PtM Book 16 - Chapter 39: Hope and Doubt

1/2 this week, to finish the book. After that, a bit of a break. Will explain in a few days.

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Cha Ming was no stranger to battlefields. He’d experienced large-scale war on the Ling Nan Plane and in Verdant Crossroads. Wars were messy and complicated, and by inserting oneself carelessly, it was easy to cause more problems than you solved.

He took several minutes to analyze each army, both mortal and transcendent. The mortal commanders, he discovered, were quite adept at what they did. Those commanding the cultivators and their warships… not so much.

I can’t just insert myself into the battlefield like I did in Verdant Crossroads, Cha Ming concluded. There are no formations to speak of, and this battle is the equivalent of two drunks fighting in bar. He supposed this had to do with sects not fighting over territory the same way mortals did. Their fights were more reserved and done by way of friendly competition.

Cha Ming found his first target on the other end of the battlefield, so he activated Clear Rune Transformation and extended his clear runes half a kilometer. He then proceeded to blink across the battlefield as though there wasn’t an entire army of fiends trampling upon it, destabilizing local space.

A swarm of avian fiends tried to intercept him. Given that there were enough of them to blot out the sky, Cha Ming chose not to engage them, and instead used lightning form to break through. He did, however, take the time to use Savage Deity Rush to kill key leaders in the swarm, breaking apart any semblance of organization they’d managed to build up.

Cha Ming naturally switched between Clear Rune Form and Lightning Form. He alternated between Clear Rune Steps and Savage Deity Rush. It felt so natural, switching between them now. It made him wonder why Godking Heavenbind had told him to keep these arts separate.

It didn’t take Cha Ming long to break through to the rear lines where the bulk of the fiends existed. He found himself floating above a sea of landbound fiends and overlooking them with disdain. This would make the most impact.

He pressed downward and summoned the Azure Tempest Battlefield, all while pouring qi and shattering high-grade transcendent jades to feed it. “Azure Tempest Descends!” he shouted, pushing down and injecting five-element qi, creation qi, and even some ten-colored energy into the mix. The azure tempest started spinning!

The Clear Sky Brush spun around and around to paint the initial winds. They whirled out from the core of the painting as it gradually accelerated. The amount of torque required to start up such a large technique was overwhelming, but now that he had a bit of practice with his ten-colored energy, it was something he could manage.

Cha Ming spent an entire minute expanding the Azure Tempest Battlefield, and in that time, countless fiends attempted to bring him down. But they were too weak, and even if they could pierce his skin, they couldn’t break his bones.

The massive azure tempest roared to life over time. At first, the azure winds generated simply knocked fiends down. But soon, it began to exhibit shearing forces that cut down fiends by the tens of thousands. The battlefield was soon slick with shattered flesh and corrupted fiend blood.

Cha Ming had no time to retrieve the fiend blood, so he painted a sea of iridescent fire beneath the azure tempest. It would not burn all the remnant fiend blood, but it would get rid of a good portion of it.

As for the Azure Tempest Battlefield, he pressed against it, and it began to move. It was a several-kilometer-wide obstruction that was now mowing down anything too slow to evade it. The pressure the lower cultivators and the mortal army felt was substantially lessened, as these fiends weren’t just rank-one fiends but fiends up to rank five.

When the cultivators saw the giant azure tempest, their morale was rekindled. The azure tempest was the symbol of their region, and its presence here meant that they’d received support directly from the Azure Tempest Sect. Their pleas had been heard. They no longer had to worry.

Cha Ming could physically see their hopes rising to the sky, alongside their raging emotions and their anger and their fear.

He choked down a handful of mixed recovery pills that were now operating at thirty percent efficiency thanks to alchemical poisoning.

Then he focused on the twelve largest fiends on the battlefield and knew that this was where he was needed most. He had done what he could for the little people. It was time to change the entire course of the battle.

The twelve fiends were humanoid in shape, though humanoid might be too generous a description. Each of them had tortoise shells and six arms with hooked claws that could tear through corvette-class warships with ease.

