PtM Book 17 - Chapter 43: Planar Battlefield

2/2 this week.

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Huxian’s worries proved to be all for naught, as Oster and Cao Wenluan outright rejected Cha Ming request for a meeting. In their view, this was a competition. Collaboration would only make things needlessly complicated.

They took a day to organize everything they needed before returning to their respective regions. The Bloodstorm Region was a flurry of activity. Every rune-gathering grade ship or better was conscripted for military use, including merchant ships.

This included, to Cha Ming’s disbelief, every cultivator that met rune-gathering standard, including craftsmen and those practicing other non-combat professions. They were kindly informed that they would not be sent to the front lines unless the need was dire, but were also given an array of combat techniques and formations to practice. An exam would be conduct a week later.

The Bloodstorm Region and the Hallowed Turtle Ox Region were outliers in the southern hemisphere. Both were filled to the brim with craftsmen, as well as non-combat cultivators in virtually every profession.

The envoys from the Three Sects, Four Clans, and Five Desolates were both overjoyed and overwhelmed by their numbers. On the one hand, this meant a huge number of reinforcements. On the other hand, most had little to no combat training. Numbers could make up for a lot of deficiencies, but too many of them would become liabilities.

The sects and clans had been preparing for the past half decade. They mobilized their sect reserves, holding nothing back, for if their members perished, their sects would vanish. The Soaring Blade Sect mobilized all three of its Sky Soaring Blades, which were each over a thousand meters long. Likewise, the Sacred Earth Sect mobilized its Sacred Earth Paradise, a ten-kilometer floating landmass kept afloat with the power of thousands of rune gathering cultivators.

The Puppet Lightning Sect dusted off the last of their guardian puppets. The True Blood Monastery uprooted their blood flowers and forcefully produced one last batch of blood beasts. The Azure Tempest Sect could not release its azure tempest elemental, as its cultivation exceeded the limits of the realm, but they did manage to mobilize the Azure Tempest Formation, mountains and all.

“Are you sure about trying to move Blood Storm Gorge?” Cha Ming asked Sect Master Azure Tempest on the third day of the great mobilization. “The original architect said that your plan only has a sixty percent chance of success. If you fail, the entire formation will be ruined.”

“If we don’t survive the battle, there’s no point in keeping it, Clear Sky,” Azure Tempest said resolutely. “This is the council’s unanimous decision. Don’t try and convince us otherwise.”

Tens of thousands of ships flew from south to north, never to return again. Others doubled back to pick up additional batches of cultivators, as the number of rune-gathering cultivators had swelled beyond the southern hemisphere’s transportation capacity.

All manner of ship could be seen, including the corvettes that were popular in the Azure Tempest sub-region, as well as cutters, destroyers, carrier ships, and battle ships. The number of larger ships was extremely limited, as components exceeding middle law-stitching grade generated too much instability.

The mobilization took a week from start to finish. Once the last of the ships were gone, the leaders of each region were summoned aboard one of the few cruisers that had been sent out from the northern hemisphere.

Sect Master Azure Tempest looked bit emotional as they boarded the ship. Cha Ming was curious about why she would react in such a matter, but decided he would discover the answer soon enough. “What a beautiful ship!” Ninesky said, flying around the entrance hallway. To others, she was invisible, but Cha Ming could always see her and often cringed at her antics.

Despite having allied themselves to the Hallowed Turtle Ox Region, the Bloodstorm Region mobilized separately. This was because the region was mostly human, fand the two groups cooperated but did not function very well as composite units.

Their group split up into two halves, with Wei Longshen and Petros Sullivan accompanying Cha Ming, and Jadefall, Wu, Baleful Vision, and White Mirage accompanying Huxian.

“Did you notice how many powerful cultivators there are in here?” Petros asked Cha Ming. “I bet things would have gotten awfully messy if any of the sects decided not to mobilize.”

