Sighing, Cha Ming closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he could recover, and if he could, he had no idea how long it would take. For now, he could only use his transcendent force. He coaxed his wounded soul back into its place in his spiritual sea and sent out his transcendent force. Looking around this way was like seeing in black and white. He could see no color, no detail. But at least he could function.
Knowing that time was short, he picked up his Clear Sky Staff and walked over to the center of the temple, eyes closed. Then he transformed the staff into a knife and carved a message just like the one before. These messages, along with the destruction of the Spirit Temple, the Blood Master Monastery, and the defective Breaker, would incriminate the Wang family. The disappearance of their permanent members from the North and their treasury would reinforce that. Even if it was all sabotage, and the karmic trail wasn’t quite clear, their resentment toward the Wang family would cause them a falling out in both the North and the South. As for Pai Xiao, who was to say he hadn’t gone missing along with them? Furthermore, his karma wasn’t traceable like it was for others; Wang Jun had assured him of that.
Cha Ming walked out of the gray shield covering the monastery. He’d barely stepped out when he heard another roar, but this one was a muffled one. It was a roar of triumph, a roar of exultation. He scanned the area to the west and discovered that his transcendent force ended at the city wall. Beyond that was emptiness.
The Taotie had come, and with its arrival, transcendent after transcendent, and hundreds of peak-core-formation cultivators, flew out from important city buildings and began fighting it. To the South, Cha Ming was a pain, a manageable annoyance. The Taotie, however, was a different story entirely. With it, they didn’t dare hold back and sent everything they had, transcendents included.
Chapter 35: Leaving
Screaming men, women, and children rushed about as Cha Ming walked away from the smoldering rubble of the Spirit Temple. The shield had faded a short while ago due to his battle with the Shepherd, and its sudden appearance had frightened the local populace. Elsewhere in the city, he felt the Blood Master Monastery’s shield shuddering uncontrollably, as though it would break at any minute. Whereas the Spirit Temple’s shield had failed due to damage to his soul, the other shield was simply running out of energy. Despite the revelation, however, the Space-Time Camera had done its job. The destruction was obvious, but there were no living witnesses to what had transpired.
Now Cha Ming had to face the cold hard truth. He’d agonized over this moment for a long time and wondered about how he could minimize the massive casualties that would undoubtedly result from his actions. It was only now that he felt the cold reality of it: People were dying, good people. Though most of this was due to the untimely detonation of his sabotaged device, which would ideally have been brought north of the wall prior to its activation, the end result was that a third of the palace had been destroyed, and demonic spiders, metallic legs and all, had broken into the city. He couldn’t blame outside interference, either. Regardless of the explosion, he’d planned on doing something similar with the wall prior to leaving. The demonic tide, coinciding with the Taotie’s attack, was simply too much for the city to bear.
Cha Ming was blind now, his normal vision blocked by the Devil-Sealing, Demon-Subduing, and Spirit-Banishing Intent within them. Yet despite this handicap, he could still “see” with his soul. He could feel each wound and each death as it happened. Every bit of suffering he inflicted on the innocent fed a tiny ochre speck of sin that latched onto his soul, tainting it. No amount of merit could get rid of that stain. It could only mask it, outshine it.
What’s done is done, Cha Ming thought, continuing his scan as he walked. Right now, his priority was to escape. He had to decide whether he would run opposite the Taotie, avoiding the location where enemy forces were most concentrated, or if he should fly into the chaos, using the fighting as a smokescreen to escape. All around the Taotie, a dozen transcendents were fighting. The emperor was notably absent, but Cha Ming had noticed him fighting the Life-Leaching Monarch along with the surprisingly powerful Miss Ge.
That didn’t stop the emperor’s sons from fighting, however. They, along with a hundred peak-core-formation cultivators and half-step transcendents, were assisting the transcendents as they could. Prince Shen was especially prominent. He wielded a familiar black spear—Feng Ming’s old lucky spear—using it to great effect against the creature’s now shrinking body. He fought beside two of his sisters, both powerful cultivators of the Ji royal family. Their bodies were laden with valuable treasures that amplified their strength, defense, and speed.
