PtM Book 14 - Chapter 51: Final Push (3)

2/5 this week. 

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Cha Ming grew into his new powers quickly and began using them to support his allies. He developed two main ways to assist them—by accelerating their techniques using creation qi and his Assembly, Mending, and Gathering runes, and amplifying their techniques using his Iridescent Aura, which he’d previously thought only capable of being used on himself.

Progress was like a drug, and it was easy to get carried away. He had to remind himself constantly that this was a war, and that overcommitting or overestimating his abilities could kill countless people. He never lost sight of the fact that while he wasn’t killing anyone directly, he was still facilitating the process, and therefore was just as culpable.

But he didn’t stop. Because if he did, even more of his allies would die. This was the cruel reality of the situation. The cruel reality of war.

It was easy to get frustrated. His qi cultivation greatly lagged his body cultivation. How much would he have been able to accomplish if his advancement hadn’t slowed to a crawl? This led to crazy ideas, ranging from using potential-burning pills or his soul-burn ability to boost his strength at key moments to much more crazy ideas like trying to merge his qi and divine power, much like he’d done with his inner universe and the Clear Sky World. Then the voice of reason put its foot down and decided that even if he every tried such a potentially suicidal action, it would be off the battlefield.

“Their battle pattern is getting increasingly chaotic,” Cha Ming realized.

“We know,” Aaron said. “It’s actually been going on for several minutes. But well done on spotting it. You are improving?”

“Do we know why that’s happening?” Cha Ming asked.

“We’re guessing it has to do with you upsetting the enemy general,” Clever Dusk said. “So yes. Good job. Keep it up.”

“He must believe the situation has become dangerous, so he’s decided to try gambling a little, starting with messing up the battlefield,” Aaron Shacklebolt said. “I predict a decapitation maneuver.”

“But we have an advantage on the ground, what with Drezil’s constructs and the participation of civilians,” Clever Dusk said. “To try a decapitation maneuver right now would expose their silver rankers to heavy fire. If he fails, he’ll lose.”

“And if he doesn’t, he’ll win,” Aaron said.

“Clever Dusk, a group is trying to break past me.” It was Merenthal. Though he was quite agile despite wearing his massive signstone armor, it was impossible for him to hold everyone back by himself.

Cha Ming could feel it happening. “Trying to break past” was putting it lightly. These gold rankers were ignoring a large threat like Merenthal and giving up defense completely in exchange for pure mobility. Merenthal immediately slew two with his sabers, but the rest managed to charge past him. They broke through a secondary curtain of investiture-realm demons, opening up a path toward Cha Ming, Aaron, and Clever Dusk.

This happened in two other locations. Multiple gold rankers acted with uncharacteristic altruism and practically threw themselves on demon blades.

“Madness!” Aaron said. “Pure madness! Even if they kill us, they’ll die for sure. Are these people deathsworn soldiers, or did he threaten their families?”

Very few gold rankers were ever willing to sacrifice themselves for military causes. Especially in Harid Dej’s camp.

Aaron and Clever Dusk quickly issued orders for their fusion-realm and investiture-realm forces to capitalize on the gaps in their ranks. By taking advantage of these two critical openings, they were able to instantly slay two out of Oster’s twenty generals, destabilizing a large chunk of the battlefield.

It was a huge sacrifice on Oster Fireblight’s part, but in exchange, he now had thirty gold rankers in the center of Verdant Crossroads’s camp.

Demons tightened around the intruders like the jaws of a primeval beast. These gold rankers would have seconds at most to do anything, because after that, they’d be dead.

“Do what you can to defend,” Aaron said. “Prioritize Clever Dusk. I still have some tricks up my sleeve.”

Unsurprisingly, the intruding gold rankers completely ignored Aaron, choosing instead to focus on Cha Ming and Clever Dusk. They ignored all attacks and unleashed whatever techniques they could, swallowing limit-breaking pills, executing forbidden techniques, and burning blood essence.

“We can’t outrun them,” Clever Dusk said, stopping. She immediately pulled out her guqin and began playing. Colored strings danced in the air and deflected incoming attacks.

Cha Ming flew to her side and retracted his creation domain in favor of his destruction domain. He channeled Claddings of Light to blind them, then activated his Golden Boots of the Clockwork Dragon to double his speed for three seconds. At this point, lasting even three seconds equated survival.

If I can do it with my creation domain on my allies, I can do it with my destruction domain on my enemies,Cha Ming thought. Three runes representing Dismantling, Breaking, and Eruption hovered around his head. He stopped analyzing battle formations and focused on his enemy’s techniques instead.

Flaws. He needed flaws.

The first attack to piece into his domain was a wave of golden sword energy. It began to disintegrate the moment it entered, but Cha Ming could tell the rate at which it decayed and fell apart was far too slow to mean anything. He had to intercept it.

