Ninth Prince & Katha Theodora Collab 2: Abductions and Assholery (Part 2)
Vengeance is something of a powerful word.
Oh, certainly, great sagas have been written with vengeance in mind. In some cultures, vengeance is a virtue, whether it be righting wrongs inflicted upon your family or your loved ones, or returning a debt in blood after a craven, scurrilous coward goes back against upon an honourable deal. Vengeance is as much part of the
hun as it is the
po, and embarking upon it is a natural process, an act of karmic rebalancing observable even in nature. Heaven desires things to be even, and therefore vengeance is just. Or so it is said.
But vengeance can be petty just as it can be righteous, pathetic as it can be meaningful, empty as it can be fulfilling. Vengeance, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Some consider taking the life of another a worthwhile trade for getting shrifted for a bowl of noodles; others think that taking vengeance upon unreasonable people who think lives are worth more than food is morally just; and others still attempt vengeance upon those who equate food with lives, or even those who
don't equate life with food. But that is that, as they say, and this is this.
The point that Katha Theodoros, young Cultivator of the Golden Devils and second scion of the nearly defunct Theodoroi Lineage, was trying to get to was that vengeance is subjective some of the time, perhaps even most of the time.
But she was really struggling to understand
who the fuck even tries stealing an entire village just to get back at another person like ancestors above is poison too expensive?!
"Calm down there, woman," Rathos cried out, "People are trying to think up here!"
"People are trying to think down here!" She snapped back. "Who does this?!
WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS?! Either lives are important, in which case
hundreds don't equate to
one, or only cultivators are important, in which case
the Ninth Prince is fucking dead who even gives a shit HE'S DEAD!"
"He's right there," Marlissa said in a small voice, right as Rathos snapped back with a "He's a ghost but he's still right fucking there you ding dong."
Upon the end of that little tirade, the ghost in question asked Katha a question. "How exactly have you never come across this particular kind of idiot 'young master'?"
"I mean, seriously." He continued, not letting Katha even answer. "This type of rampant disregard for life in the pursuit of one's goals coupled with the sheer idiocy that makes most goals they're striving towards utter nonsense is just a thing that happens when you give a young cultivator more resources and authority than they know what to do with."
"If someone goes through life thinking that no matter what they do, they'll face no consequences, then what you get is a superpowered manchild with no concept of morality and a god complex as large as the Flipper Region." He shrugged, in a sort of 'what can you do' way.
"Now, back in
my day-" The Ninth Prince was cut off by three simultaneous groans from the three younger cultivators, all of which had grown up with grandparents that kept on bringing this shit up.
He chuckled. "Alright, alright, I get the point. But even still, back in my day, the exact same thing happened, even more so really. You had people moving around with zero consequence for their actions because the Great Powers were in an uneasy state of balance and nobody wanted to break it."
"Then the Old Bandit got killed and now everything's up in flames. Most of those young masters have gotten some life experience and either wisened up or died."
"For someone to do something
this stupid, in
this day and age, we're looking at a real idiot. I'm talking 'too dumb to cycle qi properly' and an ego inversely proportional to their actual competence. In other words, one of the worst 'young masters' I've ever had to deal with."
The Ninth Prince stretched, working out the spiritual kinks in his ghost joints, before looking at his juniors expectantly. "So! Pop Quiz! How do you think we should deal with this Young Master?"
"Wait wait wait wait before that
before that, about the Young Master thing!" Katha refused to let go of this situation, she
absolutely could not accept it! "I was given to understanding that the current situation in the Virtuous Flipper Region is too chaotic and too messed up to have any power tolerate wasting the total, unequivocal attention of a Core Formation Elder on some little shit's temper tantrum! Young Masters categorically can't exist where we are,
especially in the Desert, because we're operating on a shoestring Qi budget in every waking moment!" She waved her arms around, just for emphasis, even though it made her look crazy. "We are
literally burning money just talking out here in the desert! So how the hell is this one little shit doing this sort of behaviour?! Did the Ninth Prince eat him in a past life or something?!"
"No, he's just part of the Jingshen Clan," Rathos noted with a roll of his eyes, as if it were patently obvious. Which it was, even Katha had to accept that on reflection. "Think about it. They're fabulously wealthy and do fuck all to gather that wealth. Everyone wants Spirit Stones and they'll pay literal king's ransoms for them. If you're a highly placed enough Jingshen scion, you could literally do nothing and still cultivate to ridiculous extents. Their entire
family operates off nepotism! Absolutely disgusting," Rathos said with a sigh.
"Nepotism is inevitable in all Clan-based structures, Rathos," Marlissa mentioned wryly. "Even we do it."
"That is that and this is this, Marlissa."
"...No it fucking isn't!" Katha cried out.
"Shut the fuck up, you are literally wasting money just talking."
"Out in the desert?" Marlissa asked.
"No," Rathos said, "Just in general. So preachy."
"Listen here you insolent
fuck–"
"POINT IS!" Rathos belted out suddenly, which drowned out his sister's indignation beneath a wave of shock and, she would continue to refuse to admit, pride, "We should deal with him swiftly, mercilessly, and with a swift kick to the groin. I nominate Katha does it."
The Ninth Prince, watching all this with a great deal of amusement, frowned, then raised an eyebrow. "Cool. I'm not against it, but why?"
"Because if I do it, that's just male on male violence. That's expected. If you do it, you're validating his vengeance, and that's not as funny. If Marlissa does it, he might actually die. Katha's the best combination of survivable and hilarious."
"That statement can be taken out of context so hard I'm not sure it should be taken even
in context," Marlissa said aloud. "Rathos, she's physically almost at Foundation Establishment already. Your sister
could actually axe-kick someone in half."
"Yeah, but you don't have any control over your own strength, Marlissa. Meanwhile,
she knows that making it survivable is half the challenge," Rathos said, a slight grin on his face as he looked back to the childhood they wasted, both together and independent of one another. "And honestly, making it painful without making it permanent is half the fun of a nutcracking experience. Right, sis?"
Thinking quickly, Katha nodded. "You'd know best, considering how many times I kicked
you in the balls."
"Yeah, you have the broken ankles to prove it."
Katha blinked. Marlissa sucked on her teeth, not sure what to think and feel besides a hot flush. "Beg pardon?"
"Blood of Bronze, woman," Rathos remarked with more than a little pride, enough that he would dare point both of his thumbs back at himself. "My balls are
literally metal. Well, no, they're this weird bloodline alloy bronze thing - look it's a good comeback, just let me have this."
"Oh, no, I thought you did great. Fucking fantastic counterpoint," Katha noted with a firm nod. "
You're the one who ruined it, not me. That's all on you, little man."
"Fuck's sake woman you know I have performance anxiety - NOT LIKE THAT–"
The Ninth Prince blinked. Then he just stared at the bickering twins, the kind of stare a parent gives a disobedient child, the 'I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed' stare. "Are you two quite done?"
Rathos quietly stared at his feet. Katha looked around, trying to find a tumbleweed, and when that failed to materialize just idly kicked at a small sand dune, scattering it into billowing clouds of brown dust. "...Yeah," They both said in unison.
"Perfect. Now, back to the question at hand. On their side, a weak Young Master with a god complex, I'd put him at about Foundation Establishment but the kind of Foundation Establishment where he can be defeated by a few Qi Gathering Cultivators. Accompanying him is an Early Core Formation cultivator, almost certainly very badass, with some sort of Earth Dao."
"On our side, we have the three of you, and me, the Ninth Prince. Our objective is to take back Liaogai Village, and save whatever villagers are still alive. Their objective is to stop that from happening. I have a plan in mind but I want to hear your thoughts."
Katha looked at Rathos, who looked back at her. For a moment, the twins seemed to share a moment of solidarity, together as two halves of a greater whole. Joined in immaculate purpose, both heirs of the Iron Legions came to share the same conclusion at the same moment. And each of them, independently but together, turned to Marlissa and gestured with their hands for her to go first.
Because there is no justice in the world, and siblings can always agree on one thing, at least; sometimes, other people can get fucked. Murdering each other comes later.
"...A-Ah, well, thinking about it… This is going to be a trap, isn't it?" said the young Shieldmaiden. "I mean, just from the description of the Core Elder alone, he's definitely going to be hiding somewhere… Possibly even a hole."
"That's pretty cliche and overdone," the Ninth Prince pointed out. "So yeah, most likely. Any ideas on dealing with it?"
"...Uh," Marlissa wisely said, definitely not at a loss for words.
His familial honour satisfied, Rathos immediately backstabbed Katha. "Well, my sister's dealt with Earth Cultivators before. Any ideas from the Great Battlefield?"
The asshole did it before she could. Katha did not know whether to be furious or proud. "Yeah, we threw a Mechanikos at them for good luck before striking the region with techniques."
A beat, a moment passed ephemerally as all parties waited for the other to make the first move. Sweat began to visibly bead on the side of Rathos' head. He glanced surreptitiously at his sister, who watched him keenly with eyes like a hawk's, then at Marlissa, who watched him with too-kind eyes that stung with betrayal.
"More seriously, the Centurion deployed some Wood techniques to rip apart the ground and expose what laid beneath to the elements. Not sure that would work on an Earth
Dao, but exposing him can't go badly at all." Katha shrugged. "You know, besides revealing a Core Formation Elder to beat our faces in. That sort of good stuff."
The Ninth Prince hummed noncommittally. "Well, that's some good thinking, getting your minds on the right track. As a reward…" He looked between the three, "...Rathos."
"You get to learn a wood technique."
Rathos stared at the Ninth Prince in disbelief. "Wait, like right here right now?"
"Yep!"
Rathos stood in shock for a moment more, then shrugged. "Alright, what am I learning?"
The Ninth Prince smiled. "I'm so glad you asked! What I'll be teaching you today is an art known as Demonic Oak: Crushing Bind. Got it from the Magic Oak Sect a while back in a game of high-speed poker and I just never used it because I have my own things going on."