Cha Ming flew toward the nearest one and joined forces with the small fleet of ships and loose cultivators attacking it. He channeled the power of Clear Rune Form, and this time, he used the clear runes to channel creation qi through his Savage Deity War Staff.

“Savage Deity Rush!” It was lucky he’d used the technique, because without the extra speed, he would never have breached the fiend’s shell.

The gentle white energy poured into the fiend, which began to howl and melt. Its defenses fell apart, and Cha Ming was able to land a few more hits and smash an arm off, then a second, then a third, and finally a leg.

The Raging Tide Sect pounced on the disabled creature and began torching it and any blood it let out. Once again, Cha Ming saw their souls light up like torches as the scales were tipped and the battle turned in their favor.

He flew off to a group of three fiends next. These had a lot of ships focused on them. Cha Ming decided that the best thing to utilize in this case was some of his lesser stored paintings.

Dozens of inkwell turtles, star-eye monkeys, and other members of the five clans charged out from the Clear Sky World.

Cha Ming also sent out hundreds of yin-lightning sparrows and their companions, the yang-lightning sparrows. In all, there were thousands of paintings. Though he was loath to part with them, millions of lives were at stake. If it meant saving a few more, he’d gladly give up all of his paintings.

The paintings jumped atop the fiends until not an inch of their dark skin remained. They couldn’t pierce their flesh in the slightest. When Cha Ming instructed the sects to retreat, they were hesitant at first, but then realized he was the one who’d summoned the azure tempest. They pulled back just in time to see him clench his fist and detonate the thousands of paintings, instantly causing heavy damage to the three fiends at minimal cost to his energy stores.

The Daoists and ships jumped on them as they tried to piece themselves back together, but the fiends were too strong. Cha Ming landed a few strikes on each of them with the Savage Deity War Staff and creation qi, and suddenly, the problem was manageable. Their souls lit up as well, and the fires of battle raged on.

There were still eight rank-eleven fiends left, and Cha Ming could feel that they were growing stronger. He flew toward the nearest two and summoned a pair of azure tempests. He injected enough qi into them to produce a wind scar and spatial shearing, then sent the twin tempests flying at them.

“Everyone, retreat!” he called out to the nearby ships, then waited three seconds before forcing the azure tempests closer together, expanding the shearing zone until they grew unstable, and both of the tempest paintings collapsed.

The air was filled with potent azure paint that cut into the fiends with devastating effect. They were far from disabled, however, so he repeated the process another two times before moving on to the next pair.

He repeated the process twice more, completely emptying out his stock of azure tempest paintings. In the end, only the two strongest fiends remained.

It was then that Cha Ming felt a sudden tightening in his chest and knew that things were about to get ugly. Seconds later, two of their ships exploded, and one of the fiends collapsed into a bloody puddle.

Three red-robed figures descended upon the battlefield and directly threw four large bloodred crystals at the last remaining rank-eleven fiend. A large eruption of power followed as the blood crystals and the fiend blood were absorbed by it.

“Kill them!” the Raging Tide Sect elders yelled, but the red-robed cultivators laughed and used blood escape to retreat. Their distraction was enough to ensure that the fiend broke through its limits to rank twelve.

Every rank meant a qualitive change in strength. A rank-twelve fiend wasn’t just the equivalent of an early-law-stitching cultivator—it was the equivalent of a powerful early-law-stitching cultivator. The moment it broke through, all the fiends in the area broke apart and surged toward it as its body grew threefold.

Its appearance was a catalyst for the rest of the fiends on the battlefield. They erupted with greater strength and speed than ever before. Its presence was greatly intimidating to the horrified defenders. All at once, Cha Ming saw the battlefield dim.

Cha Ming flew up beside Sect Master Raging Tide and the two Xuan Dao Sect elders. They watched on, slack-jawed, as the strengthened fiend suddenly smashed apart two warships, slaying hundreds of cultivators in only a few seconds. The shockwave reached the ship they were on and nearly blew it out of the sky.

