The Fourth Fall - Chapter 37 preview

They came when Wu Ying was asleep. Whoever it was that was in control of their opponents, they chose to pursue their objectives when the cultivator was resting. The hour of the wolf, the hours just before dawn, when hope for a new day’s arrival was at the greatest and the physical mind and body was the lowest. When doubts and the darkness of the evening extended, till there was nothing but shadows and despair.

They came, when he was asleep. How they knew, whether it was luck or watchfulness or a dao in-play, they would never know. The infiltrators managed to make their way to the base of the floating pagoda, ready to take action. They came when he was sleep, but the wind never sleeps; and Wu Ying was the wind.

Eyes snapped open, as pressure upon his body, on his dao roused Wu Ying. He found himself floating in mid-air, the winds having lifted and carried Ren over to him, such that it was only a small extension of will for him to grip it. He floated in the air, as his senses took in the entirety of his senses, as the infiltrators moved in slow motion beneath his feet.

Formation flags, set agains the base of the wall. Not the entrance, but a smooth, carved portion of the pagoda. He could not tell the name of the formation, could not read the flag and even if he could, his knowledge of formations was nowhere near as exhaustive enough to be able to tell. He could feel the dao imbued into the formations - and how strange, to realise that so many things had dao imbued into them, even if one wsa not consciously choosing to do so, but how so much the difference between spirit tool levels was the portion of dao imbued - and anything that had to do with dissolution, spatial distortion and muting could not be good.

Three others, beyond the fourth who was moving to embed the rest of the formation flags. Each of them dressed in black clothing, tightly bound to their bodies with rope and cloth. Slits only for the eyes, no trace of gender. Their weapons were short jian, daggers and throwing knives. Close-ranged weapons, meant to finish the fight quietly and quickly.

Poison. Wu Ying could smell it here, the scent even recognisable in a few of them. One, the same as used before in the attempt on the Fourth Prince’s lfe. Another, that had surrounded his Master as he lay dying over a decade ago, his cultivation turned upon him. The other two caustic and rank, though he could not ascertain the exact details.

All of them had impeccable control of their auras. They were doing something even more skilled than suppressing their auras, creating a void in space that another might notice. They were instead making their auras mimic the background effect, a level of control that Wu Ying only ever saw among his Gatherers. And even then, Gatherers did it in environments replete with life for the most part, such that flaws in their technique was easy to hide.

These four were doing so in open plains, hiding from spiritual senses and enchantments meant to capture even the slightest irregularity. They were manipulating light and sound around themselves, muffling noise and bending light so that none could even hear or see them. They were, in effect, invisible.

Except they needed to breathe. They could not turn the space around them into voids, or bend space such that the wind could not touch upon them. And so, they had waited for him to be asleep.

And still, they failed.

All of this took a second to assimilate, understand and then decide upon. Wu Ying extended tendrils of chi and thought, struck the silent arms that were set-up for just this occurence. All through the building, chained alarms went-off, guards outside the Princes’ chambers, in the Sect Head and the Right Guardian’s rooms and to the main and fast reaction forces beginning to move.

Next, he willed his body to the balcony.

Chaos, in the rooms above and below him. The infiltrators were ignorant of the chaos still, their formation master still emplacing the flags with swift efficiency. Drawing forth flags one after the other, such that in the three breaths it took for Wu Ying to reach the balcony, he was almost done. All but the final, control flag in his hand.

He could let them all in, let them finish the formation. He assumed it was a method to break into the spirit instrument, probably something to dissovle the wall and create an entranceway. Maybe something more subtle. No way to tell, but he acted to stop them for two reasons.

Firstly, to avoid the damage on the spirit instrument. Such large scale instruments were expensive. While most were also very finnicky, with even the most minor damage rendering them inoperable; Wu Ying knew the Verdant Green Water’s was a grade higher. So, a hole would not stop it from flying. But the cost of fixing it, however, was consequently much higher.

Better to avoid that.

Secondly, while he was mostly certain they intended an assassination and not a mass slaughter, that they would not try to release a poison cloud below or unleash a swarm of flesh-eating locusts, he was only mostly certain. Logic, drawn from the way they acted, what they intended. However, logic was a tricky beast to utilise against mortals, for they were illogical creatures at the most inconvenient of times.