"The basis of the technique is just causing thorned vines to erupt from the ground, squeezing around a target, but with the fun twist that you get to actually control the pressure that those vines are squeezing at."
"Now, before we actually try this out, how well versed are you in fundamental Qi Theory?"
Rathos wiggled his hand in a so-so gesture. "I know the basics, enough to actually learn techniques but not enough to create them. Everyone from a big or respected clan knows at least that much."
The Ninth Prince clapped his hands. "Alright, perfect! Means I don't have to explain it to you. So. Basics. There's five modules you need to know for this, all of them converging at Acupoint 14. The 3-13-49 feedback loop, both the leg links, 9-56-49 and 3-37-12, and the projection module around the chest, 73-104-13. Route it through your wood aspected meridians, A, K, and P, and avoid the Fengdu meridian, if you hit that with this qi flow you'll probably explode."
"And that's about it, so try it out, the theory is relatively simple and I have faith in your ability."
The Ninth Prince snapped his fingers. "Oh, actually. Don't end the qi in the projection module,
start it there and move through the legs. Makes the technique about 1.4 times more effective."
Rathos nodded immediately. "Right. Seems simple enough."
"Literally none of that made sense to me," Katha said, dumbfounded.
"Don't worry about it. That was just putting into words the feeling of looping snakes through your body until it's about to spill, then dumping it into your legs to ground the backlash while you invoke a specific element and route the Qi through your fingertips. Specifically the left hand."
"That still made no sense," Katha said, significantly less dumbfounded but intent on seeming smarter than she made herself appear to be.
Clicking his tongue, Rathos Theodoros promptly performed the Demonic Oak: Crushing Bind technique, and as massive gnarled vines erupted and ensnared his sister he also made sure to string her up so she could not move. As the earth split and vines spilled forth like the appendages of a long dead God, Katha's expression remained firmly blank.
"Real mature," she said, more disappointed than anything. "I kinda get the gist of it, so get me out of here."
"Part of the beauty of the Demonic Oak: Crushing Bind technique," the Ninth Prince said at that specific moment, "Is that it cannot be released by the one who invoked it. That's why this one might actually be useful in this situation; a Core Elder will actually take more than two or three seconds to break out of this one. Anyways, the only way out is to cut yourself free."
Rathos, experimentally, struck a vine as hard as he could, and found that the skin was able to take his blow, only slightly denting and leaving the contoured impressions of his knuckles against its surface. He whistled. "Yeah, that's not something we can do casually."
Katha rolled her eyes. "Well, you'd best get to cutting, Rathos. Unless you want to kick that Young Master in the balls yourself."
"I kind of do, actually, but as I am a good brother I'll cut you loose first. Just give me a bit… Marlissa, can I borrow your sword?"
—-
"Alright, everyone remember the plan?" The Ninth Prince asked, crouching behind a rocky overhead.
Rathos sighed, standing out in the open like a normal person. "Yes. We do, like we have every other time you've asked this."
"You go out and distract the Core Cultivator while we go after this Jianggu guy and hold him hostage. Once we get him, we negotiate his release for the release of your village."
The Ninth Prince gave a big thumbs up. "Perfect! With that, I think we're ready to move o-"
"-Actually," he said, holding up a finger, "hold that thought."
The reason for that thought being held was a small snake, not even really a spirit beast, finally returning from its scouting expedition. It slithered over to the Ninth Prince, forcing its tail into an exhausted salute, and hissed out a report, punctuating its speech with greedy gulps from a small puddle of water the Ninth Prince had conjured up.
As it finished its debriefing, the Ninth Prince rapidly cycled through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and the secret sixth stage of grief that can only be felt by snakes, Fleeg.
After taking a minute to compose himself, the Ninth Prince turned back to Katha, Rathos, and Marlissa. "So. Remember the plan?"
At this point, Katha had finally had enough. She tossed up her hands and stomped forward, yelling as she did. "
Yes! Of course we remember the plan, you FUCKING-"
She was cut off by the Ninth Prince, wearing the most dead-eyed expression possible. And considering he was
actually dead, there were a
lot of possible expressions. "Well we're tossing it out the window because the Jingshen turned my village into a floating island."
"--shiiiit." Jaw clenched, Katha looked for the words that would right this wrong. She found none. "Ah."
"Yeah. Ah." The Ninth Prince had mostly recovered his composure by this point, and even managed a smile. "So. New plan."
"I still distract the Core Cultivator, but instead of you all finding Jingshen Jianggu and holding him hostage, you just have to cut the chains."
Katha and Marlissa each nodded, understanding the plan intuitively, but Rathos, conveniently the only one who did not bring a weapon, wracked his mind for a way forward. "Wait, hold on, chains? It's a floating island, not a flying island. Why the heck does it need chains?"
"To make sure no one steals it, obviously," Katha said with a roll of her eyes.
"Who's going to steal it?!"
"We're literally about to do that right now."
While his Juniors squabbled once more over something inconsequential, the Ninth Prince snapped his spiritual fingers, remembering something. "Oh. Yeah. So, a floating island is a ludicrous expenditure of Qi and Spirit Stones unless you make it a permanent effect, so that the island in question doesn't hover at a certain altitude and instead just keeps going up. According to my expert scouts, the Jingshen chose that second method, and instead of just letting it float into the sun, they've attached three enormous chains to it, anchoring Liaogai to the earth."
"Good bit of redundancy," Katha nodded. "One chain would be enough to keep the village in place. Three is to ensure that if any one or even two chains get cut, it would still remain tethered, buying more time and forcing us to extend further. Clever."
Rathos shook his head. "Doesn't look that way to me. The chains are too thin, and not suitable for tethering an entire floating village to the earth. Their anchor points aren't centered anyhow, so if the enchantment is what I think it is, the village will just float unevenly. There aren't three chains for purposes of redundancy, but geomancy." He nodded to himself firmly. "In theory, if we cut any one of them, the other two might snap from the stress."
"...Which would throw the village around," Katha continued, clearly peeved. "This is a rescue mission, not an array engineer's math problem. If what you're saying is true, then we need to cut all
three of them at the same time, at the right point, if we don't want the people who are presumably
still there to… Well, not die."
Marlissa, quietly, raised her hand, and amazingly the siblings quietened down. "I think the Ninth Prince had more to say," was all she said.
"
Thank you Marlissa. Good to know that one of these juniors has m-" The Ninth Prince couldn't contain his laughter. "Okay no, I'm a
ghost and I still can't say that with a straight face. The thank you does still stand though, and you have permission to slap your boyfriend and his sister if they keep on being like this."
"Now, if my calculations are right, and they're obviously right, I'm the Ninth Prince, if the chains are cut exactly one third of the way up them, they should have just enough weight to keep Liaogai from floating off, but also keep it mostly airborne, so we'll have an actual floating island instead of a chained up one."
"And!" The Ninth Prince exclaimed, holding up a ghostly finger. "If we detonate the bombs that Elder Xie thinks I don't know she placed under my village, we can use the resulting explosion to rocket back to Clan Lands."
"So unless you got anything to add, that's the plan."
Rathos, sucking on his teeth tersely, thought to ask something about the geomancy involved, but ultimately that was beyond him. The Ninth Prince's math did check out; cutting the chains at a third their length
should give enough stability that the islands won't just float away - or at least, not unevenly. Katha, however, immediately raised her hand. Then she spoke anyways, not bothering to wait for permission. "How do you plan on keeping up with a Core Elder? Actually, you're not going to tell us that, so follow on question: How long can you keep up with a Core Elder?"
The Ninth Prince thought for a moment. "Well, I don't have my snakes, but I
am a ghost, so… Fuck if I know really. A day? A few hours? Somewhere in that range. From experience though, I'll be able to hold off a Core Elder for
just long enough for you three to cut the chains, after which I'll collapse into a near-death state and you'll have to make a mad dash to activate the bombs before the core elder reaches you."
He shrugged. "That's just kind of how that stuff works."
"...Right, okay, so we have to cut that island free in a few hours." She sighed heavily. "Marlissa, how thick are the chains?"
"Thicker than a man's torso," she replied as she peered out into the distance with a telescope.
"Thicker than you," Rathos added pithily, unable to resist a cheap shot.
"You insolent
fuck--"
"Like you haven't cut through thicker things," Rathos scoffed. "Nascent chitin sword, remember? Damn thing should slide through spirit steel like fucking butter. Seriously, those things can't be enhanced to more than Early Foundation standard, if
that. Just hack twice and measure once or whatever."
"Just because the Hornsword is nascent chitin does not mean it is a nascent level
sword. For all intents and purposes, it's edge is duller than you are! It's only a sword because
nascent materials categorically don't give a fuck." A heavy sigh. A pause. Then Katha slapped her brother lightly on the cheek, just enough to turn his head a bit and leave an angry red welt. "The point is, I'm going to be exposed while I'm trying to cut it, and that leaves Jianggu to the two of you - mostly Marlissa, since
you have Array nonsense to handle. And that is all assuming he doesn't have Qi Condensation lackeys, and it's the Jingshen. Of
course they have lackeys."
"I can handle Jianggu," Rathos offered.
"He's in Early Foundation and you're only at Ninth. Not a chance in hell."
"Well, that might not be a problem." The Ninth Prince interjected. "From everything my scouts told me, it sounds like Jingshen Jianggu is…"
"Alright, you know how some cultivators have techniques or items or bloodlines or whatever that let them fight above their Cultivation Level? For shorthand I just call it Impact, or Power Level."
The three juniors nodded, Rathos casting a very pointed look at Katha's Nascent Hornsword.
"Well, this Jingshen Jianggu doesn't have that. Instead, he's weak enough that he has a
negative Power Level. He's so bad at being a cultivator that he's perhaps the weakest Foundation Establishment cultivator in the Flipper Region. I'm pretty sure Rathos could lay him out with a single punch."
On reflex, Katha shrugged immediately, ready to say things she did not mean purely out of familial ribbing. "I don't know about that… Rathos punches like a girl."