“A rank-twelve fiend…” Elder Choking Tide whispered. “It’s over.”

“It’s not over,” Cha Ming said. He pulled out three pills from the Clear Sky World and eyed them. Taking them would instantly recover most of his three energy types and stimulate his potential, but then he would be out of the battle for good and require an extended recovery period.

He chose to initiate contact with Sect Master Azure Tempest. Her projection appeared and turned around to survey the battlefield. “Are you seeing this, Sect Master? Can you send support?”

She watched for a good ten seconds before shaking her head. “I can’t do anything for you, Clear Sky. Either defend the city or retreat with as many cultivators as you can. If you can’t slay it…”

“I understand,” Cha Ming said. “I’ll do what I can. Just know that after this, I won’t be able to participate in any battles coming up. Please adjust your plans accordingly.”

“Understood,” the sect master said, and her projection winked out.

“This fiend… is a problem,” Cha Ming said to the sect master and the two elders. “Every time fiends grow stronger, they also grow smarter. They know where they can gain the most energy quickly, and that’s inside the city, where thirty million lives are hiding.

“The Blood God Sect interfering like this… is good timing for them, but bad luck for us. I could chase them down, but then the fiend would be left to do as it wishes. They know that we have minutes at most before it breaches the city’s walls, at which point it would be impossible to stop it from wiping out all the mortals in this city.”

Both the elders paled at his assessment. “Is it really so strong?”

“What can be done to stop it?” Sect Master Raging Tide asked.

“Buy me time,” Cha Ming said. “You’ll need to sacrifice lives and ships to do it, but I need as much time as you can get me.” He popped the three pills into his mouth, and his divine energy, qi, and spiritual energy increased rapidly, as did the thirty percent potion of ten-colored energy.

He then took out a red pill and downed it with gritted teeth. It was not something he took lightly, especially given the fragile condition of his soul. It was a potential-burning pill and would undo a great deal of progress he’d made on his foundations and law comprehension over the past few months.

But now, he needed strength. Lives were a stake.

Cha Ming flew out between the monstrosity and the city it was advancing on. He activated Claddings of Light to maximum intensity and began to paint once again. Not just to hide his technique but to serve as a beacon, to show everyone that there was still someone standing between this fiend and their city.

He first painted two azure tempests and formed an Azure Wind Scar. He sent it flying toward the fiend and saw it bounce off with little effect. If it were still a rank-eleven fiend, this would have been enough to severely injure the creature. Now, it wasn’t even enough to scratch its armor.

I can only use my strongest attack, Cha Ming decided. He summoned five incomplete paintings from the Clear Sky World. These were the skeleton paintings of the Five Point Monarchs he needed to execute Descent of the Five Sovereigns.

At the minimum, Cha Ming needed three seconds to complete the painting and execute the technique. But the skeleton was a high-quality painting. It enabled him to paint for thirty seconds to achieve three times the power, or three minutes for even greater effect.

So he painted as quickly as he could, wishing that he could paint faster but knowing that he could only do his best. Meanwhile, cultivators died to buy him time. Sect Master Raging Tide had long since activated a soul-burn technique, as had the elders of the Xuan Dao Sect. One of the Raging Tide Sect’s three elders, Gentle Tide, had already fallen, and Elder Choking Tide was gravely wounded.

The sects were not used to war, but they did have some basic combination formations. Hundreds of rune-gathering cultivators executed combination techniques.

The Raging Tide Sect’s disciples formed large water elementals that struggled against the fiend with heavy fists. The Xuan Dao Sect’s disciples came together to form spinning lotuses that concentrated the power of a hundred cultivators into something nearing law-stitching strength.

They were just fireflies compared to the bonfire that was the rank-twelve fiend. Their attacks could do nothing to it but distract it for a few more moments, buying Cha Ming that extra time.

