Chapter 41: The Fang Clan

Chapter 41: The Fang Clan

The second they first felt the tongs of flame licking at them, Zhang Shuying acted. Behind each of them, a fierce and fast wind blew, pushing them from behind. The direct boost to their speed was negligible, but the circulation of air around them helped mix the alternating streams of freezing cold and burning air. This had the effect of keeping the temperature immediately around them within the tolerances that Mei Xian’s lute allowed them to withstand.

It was by no means comfortable, and none of them wanted to take longer than they had to, but they would survive.

Further helping them along, Liming’s technique flowed around their ankles, speeding them forward, and shadows from Gaun Li obscured their way, but helped dull the heat. Paike could do nothing but lower his head and charge like a brute, his arms pumping and legs straining as he tried to keep up with his much more nimble teammates.

They might have started out ahead of him, but soon he pushed past them, his max speed higher than theirs, even if it took him longer to get up to it. His entrance into each of the different temperature changes ever so slightly helped cushion the blow for the ones behind. It got hotter and then colder, and then even hotter, and then even colder, until they were finally through.

Last time they had all tried to make it on their own, Paike had gone first and just powered through. With no techniques to help him, the others had trouble. Several times, they had to dive off to the side into the cool water below and swim back to start when they were either too slow or overwhelmed by the temperature changes. It had gotten frustrating, and what started out as helpful advice about each other’s techniques turned into much more acidic comments.

Unwanted suggestions about one’s cultivation technique were always rude. That was even from people who were experts in related arts. Unless they were elders or instructors directly responsible for one’s instruction it was best to wait for an ask for help. That no one of them knew much about any cultivation, let alone each other, had only made things much worse.

Liming, surprisingly, had some of the most trouble. She just wasn’t heavy, or fast enough to really push through everything, the fire and ice qi almost formed a physical barrier to stop her. Mei Xian had also struggled, having not prepared any sort of song for this trial, and had to simply win through with her own effort. Both of them had eventually been unable to make it on their own.

Paike had gone back and helped a couple of times, but he could only do so much, as they just couldn’t endure what he had. Eventually, they all made it through, with him acting as a bulwark against the fire and ice qi. This time they worked together from the beginning and it had only taken them a tiny fraction of the time of their previous attempt. That and they were prepared.

Right in front of the fifth and final obstacle, Paike looked over to see if he could find the team they were racing against. But looking back, even past the previous stage, he still could not see them coming out of the forest. Either they had finished long ago, or Paike’s team was moving much faster than he realized. They felt much faster than their previous attempt, but the other team could have gotten faster, too.

Ahead of them, a series of swinging hammers and a beam, no more than a hand span across, spanned a large body of water. Running on the beam was possible, if difficult. However, the hammers swinging from side to side as they were released from some sort of timing mechanism, it meant they couldn’t just sprint through. Most of the time, they had to sprint and then stop, then sprint and stop, which was exceedingly difficult on a thin beam.

Only those with high physical cultivation could manage it, and that was probably the point.

They had eventually learned the pattern, and Guan Li had even tried going underneath the beam, though when he swung beneath it, it had suddenly become intangible and he had fallen below. This time, though, Paike had a different idea.

“Let me go first.” Paike asked the others. No one had any objections. If anything they were all much more focused this time around. Even Liming was taking this seriously. Only speaking when they had something to say, or an idea to put forth. He felt more than a little out of place giving orders, but for now he had the highest cultivation, so that was only natural.

He started to circulate his qi in his fingers, and as he stepped onto the beam, he stopped right in front of the first hammer and formed the technique.

A small shield the size of his hand cracked as the hammer slammed into it, but it didn’t break. It started to fade almost immediately, but then the hammer hung still, not having swung all the way up to its recovery point. Paike moved further along and repeated it over and over again. He stopped the hammers right before they would crash into him and watched as they hung impotently, not completing their arcs or being reset.

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His teammates watched in stunned silence. Each hammer weighed many times his body weight and was more than capable of breaking bones if one didn’t move with their momentum when struck. Him stopping them by any means probably wasn’t what an average Middle Ruby cultivator should be capable of.

This was the first time the power of his technique had been on display in such an obvious manner. He stopped hammers until he was almost entirely depleted of qi. Still, he had shortened the run they had to make by nearly eighty percent. He wiped sweat from his brow, as he had just enough qi left in his body to circulate it to his legs.

He leaned forward. He counted—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—and then sprinted, the timing almost perfect, only having to slide under the last hammer. He dove headfirst, stretching his arm to the side to keep his balance as he slid along his chest, coming up in a roll to his feet just on the other side.

Behind him, already mostly down the beam, his teammates came. Zhang Shuying came first, her wind helping her balance as she stopped halfway through for a brief pause before starting up again. Guan Li slipped through like a snake several times, letting hammers miss him by fractions of a finger’s width so that he never had to change his pace at all. Liming and Mei Xian were much more careful and took their time, but no one got knocked to the side.

Just as Mei Xian started her last run, the first hammer that Paike had stopped reset, and then, a second later, the one after it reset. But it was too late, the hammers having frozen long enough to allow them all to cross. Once the last one was over the finish line, Paike let out an undignified yell at the sky and smiled around at his teammates as they all celebrated in their small ways.