“How about you don’t embarrass us before we meet those in charge?” Wei Longshen said. “You might be powerful, but I sense souls in this ship far stronger than either of ours.”

The cruiser was the largest ship Cha Ming had set foot on to date. It measured five kilometers from end to end and was a third as tall and wide as it was long. It was made of wood instead of metal and engraved with familiar azure runes. It also had twenty-three sails enchanted with continuous wind formations that gave it surprising speed and maneuverability despite its colossal proportions.

A group of five powerful elders awaited them on the bridge. The discomfort in their group rose as they approached them, and Cha Ming immediately realized why this was the case. Their auras – there’s no mistake,he said to his companions. They’re all originally cultivators from our regions. He did a double take when he saw that one of them looked just like Sect Master Azure tempest. Did she perhaps have a twin sister?

Cha Ming, his friends, and the sect masters stopped a few meters away from the northern delegation and bowed.

“Elders!” the sect masters said reverently.

“Envoys,” said Cha Ming and the others.

The delegation ignored the three wardens for the time being and sized up their juniors. “Your law projections conflict, Grand Artificer Fei. What happened? Also, why do I sense our lightning soul’s aura on one of your wardens?”

This…” Grand Artificer Fei said uncomfortably. “My law projections conflict because I broke through out of necessity. As for the lightning soul, there was a conflict. We speculate that it tried to possess our warden, and he used the opportunity to capture it. It may have also made a pact with him, but given its character…”

“Abbot True Blood,” said a bald cultivator in monk robes. “Your aura isn’t bad, but your body is wounded. We’ll need to fix that before sending you out.” Seeing his agitation, the monk laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s on the house.”

The most awkward exchange was between Azure Tempest and her look-alike. “What?” said the woman who could have been her sister. “Are you still giving me the cold shoulder? It’s been centuries. Grow up.”

“What kind of mother packs up and never speaks to their child again?” said Azure Tempest.

“It was for the best,” said her mother. “You never would have grown up so well without the pressure I gave you in your formative months.”

One of the elders cleared his throat to dispel the awkwardness. “Let’s not forget the three wardens that revitalized our home regions to this extent. I hear they unified and call themselves the Bloodstorm Region. What an amazing development.”

A large, muscular man who looked similar to Patriarch Sacred Earth snorted loudly. “Who cares about regional identity? The whole plane’s going to be a huge mess by the time this war is over. By then, regions will be meaningless. It’ll be a free for all.”

“Regardless, their contributions to the war effort are substantial,” said their leader. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Grand Elder Crystal Moon of the Frozen Moon Sect. These two are Elder Soul Blood and Elder Nine Puppet from the Living Storm Sect. The loud man who just spoke is Elder Undying Tomb from the Sacred Tomb Clan. Azure Storm, who I’m sure you can all see is related to Sect Master Azure Tempest, is part of the Living Storm Sect, while the sneaky fellow that’s managed to evade your detection is Elder Smokeblade from the Burning Shadow Sect.”

“I’d always assumed that sect masters of each sect in our region passed away of old age or hibernated prior to retiring,” Cha Ming said. “It relieves me to see that many of you are still in good health.”

“We spread rumors of our own demise after retirement out of necessity,” said Grand Elder Crystal Moon. “The same thing happens whenever the sect masters and elders of any Tier 1 sect, clan, or desolate becomes too powerful. We conscript them into our ranks and fake their deaths.”

“So that’s why each region only has one or two Tier 1 powers,” Petros said. “I always suspected they could support more high tier cultivators if they wanted to.”

Grand Elder Crystal Moon nodded. “There is as constant need for replacement elders and grand elders in the north. The southern hemisphere sees fiend outbreaks every five or six year – is that still correct?”

“It used to,” Cha Ming confirmed.

“Well up north, we don’t have fiend outbreaks,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “Attacks occur all year round. The fiends we fight are powerful, and their numbers are endless. You cannot imagine how many have perished fighting; we do what we must to replenish our ranks.”

