Once the briefing was done, there was only organizing for the move. The pouring rain outside had not stopped, and indeed, would not stop for the entire trip. It would slow them down a good deal. Not because of the rain itself, but because it was known that Cloud Tribe shamans could use falling rain a medium for perception arts, and so they would have to move slowly, and use decoy marchers to confuse things.
Elder Yongrui was not the subtle sort, and Elder Jiao was busy.
The funny thing about the whole ploy is...we were basically told what was going on.
The endless rain certainly wasn't normal, the Cloud Tribes had set a trap no doubt.
But whoever would expect an actual assault to be the decoy?
Finally though, Earthwound Peak came into view, towering overhead. The mountain was an ugly, lopsided thing of black stone. The caldera was a deep and shadowed thing, as if something tremendous had struck obliquely, shearing off the peak and digging a massive chasm in its side that left one part of the rim looming high and jagged over the smoother lower rim.
Incidental fun fact, that looks like a magma chamber burst, the description sounds a little like St Helens after it blew, albeit far larger and much less prone to weathering than real volcanoes.
The mechanics of it is basically the chamber clogging up, pressure building, and then finding that the obstruction was harder to remove than the side wall.
Either that or a powerful cultivator got suplexed into a mountain. That would work too.
Cai Renxiang raised an eyebrow, as if asking for an explanation. Ling Qi didn't give one. The heiress shook her head. "...I suppose it is enough that you are confident."
"Lady Cai's belief in this one is an honor," Ling Qi said dryly.
"Failure is forbidden," the heiress bore an unamused expression. "Do not betray my confidence."
Ling Qi hummed, not worried by the ominous words. She could feel the thread of emotion weaving through that mechanical statement. Hidden from the other disciples warming up for their part in the assault. "Naturally, am I not your left hand?"
"Indeed," Cai Renxiang said, perfectly serious. "I look forward to your success."
A little subtext I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into.
Renxiang has doubts about the rightness of this whole adventure and is sort of hoping that Ling Qi would Ling Qi it up in her particular way?
He was silenced as one of his companions raised a clawed hand. Beside him was a shishigui. It was unusual for it's kind, standing straight without the usual hunch. Because of that it towered over the singer, more than two meters tall. It's spindly body was armored in gleaming blue black chitin, like a carapace of a beetle, an impression only made stronger by the pronged horn that rose from it's helm. The creature was at the seventh stage of the third realm.
...is that a Guyver?
For the hundredth time since Ling Qi had begun reporting back, the thought flitted through her mind, a stray thread in the loom. Continuing this operation in its current form was the incorrect choice. That was not to say that seeds of alliance being planted should be allowed to grow, that their enemies should return home unmolested, new resources in hand. It was said that in the opening salvo of Ogodei's war was a single iridescent arrow from beyond the horizon which had pierced the millenia old mountain fastness of Black Lotus Peak and struck Patriarch Li through the middle dantian in his own meditation chambers.
This sounds like insider action was involved somewhere.
The attack was too precise, either there was massive divination superiority going on...
...or somebody leaked the information in the hopes of disposing of a rival.
Enemies of the Empire could not be allowed such weapons. But this was the wrong way to go about it, and not all here were enemies just yet, by her measure. Nor could she see any path from this that would weaken their enemy's suit for allies. This was a hammer being applied to a half painted canvas. But her opinion was not yet relevant, in the grand scheme of things.
Ling Qi: "Hold my drugs"
Her gaze flicked to the disciples far below where she stood in the sky. Her objection had been logged, and it had been dismissed. The Elders involved in the operation had relayed the order to proceed. Cai Renxiang felt a spark of anger, incandescent in its unfamiliarity. Was this a shadow of what her Mother had felt before her ascent, when the warning bought with Grandfather's blood was ignored in the court of the Hui?
Its a pretty pickle. One approach could have dragged a reluctant third party in, but inaction would lend their current foes a large advantage. It'd have to thread the needle, but the situation is also such that by the time they learned it was too late to adjust their plans.
Information advantage would have been key, but its a trial to maintain.
"Prepare Fire," the communications disciple said crisply, his earlier babbling gone. Power from a dozen disciples washed over her, bolstering the flow of her qi. She saw through Ling Qi's eyes, and beheld her target.
