PtM Book 14 - Chapter 45: Melody

1/5 this week. 

Okay. So. The announcement. 

Good news everyone! I've decided that since Book 14 is so freaking long, and Book 15 is just as long (300k words each), I'll be separating both books into Part 1 and Part 2 going forward. 

This is going to take a bit of tweaking and rearranging to make Book 14 work - for example, I'm moving Huxian's adventure in the void later on, and kicking off Part 2 with the interlude - but I'm confident both parts should be good to release as two separate entities.

The reason I'm doing this is quite straightforward: my books are taking longer and longer to write. To put things into perspective, I'm going to split Book 14 and 15 into two parts, and they will both be as long as Book 7. This means that I need twice as much time to write a single book, and my release frequency is half as fast it otherwise would be.

The main question, I'm sure, is how this will affect the readers? In theory, this will result in me doubling my release frequency. There will be a slight delay at the start, but once I get things up and running, I'll be able to get pieces out to my beta readers earlier, and then my editor, which means that I'll speed up my overall release schedule by about one to two months. Those are two very real benefits. 

So here's my plan going forward: I will release Book 14 part 1 mid-April, and then part 2 two months later. But two months after that, I will release Book 15 part 1, and two months after that, Book 15 part 2. Assuming I keep on schedule.

Release frequency won't be impacted for Patrons, but releases will get pulled ahead here as well. I was originally planning on taking a two month hiatus to catch up and complete Book 15 before posting. Now, I can comfortably shrink that to a one month hiatus and start posting Book 15 part 1 a month earlier than originally planned. And the fact that I'm working with more manageable chunks will mean that long delays will be much less likely to occur going forward. 

So yes. Good news. I wish I'd thought of it earlier, but it's better late than never.

Happy reading everyone. I hope you enjoy the chapter, because it's quite the game changer.

Best,

Patrick

--

It wasn’t quite noon when Cha Ming felt a pair of arms wrap around him like a warm blanket. Gentle lips brushed past his neck, and he took a moment to enjoy what intimacy he could before the bloody battle.

“I’m not sure if you know this, but Clever Dusk can see, hear, and even feel everything that goes on around this tree,” Cha Ming whispered to her.

“Let her,” Yu Wen said impishly. She bit his neck a bit, then stopped before things got out of hand.

“Where’s Xiao Bai?” Cha Ming asked. “Still up north?”

“No, she’s off sulking somewhere around the city because I chose to stay here,” Yu Wen said. “Letting me go off alone to go sightseeing is one thing, but when there’s fighting, she’s not one to miss out. I’ll… help out how I can, Cha Ming. But you should know that on such a large battlefield, there’s only so much I can do.”

Cha Ming nodded. “It’s probably best if you don’t use that sword of yours. My qi is one thing, but half-immortal artifacts don’t grow on trees.” The Church was looking for them, and it was best to lay low for the time being. No sense making Artemis’s job any easier.

“I’m an old hand at this. I’ll be fine,” Yu Wen said. “What are you thinking about?”

“Too many things,” Cha Ming said. “So I’m waiting for rain, and hoping I’m not mistaken about everything.” He looked up at the violet sky and saw not a cloud in sight. “Do you think it’ll work?” He’d discussed the plan with Yu Wen a few days ago, and she and Xiao Bai had been equally uncertain about what might happen.

“Talismans are mysterious and often powerful things,” Yu Wen said. “Especially the higher rank they are. This Dao Origins Talisman of yours is an immortal-rank talisman. It’s a bound talisman, so the possibilities are endless. Moreover… it’s connected to you, be it because of your brush or other reasons. My advice? Trust your intuition. I think that miracles aren’t out of the realm of possibility.”

Cha Ming nodded. “I can’t help but feel like I’m biting off more than I can chew. But at the same time, I get a strange feeling when I look at this talisman. This war, these events, the happenings at the Titan Clan, Drezil’s statue… call me crazy, but I get the strange feeling everything is related to me in some way. Related to this talisman and my activating it.”

“Don’t go crazy on me yet,” Yu Wen said. “You’ve got a long way to go, Cha Ming.”