As Cha Ming pondered over his escape plan, a wall suddenly fell beside him as a shock wave came from the fighting near the barracks. A man with a familiar aura was fighting, long weapon in hand lashing out with sweeping strikes that felled dozens at a time. With every strike, he was wounded by the veritable army that surrounded him. Powerful regeneration healed any injuries he sustained.
Is that a trident he’s fighting with? Cha Ming thought. He remembered someone he’d clashed with some time ago. Gong Xuandi? Is that you?
No reply. He was confident in his assessment, however—he knew of no other trident-wielding half-step-blood-awakening cultivator who fought with such ferocity. He was surrounded by dozens of peak-core-formation experts, and five half-step transcendents. Despite his power, he was clearly on the losing end.
To help or not to help, he thought. If he helped, he might blow his cover and ruin everything. They weren’t very good friends, after all, even if the man did serve under Feng Ming due to Gong Shuren’s orders. To help or not to help. What a troubling question.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Feng Ming chastised himself as he dodged sword, spear, and saber while running through the western wing of the palace. He’d taken about half the treasury before being spotted, a heist he was very proud of. His ring was filled with spirit stones, rare gems, medicinal pills, and weapons. Many rare and unique herbs, which had been carefully stored in jade boxes and preserved for over a decade, were now resting happily in the void space on his finger.
His luck wasn’t all good. During his pilfering, he’d triggered an alarm, attracting the remaining few powerhouses in the palace. That included the head of the imperial guard, a half-step-transcendent spear wielder with devastating offensive maneuvers. The man wore black armor instead of the usual golden, and his every attack was filled with destructive lightning.
“Stand still and accept your fate, thief,” the head of the guard said angrily. He swept out with his spear, which generated a black lightning dragon that let out a thunderous roar. The roar paralyzed Feng Ming, who’d been weakened by the Life-Leaching Monarch, for a split second. It was enough for the spear to pierce his armor and graze his shoulder, leaving a three-inch gouge that cut down to the bone.
Lightning ran through his body, scorching the flesh where he’d been struck. In response, he kicked out with his boot. He struck one of the two other individuals attacking him, one of the princes of the Ji Kingdom. His boot struck true, and he pushed off, barely avoiding a saber strike that threatened to cut off his foot. The push allowed him to extricate himself from the spear long enough to catch a deep breath, form hand seals, and blow hard.
A raging inferno appeared from his mouth, surrounding the two princes and the head of the guard. They paused to defend, throwing up qi shields to absorb the torrent of fire. Their sudden defense gave him respite, and the force generated by his technique pushed him out even farther.
He flew down the hallway and took a quick right and a left, into an unoccupied room. There, he hefted the spear he’d found—just a late-core treasure—and smashed open the window, which was surprisingly made from core-grade glass. Was it to protect it from kids playing in the yard just outside? Who knew? What he did know was that there was now a clear path to a side entrance to the palace complex, one usually reserved for servants.
He leapt through the window a
nd barreled toward the closed door, not pausing to open it, kicking out with both his feet, flying horizontally as though he was falling. The door burst open, slamming a poor man who’d just knocked on it against the wall. Winded but otherwise unharmed, the man would never know his good fortune as the head of the guard and the two princes whooshed through it, uncaring of the people that stood in their path.
I need to find Gong Xuandi, Feng Ming thought. He was weak, and there was no way he could fight these three off on his own. Not only was his strength insufficient, but his spear was lacking too. It was pink, for heaven’s sake! The brilliant pink weapon, according to the description left beside it, was called Cherry Blossom’s Dancing Light. It was a light spear, an ornamental one at that, made for graceful dancing. Most of its enchantments relied on illumination and illusion.
That gave him an idea. As he rounded one corner, Feng Ming slashed out with it. Millions of flower petals accompanied the spear light he generated. The pink blossoms filled the air and covered the landscape. These illusory petals also contained charming and calming runes, distracting and slowing down his three pursuers. He used the time it bought to crash into the barracks, where a barebacked fighter covered in blue and gold runes was just about to impale a man with a trident.
