RAIDBOSS
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Chapter 49
🕑 Added 2024-05-29 22:14:00 +0000 UTCA\N: I edited the 2nd and third parts of Chapter 49. You may wish to reread them.
Rainshadow Long rode his mount like a demon, leaning forward. The veil around his head billowed; it was transparent only through a single side. Those around him couldn’t see his face through the opaque black mesh. Most could still feel his mood through his poorly regulated Aura.
And today that mood was domineering joy.
He whipped the reins, causing the long-haired Waxenmare to pull to a stop. It was built like a horse but thinner; like a dog but taller; like a wolf, but longer. It’s hair was a thick coat like an otters that repelled the rain, and its paws had unretractable claws that tore up the dirt and mud. It kneeled down to lick them.
Rainshadow Long had lost three of his fingers to a Noble brat. He was filled with such rage during their duel that it took him a week to even process what Feng Jin had said to him.
He had given him tips on his cultivation while fighting him and two of his liutenants at the same time, kicking them aside with cold ease. Feng Jin was truly a one in one thousand talent. Long sneered.
The advice he gave him allowed him to break through. And he immediately used that newfound power to shatter the bridge to the ruins. He would pay for that later with the blood of a few of the men he pressed to service. The labor to build a replacememt bridge would not be easy or cheap.
But today he was exuberant.
“Open the gate.” His voice boomed over the rain.
Each of the gates should have had a Thunderfist guarding them — a Second Realm cultivator. Feng Jin had killed two of them when he last arrived, reducing their number to six — barely enough to maintain the guard shifts.
Rainshadow Long frowned when no Thunderfist greeted him.
“Why is the gate not guarded?” Long asked, directing his Waxenmare forward through the opening.
His expression twised when he saw what was inside. Beneath his veil of black, none of the guards within could see his face. But his uncontrolled Aura was a storm boiling off of him.
A pile of corpse shaped bags rotted beneath the gateway, shielded from the rain. Blood pooled. The air smelled of iron and ozone.
In the Stormwall, the ground was unsuitable for burials, and wood came at a premium. These were prepared to be shipped away.
His Waxenmare made a terrible barking shriek below him in response to his shifting Aura.
“Reporting to Rainshadow Long…” One of the guards started.
***
We skirteed the mountains edge, drawing ever closer to the looming forms of the titanic Spiritbeasts clashing in the sky above. Old scars and new wounds covered them, visible from this close, leaking qi and ichor into the boiling sky. A hundred lesser beasts clashed in the air around them.
We needed to cross the spiritbeast horde before either of the titanic monsters fell. Once one died, the victorious horde would swell over the other in a tide in a qi-rich flesh, devouring the losing army and growing in strength.
Spiritbeasts didnt cultivate. They grew more powerful by eating, and eating, and eating. They would devour mountains and drink oceans, leaving behind barren wastes as they swept over them.
I leaned forward on my mount, the veil blowing back in the wind. The rain peppered me, chilling my robe. Beneath the clash of the monsters, I felt inordinately small. Everything I had accumulated, leaping forward years in my cultivation, was nothing to the very forces of nature themselves. Spiritbeast horde or Titan, if I wanted control of my destiny, I needed more power than I had.
Today, I gambled with my life. It was more likely I’d live if I ran forward intsead of backward.
The ground rumbled from the sound and force of a war between monsters, the trees flattened around me in scars left from the conflict. Vast swathes of the treeline were flattened, bloody chunks all that remained to tell the story of the monsters who had fought here.
We passed beyond the edge of the fight without incident.
“Don’t slow!” Wen shouted. The boars chuffed complaints now, shaking their heads and letting out pitiful whines.
Flashes of lightning illuminated the forest with the intensity of a morning sun as the Spiritbeasts released pseudo-techniques; shaped qi honed only by the shape of their meridians and their instincts. Inspite of that lack of control, they could often show powers beyond a cultivator of a similar tier; thier bodies were shaped for that purpose and that purpose only.
Through the rain, the forest lit ablaze as a bar of a light ripped through the horizon. A plume of steam and smoke rose into the sky then disappeared behind the rain as the technique ended.
We continued moving, leaving the fight far behind us. The noise and light dimmed, still audible over the storm, and when the sky lit up, it no longer revealed the whole of the world.
“Sai — ”
Wen shouted. [Danger Sense] went off. I was too slow to react.
My face hit the ground first. Then my bag. I went end over end, the backpack on me falling to pieces as I was thrown over the muddy terrain. I tried to suck in a breath and only found mud before I pushed myself off the ground.
My boar was in the jaw of a monster of emerald green scales, yellow light of the storm trees glinting off of it sickly in the rain. It walked on six horrible legs ending in claws longer than my sword. Its body stretched back into the treeline.
[Omen Alligator, Third Realm Water/Life Spiritbeast]
[A spiritbeast selectively evolved in a tropical paradise. Semi aquatic. The Omen Alligator was once ranched and revered, kept as a common animal of burden in the Heavenly Cloud. Highly intelligent.]