Cai Renxiang's misgivings wrought no hesitation. Whatever her thoughts, she did not intend to leave Ling Qi unsupported. Cifeng's sheath unspooled, shimmering thread revealing reflective steel, and in her hand, the blade purred.
Around her, rain evaporated, shredding into its component motes of qi as her Light burned. It spilled from her pores, casting the valley below in harsh light. Radiance spilled from her eyes, and mortal vision faded away, revealing the pattern that lay beneath, infinite in complexity, and beyond all but the meanest comprehension by a mind as young as hers. In the layer below conscious thought Liming's presence bubbled up. The whispers of her gown were not words, they never were. They were animal things, urging animal acts. They were rage and passion and the desire to act. The desire to break and remake.
From the spool of power that lay wound beyond her reach, Cai Renxiang pulled, and Liming howled in rage, hurling itself against her control, tearing at her mind, seeking to seize her limbs as she took its power into herself, drawing more than she ever had before. She felt her very bones vibrating under the power she drew, and she knew that her face had vanished into featureless incandescence. She had advanced since that day in the swamps.
The mastered Judgement of the Broken World could not be used with her own piddling power.
Her limbs trembled under Liming's assault, as the radiance bloomed outward, bleaching stones and plants hundreds of meters below. Cai Renxiang raised Cifeng in a two handed grip above her head, the blade was gone, replaced by a bar of empyrean light, too bright for even immortal eyes to look upon.
Cifeng sang as Liming's threads were severed, and resistance ceased.
Radiance fell.
Thats a nice big buffstack on the alpha strike and a peek at how the Cai stuff works.
-The underlying principle seems to be Seeing The Matrix. Everything is a structure assembled from strings.
-Liming is literally woven from emotions...kind of wonder if its made from Bloody Moon fairies spun into thread.
-Cifeng's purpose is to allow overriding Liming to steal a higher realm creation's force for Renxiang's use.
...the whole dress puppet theory wasn't TOO far off, except its a failure state rather than the constant state.
And the bleached substance where they got hit...seems like reality got formatted down to base material?
On the opposite side of the Caldera, a mathematically perfect circle of the clouds evaporated under a pillar of incandescent light wide enough to swallow a city block. Three unlucky barbarians circling overhead vanished without even a scream as the light touched them, seared away beyond even ash at its merest touch.
An eagle's wings flared, and the wind rose with a roar. A long, spindly arm clad in chitin seized the young man standing beside its owner, and yanked man and mount alike against the shishigui's narrow chest.
The black sphere struck the fourth realm's upraised sword and men screamed as the caldera shook and stone crumbled, bodies and objects dragged violently toward the epicenter.
Sounds a bit like they're fairly close allies or friends even, to take a hit for the Cloud Nomad.
There was a muffled sound of displaced air as Zhengui appeared in midair, falling with the force of a meteor toward the center of the cavern, Hanyi clinging to his back. Cold stone warmed to heat, as stones were made to remember their fire, and the ground rocked as a plume of lava roared forth, launching the Starstone into the air.
Then Ling Qi materialized beside it, and sang the grinding melody of winter, and the force of a glacier slammed against the slowly spinning airborne stone. It flew downward as if flung from a catapult, into the fading curtain of sparkling light from Cai Renxiang's attack. She saw the stone, bleached a perfect pearly white. She saw two ashen shadows where the two attendant Shishigui had been, and the four barbarians gathered together on their horses, horrid burns marked the beasts flanks, and she could see exposed muscle where fur and skin had burned away. Their riders were hardly better, their armor in tatters and their skin covered in burns.
The Starstone crashed into the middle of them, and the barbarians scattered like pins, but one was too slow, and there was an ugly crunch and a hideous sizzling as the starstone struck him. Ling Qi did not look at what remained when it rolled ponderously away across the scoured ground.
That's some stylish yeetery.
Sterile, bleached stone crumbled to powder as the Shishigui envoy rose from the less damaged stone beneath it, chalky chunks clinging to his scorched armor, where his armor did not cover his skin was an angry red. The barbarian man he had dragged down with him gasped for breath and his horse screamed, cantering away across the powdery stone.
The burns look awfully similar to Renxiang's burns later don't they?