“I know,” Cha Ming said. “But I can’t help it. Many people will die soon.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m hoping you won’t be one of them.”

“Obviously.”

“What I mean is: stay safe,” Cha Ming said. “Don’t do anything risky.”

“Me?” Yu Wen said in feigned surprise. “Do anything risky? What kind of lady to you mistake me for?”

“The type who’ll try stealing an immortal artifact from under the nose of a cardinal,” Cha Ming said.

“Hm. I suppose that’s true,” Yu Wen said. “Regardless, I’m done with all that. I won’t go stealing any powerful objects from powerful people anytime soon. Unless I see something shiny. Then I might make an exception.”

Cha Ming raised an eyebrow.

“Then I might make an exception and be very, very careful about it. There. Happy?”

“I guess it’s too much to ask for more,” Cha Ming said.

“Says the man who’s risking it all to try something a god might not dare,” Yu Wen said, rolling her eyes. “I need to go. Take care, Cha Ming. I don’t know if what you’re trying will work, so a word to the wise, courtesy of Xiao Bai: know your limits.”

“Xiao Bai seems very knowledgeable about matters concerning immortals, I’ve noticed,” Cha Ming said.

Yu Wen winked, kissed his cheek, and ducked away. “Be safe, and I’ll promise to do the same,” she said. “For now, this is goodbye.” She ducked into the Starry Road and vanished.

He remained alone atop the Tree of Life for quite a while, watching the black leaves and starlit branches as they swayed in the wind, partially obscuring the parched and inhospitable lands that surrounded Verdant Crossroads. To the territory’s demonic inhabitants, these branches and the shade they cast were a miracle. To the opposing army, they were a curse. Every minute they spent in the tree’s proximity sapped them of their strength and vitality.

As far as armies went, this was the largest Cha Ming had ever laid eyes on. It was organized, professional, and moved like bees under their queen’s direction.

The army was like a formation, composed of many groups that served as nodes, which were tied together by invisible strings that represented their interactions. The commander, Oster Fireblight, was the formation’s controller, and his generals were sub-controllers.

Strategists, in other words, were a type of formation controller. Two armies of the same strength might be used differently, depending on who was using it, why, and how. People like Clever Dusk could also sense the workings of these formations, and therefore serve as a tactician. Someone like Cha Ming, who only understood inorganic formations, could not.

Skills aside, Cha Ming knew these individuals possessed something else that he didn’t: ruthlessness. Cha Ming was not a strategist because he couldn’t sacrifice. He couldn’t bear to throw away lives for the greater good, as much as he realized that many sacrifices would be required to survive the upcoming days.

Though Cha Ming wondered how they could ever survive given their defensive arrangements.

Twang!

Cha Ming looked over his shoulder at the origin of the sound. Clever Dusk had appeared behind him at some point, and before her sat a rather large guqin. She sat upon a large red cushion and was looking quite comfortable and unhurried despite the large army outside her city.

Twang!

She was tuning her instrument. A true artist would adjust this type of instrument between every performance and every relocation.

Twang!

“I may not be a master strategist, but this doesn’t seem like the wisest plan,” Cha Ming said to her. “The Empty City Stratagem sounds great in principle, but I only brought it up in the brainstorming session because I read about it in a book once. It was fiction.”

Their defensive arrangement was simple: The city was completely deserted. Not a single soul walked its dusty streets, and no guards patrolled the residential quarters.

There were no inhabitants or warriors, whether human or demon, and this had not gone unnoticed by the enemy scouts. A large number of them had come to the city, scouted its periphery, and gone straight back to their commander to report this unanticipated development. Oster Fireblight himself had left his tent and was currently staring up at the peak of the Tree of Life toward where Cha Ming sat.

Meanwhile, Clever Dusk continued tuning her instrument.

“The Empty City Stratagem fits our situation quite well, so of course I’m going to use it,” Clever Dusk replied. “Zhuge Liang could not defend against Sima Yi’s attack, so he emptied out his city, offering it and himself up to his enemy. Who knows, perhaps Oster will think like Sima Yi and suspect something is amiss. There is hope for a bloodless victory.”

“I don’t think Oster is that easy to fool,” Cha Ming said.