When its eyes blinked, they closed the wrong way. It focused on me. Then it swallowed my mount in a single bite.
I needed to run, but my supply pack was completely gone. I needed Littlebird’s egg. I felt at the pinprick connection between my Dantian that bled a steady stream of qi away before diving toward it in the mud, pulling free Littlebird’s egg with a sucking noise. I shaped the Anti-Lightning Herald movement technique.
It was a combat art suitable for fighting; not my fastest movement technique, but one that I could control in combat. I shot forward just in time for the Spiritbeast’s jaw to snap shut dangerously close to my back. I felt the rush of hot air from its breath as I threw myself forward.
The creature must have been waiting for the first Spiritbeasts to break and run, not attached to either horde, just a predator cleaning up the scraps. At the Fourth Realm, it would become a proper titan itself.
I kept running for the treeline. [Danger Sense] activated again.
I threw myself to the ground. It hurt; the full force of the technique slammed me into the mud. I felt my chest bruise against the wooden log half buried under the dirt as I looked back.
The Omen Alligator was faster than the Anti-Lightning Herald technique, and it was right above me. Remnants of qi from its inherent movement technique flickered in the air around it in the shape of water. Hot wet drool dripped on my face.
I needed to use the Anti-Light movement technique. But it was so much faster that it would leave even Wen behind.
I shaped it anyway, throwing myself to my feet and forward. Wen wasn’t here to protect me right now anyway.
The mud refused to give me traction, causing me to slide forward for a split second before I found my footing and began to glide. The creature’s jaws found purchase on the edge of my robe in that split second, tearing it, and then the world started to blur as I stretched forward.
The noise in the world sounded distorted, stretched, far away. There was nothing left of my supplies. I needed to find the road through the Stormwall before the Spiritbeast horde broke.
I reached it right as my dantian reached the half way point. The Anti-Light technique took time to come to a complete stop; I slowed on the other side of the road before turning around to find the ramp up. It connected to the ground. There was no sign there had ever been a road here in the mud.
My eyes searched every shadow for enemies as I walked up the ramp.
But there was nothing.
The sound of the Spiritbeast horde was just a distant rumble. The flashing lightning in the distance may have been from the horde, but it may have also just been lightning. The columns supporting the canopy over the road at its sides acted as windows. I held Littlebird to my chest, staring out over the forest.
“Are you cold?” I asked the egg.
It didn’t reply. I could feel a sense of discomfort from the egg. A pang of horror feel me.
“Will you be alright?” I asked. I pressed the egg close to me. It felt like the cold and rain was sapping the heat from it. I brushed the mud from the sides of the egg. I didn’t carry Littlebird this far to let him die.
Wen would be fine, most likely. His cultivation was higher than he told me it was. If an inner disciple was in the Fifth Realm, he was surely at least in the Fourth as an outer disciple.
I needed to worry about myself. I needed to keep moving forward.
Walking on foot would be too slow. And it would be exhausting. The movement technique would drain me much faster than just riding on a mount. Without dry wood, I couldn’t start a fire for warmth anywhere here. The wind cut across the bridge and chilled my back.
Reaching the tournament late wasn’t as important as not dying was.
The good news was that constantly draining and refilling my Dantian using the movement technique would expand my capacity, pushing me through the Second Realm.
I just wished it was warmer.
***
The Omen Alligator regarded himself as a temporarily embarrassed Emperor. THE Emperor. He could feel that he was close to becoming a proper leader, not far away from the monstrous beings warring in the sky above him. Soon they would have to pay him tribute.
He needed something special for his next good meal. He could feel it. Just one more appetizing meal and others would recognize him as an Emperor too. And he knew that the meal he almost ate could do it.
In cultivator terms, he was at the peak of the Third Realm.
Royalty was something imprinted into his very lineage, a bloodline passed down from antiquity, a time when this place was more than a valley of storms, but a heavenly paradise.
The Emperor puffed out a hot breath, visible in the rain, and blinked its sideways eyes, turning to the second man.
Wen stared up at The Emperor with a bored expression. The Emperor was immediately wary. He sniffed. Wen didn’t smell like danger. He didn’t smell like the two monsters fighting in the sky. He smelled like nothing. And not just like a meal of no value; everything around Wen was ever so slightly off, dampened to his senses. It made The Emperor nervous.
The Emperor snorted derisively.
“Do Omen Alligator’s taste good…” Wen muttered to himself.
The Emperor decided that he should chase his meal, and shot off into the woods.
Comments
Raid Boss
confusing "other stories use this" with "you must use this" as i can make them whatever i want
lenkite
"Spiritbeasts didnt cultivate. They grew more powerful by eating, and eating, and eating." Confusing [Demonic Beasts] and [Spirit Beasts] in xinxia.
Gopard
Interesting changes, not earthshattering I feel like but give the chapter a bit more polish for sure,thanks!