The cruiser, it turned out, was a creation of the Azure Tempest Sect, the product of two hundred years of painstaking labor of multiple sect masters and elder-level craftsmen. Cha Ming learned that before the fall, the sect had produced battle cruisers that could slay immortals and kill gods.

Thousand of years had passed since that time, but Azure Tempest Sect had carried on its proud ship-building tradition. Their best works challenged the limits of the plane’s Dao Origins; some could even exceed them for a brief period of time.”

It only took a half day for them to cross the globe and arrive the legendary ring city, Wind’s Embrace. Its towering skyscrapers formed an imposing wall that blocked off the negative energies radiating from the damaged north pole.

“It’s a formation,” Cha Ming muttered. “With buildings as bones and people as elements.”

“Wind’s Embrace took thousands of years to build, and almost ten percent of plane’s resource output for that same time period,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon explained. “The people of the city draw upon the formation etched in the land and buildings to cultivate. The formation increases their cultivation speed, and in return, they feed a portion of that extra energy into the city’s grid. Since the city is so large and spans all time zones on the continent, there’s always people cultivating.”

The Grand Elder did not say so, but Cha Ming could tell from the city’s design that it did more than that. A portion of the city formation’s energies were used to fight back the northern blight, but not all of it. The formation generates much excess energy, he thought. To avoid waste, it uses their united will to compress this energy and create top-grade transcendent crystals, which the Chasewind Plane lacks. These are then used to nurture additional powerhouses and build powerful weapons.

“The city isn’t uniform, as it incorporates elements from the different factions on the Chasewind Plane,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon continued. “Some portions of the city, for example, are three-dimensional artificial landscapes. The five desolates maintain and operate these sections.”

City was not only long but thick as well. Its tallest buildings were located nearest the northern blight but tapered off over the course of five hundred to a thousand kilometers at its widest point. This wasn’t a significant distance for the cruiser to cross, but thanks to the many checkpoints, it took hours to enter the northern blight.

Space was less stable in the north. There was no land to speak of save a strange patchwork of land masses floating in void space, where the natural laws of the plane lost their grip.

“These islands are all that’s left of the north,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said to the wardens and sect masters. “It will fall to you to protect them from fiendish incursions.”

“What’s the point of protecting these useless chunks of land?” Petros asked. “They’re devoid of energy and have little material value.”

“The heaven and earth energies here are chaotic and useless,” Cha Ming agreed. “Even primal chaos energy is scarce here.”

Wei Longshen, however, was of a different opinion. “What a strange location. Have you noticed, Cha Ming? The void here is a complete vacuum. It’s not even connected to the yellow river.”

Huxian had also just crossed into this region. He was inside another cruiser with the rest of their companions. What’s your assessment of this place, Huxian? Cha Ming asked the fox.

It’s difficult to say, said Huxian. Teleporting would be super difficult here. Also, shattering the void is much easier.

“This void appeared several thousand years ago when the Chasewind Plane was damaged and its Dao Origins began degrading,” said Grand Elder Crystal Moon. “We have no idea where the point of impact was, but we do know that this is where the damage to the world’s Dao origins physically manifests.

“Accessing the void and teleporting is quite difficult here, as is any form of cultivation. This is because the world is constantly drawing on this location to replenish its own energy stores. Although this flow is mostly one way, sometimes, there is backflow. As a result, precious resources sometimes appear from time to time, resources that both us and the fiends require.”

“Grand Elder!” a voice suddenly sounded on the bridge. “A law fragment has appeared near your location. The council of elders has requested that you delay escorting our reinforcements to secure this location.”

“Acknowledged,” said Grand Elder Crystal Moon. “Well? You heard them. Mobilize!” He waved over Cha Ming, his companions, and the sect masters, and explained in a low voice. “Their intentions are to have us work with two other cruisers from the desolate faction and use this as an opportunity to mend bridges. But naturally, they’re too proud to say this.”