"Your punches break bones," Rathos pointed out. Whatever amusement Katha felt about all this, he clearly did not share. "And Marlissa murders," he added, which brought a red flush to the girl's cheeks.
"Yeah? And?"
"You're a girl, last I checked," he noted bluntly.
"...And?"
"Stop being obstinate, dammit! Jianggu's my problem."
"...Fine." Katha folded her arms. "But I get first swing at him."
"Sure, whatever. I'll go keep him busy or whatever." Rathos glanced to the ghostly Expert who brought them there. "By the way… Would you rather we killed Jianggu, or should we leave him alive? Denying the Jingshen an Expert is never a bad idea, but by your metric he's taking resources away from someone
competent, so… Your call?"
The Ninth Prince shrugged. "I suppose we can leave him alive if you want to, but the Jingshen are richer than god and I don't really care all that much. Ultimately, if you don't kill him, that's fine, and if you do kill him, it's not so bad. See how the situation unfolds."
"Right then!" Rathos clapped his hands once. "Then that's me! Let's get this shit done!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jingshen Li was ready and willing to kill something.
His idiot nephew had been going on and on and on and on about how much of a genius he was, how cunning his plans were, and how foolish the Ninth Prince was, to the point where Jingshen Li, known as a butcher without peer by his enemies, was almost glad to go hide in his designated hole and put a layer of earth between him and his brother's son.
Almost.
It was still a
dirt hole after all, and even though, as a Core Formation cultivator, he was able to ignore the petty trifles of the flesh and spirit, the indignity of the situation still burned with the heat of a phoenix.
And the worst part was that even underground, Jingshen Li, sacker of cities and destroyer of landscapes, was still able to hear his nephew, ranting and raving about his 'masterful big-brained plays', whatever the
fuck that meant.
He could be sharing a drink with one of his sworn brothers right now, going out to punch a spirit beast until it died while piss drunk. Wushan would have probably been up for it, the man was unfortunate enough to have three raging idiots for sons, which he had complained about at length to Li on one of their drunken beast-punching adventures, but at least the fourth was a good lad. Quiet, too. Too bad he couldn't inherit, being a concubine's kid. Oh, that horny bastard.
Jingshen Li, breaker of armies and man standing in a dirt hole, could only
wish for his nephew to be quiet. Alas, Jianggu had never truly mastered the art of keeping his foolish mouth shut. Then again, Jianggu had never truly mastered anything, from qi techniques to the ability to talk to women without making a rampant fool out of himself.
He still remembered the time that Jianggu had attempted to court one of Wushan's daughters. Good times. Not for Wushan, or for Jianggu, but it was very entertaining for him to watch, and really, wasn't that what mattered?
Jingshen Li, uncle to the weakest Foundation Establishment Cultivator in the Virtuous Flipper Region, was roused out of his musings by a miracle. As if by the providence of the heavens, Jingshen Jianggu, a god in his own mind and worse than dirt in everyone else's, had finally stopped talking.
…He immediately expanded his Qi Sense to as far as it could go. The only things that would ever shut Jianggu up were his death or one of his schemes actually succeeding.
Thankfully, Jingshen Li, man who deeply cared about his nephew despite Jianggu's
everything, quickly found his brother's son, hiding behind a rock on top of the Ninth Prince's floating village.
Of course, that meant that Jianggu's plan was
actually working, and that meant that…
Another quick scan with his Qi Sense later, Jingshen Li, who'd kept the same smug expression on his face through three years of Cannibal torture, sunk to his knees, eyes wide and mouth slack.
There, plain as day, floating slightly above the sands, vaguely translucent and definitely angry, was the Ninth Prince. Or, at least, the Ninth Prince's ghost, which was quite a bit easier to wrap his head around.
The Ninth Prince's ghost didn't even seem to have lost any of the snake-man's power, indeed, it was actually stronger than when the Golden Devil Chosen had died all those years ago.
But all of that threat assessment was conducted in the background of Jingshen Li's mind, for the prevalent thought in his head wasn't of battles or tactics, but rather of family. Specifically, one particularly irritating member of said family.
Jingshen Jianggu was, by the barest of definitions, correct. And that meant that Jingshen Li, Elder of his clan and too old for this shit,
would never hear the end of it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Backed by the sun, the light that shone down upon Jingshen Jianggu was tinged in the colours of grey and green, steel and poison. In his deathless state, the Ninth Prince's glare was no less grave, no less imperious. Power continued to well in the dead Naag's soul, power overwhelming and in overflowing excess. The dusty air of the desert was tinged with the taste of iron, then nothing at all, the senses numbed and deadened by the poisons that the Ninth Prince had embodied in entirety, incarnated or not.
"I
knew it," said Jingshen Jianggu, raising his hands to the air with a strength that only the vindicated could bring to bear. "I knew you were alive! THEY ALL THOUGHT ME FOOLS, BUT I KNEW YOU WOULD COME! NOW YOUR FINAL DEFEAT COMES, GOLDEN DEVIL,
NINTH PRINCE!"
Yet, as Jianggu boasted, the Ninth Prince sighed, a trail of green vapours leaking from his mouth. The young man was beneath his notice, his power a pittance compared to that which leaked from his soul. No, his eyes looked further beyond, not merely at his stolen home but for the uncle that doted so strongly upon him, a man-shaped waste of effort and blood. And from the earth did his uncle emerge, a plume of sand to follow a burst of light, lightning crackling and light flashing like stars and sparkles in the trailing earthen wake of Jingshen Li. In the air and atop a sandstone spire, both men stood as they regarded one another, one a butcher of butchers and the other the Hero of a Miracle.
"Uncle!" Jianggu cried out. "You weren't supposed to reveal yourself so soon!
THIS ISN'T PART OF THE PLAN! I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE MASTER BAITER! ME!"
"You were going to hide in wait for me and then spring the trap with my back turned," the Ninth Prince recited perfectly, and as Jianggu gasped the dead man craned his head both ways. "Got to say, that's a pretty good plan. You know, besides the bad parts."
"It's a terrible plan," Jingshen Li responded frankly, though his nephew on the ground below heard nothing of his remarks. "Only yours is worse. You have only come here to die, Prince."
The Ninth Prince laughed. Then, his laughter turned to madness, and his madness turned to catharsis. "I've come here to fix that little shit, old man! You don't know the
magnitude of the shitstorm that is about to hit both you and your miserable fucking Clan! I am the
Ninth Prince, and you will
give back my home and my family!"
"Bold words for a dead man," said Jingshen Li, and with such a naked proclamation he threw the first punch, imbued with ghostflame and more than enough to kill any upstart revenant.
Only for the ghost to match it, blow for blow, strength for strength, as the sky split in twain and as sound tore open the air.
"It takes one to know one," the Ninth Prince responded, his sharp sneering grin glinting in the sunlight even as his spiritual form pulsed with green and grey. He threw a second punch, the sound of shattering glass, and the wind howled in pain like a wounded beast as a torrent of dust was thrown up by the backwash. This, too, was caught, and Jingshen Li's eyes widened a hair as he realised that this was no mere foe, no simple Expert he could lay low with two fingers and a dab of ointment.
Then, a feral grin. Perhaps the Ninth Prince would be a suitable vessel to pour his frustrations into, one that would last even as he
exerted himself for the first time in what felt like decades.
"You have
no idea who you are dealing with, Jingshen," the Ninth Prince hissed.
Li laughed. "Then show me,
Prince. Give me something worth
beating to a pulp!"
A third clash, and the sandstorm began in earnest, the battle in its eye lit only by intermittent lightning as the gnashing sandstorm drowned out all light and all sound. As Jingshen Jianggu despaired at its base, fretting over a plan gone off the rails when they had never even been laid. As more power was expended over the land with every clashing strike than it had tasted in hundreds of years.
As three children slipped the cordon as clandestine thieves, carrying the sword that would carve freedom into Jingshen Jianggu's face.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME, UNCLE LI?!! YOU BETTER BE, OR I'M TELLING FATHER!"
As two titans waged war in the skies above, Jingshen Jianggu raged on the earth below. Even as the camp rose to alert and the servant cultivators sworn to Jianggu's service emerged in droves to fend off the attackers, the young Expert continued to rant and rave at the injustice that had been dealt at him. This was his moment,
his triumph, and to be disregarded like this was
unacceptable!
It was unacceptable enough that he was caught unawares by the redheaded beauty landing in a crouch right before him, her ponytail billowing dramatically in the wind as it caught up to her. Spotting her at the last second, Jianggu's scream was cut short as Katha stepped forward, the Hornsword pulled as much as drawn from its place on her back, and clonked the Expert right on the top of the head with its blunt edge.
"Right," she sighed, and leaned the Hornsword between her shoulder blades. Then she looked around as her brother landed a full second behind her and left deep craters where his feet landed. "I'm going to cut the chains now. This one's your problem."
"Right, right… Seriously, do you think the Ninth Prince even listens to his own plans? I thought I was supposed to immobilise the Core Elder before--" Turning back around, Rathos squinted, then his nose wrinkled. "--Dude, what the fuck? He's not even knocked out!"
As if on cue, Jianggu groaned and began to rise, before Katha and Rathos each gave him a swift kick between the ribs.
"Smack him again!" Rathos cried, as he gave one final solid kick.
"I'm not smacking him again, dude! He's your problem now!"
"Oh for--fine, fine!" Fist clenched, Rathos clenched his fists, then spread his legs and lowered into a half-squat. "When you're ready, I'll throw you. Hopefully I don't need to do this three times, because that would
really suck."
Rolling her eyes, Katha held the Hornsword close to her chest, then let herself fall into her brother's hands. He caught her gently, drew deeply upon the reservoirs of Qi within, then with a grunt hefted her over his head before taking one step, two, and a loping third before driving his feet into the earth and throwing her forward with the full force of his body and his weight in concert.