There! He found a spot on the golden wave that eroded much more quickly than others, so he stabbed at it with a spike of destruction qi that channeled all three of his runes. The sword wave fell apart and scattered.

Three more attacks entered the domain immediately afterward. Cha Ming analyzed these as well and stabbed out much the same way. The disparity between him and these techniques was far too much for him, so he was struck with soul-searing backlash.

“Use a treasure to channel the attacks!” Clever Dusk shouted. “Your soul can’t handle it, but a treasure can!” Her advise made sense, and he quickly tried to think of what treasure would work best.

The Clear Sky Brush was weak. The staff was a blunt instrument and unsuitable. Flames were too time-consuming, and cauldrons weren’t good at piercing. That only left the carving knife. Cha Ming threw it out, and as though sensing his intentions, it transformed. It abandoned its shape as a carving implement in favor of the sleek shape of a throwing knife. Instead of a short blade with a longer handle, the knife was now ninety percent blade and ten percent counterweight. Like a tiny flying sword.

He immediately channeled destruction qi through the knife and sent it flying through the weak points of incoming spells and techniques. Ice, fire, lightning, and energy attacks—it didn’t matter—he smashed them apart all the same.

He had a lot more trouble with projectiles, because those had physical form. For those, he could only rely on the guardians.

These eight guardians wore solemn expressions. But they were well trained and knew that their lives were unimportant compared to those they were protecting. They used their armored bodies as shields and took the arrows for both Cha Ming and Clever Dusk, because if they fell, so would everyone else.

Cha Ming continued cutting and dissecting techniques as these guardians dropped, knowing that if he made a single mistake, a gold-ranked attack would land and disrupt their rhythm, leaving them open to many more.

This went on for another few seconds, after which their enemies were now close enough to make a break for them. Five out of thirty gold rankers had already fallen, and many more would soon.

“Die, demon witch!” a swordsman howled as he came in.

Cha Ming was forced to call back the Clear Sky Carving Knife in favor of his staff. They collided in midair, and Cha Ming flew back several meters. He might be a Dao God, but physical rankers could get as strong as demigods, depending on their class. And this was an early-gold ranker.

If Cha Ming had been his target, he would have died, but fortunately, he’d been aiming for Clever Dusk. This allowed Cha Ming to catch his breath just long enough to see the swordsman turn toward the inkborn woman and slash out with a deadly skill.

Clever Dusk was still not panicking. The blade fell down atop her, cleaving into her skull. But then her skull unraveled, and Clever Dusk shot outward in multiple directions as a tangle of strings.

“Fusion transformation!” one of them called out.

It was the strangest fusion transformation Cha Ming had ever seen. He would have expected a Star-Eye Monkey instead.

The cut rapidly healed over, and Cha Ming felt a tug as Clever Dusk jerked out of the way of a follow-up strike. She tied a string to me, Cha Ming realized. She’s using it to dodge.

It was too early for them to celebrate. The swordsman was still there, and Cha Ming couldn’t attack him because another round of spells was coming in, and many of them were aligned with fire. He didn’t know how Clever Dusk’s fusion transformation would take it, but he guessed it would end badly.

He threw the Clear Sky Carving Knife once again, hoping to thwart the enemy barrage. He targeted fire spells first, followed by lightning, but had no time to shatter any other spell matrices.

Arrows flew out at them, and several pierced Cha Ming’s body. Several more pierced into Clever Dusk’s body but caused no damage. But then another gold ranker came in with a blade of fire, and Cha Ming knew she was in trouble.

That was when Merenthal finally broke through his encirclement and jumped in front of Clever Dusk, blocking the blade wielder. He then smashed a stone-covered fist into the gold-ranked swordsman, killing him right then and there.

Merenthal’s arrival was timely, because it was then that the other gold rankers arrived.

“Ignore the others! She must die!” one of the gold rankers shouted. A warrior with a burning spear appeared from the crowd wearing brilliant gold armor. Surprisingly, he had two pairs of jade wings floating at his back. This was one of Jezeriah’s people.

“Die, Junior Thread Seer!” the spear wielder yelled as he hurled his spear faster than anyone could react. The spear cut through Cha Ming’s destruction domain as though it weren’t there, and for the first time in the battle, Cha Ming felt the cold shadow of death looming over him. He was going to die. Clever Dusk was going to die. They were all going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Splurt!

The spear landed, but Cha Ming felt no pain, and Clever Dusk was still right beside him. Another armored figure had blocked the spear. It was Elder Finleaf, and she’d taken it in her gut.

“So you were slinking around,” Elder Finleaf said as she pulled the spear from her torso. Her flesh sizzled and popped from the spear’s high temperature.

“I tried to kill a future Thread Seer, but I bagged the legendary Finleaf,” the spear wielder said. “It can’t say I’m unsatisfied.”