Their attacks were barely effective, even for stalling, but they continued at the cost of their own lives. Because behind them was the city they’d grown up in, and where their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were living. They did it choking back tears, knowing that they would die. And every time it happened, Cha Ming saw them light up like a beacon before the fiend snuffed them out like whimpering candle.

Cha Ming shed tears for them. He painted through the tears, which somehow made him paint faster and more accurately. The maximum strength of his technique could be achieved in three minutes, but Cha Ming did not havethree minutes. He barely had one, so he would paint whatever he could.

He used up charges from Golden Boots of the Clockwork Dragon as they came and activated Crown of the Starry Sky to full intensity. He increasingly began to use his intuition to paint and used broader strokes, hoping that somehow he’d manage to capture the most important details.

He poured his heart and soul into the painting with his Aura of Iridescence.

He channeled his hopes and dreams into it with his Aura of Inspiration.

He infused his savagery into the painting, hoping to imitate even a fraction of the ferocity of the Five Point Monarchs.

The quality of the painting increased with these three auras, and some of them even bled out onto the battlefield. The frantic mixture of auras caused the sect cultivators to fight with increasing desperation, sometimes going so far as to self-detonate.

It was the same for the mortal army down below. The appearance of the rank-twelve fiend had routed them, and the army was collapsing. But the moment those three auras washed over them, they suddenly turned around and stood their ground and unleashed savage roars.

The drums started pounding again as mortals without a shred of cultivation threw themselves onto tusks and claws, then held on tightly as their companions pierced through their corpses to bring their enemies down.

The entire army rallied and crashed into the massive tide of fiends that Cha Ming realized were little more than drops of blood that had fallen from the greater fiends. That’s right—blood drops were responsible for the death of over a hundred thousand. Blood drops were pushing their way past the city’s defenders and threatening over forty million mortals.

The sheer incredulity of it brought Cha Ming close to tears, but he kept painting, knowing that if he didn’t do this properly, those forty million people were as good as dead.

Mortals threw down their weapons and began to fight with their bare hands. Cultivators combined potential-breaking pills with soul-burn techniques, some of them even going up in flames as these effects clashed. Ships flew into the fiend without regard for their lives. Perfectly good ships that probably could have fired at it for a few more seconds if the crew was being rational.

Only then did Cha Ming realize the horrible nature of his three auras.

Hope, savagery, and crazed emotions. When those three combined, dangerous, irrational things happened.

Cha Ming could have pulled back these auras, but he didn’t dare. For one, it was making his painting stronger, and for another, he couldn’t bring himself to stop them. His auras could not convince anyone to do anything they didn’t want to, and their sacrifice was buying valuable time for their brethren. Buying time for Cha Ming to paint.

And just as he was inspiring them, they were inspiring him. All the bloodshed, the bloodlust, the savagery, and the sheer visceral need tipped Cha Ming over the edge. Something crystalized inside his mind, and his brushstrokes became fluid and expansive. Instead of individual scales, he began painting patches of scaled skin. Instead of claws, he began painting talons and paws.

Cha Ming no longer painted individual runes. Where he painted, dozens of runes appeared all at once. They were even joined in formation and steadily humming as though he’d spent minutes tuning them.

He no longer painted tiny details. Broad features were enough to define entire cliffs, waterfalls, and raging rivers.

Where he’d once been painting rivers, he was now painting entire lakes filled with fish and seaweed and an entire habitat. The Descent of the Five Sovereigns, which should have taken three minutes, was compressed into fifty seconds, and the moment those five paintings were finished, the pressure they exuded gave even the rank-twelve fiend pause.

It stopped advancing and turned all its attention on Cha Ming’s creation. It paid no heed to the ships that were trying their best to pierce through its tough exterior. Cha Ming had never painted the Five Point Monarchs in such exquisite detail before. This was a level of completion that was even greater than in his many practice sessions.

Cha Ming had never seen the Five Point Monarchs in person, but he had asked Immortal Heartlock for a recording. He’d seen their legendary technique before. They flew out even without him willing them to and activated a technique that summoned a formation in the shape of a pointed star.