“And Aaron and I aren’t easy to fool either,” Clever Dusk said. She’d just finished her tuning, so she began plucking one well-tuned string after another, until all five strings were in harmony. Then, satisfied, she began playing a gentle and relaxing melody. “The reason it is a good strategy isn’t that he’ll fall for it, Cha Ming.”

“Then what good is all the posturing?” Cha Ming asked.

“Last I checked, what we’re shortest on is time,” Clever Dusk said. “We need reinforcements from Huxian. The more time Drezil and Titan Thunderfist have, the better. And you are still waiting for rain. Therefore, I need to buy as much time as possible. There is more to strategy than winning and losing. I also want to see what Oster’s reaction will be. I haven’t seen records of such a strategy being used in the past, so it might just confuse him for a few minutes.”

“When you put it that way, I truly sound like a fool,” Cha Ming said.

Clever Dusk smiled. “You worry about the Tree of Life. You worry about your teacher. That is completely normal. But know this: The Tree of Life is not completely defenseless. Oster knows that, so he won’t act without caution.”

Cha Ming left these matters in her capable hands. He was not a commander, and he wasn’t even in the top hundred here in terms of strength. He had a single part to play, and then most of his work would be done.

How are things going on your end?Cha Ming asked Huxian.

GREAT, NOW THAT ALL THOSE REINFORCEMNETS ARE HERE! Huxian shouted in his mind. Whoops. Sorry. It’s hard to control my mind voice while I’m fighting.

So everything is going well?Cha Ming asked.

Obviously, Huxian said. What did she do, send her entire army?

Cha Ming facepalmed mentally. He’d been thinking that she was holding most of their troops in reserve in the Starry Road, but now he wasn’t so certain. Had she really sent away their entire army? If so, he really had no idea how all this would play out.

***

It was time to begin. The troops were assembled, fed, and rested, and assigned to their respective armies. Strategy had been discussed. The desert winds were sapping away at their strength, so wasting time wasn’t advisable.

Yet Oster Fireblight couldn’t help but hesitate. His troops might be ready to charge headfirst into a giant trap, but that didn’t mean he was willing to send them in.

Yes. A trap. It was definitelya trap. No one ever emptied out their entire city if it wasn’t a trap, especially with something so attractive like the Tree of Life serving as bait. The problem was that he didn’t know what kind of trap it was, and how devastating it would be.

And Oster wasn’t used to so much uncertainty.

“I say we just get it over with,” a hooked-nosed man said. “Put the savages out of their misery. What’s there to hesitate about?”

Oster sighed and did his best to hide his annoyance. “Esteemed emissary, I understand your excitement, especially when the prize is right before us. The Tree of Life. Verdant Crossroads. Both are valuable prizes that the Fendal Republic have been craving for quite a long time.”

“Are you not confident?” the emissary said with a sneer. “We hired you because of your reputation, but now I’m not so certain it’s deserved.”

“I am confident,” Oster Fireblight said, ignoring the slight. “It is only a matter of cost and timing. I ask you to be patient.”

“Cost and timing, cost and timing,” the emissary muttered. “I really wonder how much you value our costs and our time, General of the Blighted Coin.” The core of the army was Oster’s private mercenary army, currently under hire by the Fendal. The bulk of it was provided directly by Fendal, as were there supplies.

Oster approached matters of war like an investment. He was notorious for it, so the emissary could not be blamed for wondering whether he cared about spending lives and capital that weren’t his own because in truth, he didn’t.

Strictly speaking, Fendal’s army was free leverage on his initial investment. Although Fendal would gain most of the benefit, the gains on Oster’s initial capital would be substantial. The only way to increase his margins was to also minimize his personal losses and maximize his bonuses.

Oster had always been quite transparent about this, so the emissary of oversight, Simon Rosen, was rightly peeved. Alas, he had some small amount of control over the ever-important budget and had the authority to request additional funding for the expedition. So Oster entertained the man even though he despised him.

“There are costs and there are costs,” Oster finally answered. “For example, I can sacrifice any number of bronze and silver rankers, knowing exactly how much this will cost. I can also do the same for ten percent of the gold rankers present. The other ninety percent, however, are not part of the formal military. Should I sacrifice too many of their lives, I could easily double or triple the costs of this expedition.”

