng Long, for his part, finally found a way to make himself useful. Inspired by Jia’s demonstration with the birds, he began making a point of destroying every scarecrow he saw with a lance of fire.

In doing so, he revealed exactly what the scarecrows did. They exploded. Each one struck, no matter how glancing, erupted in a blast of raw Destruction essence comparable to Eui’s Fifth Arm of Asura.

The group gave them a wide berth after that, but when they started uprooting themselves and launching towards people, they became top priority targets for Jia, Ruiling, and Zheng Long.

Eventually, they fell into a rhythm. Sukarto led the group, Eui directed last-second evasive maneuvers, Yue marked targets, and the fliers would distract or destroy marked threats. Ja Yun even figured out that her shield could block hits from the farmers if they’d been weakened by Ruiling’s magic, letting her take a defender role for the less maneuverable members of the party.

The gate was deceptively far away. They’d move for hours without seeming to get any closer, and since the sky never changed it was hard to tell just how much time had passed. Each time they started to grow comfortable, another flock would appear and Jia would have to take them out. It was a stressful, unending routine where the slightest slip in concentration could mean death.

It could have been days, for all Yoshika could tell, but eventually they finally made it. In the end, aside from the three Awakening Dragon members who’d died and Yu Xiang’s lost leg, nobody had sustained anything more than superficial injuries.

The same could not be said for Xiao Chong, waiting for them as they arrived. She leaned heavily against the unfathomably huge gates of gold and jade, bleeding from a dozen grave looking injuries. The other demon was nowhere to be found.

She cracked a grin as the group approached.

“Hey there! Took you long enough, eh? I don’t suppose any of you know how to get this thing open?”

Xiao Chong gestured over her shoulder at the impossible structure, and Yoshika looked up to see that the ‘door’ was a solid chunk of white jade so large that she couldn’t actually see the beginning or end of it.

Behind her, the farmers started advancing slowly, and Yoshika frowned. They’d assumed that making it to the gate was all they had to do, but she was starting to think there was more to it.

“I don’t know, but we better figure it out fast...”