Thirdly, any intake and trap they laid out would have to be planned and set-up. If one of these cultivators, of ir any of them, were as strong as the one Wu Ying had killed, these cun ke would give them scant enough time to evacuate the Princes and important personnel. Some secondary and  all the tertiary - likely - targets had not been alerted. If he was wrong of their intentions, deaths were certain to occur.

He had no way of telling their final targets, what they wanted, who they intended to kill. Perhaps the death of lower ranked team embers were enough to divert the traffic. Maybe they did intend to finish what they started. He could not tell, and gambling on another’s life was something Wu Ying was loath to do.

And lastly, lastly, were the formation flags.

Those Wu Ying acted upon. Before the final control flag was embedded, before they were ready to active them, he acted upon the flags and stole them away. Wind rose, blowing hard, uprooting enchantments embedded in stone, tore flag from hand. Cloth and metal flapped in the wind, pulled away and high above as he sought to take these for himself. Evidence, and a potential lead for the investigators.

Even surprised, even with the wind gusting at blizzard levels, only a fraction of the flags escaped the cultivators. They jumped, they leapt, they snatched and wielded auras and elements to drag the flags back. Yet, as Wu Ying plunged from above and twisted his aura to surround and capture the flags, placing them in his storage ring; they stopped reacting.

“Scatter!”

Four cultivators dashed, formation flags stored away in a flash of movement, feet striking soft earth, auras withdrawn once more. More so, their auras clashed with his own, making his tracking of the group via the winds grow trickier, less certain. Hallucinatory figments, additional bodies that felt and moved to his wind like the real thing, appearing all around. Multiplying his targets, as the wind was confounded by twisted earth and metal and even wind variants.

Wu Ying drew Ren and struck. A dozen, two score attacks flew from his sword, ripping air apart as sword and killing intent were borne by the wind. Three of four of these cun ke were so skilled with their variants that he could not pierce their decoys, so perfect were their dopplegangers to his curtailed senses.

In the distance, as he acted in the open, he felt another presence awaken. It already lay over the surroundings, dominating the surroundings. But now its focus sharpened on the area around him as the king awoke. Another more subtle presence acted as well, though its attention focused upon the fourth, cloud banks forming against the ground to create an impenetrable maze. The Patriarch of the Eight Stanzas was slower, showing no movement from his room, no dao fluctuations.

A dozen dopplegangers were destroyed, the decoys no obstacle for his attacks. Another four turned and blocked his attacks, all from the same ‘person’. Combating his dispersed attacks with their skill. Another seven were even more surprising, and dodging his attacks. Those six - for one had only managed to turn at the most inopportune of times - were fast and familiar.

“The fast one is mine.” He sent that thought to his others, and then, before he touched the ground, he blew forward. The wind howled, dirt and grass and a thrown knife all caught in the chaos as he flew after.

Two targeted and taken care of. Guards, rushing out would go after the one with but a single decoy left. And a fourth, left unchased. Wu Ying hoped one of the other cultivators would chase after them, worried that they would fail. These cun ke were fast and had a head start, even over the Elders who were exiting the pagoda from their balconies.

He turned his mind away from that issue. He could not afford to do more than push a minor working with the wind to slow the others down, for his target was the fastest of all. Fast and missing an arm, and all too familiar in body shape and size. His old friend, his old target.

Wu Ying moved, slightly faster than he had before, rushing to catch the other. There was no need to push matters, to attempt to catch the other before they disappeared. No protective shield against attacks or the wind to block their way, nowhere, in fact for his opponent to escape to.

He could run, but he could not escape Wu Ying. In time, he would be caught. That was as certain as the falling of the rain or the return of winter.

Woods, enterred to not far from the three spirit instruments. His opponent bounded from branch to branch, from tree to tree. Wu Ying almost didn’t catch the trapped talismans that had been laid behind, formations meant to trip and entangle and delay, if not kill their pursuers.

Almost.