“R-really?” Rosen said nervously.

“Yes,” Oster said. “Therefore, I must be careful with how I act and consider such intricacies. There are others, too many to count, but know that it is in my best interest to minimize losses for the simple reason that I get a juicy bonus if I do.”

“But compensation for deaths sustained in battle has nothing to do with the budget,” the emissary grumbled.

“Alas, we still bear responsibility for them,” Oster said. “Every loss must be justified, Rosen. Every sacrifice explained, and even documented. In this way, should my decisions ever be questioned, I will be able to provide a satisfactory explanation, which will in turn alleviate any pressure on both our shoulders.”

That, and he had private contracts with a few gold-ranked organizations that would double his earnings here should he keep their losses below certain thresholds. But Rosen didn’t need to know about that.

“Then the reason we haven’t started is…”

“I am having difficulty calculating the odds, so I am hesitant,” Oster Fireblight explained. “The current situation is uncertain. I have offered a sacrifice to my Mirror of the Blighted Coin for a prediction several times, but the answer varies. Since there are several answers, I can only conclude that someone has performed some version of karmic tampering to prevent me from knowing the results. In other words, I’m working half blind.”

The emissary frowned. “But the Thread Seer…”

“Is still indisposed, or I would have retreated without even consulting you,” Oster assured him. Then, because he might as well do a good job of explaining it just to minimize back talk, he pulled out his soul-bound treasure.

“I’ve always longed to see it,” Emissary Rosen said, gazing at it appreciatively. “The Mirror of the Blighted Coin. What a beautiful object.” He reached out to touch it but froze under Oster’s glare.

“If you touch it, I’ll kill you,” Oster said. “It doesn’t like being touched. Now. Where was I?” He summoned the image of two individuals. One was a Daoist, who was currently meditating atop the Tree of Life. He wasn’t doing anything in particular, but Oster had a feeling that he would have a large impact on the war regardless of what the mirror told him. Call it battle instinct. The other was a short-haired inkborn girl wearing flowing robes and playing the guqin. “These two individuals are Daoist Clear Sky and Lady Clever Dusk. She is the Thread Seer’s apprentice, and likely the one that has interfered with my predictive abilities. Now watch.”

He placed a few top-grade inkwell jades in the mirror. They vanished, and he received an answer. He continued this until he’d performed the divination eight times. “Nothing has changed since an hour ago. When I asked the mirror to predict the outcome of this battle, I received five different results. Four different results when considering Lady Clever Dusk’s perspective, anything ranging from a light ambush to an all-out surprise attack resulting in heavy losses. As for the Daoist, the prediction was consistent. He truly believes that any army we send will be sufficient to crush them. In other words, he believes the city is completely defenseless.

“The interesting part is that there is no one else in the city that I can use for reference. Not even a bird. Not even a fish. She must have done this because she understands the workings of my soul-bound treasure and did not wish to reveal any information about the upcoming battle before we first crossed blades and started mucking up each other’s predictive abilities.”

“So you’re saying that only sheknows what their defense strategy is, and what traps lay ahead, but since she has the ability to hide this information, you cannot pry them from her?” Rosen asked.

“No, I am saying that even shedoesn’t know,” Oster said. “There could be a heavy ambush. There could be a light one. If I overcommit, I could eat heavy losses. If I under-commit, however, I might miss out on an opportunity, or may even fail to reveal the trap.”

“Can’t you just send in everything at once and overwhelm them?” Rosen asked.

“Spoken like someone with no interest in history and even less in warfare,” Oster said with a sigh. “When someone is cornered, they lash out at any cost, Rosen. And make no mistake, if they should wish to die with us, we are finished. Every troop within this city will be destroyed, and the Tree of Life will be no more.”

“Isn’t that why we brought—”

Oster cut him off. “The walls have ears, Rosen.” The last card Verdant Crossroads could play was detonating the Tree of Life. They had brought a tool to seal off this ability, but this was a secret known only to three people. He really hoped Rosen’s loose lips didn’t betray him. Killing an ambassador was troublesome business.

