Chapter 22 – Battle is the Great Redeemer

Ren realized he had never known true conflict. He had been a frog at the bottom of the well. To look up at a small patch of the sky and think that was all there was to it. All those fights, duels, and beast hunts were child’s play to war. And war is what was happening here.

Countless beasts had smashed against the walls seemingly without end. In the section of the defenses where Ren and Bao Hua stood, they were faced by storm tigers that had the ability to manipulate wind to sharpen their claws beyond belief. They acted with a bestial ferocity that was hard to defend against.

All of his skills had been employed; his sword fighting was reinforced by the arrays he employed. It had taken a bit of preparation, but he had set up the rudimentary stage of the wind razor strike formation. It had helped prevent a lot of the ranged attacks of the beasts. With it, Ren made sure to cover Bao Hua primarily but helped out his other neighbors when he could spare his focus. They occasionally repaid the favor. A girl wielding a flying sword helped stop a leaping beast that Ren failed to notice in time. On the other side was a slightly older man who would occasionally throw out a dagger at an opportunity.

Large movements were restricted in the limited space, and Ren was relying on the speed of the Earth Striding Leap in short bursts instead of the distance it covered. When a beast broke past his sword’s range, he relied on his fists. When he found himself outnumbered, Hua leveraged his power to neutralize the threat.

While Ren had fought alongside others, this battle was practically forcing him to fight cooperatively just to stay in the fight. Their teamwork had its kinks, but every wound they garnered was a lesson that quickly refined their ability. Ren started to focus on controlling the flow of the battle, leaving Hua to crush resistance. He tried to pick out targets, defend against ranged attacks, keep them from becoming surrounded, and all while covering his allies.

Bao Hua, on the other hand, had been wielding the Tortoise Defender with increased familiarity. His movements were sharper, and he was no longer being dragged around by the heavy sword as much. He hadn’t mastered the technique by a long shot, but battle was the fiery crucible in which true heroes were forged. His enlightenment had clearly had some effect, but even Hua couldn’t yet say what it was. Only that channeling fire qi through the sword was easier than his other attributes.

Their exhaustion was mounting rapidly, and they were learning just how draining using qi techniques could be if not managed correctly. The air was filled with qi of all types, but the rate at which they could replenish their stores while fighting was at a snail’s pace compared to their usual speed when meditating. They both had to slow their use of techniques and focus on just reinforcing their bodies.

Naturally, doing so led to them being unable to fight at their best. Wounds were accumulating, and their focus was starting to wane. They were really fortunate that neither of them had been critically incapacitated or encountered a foe beyond their means. Yet for every moment they fought on, it was getting more likely. Ren was worried they were one mistake from taking a debilitating injury and shouted out with a strangled gasp,

“We need to retreat! Let’s swap out, Hua.”

He wasn’t even sure he had been heard over the noise of the fighting and called out again. This time, Bao Hua started slowly stepping back. Ren looked back and saw there were a couple of disciples ready to take their place and indicated to them to switch positions. With a nod, an older-looking disciple stepped forward and, with a wave, threw out an array of talismans. Under the cover of the deafening explosions, the two of them fell back and collapsed the moment they reached safety.

They sucked in rough breaths, too tired to even move from where they fell. As they looked at each other, they started laughing weakly. That had been some experience! Overhead, cultivators continued to fly back and forth on swords. Ren couldn’t even feel jealous because they were likely going to the fights further in. If the fighting was so vicious here, he couldn’t even imagine how brutal it was over there in the inner regions.

As they gradually regained the strength to walk, they started to head towards the camp center to see how much they had earned. That was when they realized the time. Not even a bell of time had passed when it felt like they had been fighting for half a day! They weren’t foundation establishment stage cultivators with qi refined bodies but this was still an embarrassingly short duration. They really were lacking in endurance.

Ren threaded a bit of qi into his token to check how many points he had earned and saw it list 412. According to the charts, they received as many points as the layer of the beasts they fought. For a 7th layer qi gathering realm, 7 points , 8th layer for 8 points, and so on. The higher-stage beasts went for a lot more points. The foundation establishment stage beasts began at 50 points. That was just another indicator of how much crossing realms increased your power. No wonder the strife stele was dominated by inner and core sect disciples.

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From the look on Bao Hua’s face, he was thinking something similar.