Li Suyin glanced at the tunnels, then back at her with an uncertain look, as the echoing sound of many scrabbling feet finally reached them over the dying wails of the burrowers. She then gave a determined nod. "This will not take long. Yi, Er, begin search and excavation," she spoke in a clipped tone, sending the constructs into motion.
Ling Qi smiled, she had to talk to her friend about her naming sense. Zhenli was fine, but calling her guards one and two? That was just dull.
"We'll have a chat with her later," Sixiang laughed. "Better get playing though."
Eh, naming your constructs by numbers is usually a means of keeping distance and keeping them expendable.
Then she began the Starlight Elegy, and the cloying mist grew colder and heavier still. She watched dispassionately as a particularly quick rat thing that had thus far avoided the claws of her phantoms faltered and slowed, it's limbs growing sluggish until a phantasmal beast tore out its throat with hungry fangs. The scene was repeated all across the cavern, again and again, beasts emerging just to die, most before they could even react.
These things were not normal, Ling Qi could tell, beasts, even spirit beasts did not charge headlong into certain death like this, not without good reason. Well, she supposed that she would find out those reasons eventually. A rat thing loped and skittered toward her, letting out a chittering shriek though blood frothed jaws, and she watched as it veered away from her to crash into the wall, torn by phantasmal claws. Beasts like this… they couldn't even find her in the mist.
First Realm rats: Mindless or fearless
These guys worked like constructs following a preprogrammed order thats not correct but keep going anyway.
She began the final stanza of the Melody then, the Travelers End, and the image of a misty vale under the dark moon seemed to impose itself, for an instant over the sandy cavern. The echoing cries of her phantoms joined the melody as her qi lent them greater solidity. No more just disembodied claws, fangs, and hungry eyes, but stalking shadows in the shapes of beasts.
Oh hey, here's why Travelers End has indefinite duration.
The phantoms become solid enough to sing it.
As she laid down the technique, the first loping forms became visible in the tunnels. Bulkier than their burrowing counterparts, with rubbery grey skin and visages that were more canine than rodent, the twisted beasts howled and gibberede, claws scratching and tearing at the stone. In response, Ling Qi's twisted blade shot out from the mist, letting loose a discordant wail as it soared down the nearer tunnel, sending the beasts within shying back, brackish black blood leaking from their ears.
Yet there were two tunnels, and the ugly beasts were only stymied, not stopped. They poured into the caverns, first in pairs and trios, and then in growing numbers. The claws of her phantoms met resistance in their rubbery hide, though it could not stop them entirely. Larger beasts, less like twisted men and more like great apes in size and stature stalked among their lesser kin, and their jeering howls hardened hides and and sharpened fangs. Other's had backs bristling with bony growths, tumorous and twisted, but poking from diseased flesh with menacing points. Her phantoms were not enough against the growing pack any longer. Their attention was still on her, but Ling Qi was all too aware of her friend behind her, searching the walls of the cavern.
And now we have what looks like the discards from Clan Moulder labs, Yellows this time.
So Ling Qi ensured that their attention would remain on her. With the Travelers End complete, the Forgotten Vale Melody would sustain itself, and so she began her second song. Ice crept over sand, and a handful of rat things that had found their way close through coincidence, pushed by the growing crush of bodies chittered in pain as frost spread across flesh and blood began to freeze. Ling Qi grimaced as she felt the things oily qi draining into her even as she easily sidestepped around clumsy lunges and snapping teeth. Most of it washed against her skin, leaving her feeling oddly dirty, but a trickle of qi flowed back into her reserves, restoring some of what she had spent.
The qi is gross but edible. Good to know.
The fight was only just beginning though, they still numbered beyond easy count, and even the4 snarling storm of snowflakes that had sprung up around her, in the mist, frozen moisture turning to short lived snow, failed to deter the beasts. She felt the qi armoring the beasts growing thicker, as more and more of the beasts reinforced each other, their filthy feeling qi roiling and flowing together. Most still wandered off course, getting turned around and running into their bretheren, but still Ling Qi had to duck and twist and dodge, avoiding a half dozen snatching claws and bony projectiles.
And so...the Yellows have teamfight arts, not very strong ones, but enough to statistically influence the swarm from not being completely lost.