There’s nothing wrong with issuing orders with more than one goal in mind,” said Wei Longshen.

“I like you,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said to Wei Longshen. “I’ll try to keep you if I can.” He waved over to one of the crew members. “Initiate communications!” Two projections appeared before the elders. Each displayed a similar group of elders led by a grand elder. Huxian, Jadefall, and Wu were in one group led by a certain Grand Elder Silver Claw, while Baleful Vision and White Mirage stood a respectful distance away from a spectral ferret called Grand Elder Half-Whisker.

“You two may all return,” said Grand Elder Silver Claw. “One of us is more than enough to resolve this.”

“Strictly speaking, I don’t believe any of us are required,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “Unless you’re of a different opinion, Half-Whisker?”

Grand Elder Half-Whisker snorted loudly. “They would never send us here unless there was a good reason. Now then, whose turn is it to go fishing?”

“I believe it’s my turn this time,” said Grand Elder Crystal Moon. “Same wager?”

“Why not?” said Grand Elder Silver Claw.

The ship that Cha Ming was aboard was the fastest and most maneuverable of the ships. The two other cruisers kept a distance as they approached the target land mass. Hundreds of smaller allied ships gave way to their much larger ships, revealing a barren island so chock full of fiends that a slight wind swept some off the edges.

“This is the Unfixed Storm, and we have been placed in command of this operation,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon communicated to the other ships. “We’ll be the main battery. All other ships, offer supporting fire.”

The Unfixed Storm was not a stationary assault ship; it attacked as it raked across the surface of the island, buffeting it with severe and debilitating winds. The turbulence reduced lesser fiends to puddles of fiendish blood; as for the larger fiends, they were devastated by wave after wave of middle law stitching wind boomerangs.

Only the center was spared from the ship’s assault; hundreds of law-stitching realm cultivators, including several that had achieved the middle law-stitching realm, descended. Among them were two armored cultivators that Cha Ming recognized as middle shell marking demigods.

There were four rank 13 fiends in total, along with fifty rank 12 minions that still remained after their initial sweep. Despite being outnumbered, they held their ground and try to buy as much time as possible.

“Law fragment secured,” said the lead demigod once the last of the fiends were cleared. “Awaiting instructions.” The ships used fire to purge the corruption from the island.

As they approached the island, Cha Ming and his companions were finally able to make out a strange law fragment. Cha Ming’s companions had never seen such a thing, but Cha Ming had encountered several similar fragments during his absorption of the Flamewing Demiplane.

“That’s a Dao Origin fragment,” Cha Ming said.

The Grand Elder was surprised. “Since you know about Dao fragments, I’m sure you recognize the importance of these islands, and why they’re defended and maintained. These platforms nearest the surface were built by us native cultivators to defend the nodes where Dao fragments normally appear. It’s impossible for us to make use of them, since doing so would only accelerate the deterioration of our plane. Our job is merely to protect the runes as the plane’s Dao Origin naturally reabsorbs them.

“I can sense many layers of island descending deep into the north pole’s crater,” Wei Longshen said. “The spirits I sense there are aggressive. I take it the fiends hold a territorial advantage in that location?”

“That is correct,” said Grand Elder Crystal Moon. “Shortly after we built the first islands, the fiends built their own. While we seek to defend the runes for the plane’s benefit, they seek to corrupt these Dao fragments.”

A light started flashing, and a screen appeared, showing a wave of fiends spewing out from the dark abyss. “Ah, I was wondering why we were sent here. It seems they came prepared.” Most of the fiends were flight-capable, but those that weren’t flew om on three giant centipedes covered in chitinous armor. Their power fluctuations did not lose out to the Unfixed Storm.

“Begin evasive maneuvers!” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “Label the devourers, and target Devourer One! Let’s see if they have anything else up their sleeve.” The ship’s formations lit up, unloading wave after wave of wind blades at the centipede, who shrugged off the attacks with relative ease.