Feng Ming flew up beside him, fending off a blow that would otherwise have stabbed the man in the back. He would have survived, of course, but every little bit of vitality mattered. The battle instantly improved for the man, whose opponents began to make careless mistakes, began to slip in blood, whose weapons began to fail. Dodging motions Gong Xuandi made for the chance of escaping were the correct decision, and feints his opponents began making lost their meaning, as he was suddenly able to guess their intention.
With Gong Xuandi’s help, Feng Ming’s life became a little easier as well. The strong, burly man had his back, giving him enough time to pop a few pills he’d pillaged from the vault. He threw a few to Gong Xuandi and downed the rest. Normally it wasn’t wise to take so many at once; if you were unlucky, some negative side effects could crop up.
But Feng Ming had luck in spades. He slashed with Cherry Blossom’s Dancing Light, and the air was filled with pink petals that obscured everyone’s five senses and spiritual force. The closer one was to the spear the better, as there were fewer petals blocking off the opponent you were targeting.
The head of the guard and the two princes who had been chasing Feng Ming joined the encirclement, but it was meaningless, as only so many people could fight in tandem, even in three dimensions. The two kept the floor beneath their feet, wisely cutting the area in which they could be attacked in half. The rate at which they killed intensified, but luck could only go so far. Spears and swords still snuck in, wounding them. Though they mostly struck the unlucky Gong Xuandi, the old emperor was still gravely wounded from his earlier battle. Neither of them would last long in this encirclement.
“What we need,” Feng Ming said, gritting his teeth, “is a miracle. A lucky coincidence. A helping hand.”
He ducked an incoming saber and struck upwards with his spear. The pink spear struck true, catching a man in the throat. He yanked it free, pulling it back just in time to deflect a flying sword that was headed toward his head. It clanked off effortlessly, coincidentally bouncing off the ground and back up into the back of a cultivator who’d stumbled in the fighting.
“If it’s a miracle you need,” Gong Xuandi said. “An old enemy seems to have reached out to me.”
“An old enemy?” Feng Ming asked. “You mean Zhou Li?”
“Cha Ming,” Gong Xuandi said. “He’s offering us a way out. He’s wounded, and he can’t fight or reveal himself.”
“Tell him we’ll take anything we can get, you wonderful, wonderful man,” Feng Ming said.
Gong Xuandi winced. “Unfortunately, he said we’d need to get beaten back to make it work. He wants us to take a dive.”
“Take a dive,” Feng Ming said blankly. He ducked a spear thrust, grabbed the spear from a man, and kicked him back into the crowd of assailants. He then threw his out into a flurry of cherry blossoms, catching a soldier in the face by sheer fluke. “Fine. Let’s do it.”
“You’re serious?” Gong Xuandi said. “You’ll take a dive in the middle of a crucial battle and trust this man with your life?”
“With my life,” Feng Ming said, nodding. They hadn’t interacted much since that time in the woods, only touching base briefly in the Song Kingdom’s succession battle, then later near Beihai. “I might be the luckiest man on the plane, but I’m no miracle worker. Cha Ming, on the other hand, is a bit unlucky. Life always throws all sorts of curve balls at him. He keeps falling and picking himself up over and over again, no matter how difficult. But if there’s one man who can create a miracle for us, it’s him.”
“Yes, sir!” Gong Xuandi said, gritting his teeth. Then he did something insane in this situation. He charged into the crowd of surrounding soldiers, flying up in the air. Feng Ming went with him.
Before, they’d been able to protect themselves against a relatively small encirclement. Now, their opponents could attack them in three dimensions. They didn’t hesitate to throw one technique after another, sending out flying swords, burning dragons, and icy phoenixes of energy to strike them. They pushed like it was the last push in their life, struggling fiercely to beat their way out of encirclement. Their enemies encouraged their flight, giving way for them but circling around, following them as they escaped.