“Just remember that no stratagem is foolproof, Rosen. We could try to rush in with everyone to stop the tree’s self-destruction by brute force, but this has only succeeded three out of seven times in the past. The other four resulted in a complete wipeout of the invading army.”

This battle was therefore about careful balance. First, he needed to make contact with the enemy and discover their intentions. Then, he would need to wear them down, little by little. At no point were they to think they had no hope, or else the results would be devastating.

And not just because he’d lose his army. The Tree of Life was a valuable resource, after all. Eighty percent of the gains of this expedition relied on retrieval of a live tree of life. According to their contract, he was entitled to a twenty percent share of it.

Following his explanation, Rosen got out of his hair. Oster waved over his second-in-command, General Shen.

“Your orders?” Shen inquired.

“Mobilize a hundred gold rankers, three thousand silver rankers, and sixty thousand bronze rankers,” Oster said. “Don’t bother with siege equipment. Prioritize mobility. Select a group of compatible gold rankers with both high mobility and defensive skills.”

“Is this a probing attack?” Shen asked.

“Yes,” Oster said. “Spear in and spear out. No need to get in too deep.” He handed the colonel ten information jades. “Review the first jade and act accordingly. Hand the other jades out to each of the other commanding officers and have them operate independently from each other.”

“Sir, this…” Shen said after reviewing his own jade.

“No need to panic,” Oster said. “Our opponent is a seer, after all. The more scattered and random the plan is, the better. And don’t worry, I’ll communicate any last-minute changes if necessary. Or I might not.” Two could play at that game.

Shen moved out to deliver his orders, and shortly after, General Vanessa Montague came to speak to him. “Is this your stratagem to counter the enemy seer?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Oster said. He did not elaborate, because that would defeat the purpose.

Out of all the jades, the one he’d given to Shen was blank. He was an old hand and would understand. Two of the jades had precise instructions. Two of the jades were filled with misinformation and required the commanders to make their own judgment calls. Two were blank jades with no further instructions but had been sent to two newly minted generals. The last one was blank with instructions to formulate a plan and concentrate on it wholeheartedly, all the while keeping silent and maintaining an air of mystery. Oh, and he wasn’t allowed to act on said plan.

Was it ingenious? Not at all. It would probably result in many casualties. But that was the game they were playing. He would start with an unpredictable board position, then would slowly assert control once the fighting began and predictions were no longer as important.

But there was one other reason for doing so, and why he did not appear on the battlefield thirty minutes later, despite saying he would. Instead, he sat in his command tent with a pile of inkwell jades. Let’s see if you can fend off my probing now... he thought, ignoring the extra casualties his absence resulted in. Show them to me, he thought. Show me the hidden doors and passageways…

The mirror pulsed, and in all of three seconds, over a hundred top-grade spirit stones vanished. In exchange, a map of Verdant Crossroads was revealed, complete with bright portals and slender lines. This map was an investment, one that would yield great dividends.

***

The city’s outer defenses collapsed in an instant. The protective formation Cha Ming had spent days setting up fell apart under the barrage of a hundred gold rankers. The many traps they’d painfully dug over the past few days were unearthed, leveled, and disabled.

And then… nothing.

No frightening traps were sprung. There were no ambushes. The confused soldiers proceeded cautiously.

“You look worried, Teacher,” Clever Dusk said. She did not stop playing her relaxing melody, though her calmness did little to alleviate his concerns.

“From what I gather, you have a token force hidden away in the Starry Road,” Cha Ming said. “I happen to be very fond of one of the people in said force and would hate to see her hurt. I had been hoping you had something up your sleeve, but seeing our defenses fall so quickly, I can’t help but doubt your approach.”

“It does look bad, doesn’t it?” Clever Dusk said.

Cha Ming sighed. “Do you at least have a plan?”

“I do not,” Clever Dusk replied.

“Then I’m just confused,” Cha Ming said. “The enemy is now halfway into the city. It’s about ten percent of the enemy’s army. They could cause some serious damage.”

Clever Dusk frowned. “That is a problem. I was hoping I’d draw a few more in.”

“So there is a plan?” Cha Ming asked, perking up.