His sister flew, silently, and satisfied by his part Rathos turned back towards Jianggu, who was no longer writhing on the ground before him. By now the Scion of the Core Jingshen had picked himself off the ground, and his face was a twisted rictus snarl. He looked at Rathos as if he were a slab of meat fit for carving, and the spite that radiated from his smile told of a great willingness to rip and tear until it is done. Around the base of the plateau, the ringing clash of steel and the rising plumes of dust told more about the battle unfurling below than the screaming soon to follow.
"You… YOU!" Jianggu laughed, a mad giggle emerging from his throat. "I'M GOING TO ENJOY KILLING YOU, YOU LITTLE--"
His fist hit like falling thunder and the snap was twice as hard. Jianggu cried out as his head reared backwards, and Rathos flexed his fingers as he prepared for the next phase of the fight.
"--YOU LITTLE
SHIT!" Jianggu, bleeding from his nose but not much else, stumbled back only a few steps before pointing fingers. For all of the Ninth Prince's bravado about this Expert's lack of ability, he was still a Foundation Establishment Expert after all. "You punched me in the face! YOU PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE!"
"I heard you the first time," Rathos scowled. Far below, he heard Marlissa cry out sharply, before a loud crack and the lamentations of several First Heavenstage Juniors echoed upwards. She was doing fine, then. "Look, we both know I'm not going to listen and you're just going to get mad, so can we skip the monologue and just get to punching each other now?"
Jianggu, snarling, pulled out knives and a lever-action crossbow. Rathos, seeing this, looked askance at the arsenal and sighed blithely.
"...That's just not sporting, dude."
The only sound Jianggu made next was angry laughter as he hurled a cavalcade of bolts at the Golden Devil before him, and it was all Rathos could do to punch out the earth beneath him without trying to kill Jingshen Jianggu too quickly.
What kind of Foundation Establishment Expert still relied on these aids anyways?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jingshen Li was an incarnate god of crashing earth and cracking sky, destruction deigning to wear the form of a human. His every move reflected the dance of rock and gale, a crushing avalanche of slaughter. If even a single blow connected, the Ninth Prince would be killed instantly and immediately.
The Ninth Prince perished ten times over in the first two seconds.
A punch to the skull, a kick to the torso, a left hook and a low kick and a right jab and a headbutt and the flick of a finger, all infused with Qi and Dao enough to make dead men die.
And yet.
The punch met an illusion, the kick was tangled and weakened by a curse, the left hook stalled for a crucial half moment by a buried trap, the low kick and the right jab and the headbutt and the finger flick turned away or weakened enough that the ghost
didn't die.
The earth howled with the injustice dealt to its god, the heretic who dared not die in the presence of its master. As Jingshen Li rushed forward, he drew on the fury of his loyal servant, each swing and each blow backed by the howling grudges of a thousand stones.
The Ninth Prince laughed, for what was the earth to one who once flew unbound by its grasp? Earth met metal and was cut in twain, while water washed away the pieces and the grudge was refined into curses and plagues, and once more Jingshen Li was left without his due.
The Naag were once known as the Blightbringers, leaving nought but rot and death in their wake. With one hand they killed armies and with another they killed landscapes. The Ninth Prince was but a fraction of a fraction of his former might, but he could still do that much. With a wave of his hand, stone died and ghosts ran rampant, an open wound on the world where earth decayed and the spirits themselves were rotted into monstrosities, howling apostates that lunged at their former god.
With a single stomp, Jingshen Li healed the world.
And thus the battle went, the Butcher of Cloud and Hill lashing out with the most basic of attacks, still enough to win the battle in an instant, and the shade of a shade of a shade frantically throwing trap after trick after deflection, all to delay death by a fraction of an instant.
Every movement the Ninth Prince made was a spit in Jingshen Li's eye. Every curse, every poison, every cunning trap and dirty trick was an insult. Merely by existing, the snakeman's ghost defied the will of an incarnate god.
His Daoheart would allow no less.
And the Daoheart of Jingshen Li would allow no resistance.
It is a complicated thing, when two Daohearts clash. The great cultivators of the age, they all have their principles and their bottom lines, and woe betide any fool who crosses it.
Not every fight between experts brings Daohearts to bare. Most are petty things, mere happenstance when two paragons by chance meet on opposite sides. The animosity there is the animosity of politics, of territory and resources, or even of simple mutual disgust.
But when two such ideals are battered against each other in the fires of battle, the thunder rolls and the earth trembles.
These wars are great and terrible things, shattering the landscape and fully erasing one side from existence. Neither can live while the other survives, a two way tribulation that will see one emerge victorious and the other struck from the records of history.
Thankfully for both parties and the desert as a whole, the Ninth Prince and Jingshen Li have unleashed only a fraction of their Daohearts. But when ideals clash, there will always be a spark, and between experts of this caliber, that spark is to a normal battle what a wildfire is to a candle flame.
Jingshen Li clenched a fist. The sky shattered, screaming shards of wind hurtling towards the Ninth Prince.
Each fragment of howling gale and rushing wind was met by hissing snakes, miniature dragons cloaked in power. Acid and fire and steel and curses and a hundred hundred other spells and techniques eating away at the broken wind until all that was left were seeds of air, stopped by a wave of the Ninth Prince's hand.
And so it went, the Ninth Prince and Jingshen Li, Jingshen Li and the Ninth Prince, the only constants in a roaring tide of pain. Earth and sky fragmented and broke and widened and twisted according to the will of its master, clashing with a dizzying array of curses and spells and techniques combining and reforming and generated whole cloth from the mad labyrinth that was the mind of a paragon.
That howling vortex only intensified, the world's righteous anger pitted against a demonic confluence of horrific magics. All life within its sphere was immediately eradicated, sentenced to a thousand years of naraka for the crime of standing in the presence of two immovable constants of the world.
Then, in unison, those immovable constants moved. Jingshen Li and the Ninth Prince took slow steps towards each other, their respective domains grinding and cracking against the other, until the two monsters were mere inches from each other. The world waited with bated breath for the first blow in this clash, the first true attack to be made.
Instead, both the Ninth Prince and Jingshen Li disappeared, their auras of death and destruction dissipating into nothingness as the two were erased from the world by the simple fact of their speed.
Then the two reappeared, hundreds of meters from each other.
This time, the world wept, for what else could it do? The battle was once more joined and the two titans were wreathed in auras of power that this sleepy corner of the desert had only experienced when the heavens broke and great titans of bronze fell from the sky.
The War for Heaven had long since ended, but its aftershocks were still being felt to this day.
Jingshen Li roared as he thrust his hands down, earth and sky bending and breaking before his all encompassing will, a symphony of shattered glass as the world around him simply broke. Great fissures jutted out of the desert as the sky fell around him,
nothing in all Heaven and Earth daring to STAY WHOLE IN THE PRESENCE OF ITS MASTER-
The Ninth Prince howled as he raised his arms into the air, the hissing of serpents following his every action, a howling torrent of curses and spells and dark rituals, thousands of thousands of snakes coalescing out of his rampant qi,
forming an endless abyss of scales and fangs that DEVOURED THE VERY BONES OF REALITY-
Then, they stopped.
The world went silent, both out of relief and the fear that even the slightest noise would attract the attention of the two titans.
Nothing was said between the Ninth Prince and Jingshen Li in that moment, for there was no need to. Both had gotten the measure of the other. Both knew enough to stop holding back.
And yet, for that moment, nothing occurred. Both men knew they would kill the other eventually, but for now, they could wait.
For a time, there was peace, a comfortable detente between two opposing powers.
And then there was war.
----
Hurtling through the air, as the wind screamed her ears not with her passage but with wailing shrieks as two titans waged terrible war, the only thing that Katha Theodoros could see in front of her was a village floating upon a slab of earth and the massive chains that pinned it to the firmament. There was no doubt in her mind that she could cut it, for her hands carried a blade of nascent chitin, and there were few things that would not break against such a material.
But the question that continued to niggle at the edges of her consciousness was not a matter of
if she could cut it, but
when she would cut it. Twelve Heavenstage she might stand, it was still a far cry from Experts that could cross horizons across a single day or Elders who bade the earth to quake with but a gesture. She was a Junior, a gnat in the great scheme of things, a seed from which a mighty oak could spring but which was still oh so very, very pathetic.
It was a question with a simple answer, but it demanded a response not once or even twice, but time and time again. And it was tiresome and irritating for there was no reason to answer it again and again, no reason but her own nerves and the pedestal she stood upon, demanding that she live up to the unreasonable expectation of cutting a chain thicker than her whole body in a single swing.
But it was a simple answer, and she would continue responding with that answer, until the moment that came and not one breath later. The moment that was fast coming.
One. Two. Three. She held the Hornsword in her hand, unevenly hewn and more like a cleaver than a fine blade, balanced not by keen craftsmanship but because the one who gave it to her simply wanted it to be so.
She took a breath. The chain came quickly. Rathos' aim had been too keen; she was not going to slip past it, but crash against it head on.
Head on will have to do. The moment came, she threw herself into a spin, and with a mighty cleave she threw all she could against the side of the chain, precisely at the point her brother warned it would have to be cut.
Her arms jarred. The shock traveled up throughout her entire body. It felt like the giants that ruled the world had taken her into their palm and shaken her like a toy. For a blissful moment as she lost focus, the Hornsword threatened to slip out of her hands.
Eyes opened. She reasserted. Hands tightened and kept the sword from flying away.
It took another second before she realised that she had no whiplash or pains from smashing into a heavy iron chain head on, and four more before she skidded to a landing on the ground. Katha looked up, chest heaving and lungs burning, and saw Liaogai Village still floating evenly up in the sky, the chain dangling perfectly just as her brother and the Ninth Prince had predicted.
That one would be the easy one. Two more to go, these ones slower.
Katha looked around, saw the numerous First Heavenstage lackeys trying to surround her and flank her while mortal auxiliaries lined the cliffs and overwatch lines. Mere bolts will be useless against her. But time was not on her side. She'll have to move quickly; en masse, even First Heavenstage techniques could hurt.
