Chapter 37- Meeting The Enemy

The battlefront was only eight hundred miles away. That was only a few hours travel, at most, for a Heavenly Person Realm cultivator with a flying artifact. The Inner Court was up to its elbows in blood, but the heretics were sending endless waves of demons to meet them. They sent swarms of insects so large, they blotted out the sun. Sinister curses that could freeze your bones and turn your blood to boiling lead. Rumor had it that there was a sixth level Heavenly Person Realm poison master on the field, and the Inner Court was running through antidotes like charcoal in winter.

It was all rumors. Nobody told the Outer Court much of anything, on the basis that what they didn’t know, they couldn’t be made to tell. The heretics were masters of torture. Some viewed it as a supreme art form. Tian had his doubts when he heard that. Then he found a broken bit of shoulder blade during a patrol, and carved into it was the word ‘regret’ over and over and over. Sometimes the strokes were blurred, or simply wrong. It seemed the ‘paper’ jerked.

It was two months before Tian saw his first heretical cultivator. Tian was part of a scratch squad put together from a couple of towns and sent to patrol fairly close to the base. The reason was simple- most of the members of the squad were kids. ‘Kids’ being defined as ‘below Level Nine and below fifty.’

There were two Level Nine’s supervising. They were everyone that could be spared. West Town Temple had done better than most, but Tian had already seen four of his brothers dragged back more dead than alive. Three of them were still in the hospital. Festering wounds were another high art amongst the heretics.

There were endless jobs, and not enough bodies to throw at them.

The patrol was sweeping a stretch of black sand desert with deep channels etched through it. At the very bottom of the channels were thin rivulets of bitter, salty water. It was, by the standards of the wasteland, a little paradise. Lichen grew thickly on the inside of the crevices. Billions of teeming mites feasted on the lichen, occasionally pushed aside (or consumed) by snails.

Then came the larger predators. And the predators that ate them. The channels the water ran through, and the crevices above them, were rarely wider than a handspan across and two knuckles deep. Yet there was no shortage of enormous predators coming to feast. The food chain was more of a vertical stack than a web here.

But not a very high stack. Rarely anything out of the middle of the Earthly tier. Perfect for the kids.

Tian didn’t really know the other cultivators. Only one was about his age, the rest were considerably older. That ‘one’ was Hong Liren, and they had never chatted before coming to the wasteland. It hadn’t significantly developed since. Their relationship was based strictly on bickering. This was despite them having gone on a few missions now. It frustrated Tian. How could he help someone that refused to realize they were brain damaged? He still stuck close to her. He trusted his sister more than the other people they were sent out with.

He saw how the other cultivators looked at them. He might call them Brothers and Sisters as etiquette demanded, but he didn’t trust them. They looked like rock throwers. Only, they wouldn’t throw rocks. They’d throw him and Hong at the monsters and run away. Hong didn’t see it. She was glaring at the black sand and rock, spear in hand. She had left her back to her ‘comrades.’

“Contact left!” one yelled and leaped forward with a slash of his saber. It was a beautiful cut, and perfectly sliced apart an animal skull tumbling in the wind. “Never mind. False-”

A man burst out of the black sand, his hand flashing, stabbing, ripping holes in the young cultivator’s back.

“Bastard!” One of the Level Nines roared, her flying sword streaking out to take the ambusher’s head. Two more men burst out of the sand on either side of her and fell on her, stabbing with their dark blades. Over and over, a dozen times in half as many seconds. She was dead before the sword hit.

“Ambush! Ambush!” Tian didn’t know who was yelling. He had his rope dart spinning, creating a deadly zone around him. He saw Hong stabbing out, her spear finding a throat and tearing it open like a bolt from the heavens. He saw the sand shifting behind her. Just a little. Or maybe adrenalin gave him that half second edge.

Tian whipped the dart up, around and whistling down again, catching the ambusher just as he made his move. The heretic’s head exploded, white bone and grey brains bright on the black sand. Some sprayed on the back of Hong’s protective robe. She didn’t notice. She was on to the next heretic.

It seems she was right to trust her back to her comrades. Or at least one of them. Tian didn’t share her faith. He lightened his body and ran, whipping the dart around him. He threw the dart towards an enemy and jumped after it, letting the dart’s momentum pull him. The dart was deflected, and Tian resumed his normal weight, black sand spraying as he braced himself and whipped the dart back around. The heretic’s arm was snagged and yanked out of position. The sister he was fighting smashed the heretic with an iron club. Tian didn’t stick around to watch the body fall.

They can’t ambush you if you are moving faster than they can react. That was his hope, anyway. Besides, someone else needed his help- him. He didn’t know who it was, but someone was launching needles at him. They had a damned quick eye. Their aim kept pace with his erratic movements.

Tian stopped suddenly behind a heretical cultivator. The man kicked a Brother in the gut and turned towards Tian, a long knife moving fast enough to make a ripping sound as it went for his neck. Tian dropped nearly flat and kicked at the heretics’ ankles, making the big man trip. Then with a press of all four limbs, Tian hopped straight up and flung the dart at the big man’s eye. It went in easily. Tian was sure it didn’t go all the way into the brain. He felt it stop on bone.

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He recovered the dart and got low again as the big man covered his eye and roared. The heretic’s knife waved wildly in the air as he rushed for Tian. Tian backpedaled. He could see black skin rotting off the man, and the long needles sticking out from him. Tian had set him up just right to be his shield.

It wasn’t hard to see when the poison reached the brain. The big man just stopped.

“I can’t let myself get hit. I can’t get hit.” Tian wasn’t sure if he was speaking aloud or not. He was desperately trying to see which bastard was launching the needles but didn’t see any likely suspects. He kicked the dying heretic up and out, his endlessly cultivated muscles launching the man ten feet through the air. Tian rushed behind him, launched the dart at a heretic on the left, ripping open their thigh. Then he dodged right, tripping a claw wielder just before they ripped open a Sister’s back.

He caught it then. A little shift of dirt. The heretical scum was still hidden under the sand! Tian charged in with a snarl, recovering the dart and smashing it down where he had seen movement. A heretic popped out of the sand, grabbing the dart in one hand and aiming a tube at Tian with the other. His face was covered, but somehow, Tian knew the heretic was sneering.