Only the White Sky barbarians stood unharmed. The man had taken to the air on his winged horse, but the woman stood in a circle of frost. Cloth and fur had become armor, stiffened by blue white rime. A crown of seven points had formed on her brow, and in a hand clad in a gauntlet of ice, she held a scepter of dull iron, its head wrought in the shape of a snarling demon, menacing with spikes.
Crown, scepter and gauntlet for wargear.
The gauntlet could be anything, but crown with scepter would be royalty most places.
And that probably hints to the very bad outcome. If they DID lose a princess out there they'd be obliged to join in wouldn't they?
Wood rotted and cracked, and Zhengui's barricade crumbled in the center where the Shishigui envoy strode through. Around him were a hundred droplets of sizzling black impurity or more, each one burning with a spark of baleful qi. Ling Qi barely had time to turn again before they shot out, spinning crazily in different directions. Elongating into blades, twisting into cutting cords, expanding into exploding spheres, they carved through her revel, tearing apart phantoms, shearing dancers to pierces.
Ling Qi hissed in pain as one particularly large explosion splashed across her back, her ankles as she leapt over a blade, burning and blistering flesh even as she blurred into wind.
Thats a neat trick to just shred through constructs like that. Dispelling field?
If it is thats an odd mirror to Renxiang's stuff.
Only the White Sky were yet aloof. The man on his flying horse eyes everyone warily, a spear of glittering glass in his hands, but she could feel his qi drifting out like a warm wind and clean sunlight, bolstering warriors. On the ground, those warriors left on the ground climbed painfully to their feet with renewed vigor, broken limbs straightening out.
The woman remained on the ground, and around her there was cold, stray pebbles and stones, deflected arrows and more that flew toward her, lost all momentum and clattered to rest a dozen meters away. The only difference was that now the foreigner was looking at her.
Sun cultivator with a Winter cultivator.
Wonder how that worked out. Or perhaps the White Sky nomad is a separate but allied faction.
The defense there looks like its Stillness/Silence keyworded like the Bai art?
From above, a renewed song clashed with her Mist, wresting its grasp from her victims, and three bowstrings sounded, and three lightning bolts fell, stakes of sparking and snapping electricity slamming into the ground around her, forming a perfect triangle as lightning arced from one to the next.
Electrical current roared out, spilling to fill the whole of the area, and Ling Qi raised her hand. Three bells chimed as the lightning arced into her hand, her Three Moons chime drinking the field of lightning before it could finish coalescing.
...is that Falling Star Art?
...Well, perhaps she didn't need all the attention, Ling Qi thought faintly as the man with the starstone mask raised his blade, and the storm answered, a funnel of wind descending from the sky to armor him and his retinue, the churning wind burning with iridescent light.
The talisman seems to imbue his techniques with Stellar Qi. Armor against qi attacks or a reactive dispel on contact?
And there was a charge in the air, something dangerous in the storm above, something that made her instincts scream danger despite the feeling of their reinforcements coming over the rim, and the slightly more distant rise of Diao Gen's qi in the south.
Charged attack. The trap is kind of obvious if a Green could see it coming wasn't it?
There was only one reason that Ling Qi could think of for why the barbarian had approached her like this. The proof was in the rime spreading across the bleached stone at their feet, and the cold howl of the wind under the pressure of their respective domains.Standing so close, meeting the woman's eyes, it was impossible not to feel something familiar.
But it only made the differences starker. The foreigners cold was not hers. It was not merely a matter of potency. The woman before her felt stark and bleak in a way that even Zeqing had never been. She was not a winter storm falling upon a temperate vale, part of a greater cycle, but something endless. A cold which knew no summer, and knew even the sun as only a periodic visitor.
Thats...definitely related to FSS's insight. Except going with the Final Endless Cold rather than Winter Before Spring.
The woman cast a glance at the starstone, and Ling Qi tensed up, preparing to defend herself. But the woman didn't raise her weapon, instead she pressed the thumbnail of her right hand into the sceptre's head, where it dug into the ugly metal. Her fingernails were iron as well, Ling Qi belatedly noticed.
She very nearly dodged the sliver of wrought iron flicked her way, stymied only by the lack of hostility in the air, and a nudge from the so far silent Sixiang. She caught it instead, and almost winced, it was painfully cold, even for her.
The woman spoke again, but this time it was slow and careful, asone would talk to a young child. It rankled a little that it did make her words more comprehensible. Something, something, offering sanctuary?
Iron Sliver acquired.
