Threads 108-Descent 10

Ling Qi was a little surprised by the simplicity of the plan. Some part of her still expected grand and intricate gambits from a cultivator strategist, but she supposed it made sense. This wasn’t a heist or a burglary; this was smashing a shop’s front window to test the response times of the guard, or a gang burning a stall to prove that yes, they were serious about the money.

They stood amongst the thick fungal trees on the hill overlooking the fortress, which was situated several kilometers north and west of their entry point to the cavern.

“Are you ready for this?” Ling Qi asked Su Ling as a single silver wisp drifted out to the edge of the forest.

“As ready as I am for anything involving you,” Su Ling retorted dryly.

“You can’t blame me for this one. I was following you,” Ling Qi joked back. “Seriously though, Su Ling, do you think you’re ready?”

Su Ling grimaced, her ears lying flat against the sides of her head. “Nah, but it’s not like I have the hard part. Me and Flowers just gotta protect the beacon and make sure the rest of you can bug out.”

“Not really the point, but I get it,” Ling Qi murmured, glancing toward Bian Ya, who stood a short distance away, crouched in front of her spirit beast. They seemed to be having a private conversation. “I trust you to have my back.”

“I guess I trust you to have my front, crazy girl,” Su Ling said huffily. “Besides, we have that Xuan guy. He’s some kinda ducal boy like the snake princess, right?”

“This one will endeavor to match the praise of Sister Su.” Xuan Shi kneeled a few meters away, examining the scores of ceramic plates which Ling Qi knew to be a potent defensive formation. “It is the pride of Xuan that the land itself shall break ere we will.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to test that down here under a few million tonnes of rock,” Ling Qi said. “We’ll be relying on all of you though. It’s only a matter of time till we’re going to have to retreat.”

Xuan Shi dipped his head. “This one will see to his duty. Miss Ling may rely upon that.”

“Indeed,” Bian Ya said, brushing dirt from her gown as she straightened up. “Ling Qi, you are being called to the front.”

Ling Qi dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Good luck, everyone.”

As the others reciprocated her farewell, she turned and faded into the shadow of the trees, heading for the edge of the forest.

Ling Qi could already see her destination. Their position lay at the bottom of a valley whereas the fortress occupied a hilltop. Built from blocks of white bone, the thing bristled like the shell of an insect. Five pointed towers rose, equidistant from one another, joining sturdy walls whose upper reaches were marked by angular spikes. The central structure was a stepped pyramid of black stone marked by luminescent and foreign carvings.

<Do you understand the plan, Zhengui?> Ling Qi thought as she flitted forward.

<Zhengui understands. Together with Big Sister and Hanyi, we are going to put on a very loud show!>

Ling Qi chuckled to herself. Good enough. After Guan Zhi broke a hole in their defenses with the initial assault, she and Liao Zhu were to move into the breach and begin laying about while avoiding stealthier tactics. Ji Rong was paired with her to assist with enemies who proved too tough for her to run over or who would otherwise impede her general havoc-raising, attention-gathering role.

It was a little ironic that he was acting as her support.

<And you, Hanyi? I know this wasn’t the sort of stage you had in mind,> Ling Qi thought.

<This is this, and that is that. I can’t wait to do a proper duet with Sis!> Hanyi boasted.

Guan Zhi would have to pace herself due to the cost of using fourth realm techniques down here, saving her strength for the inevitable reinforcements.

<Sixiang?> Ling Qi thought as she approached the wood’s end.

<I’ve got this. Just worry about yourself,> Sixiang replied.

She arrived at the forest’s edge a moment later, landing in a crouch beside Guan Zhi. “Reporting in,” she said evenly as she stood up.

“Very good. Our retreat route is plotted?” Guan Zhi asked.

“The route is plotted out,” Ling Qi agreed. She had already shared the map with Bian Ya, who would be guiding the retreat.

“Finally. Time to actually do something,” Ji Rong said, grinning as he looked down the hill.

Liao Zhu, crouched on a branch, was not so crude in his expression, but there was a visible tension in his shoulders.

Her commander merely nodded, standing with her arms behind her back. “Get to your positions then. I am not my uncle. It would be unwise to be near while I unleash my power.”

Ling Qi joined the others in acknowledging her words. She leaped away from the little clearing, flitting through the tall grass where the very last of the fungal trees grew.

But she couldn’t help but keep an eye behind her where she could feel the gathering of power.

Guan Zhi, standing in the knee-high grass, exhaled and rotated her arms, bringing her hands together in front of her chest, elbows pointed out. The air vibrated. The valley shook. In a circle two meters around her feet, grass flattened as if crushed by an immense weight. The fungal trees shook and bowed, branches ripped down to be crushed into the flattened dirt. Then the circle widened.