He would have loved to spectate. He would have loved to see his creations do battle. But he knew that they wouldn’t be a match for the fiend and could at most buy him valuable time.

Cha Ming used multiple Clear Rune Steps to close the distance, then channeled creation into his staff through Clear Rune Strike—only to discover he could no longer pierce the creature’s shell, and neither could his paintings.

The creation energy that would normally be so effective washed over the creature, charring scales and burning useless flesh. It was all surface damage, however. He could not do anything to its vitals.

But Cha Ming was determined. So many cultivators and mortals had died to give him those precious seconds, and he would not turn back. He would destroy this fiend or die trying.

Clear Rune Strike was currently his most powerful attack, but it wasn’t enough to break through. The only thing he had left to add was his physical arts. He needed to combine Clear Rune Strike with his Savage Deity Battle Arts.

This wasn’t the first time Cha Ming had tried such a thing. In fact, he could easily merge Clear Rune Strike and Savage Deity Rush.

Alas, this creature was far too strong, and the extra speed wasn’t enough to damage it. He would get nowhere with speed. So he stopped and began savagely beating away at it like an annoying mosquito. No, not even like a mosquito, because a mosquito would have pierced its skin.

The fiend ignored Cha Ming, for he was irrelevant. Descent of the Five Sovereigns was still active, but the five paintings weren’t even under his control.

Cha Ming’s frustration paled compared to his elation at being able to hammer away at the creature without retaliation. He knew there was a chance that he could affect it. He just needed a breakthrough. He needed to master Savage Deity Crush.

Unfortunately, to learn Savage Deity Crush, he would need to lean into his savagery, something he was no longer able to do, not since his Aura of Iridescence had made a resurgence and his Aura of Inspiration had grown to the point that it condensed a seed.

It was no longer possible for him to learn it. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from trying.

He drew on everything he had. That included the ten-colored energy that he typically used in small amounts and had yet to master. He gave up on control. He gave up on speed. He gave up on any regard for his safety.

So focused was he on beating at the creature’s shell that he barely noticed when his merit crossed a tipping point and the white pair of wings that had long since lain dormant lit up. Many of the larger fractures on his soul suddenly healed over. Power flowed through his soul and reinforced his spiritual energy, slightly increasing the potency of Cha Ming’s blows.

Cha Ming didn’t know what would happen if he did so, but he didn’t hesitate to initiate a single-stage soul burn. His strength rose a half step, allowing his staff to finally crack the creature’s chitinous armor for the first time.

The crack barely even registered to the creature, who was still busy with the Five Point Monarchs, but it gave Cha Ming hope—and just in time. His Descent of the Five Sovereigns was beginning to fail. The Iridescent Monarch had suffered a wound, and her painting dripped iridescent blood. Golden gears had fallen from the Clockwork Ancestor, and the Inkwell Ancestor was bleeding ink from her shell.

Their joint attack collapsed, but they did not stop their assault. Instead, they completely severed their link to Cha Ming and began to do the one last thing they could before running out of energy.

“Pull back!” Cha Ming shouted. He assumed lightning form and retreated just as the five sovereigns threw themselves at the fiend. His five best paintings self-detonated.

Ships fell from the sky. Thousands of cultivators didn’t fare much better. The explosion killed tens of thousands of mortals, even though they were nowhere near the point of impact.

The effects were horrendous, and while Cha Ming could not yet see the aftermath of the explosion, he knew that luck wasn’t on his side.

Yet he had no time to waste, so he rushed through the smoke and found that half the humanoid fiend’s head was missing, as were two of its six arms. Its body was badly damaged, but it was picking itself up.

Cha Ming couldn’t let it get up. He couldn’t let it stand. The moment it recovered, they were finished.

Cha Ming channeled everything he had and began beating away at the creature. He channeled every inch of his savagery, every ounce of his emotions, and the last bit of desperate hope he had. He launched himself atop the creature and prepared to face death.