And the next minute turned to pandemonium as her mind's eye closed and her body moved to the rhythm of her Iron Blood.
---
War.
To some it was glory and power, the chance to change their lives forever, betting it all on the edge of a blade. To others it was death and pain, a horror beyond horrors that they strived to avoid and endure. To yet others, it was merely another day in their lives, the killing of cultivators and mobilization of armies as mundane as daily meditation.
But if you gave one of those myriad definitions to any of the souls unlucky enough to witness the battle between Jingshen Li and the Ninth Prince, they would laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh till the world's ending.
War was two powers seeking nothing more than to wipe each other from existence.
And this war was one that the Ninth Prince was winning.
Not easily, and not quickly, of course. Jingshen Li was still a Core Formation Cultivator, an incarnate god that warped the world through his every whim. His fists were thunderstorms and his feet were earthquakes, a living avatar of destructive force.
Any ordinary Chosen, the apex of the apex of Foundation Establishment, would have been torn apart by the storm and the fury almost immediately, bodies and minds and souls and Daos ripped into a million million disintegrating little bits until nothing remained of their existence, the heavens and the earth rejecting any possibility that they may have been alive at all.
The Ninth Prince killed Chosen like mortals killed chickens, by the dozen and with a few callous swings.
If Jingshen Li was an incarnate god, then Anush Naag was once to such a god what that god was to a mortal. Terror of Jharkand. Master of Ten Thousand Serpents. Butcher of the Fifth Sea. Vritra Reborn. A Nascent Soul could kill every Core Formation Cultivator in the region, easier than flipping over their hand, the only thing stopping them being the wrath of the other beings on their level.
The Ninth Prince as he was now was a fraction of a fraction of his former might, ghost of a remnant that had just barely managed to see the peak it had started from. But the one thing he'd never lost was his mind, the mind of a genius and a monster, paragon in every sense of the word. That mad labyrinth filled with horrors beyond imagining had been working overtime, spiked gears turning, a well-oiled monstrous machine.
It is commonly accepted in the Turtle World that tricks and plots and traps and schemes and all other varieties of devious machinations are, after a certain point, useless.
This is a world where measurable and enormous gulfs of power can and do exist between its inhabitants. This is a world where the weakest cultivators are only useful as fodder, desperately fighting to survive with and against their similarly weak peers, until the battle between the cultivators that actually matter is finished, and all their struggles are rendered absolutely meaningless.
In such a world, there is only so much cleverness can do. It can do quite a lot to be sure, thirteen Qi Gathering cultivators can hold off an invading army, one of those cultivators can trick a Core Formation Elder into fleeing like a broken dog. But schemes and tricks are nothing in the face of raw overwhelming power, the type of power that smashes all machinations into dust. Traps do nothing to someone strong enough to walk right through them, schemes useless against a being that can spot them from a hundred
li away.
Ultimately, cleverness is useful, but vastly outclassed by strength and power.
The annals of the clan record that when the Ninth Prince heard this saying for the first time, he doubled over and laughed until well after he wasn't able to breathe.
The battlefield was a riot of power. Illusions dotted the desert, obscuring attacks and arrays and curses and hidden summons and sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes they were simple recreations of the terrain they were obscuring, useful only to confuse and stall Jingshen Li further.
Curses lay hidden in the desert, vicious hissing things that would rend flesh from bone and burn blood from body. They congealed and coalesced, running so thick that spirits of venomous spite began to form, twisted serpents that slavishly obeyed their creator, the man at the focal point of it all.
The Ninth Prince dodged and backpedaled, ducked and jumped, bobbed and weaved, always managing to stay mere inches and moments ahead of instant death.
As he went, he traced array diagrams in the sand and the sky, burning them into existence with acidic qi, preparing them for instant activation.
Each array slowed and stalled Jingshen Li, webs and glue and quicksand and walls obstructing his path for barely an instant. And even as each array was shattered into so many fragments by the wrath of a deity made flesh, his power was slowly bleeding away.
Finally,
finally, Jingshen Li was nearly spent. His Qi was almost depleted, his body heaving with exertion, even the immutable and perfect body of a Core Formation Cultivator showing signs of fatigue.
And then the Ninth Prince snapped his fingers, sending shattered fragments into the air, twisting and writing and being tortured into a monstrous array used to bring ruin and damnation against all that opposed its blasphemous slaver.
With a fanged smile and a clawed hand, the Ninth Prince activated his horror, and the desert erupted in sand and nuclear fire, a miniature mushroom cloud of death and decay, a plague upon reality localized to a single instant of torment.
When one was powerful and skilled enough, it was possible to split the atom.
And yet.
Even after all of that, even after the worst that the Ninth Prince could throw at him, Jingshen Li still stood.
He was quite battered, cuts and bruises littering his body, fire and acid leaving their own marks. One arm was black with a necrotic venom, while the other was gouged and cut fiercely, the work of a dozen different arrays acting in concert. The right side of his face was beset by whirling smoke created by a horrific curse of aeration, even as his lower legs were slowly turning into stone. His chest was scarred and blasted by a radioactive explosion.
And yet, scarred and damaged, Jingshen Li, who had once killed a Cannibal Elder while dissolved into a cheese soup, was unbroken, and unbowed.
As the Ninth Prince watched with a mix of horror and fascination, Jingshen Li took one step forward. The earth broke.
He took another. The sky quaked.
A third. The world shattered.
Jingshen Li had no need to take a fourth step.
Instead, he disappeared, vanishing into the splintered fragments of the battlefield even as the Ninth Prince desperately pushed his Qi Sense to the utmost, scanning for any trace of the Butcher of Earth and Sky.
Eventually, after an instant that lasted a thousand years, the Ninth Prince found what he was looking for, the leviathan in the depths. He blanched, and performed twelve incantation gestures simultaneously, a hundred countermeasures and treasures being activated all at once.
A tenth of a second later, Jingshen Li grabbed the Ninth Prince by the face and slammed him into the sands.
He smiled, bloodied teeth contorting into a hateful rictus that would have stopped the heart of any mortal unfortunate enough to see it. Then, for the first time in their war of extermination, Jingshen Li spoke, a horrendous broken noise emanating from a scarred throat.
"Got… you."
----
The battle in the skies was not something Marlissa could comprehend, so she did not try to. It was a place far beyond her, free from earthly tethers, and it was a place she was unlikely to ever see in her lifetime either as a Cultivator or otherwise. For one of her stature and talent, it would be almost a miracle to even see the Expert realms. And that, thought the shieldmaiden, should be good enough.
But those were thoughts for another time, in another setting, with a different set of challenges that were not trying to kill her.
Aspis strapped to one hand and
Xiphos held in the other, Marlissa instead faced down dozens at a time with naught but skill alone, the Qi she commands used exclusively for physical enhancement and speed.
That much and more she would need to keep up with Katha Theodoros, who was already halfway up her next chain and running up an uneven near-vertical face, all the while dodging or simply ignoring every projectile fired in her direction. Even now, there was something like a Century or two's worth of Qi Condensation Cultivators trying to go after her, though largely standing in the First they were attempting a fool's gambit.
It was difficult to disentangle the legendary Junior, an indisputable victor of the Yuan Contest, from the awkward, sardonic and understated girl
she knew her as in the time they met, and which Rathos often spoke her as. But then, there was something else about the twins, for even Rathos, who was now the less talented of the two, had rocketed into the Ninth Heavenstage within two decades and was seriously considering taking the Tenth. The Theodoroi… Theodoroses? They were something else.
Around her, fissures like smiles in the earth began to split the ground apart, robbing her of the space she needed to utilize her speed. And while the Bronze did not flow exceptionally strongly in her veins, she was still part of the Clan, still slower than would be expected of the Sixth. But it was irrelevant. She did not need to be fast, just fast
enough.
And in a pinch, the traditional shield of the Clan was circular for a reason.
Marlissa's arm flexed and sweaty muscle rippled as she loosened the bindings on her shield and caught it on the rim with her fingers in a single motion, spinning about with sword in one hand and projectile in the other. With a shout she struck the earth, axis of rotation confirmed, target spotted. She released, the shield flew true, and her eye proved as reliable as it had ever been. One, two, three Jingshen Servant Cultivators were thrown off their feet and had their breath stolen in a single strike that shattered ribs and jarred diaphragms. Her shield, momentum spent, continued to spin unevenly for a distance before it skidded to a stop upon the floor.
By then Marlissa was already upon it, snatching her shield up into hand once more even as a dozen bolts struck her armour and two or three cut through, but never into, her skin. Another throw, and a mortal crossbowman was decapitated outright, the rest of their platoon scared into fleeing by the brutality of it all.
She looked around. The attacks, which had flowed ceaselessly before, had suddenly stopped around her. Marlissa watched them, saw the fear in their eyes. Head on, the dead crossbowman looked to still be alive, his head transfixed in horror, for the shield had nailed his two-part corpse against the side of a cliff and was fully embedded halfway into it. And she was barely exhausted, while they had lost at least a dozen of their own.
And while the fighting was far from over, their spirit was nowhere near as indomitable as her own.
With a sigh, Marlissa twirled her blade and shouldered it, folding her free arm behind her back. This place was close enough and the ground was open enough. She should probably try to get them off Katha's back.
"Come on," Marlissa growled, and for a girl of her nature the words were fierce like a lion's roar. "If you can't even deal with
me, you can't possibly take down
Katha Theodoros."
As if on cue, spurred on by the mention of her name, the second chain fell limp as Nascent Chitin found lesser materials wanting once more. Marlissa smiled, though it came out more as a smirk or a feral grin, especially with the blood that stained her face, the blood that was not hers. The mission was about done. Just need to push a bit more.
Just a bit more killing. For the clan. That couldn't be wrong, could it?
"So stop trying to kill me," roared the shieldmaiden as she clashed her sword against her vambrace, "And
kill me!"
----
The Ninth Prince woke up.
This was, oddly enough, an uncommon occurrence.