Four meters.

Tree trunks groaned and strained and screamed and shattered to splinters.

Eight meters.

Dust and wood shards failed to fall to earth, pulled irresistibly toward Guan Zhi, an orbiting sphere of debris. The air shimmered, and Ling Qi could feel what little light there was distorting.

Sixteen meters.

Naught stood higher than her feet in the whole of the circle, and Guan Zhi’s hand darkened to the color of blackened bronze, snapped out, catching a stone from the cloud of debris.

Thirty-two meters.

Only a handful of seconds had passed. Cries of alarm were beginning to rise from the fortress, and Ling Qi could hear the faint sizzle of impurity burning flesh from within the warped and darkening cloud.

Sixty-four meters.

As Ling Qi completed the arc of her leap and landed atop a still standing tree, she saw the blurry form of Guan Zhi move, cocking her arm back, and then a boom of thunder as a projectile whizzed out. Ling Qi tightened her hands upon the branch as the wind screamed and her perch rocked in the passage of the missile.

Ling Qi was just barely able to see it, the ragged stone Commander Guan had thrown. When Guan Zhi had snatched it, the stone had been the size of a fist; now, it was a perfect sphere the size of a marble, and air and light alike warped around it.

The stone struck the tower with an echoing boom. Ling Qi shielded her eyes from dust, and the noise of crumbling masonry rang out, washing over her as the sphere of warped light expanded a dozen times over. Blocks of bone, enhanced by the shishigui’s foreign formations, crumbled to powder, ripped inward toward the center of the distorted, smoky gray sphere two score meters wide that expanded outward from the point of impact.

Ling Qi could feel the screams from within the vanishing tower, even if the actual sound was unable to escape the circle. It lasted only a second, and when it vanished, a compressed sphere of dust and stone the size of her head dropped to the ground, oozing pinkish froth, leaving a perfect spherical scoop missing from the tower. At the edges of the scoop, severed formations sparked and spat, and the air trembled with the fluctuations of the destabilized array.

Inside, Ling Qi saw a scene of confusion and alarm. Shishigui who had been patrolling the walls had fallen back on the floor and stared, those inside the tower gaped at the hole in their defenses, and the many individuals in the courtyard were scrambling to respond.

Ling Qi leaped from her perch.

Zhengui landed in the courtyard with a ground shaking boom.

Balanced on her toes at the highest point of his shell, Ling Qi raised her flute to her lips as The Mist rolled forth from the singing blade which circled overhead. Standing on a lower spike, Hanyi laughed and raised her hands and her voice in the Spring’s End Aria.

Ling Qi joined her, and together, they brought winter to the underworld. Frost spread across stone and flesh alike as the temperature dropped, and in The Mist, frost coalesced into haunting skeletal shadows whose raspy voices joined the song, even as frozen claws tore into rubbery grey flesh.

Below her, Gui bellowed, and the frozen earth cracked as tendrils and roots reached up to spear unready foes. The roots continued to spiral and climb up crumbling bone walls to stab and grab at enemies in the broken halls. Above, smoke rose from Zhen’s maw as he snapped down lightning fast, sinking his fangs into a squealing shishigui and flung it away, flames leaping from its wounds.

Yet her enemies were not overwhelmed. In the handful of seconds after she had appeared, the wide open and chaotic courtyard saw order already forming, drill sergeants and officers howling and yipping for their comrades.

To her left was something like a kennel where shishigui stood gaping as dozens of rat beasts cowered and yowled in confusion. A single shishigui almost twice as tall as the others and clad in heavy chitin armor let out a bellowing bark which silenced the yowling, and before Ling Qi’s eyes, the chaotic mass began to fall into order as lesser herders joined in, their qi propagating through the pack and each other.

To her right was a short, twisting tower which looked like a carven waterspout. Two of the dancing assassins stood at the entrance, already recovering their poise.

And in the center was the pyramid keep from which she could sense many gathering auras.

Just a short distance away, a squad of the creatures armed with slings seemed to be forming up, preparing to barrage her, guided by a pair of low third realm officers.

Then Liao Zhu landed in their center, and his arms blurred. Weeping red wounds opened across one of the third realm officer’s throat, wrists, and inner thighs, and the creature let out a strangled scream as he collapsed, gushing blood from his everything. The creature’s companion struck out, and his spear slashed through Liao Zhu’s mask only for his form to blur. Then, there were two Liao Zhu, arms blurring and flashing as his knives butchered the squad like animals being carved up for market. His twin forms strode untouched through them like a whirlwind of steel and death, heading for the entrance of the pyramid.

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