Chapter 61 (Patreon)

“Besides Patriarch Lan, there is only one other Liquid Meridian realm stationed within the Bathhouse. Due to the delicate situation over there, the others will not be able to leave Clearsprings City. Thus once the Patriarch can extricate himself he will come here alone. If you want to leave the Bathhouse then the other Liquid Meridian realm Elder must die before he arrives.”

“So the Patriarch is already a Liquid Meridian realm again?”

“The Fifth-Layer.”

“So basically a Seventh-Layer with the Earth-rank method. You’re sure you can deal with that?”

“It’s barely within manageable range.”

Chen Haoran slapped his forehead. “Those aren’t really my favorite odds.”

“It is what it is,” Lan Fen said. “Blame Lan Yao. Had she betrayed me sooner I would have killed the Patriarch while he was in the Qi realm.”

“Had she betrayed you sooner then you’d have been dealing with the original Chen Haoran,” he pointed out.

“I would have overcome it with time.”

Given what he knew about his predecessor, Lan Fen’s answer had several different layers of horrible meaning woven into an otherwise innocuous sentence.

“Tell me this Elder is weaker than the Patriarch at least.”

“Elder Qianbei is a Second-Layer Liquid Meridian and the last Elder of any strength left in the family.”

Chen Haoran looked at Lan Fen in askance. “The Lan family has to have more Elders than that. What about the guy we met at the tournament?”

“Dead,” she said.

“You killed him?” Chen asked, eyes wide.

“Song Yuelin did it.”

He raised an eyebrow. That was unexpectedly helpful of him. Lan Fen saw his look and paused.

“I had to push it a little,” she admitted.

That made more sense.

“Moving on,” Lan Fen said. “Elder Qianbei is an arrogant, obnoxious man. Provoking him into leaving the camp will be easy. I have a trap prepared to deal with him.”

“So we lead him out and lure him in. Simple enough.”

“I will be the one doing it, you will stay here.”

“But-”

“You do not have a movement technique,” Lan Fen interrupted. “Once he is properly chasing us you will be the first one he catches, only I can keep ahead of him.”

“Not that I don’t mind just sitting on my ass and letting you do the work but this isn’t what I had in mind when I said I’d help.”

“Do nothing?” Lan Fen smirked. “You will be destroying the camp after I lead him away.”

Chen Haoran stared at her.

Lan Fen calmly looked back at him.

“There’s got to be a hundred guys in that camp,” he said.

“There are 30, the others have gone to the downriver camps to prepare for the Frost Storm.”

“I’m still 29 people short of being able to fight those guys.”

“I would not tell you to do it if I did not believe you were capable of it and when you succeed you can leave without having to wait for me.”

“So you… believe in me?”

“I do,” Lan Fen confidently said.

It was perhaps the most validating thing she had ever said to him in the time he had known her. There was a tingly feeling inside his chest. He looked at Lan Fen in a new light.

He opened his mouth.

“That means jack shit.”

Lan Fen glared at him, unamused. Chen Haoran matched her look before eventually rolling his eyes. “I’ll figure something out. You just expect me to do some damage and dip until you’re done with the Elder anyway.”

“I do think you have the ability to do it,” she huffed.

“And yet you haven’t denied my words.”

Lan Fen shook her head. “You’ve gotten ruder since I’ve last seen you.”

“That’s because I’ve replaced you,” he said, pointing to Phelps. The sloth was currently floating in the air and trying to scrape the glowing moss off the boulder.

“With a sloth?”

“With a genius sloth. Smartest sloth in the whole cave.”

Lan Fen sighed. “You have been down here too long.”

“Now that’s something we can both agree on,” Chen Haoran said, chuckling. “Have fun being bait.”

“I will be scoring your efforts when I return.” Len Fen flashed him a small smile. “Try not to get yourself caught.”

Easy peasy.

———

“Damn you Lan Fen!” Roared Elder Lan Qianbei. Chen Haoran didn’t know much about his and Lan Fen’s relationship but he could swear he heard something personal in the Elder’s tone. However, she ended up getting his attention it worked. The force of the Elder’s qi-enhanced shout disturbed the steam near him, as far away as he way. Another wordless roar followed as the Elder rocketed off after Lan Fen.

That was his cue.

The chittering around him got even louder as more crickets were attracted by the Elder’s thunderous shouts. Chen Haoran banged his swords together and whooped out a few screeching cries to focus their attention on himself as he imitated in real life the most noble skill of videogames.

The sacred act of kiting the enemy.