Strands of spirit spider webbing exploding, filling the air with fine strands of sticky silk. Wu Ying dodged these, falling to the ground and spinning through the air, even slicing apart some with blade intent such that his body was never touched. Trees toppled, shattered as explosive talismans tore them open and turned the surroundings into furious fiery infernos. Thrown aside like a leaf on the wind, the wind cultivator drifted away from the explosion, warping the debris and controlling the flames to reduce their impact and kill the blaze before a forest fire could begin.

Spiked traps, branches twisting to strike at Wu Ying or closing the area before him in an impassable area of leaves and branches, the space in-between blocked by a dense layer of wood chi. He flowed over it, going above the trees to skip across the foliage only to be caught in an illusionary formation.

He shattered it, with a surge of killing intent and a swing of his blade, breaking apart the formation by virtue of strength and skill. He cut the strands of forming water and cloud and light chi, the strains of audible sound and the twisting of life and space about him to throw his senses off. It was a subtle illusion, meant to turn him aside and continue chasing a figure that was displaced in his sensory techniques.

Within a li, he would have escaped the formation, but be multiple li further from his target.

Each of these formations only took a fraction of time to escape. It was still too long, for his opponent was wily and fast. Wu Ying sensed him reaching into his ring, pull out a pill. Consume it, as he continued to flee. No way to tell what the pill was, though the wind brought traces of its scent to him. His hackles stood on end as he breathed in traces of blood and meat, of liver and earth.

His opponent was not the only one who could delay. Wu Ying struck, high in the air still and gusting forwards. Blade strikes that tore through the air, breaking breaks and branches and toppling the trees before his opponent. A portion of the wind cultivator mourned the damage done to the forest as age old majestic woods came tumbling down, all in an effort to slow his opponent.

Like the man’s own methods, it was of little use. Minor inconveniences for one at the Core Formation stage. Yet, like the man’s own attempts, it gave the wind cultivator time to catch up, to reach his top speed again.

Two hundred feet.

One hundred and fifty.

Eighty feet.

Thirty.

He could almost reach out to touch the other with his blade, when the pill once consumed reacted through his opponent’s body. Energy poured from it, and the man seemed to split. One part of the body kept running forward, a second part, joined together by strands of flesh and hair and blood and chi, forming as it was left behind; entirely naked and sexless remained behind. It held no weapon, had no clothing, was not even conscious.

Until closed eyes snapped open.

Wu Ying skidded a stop, blank and guileless eyes like a child’s turned on him. It stared at Wu Ying whose sword was stretched outwards to strike, touching Ren’s tip. It hissed, drawing its finger back, half of it nearly sliced off by that simple movement. Finger turned, the head tilted sideways as it stared at the at first bloodless cut. Only to hiss, as nerves and blood caught up, seeping outwards and pain struck the creature.

“What are you?” Wu Ying asked, staring at the flesh creature. It had no dao, no more than an animal when it was first birthed. Entirely innocent, entirely guileless and without killing intent. It was malformed though, the chi within its body roiling and twisting, trying to settle but failing to do so as broken meridians, twisted and fast grown muscles and bones fought against the flow of energy within it. Some healed, other mistakes multiplied and always, always, the left behind roiling blood and meat and bone chi roiled through the creature, leaving and leaking out cun by cun.

“What. You?” It mimicked Wu Ying’s voice, attempting to copy his tone and his mouth movements. Did a passable job of it, even as blood dripped from its finger. “Hurt.”

“Yes, that’s what you get for touching a sword without protection.” If it had been any less ginger with its action, it would have lopped off its own digit. It had no protection, no aura to blunt the dao intent on the blade, to hinder the extreme sharpness of Ren from injuring it. It was like a child, though it smelled, moved, wrong.

Not entirely seperate from the Dao, but also, not a natural portion of the world. Something forced to give birth, to exist because of twisted apothecary and chi. A delaying tactic, but also, possibly something worse. If he had time, the wind cultivator would have stayed to probe the creature, to examine it further. However, every moment he delayed, his opponent ranged farther away.

Wu Ying stretched out his senses, wrapped the creature in bonds of wind. Trapped it and sand and leaves in chains of wind. It struggled, at first gently, then with increasing fervour and panic. It began to let out long, low screams, like it could not find the words, a trapped animal shrieking its agony and dislike.