Looking over the writhing mass of flesh as they poured forward, the sheer weight shattering their frozen comrades, Ling Qi spied something new. Their crouched on the lip of the further tunnel was another creature, smaller than most of them, the others slid around it, never once approaching. Resembled the creatures of the second wave the most. An eyeless thing with rubbery gray skin and a canine visage. Yet unlike the others, it crouched their like a man rather than a beast, and around its neck she saw a necklace of glowing purple stones, carved into strange shapes. And in its right forelimbs, it loosely held a strange stone knife
The thing let out a few barking yips that had the cadence of speech and then drove the knife into the sand. Even in the chaos of the scrum, Ling Qi felt the ripple of qi that washed over the horde. That one had taken the first steps into the third realm, she could feel. Ling Qi did not have much time to think of that, because suddenly, far fewer of the beasts were stumbling around, snarling at their fellows, hopelessly lost in their effort to reach her.
And a green. And Impurity talismans. And thats a dispel.
All the while she moved forward, every step carrying her further into her enemies reach. In seconds, she was surrounded utterly. Then winter sang, and beasts died, claws that reached for her flash froze and exploded into pinkish mist, frozen blood swelling in suddenly rigid veins like the spa of a tree in the deepest depths of winter. And, the entire time, she kept her eyes fixed on the third realm beast that was her goal. With a mental tug, she pulled back on her flying sword, recalling her blade from where it stymied the flow of beasts in the other tunnel.
For its part, the beast that was her target seemed all too aware of its situation. It let out an alarmed bark as she began to advance, scrambling backward even as it raised its knife defensively. Another pulse of filthy qi rippled out, and the beasts around her let loose with blood curdling howls, from the pores and jaws, a crimson mist began to emerge in thin streamers, mingling with the cloying fog of her melody.
The claws of her phantoms, which had thus far still been tearing bloody lines in exposed flanks, of dozens of beasts still, began to deflect off of suddenly stony hides, and claws and fangs gained a metallic sheen, that shone in the dull red light cast by the mist leaking from opened jaws.
At the same time, through her connection to her sword, she felt two other third realm presences, even as she felt the influx of lesser beasts finally beginning to taper off. Sh felt something soft and viscous strike her Singing Sword then, and quite suddenly, it could not move, stuck to the wall by something clinging and jelly like.
Crimson mist -> Blood element?
Stone Skin -> Earth element
Metal claws -> Metal element
And thats a tanglefoot bag. Nice trick to stop a domain weapon.
Ling Qi twitched her head to the right, avoiding a lashing claw that would have taken her eye by a mere millimeter. She stepped, and her body flowed a meter to her right, reforming from darkness and leaving a volley of crimson spines to strike the sand where she had been. Ling Qi, moved and her enemies found themselves striking at phantoms. There was no wasted movement, she avoided claws by a hair's breadth, grew immaterial to gnashing fangs, and let those few that she could not avoid skate off of viridian bark and rustling cloth, nothing more than glancing blows.
In that moment, Ling Qi felt like she had finally understood the lesson of Sable Crescent's Grace, of motion without motion and presence without presence. She found the moment of understanding fading quickly, and yet some knowledge remained. She leaned barely to the side, avoiding the flung corpse of a rat thing with hardly a thought, and her flute sang again of winter. Even through their armor and bolstering qi, a dozen beasts died.
Ling Qi is a touhou now.
*Graze*
*Graze*
Behind her, she heard a sound like shattering pottery, and saw Li Suyin standing by a hole broken in the stone wall. In the cavity beyond, slowly pulsating, fleshy eggs glowed with faint luminescence. At her back, her guardians stood in a shield wall, and in front of them was a metallic cone atop a stake driven into the ground, hissing faintly as it discharged something into the air.
Fresh Impure Antlion eggs!
And Suyiin brought a drill!
Well, sounds like something emitting poisonous fresh air ,but it looks like a drill.
In front of her, two loping figures emerged from the second tunnel. Like the other third realm beast, they were smaller than the rest and carrying tools, unlike that one these wore bandoleers of some pale leather across their chests, hung with pouches, and were even now unholstering spears from their backs, as cackling high pitched laughter spilled from their snaggle toothed maws.
Yet, very few beasts were emerging now from the tunnels. The cavern was still filled with the press of flesh, despite the culling Ling Qi had dealt out.
It looked like the real fight was about to begin
Commanders arrived, they called off the swarm. These guys understood that the swarm wasn't doing anything but giving Ling Qi more Qi.
And those look like ratman Production specialists.
And they don't seem fazed at all by the dead.
Wait, if they have Impure Cultivators down here then they must have swarmed the Antlion nest to loot it right?
