Chapter 8- Bitten By a Ghost

Liren didn’t wait, lashing out with the blunt end of her spear to smash Suneater’s skull. An invisible hand flicked it away.

“Not even a trace of qi. Pure vital energy. This is pathetic.” Suneater laughed. “Let’s see-”

Tian didn’t wait either, the rope dart came snaking in from the side, going for Suneater’s spine. It, too, was slapped away. A moment later, so was Tian. An invisible force sent him spinning through the air and smashing into a rock. He felt his ribs crack, and something in his guts was screaming that he had all kinds of new problems.

“A rope dart? Are you a circus performer? No, with those hands, a street performer. At least a spear is a real weapon. Killing you will be a mercy. This life is clearly a failure already.” Suneater’s voice dripped with contempt.

The crane flapped into the air, but the cavern didn’t allow much room for flight or maneuvering. She raced over as best she could and tried to spear the skeleton with her beak. She got within five feet before her head was sharply pulled to the ground, making her flip in the air and slam into the stone floor hard enough to make Tian flinch. Then some invisible hand picked her up and flung her back across the room. It looked casual. A higher being flicking away a fly.

Liren gathered fire vital energy into her spear, the wavy blade shimmering with heat. A lightning fast thrust, closer this time, but still smashed away. A moment later, she crashed into a wall. Suneater never shifted, his bones unmoving from where they had sat for thousands of years.

“It’s not qi, I’d be able to see something if it was. I think. It’s brainpower, only it’s not attacking my mind, but my body.”

Tian forced himself up and into a guard position, hands out in front of him. “On. Ran. Cho. Sha. Vo…” he started chanting, pouring elemental energy into each sound, trying to fill the area around him with chaotic energy before diving in with his rope dart. He had first learned to imbue his voice with elemental vital energy when he was trying to break Daoist Steelshimmer’s brainpower-based illusions, so it was worth a try now.

“Ahahaha! Oh, that’s amazing! You… has that ever worked for you? That’s the dumbest thing I think I have ever seen. Let me show you what a real shen art looks like.” Tian had a dreadful premonition and dove to his left, never letting up with his chanting. He felt something scrape along the side of his head, there was a feeling of burning, then of coldness.

Liren rushed back in a fury, her spear exploding forward, fire qi faintly wreathing the spearhead. This time Tian did see Suneater use his qi- a brilliant gold shield shimmered in the air for just long enough to stop Liren’s spear. Then she went flying back, hitting a stalagmite hard enough that Tian heard the bones breaking from twenty feet away.

“Oh you hideous thing! Do you know how hard it is to gather yang qi when you are a ghost? Tell me, what would hurt you more? Watching me kill him, or…”

Liren forced herself to her feet. Her left arm was broken, and if Tian was any judge, so were some ribs. She didn’t let that stop her. She looked at Tian, her eyes wide. Then they went hard, and a spear appeared in her hand. Ancient, plain, but something about it seemed to weigh heavily on the world.

For the first time, Tian saw the skeleton move. It almost looked like a flinch. “You didn’t get that from a trash heap. No, I don’t think I will let you play around with that.”

“Hey, Senior, where’d your dick go?” Tian yelled, then leaped forward. The second move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing- Dragon Soars Through the Sky. His left hand filled with yang vital energy, deceptively relaxed but with the promise of destroying whatever it touched.

“Bastard thing!” Tian felt another drilling bolt of brainpower coming at him. He was in the air. It was what the brothers had always warned him would happen, he would be in the air and open to a fatal counter. Tian used the fractured second between identification and impact to fling his right hand forward and down.

The brainpower smashed into his chest, drilling through his body. Tian bit back a scream as he tumbled across the stone floor. He wasn’t breathing right. His lung. Something had pierced his lung, and the pain was getting worse. It felt like drowning!

There was a staccato ring, like five sharp nails striking metal. Then an audible crack.

“What… What did you just do? Answer me, boy, what did you just do?!” Suneater roared, fear in his voice.

Liren grinned, her expression every bit the death’s head rictus that Suneater bore. With one hand, she still managed a perfect lunge. Brilliant yang qi flames spiraled around the spear, igniting the air as it passed. Tian thought he saw something trying to flicker into existence in front of it- too late. She put the spear clean through Suneater’s head.

Something in the old ghost caught fire. Suneater screamed.

“ANTS! ANTS! MERE ANTS DARE BITE THE IMMORTAL?! DIE FOR ME!” A burst of qi came boiling out of the skeleton- the might of a heavenly person revealed at last. Golden sabers swum into the air around him, then fell, chopping down on Liren. She parried two of them. The third bit into her hip hard enough to make her scream- but not enough to kill her. She planted the butt of the spear in the ground with her foot, and using the leverage, ripped the skull, and the life, clean out of the skeleton. The bones scattered on the cave floor, little sun bright flames gleaming over the white bones, then extinguished.

Liren didn’t bother investigating. She stumbled over to Tian and collapsed to her knees next to him. “Here, swallow-”

“Treat yourself first!” Tian barked, his voice choked. “When you are stable, I will walk you through what to do. Stop the bleeding, splint the bones, then help the others. Remember what we practiced.”

Tian followed his own instructions, and dusted his wound with blood clotting powder. It would help keep infection out while he came up with a plan for treating the punctured lung. His hands feebly patted the hole on his chest. About the width of his thumb. He didn’t have large hands, but a hole that size, in the right place, was more than enough to be fatal.

He could feel the brainpower doing something inside of him. Whatever it was, it hurt. He slammed Advent of Spring into motion, pouring the yang vital energy into the Hell Suppressing art. It wasn’t enough. The Brainpower was something different than curse qi or poison qi. His body wasn’t tearing it apart like he hoped.

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“A bone. Toss me one of that bastard’s bones.”

Liren, bless her, didn’t ask any question and just tossed over a femur. Tian rubbed the white powder off of it, then grunted. The bone underneath was smooth to the point of being slightly sticky, and harder than the stone he was lying on. Jade bones. Not as fancy as what the Saintess had, but really, he was in no position to judge.

The bones were steeped in yin qi. Fuel for his body cultivation, and damned if he was going to leave Suneater an intact corpse. The Hell Suppressing Sutra started pulling on the yin qi of the bone as Advent of Spring began the healing process. Attacking his wounds from two directions.

He could disrupt brainpower with his chants, even if it wasn’t a ‘real’ brainpower technique. There was nothing to support the brainpower in Suneater’s attack anymore. That should make it much weaker. He didn’t have any better ideas. He closed his eyes and began again. “Xho, Kah, Bo, Ni, Fas…”

He could feel the fuzzy chaos of the elemental qi vibrating in his chest, but the spell, or whatever you called an attack made with brainpower, resisted it. It had a cohesion to it that he had never encountered before. Daoist Steelshimmer was pressing her brainpower directly against his mind. By losing himself in the elemental sounds and letting the chaotic elemental qi wash through him, he could disrupt her illusions. He had managed something similar against other cultivators, but against enemies in his realm, it was less the disruption of brainpower that mattered and more the disruption of qi.

He tried to remember what he knew about brainpower. It was practically nothing- everyone said it was bad to know too much about the realms ahead of yours because it made breakthroughs harder. It was a type of qi, because everything was a type of qi. Grandpa had said it was a type of qi he didn’t have access to yet.

He was starting to get lightheaded. The wound clotting powder had probably sealed the external hole, but he was now sure he was bleeding internally. Advent of Spring and the Hell Suppressing Sutra would eventually take care of it, if it weren’t for the brainpower constantly burrowing inside of him and making things worse. He was just lucky it was in one lung for now. A little to the right, and it would be in his heart.