Then one sword came through, then another, then another. Feng Ming took cuts to the arms and legs while Gong Xuandi began taking entire blades in the torso. He didn’t have time to yank them out, so they simply remained there, making him look more like a living pincushion than a human being.
Over here, a voice called out. It came from the floor up ahead.
Feng Ming didn’t hesitate. He used everything he had to push himself off toward what called him. He grabbed Gong Xuandi and noticed everything around them sinking into darkness. The darkness obscured both sight and spirit, an absolute blackness more potent than Feng Ming had ever seen.
Where the floor should have been, they found none. They fell through, then something strong appeared above them. Whether it was a formation or a physical piece of wall, he didn’t know. The darkness faded, and through their spiritual forces, they could sense their opponents even though their opponents could not sense them. Feng Ming noticed that they were in a refuge completely formed by combat sigils. Thin lines of qi ran around them, shielding them, while others were up above, creating the false ground they hid under, where many others stood.
At that moment, a man crashed down from the air into a house beside them. Half the house was instantly demolished, and the man recovered thirty feet later, pulling himself out of a deep gouge. He struck a heroic pose, his yellow armor in sharp contrast to the familiar black spear Feng Ming had lost so long ago.
No way, Feng Ming thought. He recognized the man from a folio he’d seen at a Northern Alliance meeting. That was Prince Shen, without a doubt. The heir to the Ji Kingdom, the most powerful kingdom in the Southern Alliance.
“Young prince, are you all right?” asked the leader of the royal guard, who’d joined the battle against Gong Xuandi once Feng Ming had jumped in.
“It was just a glancing blow,” Prince Shen said, fingering a deep gouge in his chestplate. The gouge didn’t seem burnt or bent; it was simply missing. Like it had never been there in the first place. “The enemy is strong. It threw me from all the way across the city. Fortunately, I had this armor. It was able to absorb the blow for me.”
“You must take care,” the guard leader said. Then he hesitated. “Did you see two strong cultivators, one a spear wielder and one a Haijing royal? They’re wreaking havoc in the city. One of them even stole from our treasury.”
The crown prince’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that while my royal father is fending off the Life-Leaching Monarch to the north, and half the transcendents in the e
ntire South, along with a large contingent of our elites, including myself, my brothers, and two of my sisters, are fighting for the survival of our very city, our very plane, you are here chasing mere thieves?”
The guard leader paled. “I was assigned to guard the palace.”
“The palace is meaningless!” the crown prince shouted. “It’s all meaningless if we don’t save this city, don’t contain this creature. My father’s battle is excusable, because without him, the entire city would fall. But you are all here dealing with petty criminals?” He lifted his spear. “I should cut you down where you stand.”
The leader of the imperial guard, so majestic, so heroic before, could only bow his head in shame. He gripped his spear tightly, gulped, then looked up. “What are your orders, my prince?”
“Your orders are to fly to where our elites are and help destroy that creature,” Prince Shen said. “Do it now!”
“Yes, sir!” the guard leader said.
Just as they were about to fly off, however, the prince suddenly gasped and fell to one knee. “My prince!” the man said, flying up to him.
“I’ll be fine,” Prince Shen said, panting heavily. “I just need a little time. The others, they don’t have time. Go help them.”
“I’ll stay and—”
“Go!” Prince Shen yelled.
The head of the royal guard hesitated but saluted. “Let’s go, men. We have a duty to fulfill. Not just for our country, but for the South and to everyone who lives here.” They rose up in the air and shot out toward the beast, which now towered above the city walls.
Feng Ming pondered attacking the crown prince as the men left. He was a juicy target, someone they had a bounty on in the North. A surprise strike in the back was all it would take, and the spear he’d lost would be his once more. So he jumped out of the hole, concealing his presence as he snuck up behind the man. He gripped his spear, ready to stab down at the man’s exposed back, when the man changed before his very eyes. His face, his aura, his armor. Everything. Revealing a familiar figure: Cha Ming.
Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists Page 45