I never considered the size factor when it comes to battles, Cha Ming thought. That thing’s a Rank 13 fiend, so in theory, I can kill it. But its size is unreasonably large. It could take hours to whittle down a creature like that. The same applied to the Unfixed Storm and the two demon cruisers accompanying them.

“Grand Elder, the other two devourers are releasing an acid attack,” said the ship’s captain. “Permission to utilize the Frost God Gem for defence?”

“Denied,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “Elder Azure Storm? Kindly show Sect Master Azure Tempest what your lineage is capable of aboard this ship.”

Azure Storm had already walked over to a formation at the center of the bridge. Her hair, her eyes, and several runes painted on her body began to glow with a dim light. The sudden injection of her energy and law projection caused the twenty-three wings on the Unfixed Storm to transform. They doubled in size and began to fill the air with thousands of tiny azure wind scars.

“Friendly ships, evacuate on my mark,” Azure Storm instructed the other ships. “Three. Two. One. Go! Un…. Fixed… Storm!” All twenty-three wings were suddenly released. Tens of thousands of large azure wind scars filled the nearest three kilometers, encompassing one of the devourers and clipping a second.

Utilizing such a powerful attack was not without consequence. For a few seconds, their ship lost all maneuverability, and would continue to move in one direction, defenseless, until its wings returned.

“Silver Claw, Half-Whisker, it’s your turn,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. The surviving devours, perhaps sensing that something was amiss, began to flee. But their hesitation cost them.

Unlike the unfixed Storm, which largely resembled a sea-faring ship, the Silver Streak and the Bleeding Fang were constructed using a beast-form design. “They’re strengthening the ship for physical combat by pitching in their demon armor!” Cha Ming exclaimed.

“Their strongest demons can also fuse with their ships, enabling them to control its limbs as though they were their own,” said Azure Storm. She’d left the central formation and returned to her position near Sect Master Azure Tempest. “Their ship’s commanders are typically related to the ship by blood, enabling them to more easily serve as the core.”

No wonder their materials look so strange, Cha Ming thought. Their frames are built from demon bones, and their main armor’s been nourished with demon blood for decades, if not centuries. The demons had invested no small number of resources into this war. Such resources had many alternative uses, the most primary ones being nourishing bloodline descendants. They were effectively giving up the future prospects of their species for the good of the planet.

“We from the Chasewind Plane might bicker from time to time, but we are united in this struggle,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “This is our world, and we will save it. To achieve this goal, there is no price that cannot be paid.”

In the end, they were able to destroy a second devourer before the third escaped into the abyss. They did not chase it, as chasing down fiendish ships in their territory was both impractical and a poor use of resources.

The Dao Origin fragment was easily reabsorbed, after which the three ships went their separate ways. Cha Ming and the others saw a slight uptick in their points for ‘participation’ in the retrieval mission. “For the next three months, we will not be attacking, but defending,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “Elder Azure Storm will be taking command of the Unfixed Storm. You cultivators of the Bloodstorm Region will take over the operations of this ship, allowing us and our senior personnel to reinforce Wind’s Embrace during these critical times.”

“What about us?” Cha Ming asked.

“You will support them as you see fit, as per our agreement with the Heartforge Realm,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said. “Battles like these can occur a dozen times a day in this sector, but most of them won’t be so intense. Alternatively, you could descend deeper into the abyss to carry out attacks on islands in fiendish territory.

“By the way, it has been noticed that the number of cultivators originating from your regions is extremely high.”

“The Painted Daoists and Demons in our region have been a great boon,” Cha Ming said. “I expect they’ll be very useful in upcoming struggle.”

“Well, don’t be too happy just yet,” Grand Elder Crystal Moon said drily. “Since your region has more cultivators than normal, you’ll be assigned more battlefields to defend. Try not to stretch yourselves too thinly.”