PtM Book 16 - Chapter 37: Outbreak

2/3 this week.

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A gush of messages awaited Cha Ming the moment he appeared in the planar teleportation formation. Most of them were pleas for help, while others were quick communications from his friends about a similar eruption of fiends in their own protectorates.

Cha Ming and the others had long expected a fiend outbreak. He only wished he’d had more time to prepare. Just a few more years… Well, there was no use thinking about what he could have done. The fiends were here now, and by the looks of it, the outbreak spanned the entire planet.

The initial twelve missions on his mission jade had just been the tip of the iceberg. Now, there were hundreds of noteworthy cases, and many more were on the way. That wasn’t even including the countless lower-level fiends that would accompany them to lay waste to cities, strongholds, and sects.

Speed was of utmost importance, so Cha Ming immediately flew toward one of the many teleportation portals in the Azure Tempest Territory’s teleportation network—only to find it dull and out of order.

Huxian, what’s going on with teleportation? he asked.

Had to shut the whole thing down, Huxian said. I let all the sects know just now. I’m not sure what came first, the fiend outbreak or the massive spatial instabilities, but some of the tunnels connecting these formations have spatial cracks in them, and people are getting torn apart just traveling through them. Oh, by the way, get ready.

Get ready for what? Cha Ming asked. His question was answered when irregular energy blips appeared in his domain. He didn’t even need to look—he would recognize that familiar destructive presence anywhere. Fiends were advancing toward the teleportation formation. Lots of them.

Why are they coming this way? Cha Ming asked. There are no ley lines or transcendent-crystal veins.

Probably because it’s filled with immortal energy, Huxian said. Maybe there was something cloaking it before, and the spatial instabilities got to it? It’s all very confusing. All I know is that all the fiends in the nearest thousand kilometers are pouring in toward me. Heh. Good thing I rigged this entire place with spatial traps just in case.

The fiends were far quicker then normal. They bypassed nearby mortal settlements and forests filled with life without giving them a second thought.

Since they were still quite far away, Cha Ming had some time to put down defenses. He summoned the Clear Sky Brush in its largest form, then began painting a tempest in azure ink.

The core of the tempest was made up of twenty-three large wings. Each of them was as large as one of Cha Ming’s Azure Tempest Wings. This was the largest azure tempest Cha Ming had ever thought to create.

It wasn’t that Cha Ming had no other options—he had more than a few azure tempest paintings stacked up in the Clear Sky World. But to defend such a large area, he could think of nothing better than the defensive formation that had kept the Azure Tempest Sect safe all this time.

After the wings, he painted the rest of a core element a kilometer and a half wide, leaving only a hundred-meter-wide buffer zone between the shield protecting the interplanar teleportation formation and the origin of the tempest.

The twenty-three wings were connected by a circular rim. This was connected to a stabilizer rim that was held together by eight large spokes at the center.

Spin! Cha Ming urged the painting once he finished the last stroke. The runes on the tempest core activated, and all twenty-three wings and the outer ring began moving. Gusts of wind appeared at the rim, and these eventually turned into azure wind blades, which accumulated until they formed a replica of the azure tempest. It was a full three kilometers thick and brimming with lethal energy.

Painting the Azure Tempest had taken quite a bit of Cha Ming’s energy. He consumed a few recovery pills and watched coldly as the first of the fiends threw themselves into the tempest without regard for their safety. They ignored the cutting blades that reduced them to piles of black blood, a fraction of which was dispersed, but a good portion of which ended up on the ground, forming an oily black film that was quickly absorbed by the passing fiends.

Tens of thousands of them consisted of the first wave. Most of them only made it halfway, but some of the stronger ones almost breached the inner wings. Some even got within meters of the wind blades.

It’s not enough, Cha Ming thought as he saw another fifty thousand fiends emerge in the distance. Not nearly enough. He watched as this batch made contact with the wind blades. But they did not attack them and simply passed through on their way to what had attracted them here in the first place—the interplanar teleportation formation behind the shield. It flickered and crackled as the hundreds that had survived the Azure Tempest attacked with horns and claws and tentacled limbs.

Cha Ming did not know how much damage the shield could take, but he figured it was a lot, since it was protecting an immortal-grade formation. He chose to ignore them for now. More important was that two hundred thousand lesser fiends had just appeared on the horizon.

This first painting can be considered a battlefield, Cha Ming thought, analyzing the situation. My Azure Tempest Battlefield. If it’s not enough, I’ll use a second battlefield: my Yin River Battlefield!

