Chương 187: Fight!

You know when you have been in the cultivation world for too long when you start being able to read the expressions on the faces of giant insects, well that was exactly the situation I found myself in when the Mantis raised its bladed limb above Yan Ziheng's unprotected back, I was almost certain the thing's mandibles moved with satisfaction. It didn't get to enjoy that satisfaction for very long though.

My vines tore up through the earth and wrapped around each of the Mantis's bladed limbs, the beast's own forward momentum pulled against them before they went taut and held it in place. That was the opening I had been waiting for. My scorpion tail came out from under my robes, four feet of bark-scaled vine-tendoned appendage that moved so quickly that most eyes wouldn't have been able to follow it, the tip drove straight through the creature's core before it even had a chance to pull against the vines holding it.

Enough force to shatter the core, but not too much that it would damage anything else. A clean kill so the corpse was still intact and worth a lot of spirit stones. I stored it in my ring before it even finished falling.

"Interesting." Yan Li's voice came from directly in front of me. I hadn't even seen him cross the battlefield, one moment he was far away and then he was simply there, studying the spot where my tail was already retracting back into my lower spine beneath my robes, his expression was completely unreadable. What drew my attention more than anything though was the golden energy moving around him, which felt heavy, like it carried something that ordinary qi simply didn't have.

Then he bowed, which I wasn't expecting at all.

"You have my thanks for saving my clan member." Behind me, Yan Ziheng made a sound that was somewhere between choking and gasping as the reality of how close he had just come to dying flashed through his mind, he spun around with his face drained of color.

"I... you... that was a Stage 7 beast, how did you..." He couldn't seem to string the words together properly.

"Just lucky timing," I shrugged, because the last thing I needed was people starting to ask questions about how a Qi Condensation Stage 6 cultivator had just casually dealt with a Stage 7 beast. Yan Li's eyes narrowed at that answer, but he didn't push it, instead he looked back toward the main part of the battle where the Stage 9 beasts were still engaging with our strongest fighters.

"Shouldn't you be over there helping?" I asked, nodding in the direction where Liu Chang was exchanging blows with the Alpha Wolf that were shaking the ground.

"There is nothing I would rather do," Yan Li replied, sounding frustrated, "but a Stage 9 opponent requires time to properly deal with, and during that time too many of our people would fall to the lower stage beasts breaking through our lines. Sometimes leading means accepting that you can't fight the battle you want to fight." That made sense so I nodded. A Stage 9 fight could take several minutes even for someone at Yan Li's level and those minutes had a cost.

"No barrier is without weakness," he said before he moved, looking at the Symphony Shield, "the gaps will appear, watch for them." Then he was gone back into the chaos of the battle, the golden energy trailing behind his movements.

"I didn't even sense it approaching," Yan Ziheng said quietly, and his hands were still shaking when he began reforming the seals for barrier maintenance, "if you hadn't been here, I would have..."

"But I am here," I said, cutting that thought off before it could go anywhere useful, "so focus on the barrier instead of what didn't happen." He nodded and started working but I could still see his hands were not entirely steady, so I decided to give him something to get his mind off it.

"Pay attention," I said and pulled out a full stack of explosive talismans while looking toward the cluster of beasts that were beginning to overwhelm Su Yue's position on the far side of the defensive line. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I let my qi flow into the first one and the paper started glowing with a deep red, then I threw the entire stack at once rather than one or two at a time like most cultivators would have done.

The talismans spread out through the air and when they detonated across the thickest clusters of lower stage beasts, the results were quite significant, it wouldn't do much against anything Stage 5 or higher, but it thinned out the lesser beasts. That was going to save people a lot of trouble and maybe a few of them would keep their lives because of it.

That was when I noticed Chu Feng doing something odd with the Dreamwalker corpse he had killed outside the village earlier, the one he had been keeping in his storage ring, and now he was placing it among the other beast corpses like this was a normal thing to do.