It was then that he felt a strange heaviness in his staff. He leaned into his attack as he felt everything suddenly compress. The Savage Deity War Staff came down with such force that his skin broke open, and his entire body began to drip ten-colored blood.

The rank-twelve fiend’s broken carapace shattered once again, and under the effects of Clear Rune Strike, its body was filled with a full dose of creation energy. It roared in pain as it broke apart into five different pieces.

But the fiend’s vitality was strong, and the pieces immediately joined and started healing over. In seconds, the wounds would be gone, and they would be back to where they started.

Unfortunately for the fiend, Cha Ming was there, and now, he remembered. A shadow had appeared inside his spiritual sea beside the shadow for Savage Deity Rush.

But it was wrong. All wrong. He wasn’t executing it like it should be done.

Somehow, though, it was working, because he’d replaced a core component with something else. He couldn’t lean on his savagery like he used to. He wasn’t capable of it. But emotions… well, he’d gradually come to be able to feel again, and those strong feelings resonated with those on the battlefield, just as the budding feeling of hope he felt resonated with the hope of an entire battlefield.

Savage Deity Crush required strength and savagery, but he’d replaced that savagery with something else. It was an unstable threefold aura that mixed cold ruthlessness, fierce emotions, and hope and compressed them to the point that they had physical weight that gave his staff the requisite heaviness.

The fiend’s carapace blew apart again. Savage Deity Crush was simply too powerful. Overwhelmingly powerful, to the point that using it was damaging. Only by fully concentrating on pure, overwhelming strength could Cha Ming execute it.

The second the fiend’s pieces pulled back together, Cha Ming roared again and leaped upward. The Savage Deity War Staff expanded and came crashing down. This time, there was an explosion of creation energy, and the fiend was blown into three distinct pieces. A part of its head was directly blown off.

Landing this attack came at the expense of his physical stability. His muscles were torn, and every bone in his body was cracked. But he laughed, because now he knew that the battle was winnable. The Raging Tide Sect was already taking advantage of the situation and landing well-coordinated hits on the wounded creature. Its shell might be impervious, but its insides were not, and its black fiendish blood was especially defenseless.

So Cha Ming launched himself up a third time, and this time, the staff grew to the size of a city street. He heaved and struck downward, and half the fiend’s body became mincemeat. Every bone in Cha Ming’s body broke, and he barely had any divinity left. Simply standing was exhausting.

His attack severely damaged the creature’s vitality and revealed its rank-twelve fiendish core. As long as this core still existed, it would continuously draw on the nearby fiends and fiendish blood to regenerate.

Cha Ming did not trust the sect master to be able to finish it off, and his body was too weak to execute Savage Deity Crush a final time, so he poured the last of what he had into one final painting.

Two azure tempests appeared atop the creature’s broken body. They spun faster and faster until a zone of spatial shearing appeared at their center. This was Cha Ming’s imitation of Azure Wind Scar.

The fiend constantly broke apart and pulled itself back together, and its core began to crackle and pop, until finally, a single large crack appeared. “Explode!” Cha Ming forced the two tempests together, destabilizing them and creating a storm of spatial fissures. Azure wind energy ripped apart what was left of it, grinding it into dust.

With its core gone, the rank-twelve fiend was no longer as threatening. The battle was won. The appearance of the fiend had bolstered the fiendish army, but now the will forcing the army forward had vanished, and the creatures became lethargic and soulless.

The sects and the mortal army charged forward and began dutifully cutting down their sworn enemies, burning whatever corruption they found lest it spread and lead to another outbreak.

As for Cha Ming, he was in no condition to fight. He flew up to Elder Choking Tide’s ship, which was currently wiping out a large quantity of lower-grade creatures. “I don’t suppose you have a secure place for a lone cultivator to recover?” he croaked as he staggered on to the deck.

“Third cabin to the back,” Choking Tide said, pointing his thumb toward a door.

Cha Ming went to what was probably the last private room on the ship. He did not have energy to ward it, so he left a note before stepping into the Clear Sky World. Once there, he began what would probably be a lengthy recovery.