The Clear Sky Brush flew out through the tempestuous winds, past the slick ocean of black blood that struggled and shook to re-form a semblance of destructive life. Upon breaking through the vortex, it released a river of death and painted spirits. The Yin River Battlefield was the most adaptable of his paintings, as it was only two kilometers thick but fifty kilometers long.

He summoned a whole quarter of it to completely encircle the Azure Tempest Battlefield in a four-kilometer-wide circle of yin death. Creatures of instinctual destruction the fiends might be, but they died like anything else.

The yin river wiped away a third of the fiendish horde, and the remainder entered the grind wheel of azure wind, which shaved off nine tenths of those that remained. Only the strongest of them charged onward and joined the hundreds of fiends already attacking the shield.

Ideally, he would summon the Yang Memory Battlefield, but he didn’t have the qi to do it. I need to save my strength. Daoists were ideal for mass elimination and large-scale spells, but in battles of attrition, nothing beat out demigods.

Cha Ming took on Flame Rune Form and sent out countless flame runes from his body. He used these to execute Flame Rune Steps to reach the nearest rank-eight fiend.

Fiends came in all shapes and sizes. This one was built like a rhinoceros, with tentacles for a mouth and an additional pair of scythed arms and a black carapace. The creature made him sick, both physically and spiritually.

So he advanced and brandished his staff, harnessing his flame runes into an offensive array around his staff. This was the newest iteration of Flame Rune Strike. As he smashed apart the creature’s tough shell, the flames bored into its flesh and blood. The creature’s body was reduced to pile of corrupted mincemeat, and the flames burnt away what was left. None of its black blood or corrupted flesh had a chance to join the growing puddle of fiendish gore.

There was no time to stop or hesitate. Not far away from him was another fiend. He closed the gap with yet another Flame Rune Steps and Flame Rune Strike, not even stopping as he blinked over to fiend after fiend, never stopping, never resting, never tiring.

As long as they passed his two battlefield paintings, he dispatched them within a hundred seconds. Most of them he killed without suffering any damage, but some of them managed to score a hit, forcing him to expend some of his precious divine energy.

And as he fought, he painted. Smaller azure tempests appeared around him and revolved like shearing blades, cutting down the ones he missed or simply didn’t have time to take care of right away.

Minutes passed, and then hours. There seemed to be no end to the suicidal rush. Worse, the black sludge was growing increasingly concentrated, and so was the power of the fiends making it through his battlefields. Eventually, rank-ten fiends began emerging, and Cha Ming knew he needed to do something.

I need to wipe out the residual blood, Cha Ming thought. Ninesky, can you pick up that blood? Surprisingly, she voiced a negative. A firm negative. Is there a reason you can’t?

A complicated mixture of images came his way, and Cha Ming somewhat understood what she was saying. I got it. It’s gross. What a time for Ninesky to get picky.

Cha Ming had many options to destroy the blood, but all of them required qi. Most importantly, they required time. Cha Ming needed to be as efficient as possible. Can spatial artifacts contain fiend blood, Huxian? he sent across his link.

Nope, they break down, Huxian said. I checked. It’s inconvenient.

What about temporarily? Cha Ming pressed. And when they break down, does that mean the blood ends up in the mortal world or the void?

Oh, I thought you were collecting, Huxian said. Containment should last a few hours. The blood will end up in the void.

Good enough, Cha Ming thought. He had quite the collection of storage rings, so he did not hesitate to adopt Clear Rune Form and hop into the tempest.

He used Clear Rune Steps to advance. This was the latest benefit of training his Clear Rune Form over the years. Each of his Flame Rune, Grass Rune, Sand Rune, Lake Rune, and Steel Rune Forms had improved, to the point where he could now use clear runes as a medium to achieve something akin to teleportation without piercing the void.

He hopped across the battlefield, filling ring after ring of black blood. The sludge beneath the azure tempest cleared up within minutes, and that beneath the yin battlefield in a quarter hour.

In the end, he had over a hundred storage rings’ worth of black fiendish blood. Each one was shaking uncontrollably. It wanted to join with its brethren but couldn’t.

Cha Ming’s actions greatly weakened the fiends, and by then, there weren’t a lot of them remaining. Only a few scattered groups still dared charge across the twin battlefields—only a few made it through every time.

As for the remaining fiends, it only took a single Clear Rune Strike to take out all of them, even the strong ones. For some reason, a combination of all five elements was very effective at destroying them compared to single-element attacks.