Cha Ming’s mind was reeling. What was an angel doing on this battlefield of all places? Was he just a mercenary with a bone to pick, or was something far more insidious going on?

“Since you’ve come, stay!” Elder Finleaf said. Her body grew severalfold as she executed her fusion transformation once again. The sudden growth forced him and the other gold rankers back. Then she grew another thirty percent, and her eyes turned red with rage.

The spear wielder’s eyes narrowed. “You’re burning your bloodline?”

“Get a good look, fool,” Elder Finleaf said. “I’m on my last legs, so I’m taking a late-gold-ranked saint down with me!” She launched herself forward, simultaneously knocking Cha Ming and Clever Dusk back into a group of their allies while she tackled the enemy saint.

She didn’t use a demon weapon. She didn’t need a demon weapon. She only needed her armored fists and her powerful body to take him on.

Cha Ming felt pure hate surging with every strike, and he couldn’t help but reach out with his Iridescent Domain, strengthening her attacks. It wasn’t only her hatred that poured in, but the land’s hatred and resentment. The might of it clung to the gold ranker like flames of vengeance.

“You’re insane!” the gold ranker shouted. He glowed with a golden fire that burnt everything around him. Even touching him would kill those of a lesser cultivation.

But Elder Finleaf didn’t care. She ignored the flames and pulled him apart. An arm. A leg. Then another. Her opponent screamed as she pulled off his head, and when the last of his life left him, Elder Finleaf’s fusion transformation ended.

“Elder Finleaf!” Clever Dusk shouted.

They flew over with their entourage of gold rankers. The junior Thread Seer placed her hand on the elder’s mangled armor and gasped.

“Now you see why I did what I did,” Elder Finleaf said with labored breaths. “What a lucky devil. His spear glanced off my armor and shoved straight into my demon core. I can’t live without my demon core, so I thought to myself, why not make the trade-off worth it?” She grinned but coughed up blood. “Well, at least you’re safe.”

“Elder Finleaf…” Clever Dusk said.

“Don’t you dare cry, little girl,” Elder Finleaf said. “There’s still a battle going on. Go out and fight it. I’ve still got a bit of fight left in me, so I’ll be going now.” She nodded to Cha Ming, then braced herself before kicking off the ground and entering the melee once more. Moments later, a bright light shone on the battlefield, and twenty gold rankers fell from the sky.

“Let’s win this,” Clever Dusk said, and began to issue orders. Only…

“Something’s wrong!” Cha Ming said, grabbing Clever Dusk.

“Look out!” Aaron Shacklebolt shouted. “Oster’s breaking through!” That was when their rearmost defensive line crumbled, and Oster and a substantial portion of his remaining powerhouses made a beeline for the Tree of Life.

***

“Ha, bet they didn’t see that coming!” Oster shouted.

“Indeed, it’s difficult to spot the enemy’s encroachment on a distant goal when you’re constantly defending,” General Montague said. “Congratulations on the breakthrough, General Fireblight.”

“It’s too early to congratulate anyone yet,” General Shen said.

“Nonsense. There’s no recovering from this unless they pull an army out of thin air,” Oster said excitedly.

“Sir—”

“You dare interrupt me in my moment of triumph, Aldrich?” Oster shouted angrily. “Tell me, what gave you the brass balls to do that?”

“S-sir, it appears that an army hasappeared out of thin air,” the pale General Aldrich stuttered.

Oster looked at where Aldrich’s gaze was. “Hm. So it has. Damn it all,” Oster said. “Wait a minute. Is that Petros?”

“That appears to be the case, sir,” General Aldrich said.

“How unfortunate,” Oster said. “Assume a defensive position until I can figure a way out of this. Damn you, Petros. Stop crashing my battlefields!”

***

The enemy spearhead maneuver abruptly slowed down and assumed a defensive formation. As for why they would do this, what else could they do when a literal horde of demons had appeared out of nowhere and was attacking their northern flank? They were quite literally emerging from the void, and their numbers were growing by the second.

Cha Ming could finally breathe easily. Huxian and the demons of Shanarah Mountain, along with a good half of their original forces, had arrived at a crucial moment.

It started with a trickle of initiation-realm demons, which quickly turned into a stream, and then a flood. Investiture-realm demons flew out to support the vanguard, and a horde of bestial demons followed.

Then the fusion-realm demons poured out alongside a healthy contingent of Daoists, for not all the Daoists had been defending Verdant Crossroads. Many had been sent to Lord Eight Directions, who’d generously agreed to accept Daoists into their territory, including the up-and-coming Painted Daoists, in exchange for military support.

To top it all off, a few gold rankers poured out. Adventurers hired by the mountain range with their substantial resources and influence.