Baba Yaga alright, with the iron nails. Wouldn't be too surprised if the scepter was an arted up tooth either. Hmm, I wonder, Baba Yaga is known for adopting(or abducting) children to teach.
If someone learned both FSS and LWM too early would they also start transforming similarly?
Above, Ruan Shen descended on a platform of flowers, a vibrant ramp that bloomed in front of him and withered behind him, leaving a rain of falling petals. Behind him came three disciples, an appraisal and two early greens, armored in flowering vines.
Is that a Movement Art or is that a Show Off Art?
Overhead, the battle between Guan Zhi and the barbarian commander was escalating. Guan Zhi stood in midair, the floating rubble she had been trailing was taking more coherent form, pressure compressed stone shaping into a curling black mandala that hovered about her back and shoulders as she blurred through the sky, fighting a brewing storm with her fists alone. Under the weight and pressure of her blows, thrown so quickly that Ling Qi could only see her in those brief moments when she clashed, the whole mountain was beginning to rattle and shake.
The same thing as Ji Rong's?!
To her right, Cai Renxiang was holding out well, the tendrils of light that formed her wings hissing and sizzling as they beat away droplets of impurity. Several glowing scars marked the Shishigui envoy's armor, but in turn, droplets of corruption stained Renxiang's luminosity, dimming her light where blackened droplets marked her, each one seeming to vibrate as they struggled to expand against her purifying light.
But they weren't being cleansed, they were being contained.
She was being pushed back.
Cai Renxiang was losing ground, and she could feel an ugly corrosion nipping at the edges of the girls' qi.
She appeared in front of the Shishigui envoy a bare instant later. One hand pinned her liege beneath him, and in the other a marble of impurity gathered, a hideous boil whose stench made her eyes water and made her stomach churn. His armor was scoured and bleached by Cai Renxiang's own attempts to escape.
Cifeng's point touched his chest, her liege given just a single breath to maneuver, and erupted in light.
Cai Renxiang shot to her feet as the creature flew back, a smear of blackness hidden within the inferno of radiance she had unleashed. Where the Shishigui had touched her, her skin was red and raw, covered in blackened blisters. As she rose into the air, a grimace of pain on her lips, the light of her technique faded.
This is more worrying long term because this is Renxiang's Domain Weapon:
Ling Qi was quiet, looking down on her blade. "...If you do not mind, what did you put in your weapon?"
The silk floating between Cai Renxiang's hands rippled, and the bells sounded faintly, ephemeral and echoing. The crimson eyes splayed across her chest narrowed in hunger, and the girls own eyes looked up at Ling Qi. "My desire for purity. You know well my attitude toward disorder and uncleanliness."
Ling Qi glanced away. "...I said I was sorry for putting the tea leaves back wrong," she mumbled. Rarely had she seen her liege more blatantly incensed as she had been this morning. "...that doesn't sound like something you would want to be rid of though."
"It is not, nor is that the purpose of the exercise," Cai Renxiang agreed quietly. "For as long as I can remember, I took pleasure in ordering my surroundings, even more so after my awakening. Yet… the world is untidy. It can be improved, but ones plans will never be executed to perfection. This is not because the world cannot be predicted or ordered, but because you have failed to account for all factors. It is important to be able to accept some degree of disorder and uncleanliness in action, but it is more important to not forget the goal I am seeking past that tolerance."
Ling Qi nodded slowly. "It's what drives you. By enshrining it in your domain, you make sure you never lose touch with it."
Getting literally stained might hurt her more than the obvious ways.
Bei Yongrui was not a warrior.
He did not wish for war the way many of his comrades did. He did not glory in battle or death. Building things, building people, helping others rise, those were his talents. Yet, with a single mote of attention which was on the caldera below rather than the sky around, he could admit to some satisfaction as he saw his disciples descend upon the barbarians.
He saw them die, frantic and confused. Wheeling to defend that odious stone, they died.
Lightning struck fires burned in their wake, and only the victorious scream of horses and the rushing of wind could overtake the hungry crackling. The walls were broken, the warriors dead, his younger siblings gone, screaming into the sky.
And in the morning, the beasts had come.
Oh yes, satisfaction was the right word, he thought, resting his hands on his belly, sitting meditatively above the churning clouds.
Looks about right, old veteran of Ogodei, who then had all the bad old memories stirred up again by losing a friend.