“There is, but I’m not aware of it,” Clever Dusk said. She took out a small jade leaf and broke it. Cha Ming recognized it as a message transmission leaf. It was like a message transmission talisman in that it bypassed the nodes used by standard communication devices. In other words, it was difficult to intercept.

The enemy continued in unchallenged, managing to reach two-thirds of the way into the city. It was then that they slowed down and began fanning out. The gold rankers in each of their groups kept careful watch of their surroundings, especially the ground, which could easily hide a small army of demons.

It was then that Clever Dusk plucked a string. Then she plucked a second string, and that string caused their surroundings to shake. The sound that came out pierced through concrete, stone, and wood, and leveled buildings. It struck the enemy formation brutally, causing eardrums to burst and the weakest of them to vomit. And that was only the first attack.

Do-ing!

She struck again, this time more forcefully. The attack struck inert matter. Weapons began to break, and most importantly, communication devices. Their formations fell into chaos.

It didn’t take long for Cha Ming to figure out how she was doing this. She was a fusion-realm demon, and her dominion was all of Verdant Crossroads and the Tree of Life. The closer to the tree they were, the more her power grew.

Twang!

A cluster of inky leaves on the Tree of Life was drained in an instant. This time, the attack was a mental one, and everyone silver ranked or lower fell to their knees and clutched their heads.

For a single second, they were helpless. Cha Ming thought it was a shame that Verdant Crossroads had no one in position.

And suddenly… there was.

Like death gods, they appeared from the Starry Road. Tens of thousands of demons, each wielding their personal demon weapons. Champions in demon armor led the charge, crashing into enemies that, for a single second, had lost control over their senses.

The exchange lasted only three seconds in total, but in those three seconds, thousands perished. As for the demons, they simply fled back into a nearby portal before the enemy could encircle them.

Do-ing! Di!

This time, Clever Dusk played two notes. The sonics attacks weren’t as effective as last time, and the soldiers, wary from the last attack, looked about for the inevitable ambush.

Which didn’t come.

Di-ying dong!

The earth erupted with bamboo spikes that impaled them from beneath, catching the weaker bronze rankers, who couldn’t fly, unaware.

“They’re poisoned!” one of them screamed.

“It hurts!” another yelled.

Cha Ming could hear them all the way atop the tree. But their screams were lost in the sea of music, and Clever Dusk, unperturbed by these events, continued to play her violent music.

Chaotic combinations of notes Cha Ming would never think of left the guqin, and as Clever Dusk’s tempo sped up, so did the ambushes and the traps. The enemy’s probing force was split up into three groups, and ambushes struck at each of them, seemingly at random, with varying force.

It was clear that the enemy commander was confused. Sometimes, their defensive measures were effective, but at other times, they were completely lacking.

Only one thing remained constant—those who emerged would inevitably retreat.

The combination of unpredictable sonic attacks and ambushes proved quite effective. While the gold rankers could probably stop them if they wanted to, they were hesitant, because all this time, the ambushers had only been initiation- and investiture-realm demons. Their true opponents had yet to appear, and if they allowed themselves to get distracted by weaker demons, the fusion-realm demons might just pop up from behind them, and then they would be the ones to suffer.

Twang!

The moment he heard this last note, Cha Ming knew it would different, because this note had been conspicuously absent all this time. The moment it sounded, fifty fusion-realm demons emerged, and all together, they attacked the group of gold rankers that had similarly been holding back.

The commander of the gold rankers issued orders for them to defend until the enemy retreated. Then they waited.

One second… two seconds… three seconds…

It was only when the fifth second came and went that they realized their mistake. “They’re not going to retreat! Run!” The group of thirty gold rankers scattered, because they realized the crux of the issue: This wasn’t a small force, but one that could crush them with ease.

Alas, it was too late to pull back. A massive wall of sand shot out from the ground and blocked their retreat. They grouped up with the silver and bronze rankers, who tried to support their leaders as best they could.

Yet they didn’t realize that this was the real trap, and completely within the mysterious attacker’s expectations. The wall of sand collapsed and came crashing down on the silver and bronze rankers.