Hours after the battle began, it ended. Cha Ming’s qi and divinity were severely depleted but recovering. He cleared the battlefield of what was left of the black blood and finally pulled back both battlefields. The Azure Tempest Battlefield had been painted on a whim and would need some time to be refined. As it was, it could be used a few times without any problems. He set the painting using the Clear Sky World as a canvas.

He then sat down and watched his energy slowly recover. The jade coloring of his spiritual-energy pool had deepened substantially, and his first pair of wings was almost filled out. The cracks on his soul were starting to vanish. In fact, the damage his spiritual sea had suffered in the Azure Tempest Sect was completely gone now.

Merit, or something like it, was flowing toward Cha Ming liberally. Not just from those fiends he’d killed, but from his many contributions to the Azure Tempest Territory. Before, it hadn’t been as pronounced, but now, the karma he’d sown by rewarding the sects for slaying fiends was being reaped. He was not fully responsible for their increased battle effectiveness but could claim partial credit, at least.

A few more hours passed before Cha Ming was recovered to full strength. Only then did he turn his attention to the pool of black fiendish blood. Half of the storage treasures had already shattered, and what remained of the blood was now kept firmly suppressed by the Ninesky Seals.

If left unchecked, this blood would strengthen other fiends or even create new ones. That wasn’t even counting his effects on the soil and local plant life.

Currently, Cha Ming had a whole sphere of said fiendish blood the size of a large house. It was wriggling and trying to escape spatial containment, with limited success. He could destroy the blood, which would net him a great deal of merit, but he had reservations.

This was but the first of many outbreaks. This war would last a long time. He was curious about what made fiends tick, but only now did he have a large amount of unpurified blood to experiment with.

What did fiendish blood respond to? What was its nature? Was it possible to eliminate the fiendish will inside of it? He hoped to answer this and other questions.

Cha Ming pulled apart a head-sized sphere and began to cycle qi of each of the five elements through it. He discovered that it was possible to destroy or disperse the blood somewhat with any element. Doing so would also increase the concentration of the black blood, much like boiling diluted alcohol would eventually yield a 95% solution.

After understanding its interactions with the five elements, Cha Ming tried wind and lightning and discovered that wind was more effective, and lightning less so.

Using the five elements in conjunction was especially effective. At first, he wondered why, but when he experimented with creation and destruction qi, it all made sense: destruction qi made fiendish blood stronger. Creation qi was its antithesis.

Cha Ming pondered the implications of his discovery. Most other people weren’t in a position to generate large amounts of creation qi, but Cha Ming was. In fact…

He assumed Clear Rune Form and summoned several dozen clear runes. He then proceeded to channel pure creation qi through them.

Having confirmed that this was possible, he channeled the qi through his staff and struck at a large glob of fiendish blood. It shattered as though it had encountered its natural predator. In the future, pure creation would be his trump card against fiends.

Since creation qi was its antithesis, and destruction was nourishment, Cha Ming decided to see the effects of different types of qi on the fiendish will inside the blood. He discovered that most types of qi did not affect it, but destruction qi was a useful supplement for it.

Creation qi, on the other hand, destroyed it very quickly, but not before it destroyed an entire blob of black blood.

Intrigued, Cha Ming began cycling both types of qi. Creation qi reduced the volume of the blood but increased its concentration. Destruction qi, on the other hand, nourished the blood regardless of its purity.

Every time he cycled creation qi through the blood, the will inside it weakened. When he replenished the blood, however, the will did not recover nearly as much. Cha Ming used multiple cycles, and in the end, he was rewarded with a few drops of black blood that were completely free of fiendish influence.

How about now? Cha Ming asked Ninesky. Can you drink this?

The Clear Sky Brush appeared and sniffed at the few drops of black blood. It shivered but nodded hesitantly.

Go on, Cha Ming said. What’s the worst that could happen?

The Clear Sky Brush gingerly drank in the liquid. It seemed utterly revolted by the process, which was interesting because it could store corpses and yin energy without any problem. This was the first substance it had ever shown a real aversion to.

As the brush sipped at the blood, Cha Ming turned his attention to the larger sphere of black blood. He broke it into eight different spheres, then began refining them using alternating blasts of creation and destruction qi.

Eventually, he was left with eight small blobs of fiendish blood the size of a grown-up human. By then, the Clear Sky Brush was resigned to its fate and directly consumed them.

