v5c30: Full Burn

The key to an effective ambush is shock and surprise.

Pretty basic, honestly. The question was how exactly one achieved said surprise. A fusillade of powerful techniques? A profound formation?

I had neither of those, so I settled on the next best thing.

Namely, dome the fucker who “felt right.”

Honestly, I wasn’t entirely thinking when the man had touched down beside the tree I had just gotten to. He felt right, so I wound up my shovel and swung for the fences.

Now, baseball swinging a normal shovel, as a normal man, has a very good chance of killing them.

My shovel, flooded with my Qi and propelled as hard as I could swing, was somewhere around “mountain leveling”.

Instead of turning into chunky salsa, however, something flared just before impact and the man simply went flying for a few hundred meters before he hit the ground and skidded backwards.

I, meanwhile, stepped out from behind the tree, scowl fixed firmly on my face, and letting my Qi really show just how unhappy I was with the impromptu invasion my lands were being subjected to.

“Ho ho ho. Happy Solstice,” I said, with a lot more cheer than I felt, and it had the desired effect of making everybody stop and focus on me. I glared at the demonic cultivators. Had they killed a bunch of people to get those Shrouded Mountain Sect uniforms?

Immediately after I revealed myself there came the shouts. I was preparing to just ignore them and go straight to swinging, but the words made me pause.

“You’re courting death, you bastard!” one shouted, the line as cliche as it came. The others made various exclamations of anger at my appearance, but the timbre was off.

They sounded angry… but lacked rage. It lacked passion. Cultivators had big emotions, for the most part. Legendary anger. The bitterest sorrows. The fiercest joys.

More than that, I knew the cultivators from the Shrouded Mountain Sect. I had met with the Yingwen guy a few times, and even though he was polite, professional, and cold… even his voice would have carried an undercurrent of offense if I had just domed his leader.

It was there, but it was missing depth for lack of a better word. The other thing is that none of them sounded particularly scared—Yingwen and his guys had had their knees knocking together when I was pouring out my Qi like this, but all that radiated from these cultivators was belligerence.

Secondly, Meimei had said they smelled weird. Not entirely demonic, but weird.

I squinted at the cultivators, who were obviously gearing up for an attack. I looked into one of their eyes, the closest one. His eyes were ever so slightly dull. Nearly imperceptible, but it was something about the back of his eyes.

…if this was meant to be a false flag to get me to attack the Shrouded Mountain Sect… then what better way to do that than to use actual mind-controlled members of said sect?

Which made things a bit complicated. I had people attacking me against their will. It was my people’s lives over theirs, of course, but… well, we’ll see.

“Mind control. Gently, if possible,” I shouted to the others, who were still hidden in the surrounding trees. I heard Tigu and Xiulan curse under their breaths. Hopefully the paralytic poison Meimei had given us would make this possible. Tigu, Xiulan, Xianghua and Yin all burst out of the trees at that moment, going on the offensive.

I had only a moment to see the girls scythe into poor, mind-controlled bastards when I felt a surge of lightning and cursed myself slightly for not keeping on the pressure and instead taking stock of the situation.

My eyes jerked back to the guy I had hit. He had blonde hair with a well-trimmed beard, and a rapidly forming bruise on his forehead where I had hit him.

He looked kind of like the imposter guy, which made me grimace. Did they get both the father and the son with their body-snatcher technique? His body twitched and spasmed, and then he moved. I lifted up my shovel and intercepted the strike, grounding myself as electricity erupted out from the point of impact. It was a punch that made the air scream and the world shake.

My muscles spasmed slightly, but I held firm; I was protecting my home, as was a farmer’s right.

“You, slayer of my son. Did you think you could insult the Shrouded Mountain Sect so and escape our wrath?!” the man roared, our faces inches from each other, and my eyes widened. This voice, compared to the others, had passion. His voice had hate. This man’s eyes, as they met my own, had a spark within. A spark of unbridled rage… but also glee. “I, Zang Zeng of the Shrouded Mountain Sect, will destroy you! Kowtow before me a thousand times and I will kill you swiftly!”

Yet even with that fact, there was still something off about his voice. Like he was speaking it from a script.

A different version of mind control? Could he be broken out of it? Could I defuse this and save him?

My hesitation at this new information cost me. Qi erupted around the man, fully visible and so thick the world trembled.

My eyes widened.

[Fulmination Arts: Heaven’s Searing Rebuke]

A thermobaric bomb went off in my face as Zang Zeng, or whatever was controlling him, instantly went for the big guns. The world turned white.

Metal ground Qi— I thought as the man exploded with golden light. I rammed my shovel into the ground and flared my Qi, making a lightning rod like how I did when I showed Washy how electricity functioned. I could take one of his blasts and not feel a thing.

This was not Washy’s lightning. This was a powerful cultivator’s lightning, and physics, to them, was a mere suggestion.

It still partially worked. Some of the lightning was redirected into the earth; the snow sublimated instantly to steam, and the ground melted and turned into slag. The area directly under my shovel heaved and shuddered like I had gotten hit by a localized earthquake. The trees around me exploded as the water within them expanded and turned to steam.

The rest of the man’s Qi met my own. It hurt. It hurt like Hell. Tears sprung to my eyes as my entire body shuddered as I contained it—and kept it away from the bee behind my ear. It was buzzing with panic, but the little girl held fast.

There was no time to really think about the attack. Barely enough time for my wits to return.

[Fulmination Arts: Blade of Heaven’s Judgement]

There was a sword descending on me, trailing bolts of blue lightning. It was also two stories tall and coursing with Qi.

My shovel was already in the ground, which was loosened from the previous strike, so I dug. The earth parted for me like water and the world around me quaked. I went down diagonally, and that proved to be the smart decision as the sword cut through the ground like butter and stray bolts still lashed painfully against me.

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I have to get him away from the others if he’s just going full destruction mode. Gold cracks formed on my knuckles. My sluggish Qi pumped. It would not be the real technique, but it would be its foundation.

Old teachings filled my head as I landed on an underground rock.

He was still standing on the ground.

I gave a mental apology to the earth as I fused my Qi with it and jumped.

The bones of the earth came with me.

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To Rou Tigu, their ambush had started rather well. Her Master had struck a mighty blow against a powerful enemy, sending him reeling. He had focused all the enemy’s attention upon him, his overpowering Qi smothering their enemy’s senses so they could not feel Tigu and her companions. Tigu had even spotted one of the enemy’s scouts—an ugly bird that had been driving her Mistress to distraction with its foul smell.

When her Master had declared that their enemies were being mind-controlled, it made perfect sense—her Master having seen through the foe’s foul ploy instantly.

It incensed Tigu. To take control of people and force them to fight against their will? It was just like the slavers at Grass Sea City, but worse!

She swore an oath to herself at that moment; the men here would be free of whatever had stolen their minds, and their captors would face justice.

Tigu, Xiulan, Xianghua, and Yin smashed into their foes. The surprise was total and Tigu threw a rock at the bird, which exploded into a shower of black blood.

They downed five people before their enemy began to react in earnest, and Tigu was certain this spoiling attack would be as successful as her Master envisioned it. Her opponents had disturbed reaction times, and Tigu grabbed one of Xiulan’s blades, coated in one of Mistress’s paralytics.