Then hundreds of thousands of demons emerged. Most of them were civilians, but they were still armed to the teeth. They jumped onto the battered army like wild beasts, and the trained soldiers, unused to such ferocity, and weakened from the previous wave of attacks, did not stand a chance.

“Break through!” the leaders of the gold rankers shouted simultaneously. By now, two of the three support armies of lower rankers had been crushed.

It was surprisingly easy for the gold rankers to break away from the flailing armies, but they quickly realized their pursuers were far faster and stronger than they were. Not only were they demons, but they also had the Starry Road to draw on. For them, catching up was as easy as stepping through one door and out the other.

Noticing their mistake, they tried to group up once again, but it was too late. Clever Dusk ran her fingers along her guqin, and colored strings sprang up in the air to form an invisible cage. A portion of the fusion-realm demons rushed into this cage and executed their fusion transformation and became large armored demon beasts.

Star-Eye Monkeys. Jade-Tusked Boars. Twin-Headed Adders and Blade-Beaked Eagles. All manner of vicious creatures erupted with power. By the time the gold rankers even thought to attack them directly with spells and techniques, the demons were at their most powerful.

They completely ignored defense in favor of tearing apart their enemies as quickly and mercilessly as possible. Cha Ming wondered if perhaps a few of them were fiendish demons that had accidentally escaped his perception.

In the end, only a third of the enemy’s forces escaped. Clever Dusk’s music ended, and she pulled back her trembling fingers to rest. She was exhausted and soaked in sweat but also grinning like a devil. “There, that’ll teach them.”

“Perhaps to Oster it was a worthwhile sacrifice,” Cha Ming said. “He now knows how many forces you have, and how many civilians have chosen to stay. I hope you have a few other cards to play.”

“Like I said, I don’t know,” Clever Dusk said. “Knowing the arrangements is not my role.”

“Then how?” Cha Ming asked. Then he looked over to her guqin and suddenly understood. “Your role is to play and support. Their role is plan and to change those plans constantly. You must have a way to feed them information—no, they’re fusion-realm demons. As long as you don’t revoke their authority, they can feel what’s happening across the boundary separating this realm and the Starry Road and do whatever they wish.”

Clever Dusk smiled. “That’s right. Through trial and error, I discovered that Oster’s soul-bound treasure, the Mirror of the Blighted Coin, has a weakness. It relies on people to divine answers based on their perception. As long as you and I don’t know what’s going on, or how the decisions are made, then he can only guess at what our plans are and waste his precious money.”

She reached her hand out and plucked something off one of the tree’s many branches. It was inky black, making one wonder whether it was poisonous or not. The fruit—a pear, it seemed—gushed bitter black juices as she bit into it. Her energy began to recover at a visible rate.

“Now that it’s started, there won’t be time to rest,” Clever Dusk said. “They know we have a recovery advantage because of the Tree of Life, so they have to follow up.”

Cha Ming saw that she was right. Half the army was moving out now. The formations were somewhat changed from before the assault. They were more compact and ideal for dealing with hit-and-run attacks.

Looking at them, Cha Ming felt a little depressed. He prided himself on his abnormally high strength for his cultivation, but before such an army, he was nothing. Joining the slaughter wouldn’t make much of a difference. At most, he would be throwing his life away.

It was just as he was thinking of this that a drop of rain hit his cheek. Several others followed. He looked up and noticed familiar black clouds. How typical. Always appearing out of nowhere.

“This is it,” Cha Ming said. “The rain I was waiting for.” He didn’t know if it would work, but he had to try. The odds were against him, and it would take a miracle to turn things around.

He held the Dao Origins Talisman to his forehead. Beside it, he held a large piece of immortal jade. Cha Ming poured qi of the five elements, creation qi, and destruction qi into the talisman. He even coughed up a bit of divine blood essence.

The eight sources of power were immediately absorbed by the Dao Origins Talisman. The artifact proceeded to devour the piece of immortal jade, and almost as an afterthought, it pillaged half of the inky leaves on the Tree of Life and half the starlight on its branches. From the air, it took half the rain, and from the battlefield, half the blood that had been spilled.

Only then did the talisman glow a soft gray. That gray glow expanded until it enveloped Cha Ming. Then, together, they vanished.