Cultivation was a path of ascension. As one rode the wheel ever upward, they slowly shed their mortality, step by step, small realm by small realm. One of the first things to vanish, stripped away by the road to perfection and cast into the void between lives, was the need to sleep.
As a cultivator stepped into higher heavenstages, they began to rest less and less, fractured divinity sustaining them far better than any mortal notions of 'rest' would. And as they stepped into Foundation Building, constructed their great Pillars of Truth, the need for mortal measures was utterly severed.
The Ninth Prince wasn't merely a Foundation Building Cultivator either. He was at the
apex, Great Circle and still pushing on forward. The number of experts or Chosen in the entire region that could match him in the same great realm could be counted on one hand.
He was also dead.
These two factors combined to create a being that needed no food, no water, no air, and no sleep.
There were only two times the Ninth Prince ever woke up anymore. The first was when he actively chose to sleep. It was almost like a hobby at this point, one that was surprisingly popular with Foundation Establishment cultivators. He tried to stay out of the subculture drama though. (The Ninth Prince had seen sects erupt in civil war based on disagreements about the proper way to place one's pillow. Heavens
forbid that the pillow and anti-pillow factions ever came to blows.)
The Ninth Prince was currently experiencing the second set of circumstances under which he woke up. That was, of course, after he'd been knocked unconscious.
With the sight that awaited him when he returned to the waking world, the Ninth Prince almost wished he'd just stayed unconscious.
Jingshen Li was an implacable titan, looming far in the distance and inches away from him, a burning shadow forever seared into his vision. The Ninth Prince braced himself for apocalypse, a sputtering furnace of Qi coughing and wheezing back to life as precious energy was spent on a hundred hundred defensive techniques, a spiritual armor of scales.
But it never came.
The man - the monster - simply sat there, content to wait and watch, as the Ninth Prince shakily rose to his feet, extricating bits of soulstuff from the splintered pit where he'd been bashed against the rocky outcropping.
Eventually, the Ninth Prince fought to his feet, waging a thousand thousand wars of conquest simply to force his body into motion. The man who had never been affected by alcohol was swaying like a drunkard.
A lesser man would have laughed, would have mocked the hero for being reduced to such a pitiful state. A lesser man would have lashed out with biting words and cutting scorn. A lesser man would have been dead.
Jingshen Li simply stood up, wounds and injuries suppressed. Then, he appeared in front of the pitiful figure and, with a motion so simple that a mortal could copy it and so profound that entire libraries could be written about its complexities, punched forward.
The earth, so recently pushed up by its god, splintered and shattered in the face of divine will, as the Ninth Prince was launched through forty feet of solid stone and into the open air.
This time, Jingshen Li had neither the patience nor the injuries to wait for the Ninth Prince to recover. Instead, the Destroyer appeared before the Ninth Prince as the shade was falling to earth, and, with a single forceful kick, expedited that process.
And so it went, with the Ninth Prince, pillar of the Clan, Chosen of Chosen and Paragon of Paragons, a shining beacon of boisterous hope to his allies and a baleful lantern of venomous despair to his foes, being tossed around the desert like a mortal ragdoll.
Jingshen Li broke through earth and sky and the space between, shattering everything in his path to drive the Ninth Prince further and further into the clutches of the cycle of reincarnation, battering and breaking the hero with punch and kick and elbow and headbutt and palm strike.
No man, alive or dead, could withstand that battery if they had not already grasped divinity, if they had not already formed a Truth within themselves. Each attack carried with it the weight of endless forever war, an unending hail of utter destruction.
It was impossible for the Ninth Prince to survive.
And yet crossing the Seas as a Qi Gathering cultivator was impossible as well.
Despite everything, the Ninth Prince hung on to life, tenacious and stubborn until the very end, until ruin and the world's ending. He would not perish to something like this, not when fractured infinity spurred him onwards and the truth of sovereignty burned within his belly, howling for victory.
Eventually, Jingshen Li grew tired of their Tandava, the dual dance of death and destruction wearing down on the Breaker of Idols. With a flick of a finger and an outsurge of Qi, a mountain was raised, spires of broken earth being forced and battered together until a twisted crag of rock and ore jutted from the desert.
With a single flick of his finger, Jingshen Li speared the Ninth Prince's ghost to the cliff walls, a massive crater of molten metal and burning stone marking his impact.
And as the Ninth Prince slowly extricated himself from his latest impact point, Jingshen Li slammed him down straight into the crater.
Once more, the Ninth Prince struggled to his feet. Once more, Jingshen Li knocked him into solid stone.
The Ninth Prince struggled to his feet. Jingshen Li knocked him down again.
The Ninth Prince struggled to his feet and hit the sand again.
The Ninth Prince struggled to his f-He tasted dirt again.
The Ninth Prince str-Knocked down again.
Again
Again.
Again.
Down Again and Again and Again
and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and AGAIN.
…T-No.
…The Ninth Prince stayed down.
And he continued to remain down, unmoving and unable to fight, a living corpse merely waiting for inevitability, waiting for Jingshen Li to put him out of his undead anguish.
And the Core Formation Cultivator obliged.
With great thunderous steps that shook the heavens and the earth, Jingshen Li trudged over to the Ninth Prince. With heaving muscles and guttering Qi, Jingshen Li raised his leg. With contemptuous effort and incredible power, Jingshen Li brought his foot down in the blow that might leave the last Scion of the Naag dead for the third time.
And with fangs and claws and venomous spite, the Ninth Prince smiled, as Jingshen Li, Executioner of the Impure, peerless warrior and incarnate god, and, for the first time in this battle, once more a concerned uncle, was finally within range of a worthless wretch's fearful cries.
And finally, after aeons of punishment, an infinity of Naraka and tortured by the fiercest of demons, the Ninth Prince moved, turning to look up at his foe. The message was clear, even as no words were said.
Got you.
----------------------
Jingshen Jianggu was a mess. Bleeding from a thousand cuts, his chest dented in, left shoulder dislocated, knees bending too far inwards to be natural. His attire was now red and black-brown where it had been white and blue accouterments previously, the crimson of his blood mixing with the light tan of the sands. He had challenged an upstart at the Ninth Circle of Qi Condensation with the highest and mightiest of expectations and found himself humbled. But he was standing, while the upstart Devil was face down on the ground, knocked into a twirl by an errant blast of Qi.
It was distasteful, but a victory was a victory. Scowling and sneering, Jianggu held a Qi Musket over Rathos Theodoros' head with his right hand, holding it point blank. Even his toughened bronze physiology couldn't endure such a blow head on.
"Got you," the Expert undeserving of the title said. "Die screaming like Heaven
wants you all to."
Rathos muttered something, his mouth filled with sand, and Jianggu felt a rush of anger. He kicked Rathos twice until his body rolled over slightly and his mouth was free, reddened by the blood flowing from his nostrils.
"Now scream, monster! Repent with your final words, sinner!"
Rathos coughed, a shower of sand from his mouth.
"I
said," Rathos said firmly, "I can do this all fucking day!
Hapless Desert Maw!"
His hands, numb from constant strikes, clenched suddenly as they grasped the earth. And Jianggu yelped as the earth beneath him suddenly swirled and liquefied like soup, swallowing him up to the waist like a rockodile's maw. He fired once, twice with the Qi Musket, and the second blow glanced off Rathos' collarbone, searing skin and scratching bone. The scion of the Theodoroi paid it less than no mind, instead pushing himself off the ground and launching himself forward, hands blurring. Rathos caught onto Jianggu's right hand in the flurry and pulled it hard, until it popped free of its socket as well. Limply, in screamless pain, Jianggu found that he could move neither arm, and his legs were helpless.
He was helpless, now truly at the mercy of a Junior a Realm beneath him. And Rathos collected himself, wiping his mouth clean of blood with one rough rub of a toned forearm.
"Thought I was just muscle, didn't you? Well, now I've got
you," Rathos snarled back in response, an echo of Jianggu's earlier refrain. "Any last words before I rip your arms off properly?"
The helplessness. The pain. The threat of excessive violence. It was too much to bear. He blubbered, tears flowing freely.
"U-Uncle," Jianggu wailed. "UNCLE LI! HELP!"
----
There was no question as to what Jingshen Li would do. His every action was decided aeons in advance, as if a tangled skein of fate was woven around the Butcher of Earth and Sky, puppeteering the Core Formation Cultivator and binding him in an inescapable web.
The Ninth Prince was, for obvious reasons, most commonly compared to a snake. But for this moment and this moment alone, all that any observer in the heavens and the earth would have been able to think of when they gazed upon him was an incredibly well-fed spider.
Of course, Jingshen Li
could take the extra second needed to eradicate the Ninth Prince's life once and for all, and with the last Scion of the Naag in such a state, it would be as easy as flipping over his hand.
But with his nephew's cries for help ringing in his ears like a great bronze bell, cries that might be at any moment snuffed out by a cold and unfeeling world, Jingshen Li, Core Formation Cultivator, Master of Battle, Hero of the Jingshen, and, in this moment above all else, Jingshen Jianggu's uncle, dared not take that extra second.
Instead, he kicked off of the earth, plunging his fists into the sky and demanding that it speed him on his way, refusing anything less than utter and total exploitation, a tyrant to his slave.
With cracking earth and broken sky, Jingshen Li rocketed forward. Each step was magnified a thousandfold, Space and Time never quite breaking but definitely bending. The flows in reality were warped again and again, scarred so deeply that they would not be healed within the current Cycle.
After the world had forgotten Jingshen Li and the Jingshen Clan, this area of folded space would remain, and grow host to hundreds of spirit beasts and spirit plants never before seen in the Virtuous Flipper Region. As time went on, as life was wiped out and reformed, far beyond the lifespan of any human of the Region, as the political climate shifted and changed and consigned great powers to the dust of history and the sands of time, this area would remain.
So it is with every Core Formation Elder, with every Nascent Soul Tyrant. Those who have grasped divinity and impaled themselves with its razor's edge are always doomed to be forgotten by men and beasts as Time takes her due. But their memory always is outlived by their footprints on the Turtle World.