"Master," Azure said, pulling my attention away from that, "an underground is heading your way." I didn't wait even a moment. My left palm hit the ground, and I activated the shockwave rune inscribed there, the earth rippled outward from the point of contact, and a very unhappy Stage 7 Earth Digging Mole came bursting out of its tunnel. It was at that same moment that a spirit wolf of the same stage chose to come charging through a gap that had opened in our defensive line. Yan Ziheng almost squealed at that.

"Just keep the formations running," I told him as I moved away from the barrier. Fighting two Stage 7 beasts anywhere near the Symphony Shield would be a disaster, one solid hit from either of them and a whole section would collapse and then the lower ranked beasts would pour through. The mole attacked first with its claws trailing light as they cut through the air and I activated Aegis Mark in time to absorb most of the force but still got pushed back several feet from the impact alone.

"The wolf is moving to your left," Azure said, "it wants you focused on the mole while it flanks."

"Understood," I said and sent out a spread of razor-sharp leaves using the Leaf Storm rune. The wolf had to dodge right, and the mole went back underground to avoid the attack and that was exactly the spacing I needed. I hit the ground again with the shockwave rune at full power and the mole erupted from the earth a second time and this time I was already positioned for it, my scorpion tail struck directly at its eyes. The beast pulled back hard from the pain.

I activated Titan's Crest and drove my fist into its chest with the strength enhancement rune on my left hand burning with power combined with Phantom Strike and even then, it was like hitting dense stone. But I felt something crack inside the beast's chest, dark blood started coming from its mouth and the crystalline claws had actually chipped trying to absorb the blow. I used Blink Step to get directly above it to press the advantage.

"Careful, the wolf is…" I had to burn the second Blink Step charge immediately without even finishing the movement, the wolf's lightning-wrapped fangs closed on empty air where I had been a fraction of a second before and left a crater in the earth with electricity still jumping between the edges. I activated Explosive Seed and flicked three red sun energy-infused seeds at the mole while it was still trying to recover.

It tried to pull back but I had Vine Whip already ready and it held the beast in place just long enough for the seeds to reach it. The detonation was more impressive than the talisman stack had been, the mole's damaged chest couldn't absorb a focused blast like that, so its core shattered and the body went into my storage ring before it had finished dropping. The wolf didn't give me even a moment after that. Its first strike came low and aimed to disembowel me with lightning-charged claws.

I got Aegis Mark up in time to absorb the hit, but when it immediately followed with an overhead bite aimed at my shoulder, the barrier shattered under that second impact. I used Blink Step to get ten feet back and tried to create enough space to set something up properly. The wolf had apparently anticipated exactly that.

It moved the instant I reappeared and its lightning-enhanced speed matched the teleport as its claws cut through the air right where my head had been a fraction of a second after I ducked under them. As it closed the distance again, I activated the shockwave rune and sent a ripple of force directly into its path, which caught the wolf mid-lunge and threw its balance off for just a fraction of a second.

This was the fraction I needed to get my scorpion tail out and drive the neurotoxin-coated tip through the lightning armor on its flank deep enough to deliver the payload. The wolf's qi flared and burned away most of the poison but not all of it. I could see after that its movements weren't quite as sharp as they had been before, slightly slower and slightly less precise.

Its counter-attack was still devastating enough, it twisted in the air and turned its entire body into a conductor and launched a full-power bite directly at my throat. I spent another Blink Step to avoid being electrocuted and decapitated at the same time. The beast kept pressing, each strike coming faster and more precisely calibrated than the one before it, as if it was actively learning how I moved in real time. I needed to finish this before it caught me.

My red sun energy wasn't infinite, and this wolf was far more resilient than I expected. I activated Titan's Crest, Vine Whip and Leaf Storm at the same time while layering reinforced plant matter around my fist. The wolf saw the technique taking shape and lunged forward to interrupt it before it could finish forming, but that was what I wanted. My reinforced fist and its electrified fangs met head on.

The impact cracked the ground beneath both of us as the two techniques strained against each other and I was almost there, just slightly more and I could cut directly at its neck, and that was when it happened. A massive spiritual pressure came down from above. I glanced up to see an eagle-type beast, its wingspan easily twenty feet across, dropping out of the night sky like the world's most aggressive diving instructor, but what was more concerning was its cultivation. This was a Stage 8 beast.