While the elite forces were already quite overwhelming, this was by no means a top-heavy army. Their advantage lay in their massive horde of monstrous demons. They quickly mowed down any of the remaining bronze rankers, cutting the grass out from under the silver rankers’ feet, which then fell prey to the overwhelming army of lesser demons from below. The gold rankers lost their support, effectively completing a bottom-up reversal.

Oster and his gold rankers were cut off from any support, so they looped around toward the south, giving up on their objective. The enemy called an all-out retreat, proverbially throwing away their shields to gain a chance at survival.

Retreat skills were activated. They ceased all hostilities in favor of speed. Oster’s group was especially quick, and it was clear that if he didn’t have a quick retreat skill, one of his generals did.

“If we want to minimize losses, we should let them pull back,” Aaron Shacklebolt said as he landed beside Clever Dusk and Cha Ming. Merenthal dragged his wounded body over.

“No,” Clever Dusk said. Her fists were shaking, and her teeth were clenched. Inky-black tears were flowing liberally down her face. “Not a chance.”

“But the casualties…” Aaron started, but then he read the room and nodded. “Deterrence against future aggression is also a sound strategy. I’ll get to it at once!”

Perhaps, logically, Cha Ming agreed with Aaron, but he also remembered that this was a demon city, one that had lost many friends, family members, and tribesmen. Civilians had died defending this place.

As one, the flood of demons began to chase after the beleaguered humans, using a combination of terrain, manipulation, and the Starry Road to nip at their heels. While they were within Verdant Country, as it would now be known, even in the territory Fendal had taken over, it would be impossible for them to rest.

Since Clever Dusk was safe, Cha Ming joined Huxian, who was grimly shouting out orders. “They dare cut their way into this city and think they can just pull back? Do they have a death wish?”

“Many people will die, Huxian,” Cha Ming said.

“Oh yeah?” Huxian said. “Well, if we don’t hurt them badly enough, everyone will think they can walk all over us, just like they always have.”

Cha Ming understood. Rules and conventions were based on mutual respect and understanding. Mendin had agreements because they were similar and had some common values.

This was not the case between humans and demons. While Fendal had offered them Mendin terms, it remained that they had invaded because they saw them as animals, not people.

And if that was the way they saw them, that was the way they would retaliate—as animals.

The demon army chased continuously, starting from the moment they left the city and stormed through their camp to quickly pick up their wounded and equipment. They began their harassment with the lowliest bronze rankers. Thousands upon thousands of invaders fell to blade, tooth, and claw.

Some tried to surrender, but their surrender was not accepted. Anyone who stopped was mercilessly cut down. Fendal’s army poured all their skills and energy into running, because doing otherwise would result in their deaths.

An hour passed, then two, then half a day. The demons did not slow, did not tire, did not rest. But the wounded human army did tire, eventually falling behind as individuals, then groups, which were swallowed up by their demonic pursuers.

Cha Ming did not participate in the slaughter. He did not have the heart for it. He fought to protect, and he could not kill so many people in cold blood.

Still, he understood why they did this, so he did nothing to stop them. Mendin had forgotten how savage demons could be, and they needed to be reminded of that.

A day later, Cha Ming and Huxian finally stopped. The bronze rankers were no more, and half the silver rankers were dead. A token army kept chasing after them, but the bulk of them no longer bothered.

It was done. They had won. The enemy had tried and failed. The next group of invaders would think twice before trying anything.

But for now, they could rest and return to what was left of their homes.

It was time to rebuild and recover.

***

They left the battlefield in waves using the Starry Road Network and Huxian’s teleportation services. Earth-aligned demons and Daoists and rankers went ahead to clear out the rubble. Three quarters of the city lay wasted.

Cha Ming waited a half day before returning with Huxian and his friends, a little earlier than he should have, but he was worried. Yu Wen and Xiao Bai were still in the city, and Yu Wen had yet to awaken. Xiao Bai was not answering his messages.

When he arrived at the infirmary and saw Clever Dusk conversing with Petros, his world came crashing down. Yu Wen was no longer there, and neither was Xiao Bai.

“What’s going on?” Cha Ming asked.

Clever Dusk and Petros exchanged a look. “I’ve been quite busy, so I never checked on Daoist Misty Sea or Lady White,” Clever Dusk said. “If it wasn’t for Petros hounding me, I wouldn’t have noticed it for another few days.”

Cha Ming’s face fell, and Huxian’s ears pulled back. “What happened?” Cha Ming said.

“I think you know what happened, Clear Sky,” Petros said. “I have a skill, remember? I’ve been chasing her for months, and in my experience, leopards don’t change their spots.”

It was too much. Had she been stealing from the Church?

“What did she take?” Cha Ming asked.

Clever Dusk gave him a pitying look. “I’m afraid her target this time was a vital component to your teacher’s revival.”

Her words struck his heart like a dagger. “Show me.”