Thus it has been since the first Cultivator formed their Core. From before the War For Heaven, when Calamity and Ruination reaped their bloody toll, to long after the Sun falls from the sky and brings one last explosion of life and heat to nine corpses floating in an infinite sea.
Heaven will never forget those that have defied it. Their imprints will mar and shape the world forever. It is immortality, of a sort. The only eternity most can ever hope for.
However, most pay such things no heed, preoccupied with their own matters. Fleeting as they may be in the face of eons worth of change, they are all-consuming to those living them. Even as Jingshen Li made one of his million marks on the back of a dead beast, he kept moving, pushing harder and harder and more and more, breaking sky and crushing earth in his wake.
At this rate, Jingshen Li would make the immense distance in less than a minute, a passage so fast that Foundation Establishment eyes would barely be able to track anything more than a blur, and mortal and Qi Gathering eyes wouldn't be able to track it at all. By most Core Formation standards, this was an incredibly wasteful speed, burning Qi and stamina far greater than was viable in any situation, especially not when an Elder had been beaten half to death.
It was nowhere near enough.
He would not get there in time, not when a blade or a fist or a technique of any sort could kill within a second at most, leaving the Incarnate God to arrive far too late, impotent and unable to do more than avenge his nephew.
And Jingshen Li would boil the oceans and break the world before he'd let that happen.
So he crushed treasure after treasure, burnt life's blood and Dao Energy, killed himself by inches to wring out enough power to turn himself into a crimson dynamo, managing to barely match the speed of a Nascent for a single instant, forever reducing himself in order to do what those great Tyrants could manage as easily as breathing.
A single drop of his Heart's Blood fell into the middle of a mortal village,striking hundreds dumb with awe and reverence and sending the remainder into a frenzy of avarice over this most precious of treasures, inflaming desires and dreams alike. The eventual victor, climbing to the peak of a mountain of corpses and consuming them all, swallowed the gem of blood and immediately ascended, breaking through the peak of Qi Gathering and into the ranks of Foundation Establishment.
She would become a bandit of some mild renown, terrorizing the mortals of the region until she eventually escaped into the mountains, an old legacy of carnage drawing her westwards, towards a man with monsters under his skin.
There were other such effects to his passing, sweat drowning caravans and creating lakes, bits of skin flayed by the speed of his movement turning into precious treasures or spawning demons, a broken tooth from a technique's backlash turning into a sword that would become the foundational treasure of a minor sect.
When one becomes a Core Formation Elder, their very passage stirs the fire of legend, spawning a hundred stories and sagas with each action perceived by the world at large.
But despite backlash and side effects, despite the emerald flares following his passing, despite the slight tug at his back that would have disappeared if he had spent a fraction of an instant to sever it, Jingshen Li had succeeded.
The floating village of Liaogai appeared in the distance, though Jingshen Li closed the gap so quickly that it might have been more accurate to say that he appeared above the floating village, akin to a furious moon hurtling down to an unprepared earth.
But there was no masked hero to stop
this moon, and mere instants after Jingshen Li had appeared over the horizon, he crashed down, a cataclysmic meteor that would cause the extinction of all life on this miserable hunk of rock.
The world waited with bated breath for the impact, flinching back so that the very desert itself was compressed, the sand and dunes ever so slightly lower than they were before, not due to any sort of peerless technique or secret art, but out of sheer
fear as to what Jingshen Li, worried uncle and unbound deity of carnage, would do. What atrocities would he commit, now that his brother's son was dead? What demons would he unleash, what monsters would he tear loose from Tartarus Below?
The desert waited for his answer.
It wouldn't have to wait for long.
Jingshen Li touched down on floating soil with all the grace and poise of a ballerina dancer. Not a single sand grain was displaced, not a single ant was inconvenienced. For a moment, he changed utterly. Gone was the tyrant of breaking earth and cracking sky. Here was a man in tune with all living things. He gave to the world and the world gave back.
Jingshen Li's wrath had transcended such petty things as hatred, anger, and spite. He was beyond an unbound fury, beyond lashing out at anything and everything around him, beyond the petulant wails of a spoilt child. He was perfectly calm, a buddha in all ways, hating none and loving all.
And then, serene and fully immersed in the principles of Zen, Jingshen Li calmly and contentedly took a step forward.
The earth trembled.
And then another.
The sky shuddered.
And a third.
The heavens cracked.
Jingshen Li didn't need to take a fourth.
He appeared in front of the child that was about to kill his nephew, arms outstretched, earth breaking and sky shattering around his fists, an almighty god of destruction ending the world before its appointed time out of disgust at humanity's sins. Faster than lightning, faster than thunder, faster than heavenly punishment because he
was heavenly punishment, a living calamity on the tainted blood of the Golden Devils, Jingshen Li struck out with a fist that splintered time and space,
nothing in all heaven or earth that could stand against HIS WI-
And then Jingshen Li, bearer of many titles relating to perceived divinity and just as many relating to familial matters, stopped. The reason for this was quite simple.
Rathos Theodoros, who matched his sister in some ways and differed in others, exercised one of the most fortuitous traits he possessed. This cheat skill was a result of winning the genetic lottery and perhaps the greatest way in which he and Katha were separate: Common fucking sense.
Even as Jingshen Li did not take his fourth step, Rathos had already begun the process of tossing Jingshen Jianggu, waste of flesh and valuable only to his father's brother, towards the terrifying engine of destruction barreling down on him.
And so, instead of turning Rathos Theodoros into a million million still living fragments scattered across a thousand
li of desert, Jingshen Li healed the scars he'd inflicted on existence and caught his nephew with a single monstrous claw.
Jingshen Jianggu, clutched in the grip of a god that he treated like a slave, opened his mouth. No doubt to deliver some tirade of invective, a seething spew of bullshit and blasphemy, a mocking rant about his perceived importance in relation to all other things. Such was the way of Jingshen Jianggu, to weep like a dog when dealt the slightest hardship but to crow like a rooster when given the slightest of upper-hands.
After all, who would stop him? With Jingshen Li as his long-suffering minder, Jingshen Jianggu, unworthy of the title of cultivator, could boast and preen and mock as much as he wished. The Butcher of Cloud and Hill protected his brother's son from all backlash and rebuttal. He was free to say what he wished, when he wished, as nobody else wished to shut him up.
Jingshen Li, shield of his nephew, simply looked at Jingshen Jianggu. It was a quiet stare, promising nothing and threatening even less, but the power and barely contained disappointment behind those eyes was enough to drown the desert in an ocean of regret.
Jingshen Jianggu, unbearable idiot and far too full of himself, shut up.
Fucking
finally.
And as the heavens reeled from this monumental shift and the loom of fate respun itself to account for something beyond even its predictions, Jingshen Li lashed out.
A single kick from Jingshen Li was enough to crush earth and sky, to bend the very fabric of space and time. Even without qi or technique, it would pulp bone and explode flesh, turning foes into so much viscera on the floor, nothing but popped balloons of meat. It was undodgeable, an infinite formless attack that shattered causality to hit where you weren't and struck everywhere at once.
The Ninth Prince watched amusedly as it passed harmlessly by him.
The Naag scion was battered and scarred from a hundred kicks and a thousand punches, cut a thousand times over from fragments of shattered air and earth. His body and soul (now one and the same) had underwent enough physical and spiritual trauma to kill an entire minor sect. By all rights he shouldn't even be crawling.
And yet here he was, cocky and confident as always. He wore an easygoing expression that would be more appropriate for one of the galas that the Ninth Prince kept ignoring the invitations to, an expression that was completely out of place for a life-or-death battle with the fates of innocents and juniors on the line.
He was cool, calm, and perfectly collected.
He was also holding an enormous orb of pure destructive force, the collected runoff from Jingshen Li's battle with the Ninth Prince and his subsequent frantic flight to save his nephew, ten thousand different fragments of dao emanations tortured and chained together, a grinding cacophony of discord and annihilation.
For a moment, there was peace as the world held its bated breath. Neither side moved, neither side acted, neither side
breathed. In a different world, one without cultivation but with weapons that could split worlds asunder, this would be called M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. A type of war avoided at all cost due to the sheer capability for carnage and nuclear armageddon.
In this world, it was merely called a Core Fight.
And eventually, like all fights between Core Formation Elders, the situation shifted from standoff to action, as three things occurred in rapid succession.
The first was the Ninth Prince finally unleashing his ruinous technique, earth and sky trembling as the floating island was warped by the orb's mere presence, shattered fragments screaming and howling in agony as they were released, swarming towards their primogenitor in a hundred hundred hateful embraces.
The second was Jingshen Li exploding into motion, plumbing the depths of his reserves in order to wring out enough Qi to escape his impending apocalypse. With one hand, he wove protection spells around Jianggu, shielding his brother's son from the backlash of a technique that could threaten the life of a Core Formation Elder. With a second, he activated a movement technique, ready and able to dodge out of the way of an undodgeable technique.
The third was Rathos Theodoros finally taking the Ninth Prince's unsubtle cues and activating Demonic Oak: Crushing Bind. Enormous roots erupted out of the earth, thorny vines wrapping around Jingshen Li and Jingshen Jianggu, binding and pulling like a horde of vengeful ghosts dragging the two down to hell.
Jingshen Li looked down at his paltry binds with contempt. With a flex of his Qi, summoning the scraps of destructive power available to him, the Butcher of Cloud and Hill made to crush the vines by root and stem, burn them out and
scatter the ashes, even as the two vermin before him CRUMBLED TO DU-
Then he looked to his side. At Jianggu, utterly helpless in the face of this attack, protected from the recoil and edge effects by Jingshen Li's techniques, but defenseless against the main body of the attack.