It thrashed, throwing its heads around, its body against the bonds that kept it tight and unable to escape even as Wu Ying continued his pursuit. He cursed his hesitation, his pause as he realised his opponent had regained its lead. Any other attempt, a shadow clone, an illusionary decoy made of wood, even a mirror seeming and he would have not hesitated to cut it down.

A mewling babe in his senses, a creature so newborn? He could not imagine taking such action. He could hear his Master, Tou He complaining about the kind of damange to his karma such an act could have on him. Speaking of the innocence of babes, even as Wu Ying sensed the thing behind him begin to breakdown, it’s life condemend to be short and pitiful as the hasty making that had created it condemned it to a mayfly’s existence.

Damn cike probably understood that.

More delays, more chances to escape. Another splitting of images, shadow decoys that failed to divert Wu Ying, the decoy’s no more substantial than the shadows there part of. No scent, no physicality. He ignored the three that split off, ignored the one still running in a mostly staight line. Turned to the left to chase the real figure.

A talisman, dropped on the floor created a blooming midnight louts with wavering stamens that sought to grasp Wu Ying, which exuded a terrible narcotic scent that was meant to sap strength and lull victims to sleep. A simple wrapping of air around Wu Ying and a series of blade shards as he spun through the air around it dealt with that delaying tactic.

“Enough!” he snarled. Patience was ended and Wu Ying no longer tried to hold back the wind. It rose up, a solid wall of fury before his opponent, coming in from all directions. It slammed into the man and the forest, tearing free trees and cracking branches, topping great old men of the woods without a care as the fury of a typhoon slammed into the cike.

Surprise caught the cultivator out, his opponent struck by a dozen pieces of wood and debris, the solid fist of air throwing it backwards. Now, now, it used its dao. Poison filled the surroundings, exuded from the aura that had contained it. A rotting, pervasive destructive poison that decayed all caught in its vicinity, swept down towards Wu Ying.

Smart.

Poison against wind, and it would only be a matter of dao strength and elemental resistance to see who won. If Wu Ying chose to enter the escaping cloud that killed plants and insects and even the earth itself upon contact. Snuck behind the exuding aura were thrown knives, shards of tiny metal meant to embed and open up skin and aura. A pill, a dozen pills, drawn from its ring, consumed moments after.

Conceptual, decaying poison against the elemental wind. How could you rot the wind? You could not. If Wu Ying had embraced the eternal, the twisting, moving concept of shifting air, he would have been immune to this. If he had been the wind itself, poison and the death of mortal flesh and blood would have mattered little.

But he had rejected that conception. He would not become the wind, in human form. He would not take upon mortal flesh as a seeming only, to become the eternal winds only to be lost in the entirety of its concept; to lost all conception of self. He was still the loyal son, the passionate swordsman, the stubborn farmer of old. He was the bumbling outer sect cultivator and the sage Elder, the consistent Head of the Wandering Gatherers and an explorer of new countries and lands. He was all his experiences past and present.

He could not touch the poison and not come away uninjured. And so he created a wedge of a blade with his killing intent and his understanding of the sword, layered it with shields of rotating wind in layers and as one layer after the other became infected, exploded it and sent it away.

Finally, he caught up to the assassin. His armless opponent had formed a second appendage in place of its lost arm, a waving tentacle that split again and again as it struck at him. Each tentacle dripped with poison and the concept of decay and destruction. His blade cut at the tentacles as Wu Ying plunged at his opponent, only to catch sight of those grim, resigned marsh dark green eyes.

Too close. The wind cultivator had fallen for its last trick, and the pills that it had consumed finished their final mission. The body before him finished boiling, the overflowing energy imparted into itself and the numerous poisons - not healing pills, as Wu Ying had assumed - mixed.

Too deep, for Wu Ying to retreat as the body broke out into puss and boils, as flesh sloughed off and energy exuded and exploded outwards.

Too late, for the winds that Wu Ying had conjured to stop it to die off.  It caught and swept the remains of the cun ke towards him, bare feet away, blade mere cun from kissing the creature’s non-existent chest.

A boiling cloud of blood and poison rose in the surroundings, consuming wood and earth and life, a cone shaped explosion of death and decay.