Chapter 51- Hideous Things

Tian slammed into consciousness driven by the screams of dozens of monstrous insects. Like spiders stretched out flat- ten legs instead of eight, and their mandibles stretched out far too long. Worse, they were the size of large dogs. They didn’t give him the same prickly feeling as Gu, it was a sort of sinking feeling, cold, sticky. An overabundance of yin giving rise to, if not demons, monsters much like them.

There were a few dozen of them, smashing into the array with endless insect fury. Their screams were a high pitched keening noise that shook the eardrums and threatened to overwhelm sleep-sodden minds. Tian was up and out of his tent a half second after they first impacted the array. The sound of monstrous things hitting a spell array was one his barely conscious mind had no trouble interpreting.

He raked his eyes across the campsite. Liren was up and ready to go, spear in hand. Brother Wang was coming out of his tent. Sister Su was coming out of hers on her crutches. The daoists from the Courtyard were still in their tents, but he could feel qi twisting and moving around them. They were awake, and readying themselves.

The insects started spitting something orange and viscous against the shivering, pale blue array. Whatever it was, it hissed and smoked as it slid down the barrier. The shivering of the array got worse. The shrieking intensified, the spider-things scrabbling at the array with almost desperate ferocity. Insect hate making mandibles snap like broken arms. The daoists from the Courtyard were still not out of their tents.

“Sister Su, can you use your darts through this array?” Tian asked. His voice was calmer than he expected it to be. It was just like his nightmares. It was just like the memories he slid back into. It was so familiar, it was calming. The bad thing was happening. He didn’t have to fear it coming, it was already here. Tian knew how to live in the bad place.

“I don’t know. They never said. I might destroy it from the inside if I use them now.” She had them out, though, and the little yellow array flag she had used before.

“Fellow Daoists, can we attack through the array, or will we bring it down faster? Incidentally, I’d get out of your tents now if you ever want the opportunity to do so in the future.” Tian raised his voice over the screaming insects.

“No, that sort of one way array requires far too many expensive materials and a Heaven Watching Scholar to set up. No need to panic. We are very used to dealing with ten-leg horrors.” The doughy daoist strode out of his tent, covered in shimmering, glittering light. He held a horsetail whisk in one hand, and a fistfull of talismans in the other.

Doughy did a double take looking at the daoists from the Ancient Crane Monastery. “Never mind us, are you ready for a fight?”

They all looked around at each other. “Yes?” Hong vaguely waved her spear in the air. “What else do we need?”

“What in heaven’s name are you wear- wait! What’s that?” Oily pointed, shifting from superior to alarmed in a single word. His long finger pointed at the acid spitting ten-leg horrors. “What is that orange stuff?”

He wasn’t alone. All the daoists from the Courtyard gave the sticky bile looks ranging from disturbed to horrified. Or perhaps they were looking at the way the array was shimmering, visibly corroding with every spit of acid.

Tian shared a moment of instant, perfect psychic connection with all of his sectmates, then glanced at the Sky Grace Crane.

“Make ready. Sister Su, open the way. Sister Hong will be first in the gap, then me, then Brother Wang. Disciples from the Courtyard, help where you can.” Tian gave some basic instructions. They were martial cultivators of the Ancient Crane Monastery. Detailed commands were neither needed nor wanted. He had already warned them it was coming. Everything else was just survival. He didn’t need to teach them that.

The crane flapped its white wings and leapt into the air. Tian watched it fight for altitude, climbing until it was practically lost in the canopy. The array wasn’t a dome, it was a wall.

“Interesting. Sister Su, see if you can attack without destroying the barrier.”

“You can’t just-” One of the daoists from the courtyard yelled something, but Tian was focused on the enemy.

“Yes, Brother Tian.”

She threw a fistfull of crude rock darts almost straight up. Then another. Then another. She looked over at the shuddering, creaking barrier and the ten-leg horrors behind it. There was a long roll of thunder and with the swing of a little yellow array flag, the darts came hammering down.

It was a massacre.

There was no other word for it. The darts hit harder than anything Tian had ever seen from a Level Nine, and there were at least twenty of them in each salvo. Sister Su didn’t aim too precisely. The ten-leg horrors were coming in a solid front from the north, barely a couple of feet between them. So the darts fell, and the bug-things exploded. A wave of gore slapped into the array- and stuck. Then burned.

Trapped under a collapsing array, a swarm of monsters coming. Untrustworthy people behind him, his brothers and sisters beside him. Counting on him. Just like coming home. Perhaps he had never left.

“DAMN! Five Point Earth Building Formation, I’m the formation eye!” Doughy roared out. The camp’s defensive array broke, peeling back from the spray of gore, and exploding array nodes as it went. The gore sputtered and burned where it landed, including on the ten-leg horrors, who screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed but it was just noise and he had a job to do.

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“Don’t step in the gore.” Tian’s voice was steady.

“No, really?” Hong snarled. Then with a shout, she shot forward through the gap in the array. The surviving ten-leg horrors didn’t like the gore any more than the array did, and were struggling to stay clear. Hong kicked a rock ahead of her, then took a little hopping step. Her toes landed on the rock just as it set down in the vile remains, then she was up and off again, leaping to a clear patch of earth to the left of a horror.

Her long spear flashed out, red tassel flying, drilling into the side of the horror’s head. It went rigid, twitched, then collapsed. She yanked the spearhead clear, flicked the gore off of it, and pressed on.