At this moment, Jingshen Li, He of Many Titles, had a choice to make. On the one hand, he could explode free of these pitiful bindings, dodge out of the way of the Ninth Prince's last ditch attack, and kill both the Ninth Prince and Rathos Theodoros, thereby winning and killing a potential Nascent Soul Candidate of the greatest rival of the Jingshen. On the other, he could save his nephew, thereby dooming himself to an agony of torment and a losing position.
With zero hesitation, Jingshen Li used his accumulated power to break Jianggu's bonds and push him to the side, out of the direct radius of the blast, breaking space around his brother's son to shield his nephew further.
And then, a fraction of an instant later, Jingshen Li was hit with the full force of the Ninth Prince's final attack.
To an outside observer, it would have been both horrific and incomprehensible. Thousands of hungry beasts burrowed into Jingshen Li's flesh like gnawing grubs and writhing worms, destroying skin and muscle and tendon and putting holes in bone. The natural defenses and arrays embedded into his body did nothing, for these were Dao-Beasts, splinters of his own philosophy, accepted without reservation.
Jingshen Li's body bulged, contorted, and twisted, as if there were innumerable tiny insects beneath his flesh, wriggling and running under his skin, digging and burrowing as if his body was the soil of an ant farm. The bubbling only grew worse, until great gouts of blood and viscera erupted from his body, eaten and destroyed by the swarm before they could even splatter onto the ground.
He was covered in the shards, a feeding frenzy without peer that threatened to eat him alive for eternity and a day, growing stronger and hungrier and
more as they burrowed even deeper, as they hollowed the fallen divinity out bit by bit.
Eventually however, the swarm subsided, Dao energy spent and bodies disappearing as so much dust in the wind, leaving the Ninth Prince to see what had become of Jingshen Li.
What the last Scion of the Naag saw…
Well, it horrified him.
Jingshen Li was more honeycomb than man, thousands of holes criss-crossing his entire body, stopping partially into the flesh or burrowing clear through and letting open air and desert grit into places where they very much should not be. His limbs, his bones, his organs, his face, his teeth, his eyes, none were left unscathed, an abominable sculpture of how much torture it would take to kill a man.
And yet that was not what horrified the Ninth Prince
As the Ninth Prince watched, holes fused together, flesh wriggled and writhed as it forced itself to attach to flesh, Jingshen Li literally stitching himself back together. It was an abomination, a curse against god and man, a memetic agent designed to weaken and suppress peak experts through sheer nausea alone.
Jingshen Li, Core Formation Cultivator and somehow still alive, said nothing, did nothing beyond raising an eyebrow. He didn't need to, the message was clear as a hot desert day. 'Is this all you have?'
The Ninth Prince's face, iron at the best of times, gave nothing away as he buffed his ghostly nails. Eventually, he looked up, simply raised a single spiritual eyebrow, and smiled, low and fanged, the smile of an ambush predator who had cornered their prey. The message was clear as ice cold crystal. 'No.'
With a snap of his fingers, Jingshen Li's world exploded.
If a mind such as
Jingshen Jianggu's could manage to form the idea that Liaogai Village was a target that would have an outsized impact on Golden Devil morale, then obviously Manuel Konstantinos and Xie Xinya had already accounted for it. Institutionally paranoid, they'd also drafted up plans for if the Ninth Prince ever fell to blood path or turned against the Clan.
One of those plans simply happened to include a layer of Spirit Bombs buried under the surface of Liaogai Village and charged by the Jeweled Spider herself. At a signal from Xie Xinya or the Archegetes, the bombs would explode messily and violently, with enough force to kill Foundation Building and severely injure Core Formation.
Of course, the Ninth Prince had found the bombs easily enough, and managed to reverse-engineer the access code from examining one of the explosives. The first layer at least. There were almost certainly others, but they weren't reachable and weren't relevant.
Now, what this meant was that with the activation signal, with knowledge of where the bombs were, and with enough time simply standing around waiting for Jingshen Li to finish being eaten alive by his own Dao energy, the Ninth Prince could use earth arts to shift the positions of the Spirit Bombs, shape their charges in such a way that the impact all converged on a single spot.
Jingshen Li was hit with the full force of 36 Spirit Bombs, as Xie Xinya's Dao energy scanned him and found him not only an outsider but an enemy. The impact was visible for hundreds of
li, the visions of sheer beauteous destruction inspiring the founding of three minor sects.
These sects would war and ally with each other again and again over the next two centuries, a tangled history of partnership and betrayal that would culminate in a merger of their philosophies and arts into one entity. In time, this Sublime Detonation Sect would produce a Core Formation Cultivator that would go on to marry into the Xie family, thus furthering Xie Xinya's stranglehold on the Clan.
Such stories played out in dozens of pockets of the desert, heroes and villains rising and falling due to a single cataclysmically beautiful explosion in the sky. A smith sought that perfection for the rest of their days, crafting greater and greater weapons that encapsulated that single sublime moment; a band of sworn brothers were distracted long enough for one to betray and consume the rest, falling to the blood path; a young man set out on his journey to the backdrop of an explosive sunset. Such is the way of a Core Formation Elder, they who drink of divinity's poisoned chalice, they whose every move spawns a hundred sagas.
And after an eternity that ended far too soon, as Rathos Theodoros and Jingshen Jianggu wept tears of blood at the perfection of the cataclysm, as the Ninth Prince wordlessly braced himself against the injury that an unauthorized use of the Spirit Bombs inflicted on the wielder, the dust cleared, debris fading away in the evening sun.
For a moment, Rathos Theodoros allowed himself a sliver of hope. Surely that had to be enough, yes? Surely, after all the punishment inflicted by the Ninth Prince, that had to be a finishing blow?
Yes, by any metric imaginable and logical, Jingshen Li must have been torn apart. After a minor nuclear explosion, after hundreds upon hundreds of curses and magics and poisons and arrays, after being eaten alive by his own Dao Emanations, thirty six fermented attacks from a Core Elder should have been enough to kill the Butcher of Cloud and Hill. There was no other outcome. It had to be this way.
And yet.
As the dust cleared, Jingshen Li stood. He was bloodied and battered, an utter wreck of a man, hollowed out again and again by atrocity after apocalypse, but he was alive.
For a moment, the two simply stood there. Neither of them moved, neither of them made any action that could be interpreted by the most hardened and ignorant agitator as an act of aggression. For a moment, even as the desert held its breath and flinched away in fear, there was peace, two broken titans weary from an eternal war.
On one side, there was the Ninth Prince. He had been the unlucky party in their exchanges, beaten and broken over and over, cracked into pieces and an inch away from his third and final death. And yet, now he was in the picture of health, unblemished and completely healed, with a Qi signature to match. There was not a hair out of place, not a fold in the spiritual cloth of his outfit. He was pristine, a cocky fanged smile back on his face, just daring his foe to come and have another go.
On the other side, there was Jingshen Li. The Incarnate God of Crashing Earth and Cracking Sky had had the upper hand in their fight, at least until Jingshen Jianggu cried for his uncle. But that didn't mean he was unscathed. His limbs were gouged and blackened by curses and poison. His face was riddled with holes and turning into a variety of gases, Dao-Beast and hex working in concert. His chest was scarred and blasted by two explosions, one nuclear and the other Dao-based. Parts of his body were melting into sludge. Other portions were petrified. Holes writhed with tendrils of flesh and areas of skin showed naught but bone. But no man alive would have wanted to face Jingshen Li in that moment, for he was still standing, still ready, still able to kill.
The moment that was an eternity hung in the air, suspended from the string of fate. Nothing within a 20
li radius dared to breathe, dared to move a muscle. The world paused, submitting to the power and will of two monsters that walked its back, even as it vibrated with anticipation. The tension in the air was so thick that even the Hornsword was unable to cut it. The entire desert waited for the two holy abominations to finish taking the other's measure.
Eventually, the uneasy peace was broken. Jingshen Li, a shell of a man but still enough to bring wrath and ruin, held out a fist, unmoving. Even as the Ninth Prince did nothing, the fist began to crack the air, a razor-sharp spiderweb sphere that extended in all directions, even those directions that were imperceptible to mortal eyes.
The cracks began to spread, sky splintering and falling to the ground of Liaogai Village, leaving a dark purple void hanging where there was once air. And then, even that void began to crack. Bright red splinters began to form in the fabric of space, expanding in every and all directions, into the future and the past and the realm where possibility died.
The cracks from there went further and further everywhere, a bursting storm that was large enough for a man to be fully engulfed within its depths, a calamity concentrated around a single man's fist and a single god's will. It was a monster that could swallow Liaogai whole, an infinity and an eternity in the shape of a sphere.
And still the Ninth Prince did nothing.
Once more, Jingshen Li locked eyes with the Ninth Prince, who stared back, unblinking. The Core Formation Elder searched deep, looking for some sort of answer to an unasked question, until eventually, hidden and locked away under defenses that were intentionally weak, he found it.
Whatever was found there would not be spoken of by or to any other cultivator alive, a secret that the two would take beyond their graves. All that is known is that Jingshen Li reached out with one calamitous hand to take hold of Jingshen Jianggu. Then, with nary a look back or a sense of regret, he strode into the corridor of broken space, exiting the battlefield and conceding the match to the Ninth Prince.
The Ninth Prince said nothing, did nothing. As the last fractals of spacetime vanished, even as Jingshen Li had long since made his escape, he stood unmoving, unchanging, a statue instead of a cultivator.
Then, when there was no longer a trace of Jingshen Li or Jingshen Jianggu in his perception, as Rathos rushed over to him, as a newly arrived Katha and Marlissa (who had each completed deeds worthy of saga and song) did the same, as a stiff breeze blew through the floating village, they saw why the Ninth Prince had done nothing, said nothing.
His eyes were blank, the thought stolen from him. He had expended everything, given everything, and from nothing snatched victory with fangs of desperate will.
Survival was victory. Victory was Liaogai. And they had Liaogai.
Kaboomatic A/N: It's fucking DONE. Nothing else needs to be said. I hope you enjoy.
Swordo A/N: My man fuckin' killed it. Let's goooooooooo--