Consuming the paint was a slow process, and as it happened, Cha Ming wondered what could be painted using fiendish blood. After all, it was a powerful substance, and a single drop could blight away an entire forest.

It took twenty minutes for the Clear Sky Brush to drink in the rest of the fiendish blood, by which point the brush looked listless, weak, and resentful.

“Come on now, it can’t be that bad,” Cha Ming said.

The Clear Sky Brush shivered indignantly, and Cha Ming saw a flash of shocking images. He gasped and sent his awareness into his inner universe where Ninesky slept.

There she was, floating in the air, surrounded by the eight forms she could inhabit, brush, staff, hammer, knife, flame, cauldron, seal, and needle.

Normally, her expression was peaceful, but right now, she was shivering with pain. Her skin and her dress were still misty gray, but now this mist leaned more toward white. He could tell because a lock of her hair had changed. Her once silvery-white hair had turned completely black.

Her state made him regret feeding her the fiend blood. It was his calculating curiosity that had prompted him to wonder about using it as ink. “Spit it out. It’s not worth it,” he said, but Ninesky refused.

More images flashed inside his mind, and Cha Ming frowned. “It hurts, but it’s also necessary?” He wasn’t sure what that meant.

A picture of yin and yang flashed inside his mind, and only then did he understand. “So far you’ve been absorbing pure creation materials. You’ve never been exposed to truly destructive materials. You need these to reach your true potential?”

She answered in the affirmative.

Ninesky’s state would not have a large effect on Cha Ming’s combat effectiveness, so Cha Ming, having fully recovered and completed his experiments, looked through his message jade. Everyone from the Heartforge Realm was hard at work, and they now had more information. Apparently, something had suddenly caused an increase in the density of spatial rifts, especially in the southern hemisphere. The massive outbreak was mostly concentrated toward the south, but a few larger pockets had emerged—surprise, one of them had been close to his starting location.

The Azure Tempest Sect had mobilized most of its people and half the tier-two sects to the southern battlefield, but this had in turn left most of the territory lightly guarded. It would be up to the tier-three sects to clean things up.

Cha Ming decided that going out on his own was probably a bad idea. He sent a communication request to Sect Master Azure Tempest. The image of an azure-haired woman appeared in front him. “Sect Master,” he greeted.

“Clear Sky,” the sect master said. “I saw your report on the number of fiends slain. Very efficient. Well done.”

“I can’t exactly do nothing when so many people are in danger,” Cha Ming said.

“Yet many people do just that,” Azure Tempest said. “What are your plans going forward?”

“I’m a free agent, so I can help out wherever the places were hit hardest,” Cha Ming said. “Tell me where to go. I’ll follow your lead.”

“Have you mastered Azure Tempest Wings yet?” the sect master asked.

Cha Ming grimaced. “For the most part. I can maintain something approaching flight indefinitely, and I think my body’s reached the standard for withstanding what you called minor completion of the technique.”

“Good,” she said. “Head north. I’ll plot you a path. What strength of fiends can you take care of on your own?”

“You can send me against rank-eleven fiends alone,” Cha Ming answered. “I’ll struggle against rank twelve but could buy time if I fought them or joined forces with other cultivators.”

“Done,” Azure Tempest said. “You’re familiar with Soaring City, I believe? Between your location and Soaring City, there are about ten rank-eleven fiends going on an uncontrolled rampage that the sects can’t attend to. All the rank-twelve and thirteen fiends have been tied up. On your way, I want you to take care of any fiend you see, but you can ignore the weakest of fiends. Rank eight to eleven fiends can snowball quickly, so eliminating them is a must.”

Cha Ming hissed. Rank thirteen was the upper limit of cultivation on the Chasewind Plane. And some of those were attacking? Since the cultivation system here wasn’t especially advanced, and few people dual cultivated body and qi, it would take an entire tier-two sect to constrain just one of them.

“I’m no expert on the mechanics of planes, but what happens when a rank-thirteen fiend gains enough energy?” Cha Ming asked.

“Bad things, I’m told,” Azure Tempest said. “Which is why my sect is personally tying down all of them. Speaking of which, I’d better go.” A two-hundred-meter-tall humanoid fiend appeared in the projection.

The sect master extended a palm, and five wind scars tore into the fiend from above. When it moved to reshape itself, a kilometer-wide azure tempest appeared and cut into it like a grind wheel. In the end, only black paste was left.

Only then did Sect Master Azure Tempest cut the connection.