Those he watched more closely, the heathen shaman's were clearly up to something. He was not about to allow his growing disciples to be drowned under a downpour of lightning or suchlike. Things were going well with the main operation however, even if the Southern group had ended up entangled, intercepting reinforcements.
Southern group...that was the path not taken, and it seems like they smashed into the Cloud Tribe's own hidden reinforcements. Guess that answers how we'd have been useful there.
They were holding up well, and things were tilting in their favor.
Detachments of the larger forces in the east and west were approaching regardless and would soon be here to reinforce both groups, since the force concentration had been a bit higher than expected.
He was quite proud of that girl, Ling Qi, for holding up so well.
Did a crude tally of the fight:
Twelve Stars
-1x Cyan
-10x Warriors
--5x Green 2
---2x OHKO Guan Zhi's Gravity Slam Dunk collateral.
--3x Green 3
--2x Green 4
---1x Vanished at some point, not sure who eliminated them, but probably got splattered accidentally by the Cyans?
Red Horse[IIRC]
-1x Green 3(Bardbarian)
-4x Green 2
--1x Frozen Soul Serenade
--1x OHKO by Yeeted Starstone
--1x Abducted By Moth
--1x Speared by Anonymous Argent Forces
Y'lith'kai(w/ Sky Horse)
-1x Green 7
-2x Green 2
--2x OHKO by Ion Cannon Cai
-2x Green ?(Dancers)
--1x Volcanic Prominence & Hoarfrost Refrain
--1x Zhengui & Hanyi combo
White Sky
-1x Green 8(Winter Lady)
--1x Withdrew
-1x Green 6(Winter Consort)
--1x Withdrew
Perimeter Patrols
-6x Green 1
--2x Lost In the Forgotten Vale
-100~x Yellow
--3x OHKO by Ion Cannon Cai
--"Handful" left with White Sky
So that looks like Team Ling Qi was taking on 6x Green 1, 7x Green 2, 4x Green 3, 1x Green 4, and 2x Dancers.
Twenty low Greens at the same time and eliminated 7 of them, even if there were only six peers and 1 superior.
No shit they couldn't interfere with Renxiang, they couldn't spare the attention.
Meanwhile Renxiang is solo dueling a G7 by herself and managed to drag it out long enough for the reinforcements to break up Ling Qi's furball and then slam into the boss fight with a full party raid.
Big sect rankup incoming.
Less proud of her odd action in regard to that strange woman, but he did not condemn her for it. It was only good sense to scatter your foes, however you did it. But they were not actually fleeing, they had withdrawn, and vanished from lesser sight, but they circled the Caldera still.
My that was a potent artifact she wielded though. He would want a closer look at it after this. Also, she was certainly not a Cloud tribesman with a soul like that. They would have to capture those ones if possible.
Bei Yongrui frowned then, there had been a frisson there, a change in the sea of probability. He would have to consult his coins when he returned.
Good god its right in front of his face and he can't see it due to Imperial Thought.
Just two of them left the fighting with minor escorts and fate shifted from its tracks.
But barbarians can't be important.
It felt like something of great import. It was almost enough to distract him from his vigil.
Not enough though.
Bei Yongrui raised his head, cracking open his right eye to gaze upon the stars, so suddenly mobile. Subtle, but not subtle enough. He and the other Elders of the Sect had learned that qi well, oh yes. That wretched verminous thing might have died on the battlefield, but the barbarian who had struck Senior Brother Zhou down, in his weakened state? No, that one was still alive.
And here he was, just as the Sect had suspected. This meeting was too important to the embattled tribes of the northern wall.
Bei Yongrui rose, shaking out his sleeves as a ten thousand new stars were born in the sky overhead, falling fast, each a miniature sun. Silently, he pulsed his qi, sending the signal to his Sect brothers in the east and west.
If the stars were falling, he would just have to catch them.
...is that the higher realm version of Falling Star Art?
Because it looks awfully spot on in the description...and Chinese Archery was mainly an import from nomads to begin with.
And finally, the trap snaps shut.
This was why the plan looked dumb strategically - the objective was to take revenge to begin with.
It'd be a bad plan if you were aiming to blunt the assault or break up alliances, but it'd be a fantastic plan for putting bait they can't resist into their trap so you can snap shut on their trap.