Whatever Lan Fen might have thought about him he was not her. Just ambushing five enemies had taxed him mentally let alone trying to solo 30 cultivators at once. So he wouldn’t. Even if he could it just wasn’t his style, when it came down to it he had always been a quantity-over-quality type of guy.

The crickets were the obvious pick, there was no other monster in the cavern as numerous and single-minded as they were. He still remembered when he had been chased by a hundred crickets before. Now he was amassing double that number. His sense was in full bloom and he was cycling all the qi his legs could bear. In a way he was thankful for Lan Fen and Song Yuelin throwing herds of wild monsters at him. At least he was experienced. He still took more than a few blows from the crickets just due to their sheer numbers. Nothing that truly hurt by getting slapped around by a giant bug would definitely be haunting his dreams after this. Phelps had been directed to float up to the cavern roof for safety. With all the jumping and tumbling he was doing the poor thing would have been ripped off his back and torn to shreds.

“Let’s go!” he shouted. Qi-pitching his voice and have every cricket’s bulbous eyes riveted on him. He quickly took off in the direction of the camp, the last bits of lightning-refined qi flowing through his legs and easily putting him ahead of the horde. He cleared the steam layer and entered the sight of the watchtowers. Almost immediately a horn sounded and the entire camp was alarmed to his presence. When the mass of crickets lunged out after him another much more panicky alarm was heard. An arrow whizzed by his head and skewered a cricket behind him. Another soon followed. There was an archer on the watch tower and more mustered on the walls.

After judging he was close enough to the walls he burst a wave of qi to his legs and flung himself backward over the horde. He had a moment before the crickets could reorient themselves. His sword glowed blue.

Canyon Carving Sword

Blue energy flowed like a river through the air above the crickets. He couldn’t let too many die, they were another tool for him to carve with after all. The Lan cultivators on the wall panicked and jumped off as the blue torrent touched the bricks and tore through them, knifing through the wall like it was so much air and scything through the base of the watchtower. The tower dropped then tipped over and ripped apart under the force transmitted through the attack.

Chen Haoran cycled qi to the Leaping Tiger Earring. An invisible wave of qi carried the king of beast’s roar to drive fear into its lessers. It didn’t get every cricket but enough were influenced that the rest were carried into their desperate flow to escape and with Chen Haoran behind them there was only one place to go. The gaping hole he created in the wall.

The crickets poured into the camp, overwhelming the guard’s hasty attempt to secure the breach. The crickets were a lower cultivation Layer on average compared to the Lan cultivators but with numbers and shock the high layers were immediately put on a desperate footing. Not everyone could be as durable as him after all.

Chen Haoran leapt into the camp and spread out his sense. His first target was found, a Ninth-Layer heading the defense of a squad formation in the mob of crickets. Another leap sent Chen Haoran soaring through the air and he came down on the Ninth-Layer like a stone, crossing the Swiftwind Scimitars as he did and immediately crushing the man’s attempt to block. After cutting the leader down he didn’t bother with the rest and took off looking for the next high-layer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Phelps dropping down from the ceiling onto the watchtower across the river. The good boy was definitely earning his treats.

Chen Haoran barreled through crickets and through superior cultivation and his Profound-rank weapon cut down three more Ninth-Layers. With him targeting their leaders whatever formation the guards here had left quickly broke down as they were surrounded and buried under the mass of crickets. In the back of his head, from a rather dark place, he wondered what kind of score Lan Fen would give him.

He paused for only a brief moment when his qi sense was overwhelmed with a sudden nexus of energy. It was the only warning he had before he was picked up by the throat and lifted into the air with crushing force. His vision swam, turned black, and flashed with stars all at once as he gasped for air. He had lost his grip and dropped his scimitars during the sudden attack. Not that they would have done him any good against his assailant.

The man strangling him didn’t look a day over 40. His white was pulled back into a tight topknot and his golden eyes looked at Chen Haoran indifferently as he sneered. The threat from his qi-sense finally registered far, far too late.

Liquid Meridian Realm.

The Liquid Meridian Realm looked around at the horde of crickets and scowled. Liquid green qi flooded from his body in a wave and crushed the surrounding crickets into paste. The stragglers scattered in every direction while the few surviving guards picked themselves up.

“You and that bitch must think you’re so clever. As if I couldn’t be alerted in case the camp came under attack.” He sneered at Chen Haoran. “It was my personal development. It’s only natural that traitor wouldn’t know about it.”

Elder Qianbei. Had he turned around when he learned the camp was under attack?

“This is far too much damage however,” Elder Qianbei said, glaring at the ruined camp. “You’re just as poisonous as your wife.” He flicked his free hand four times and Chen Haoran’s vision exploded into searing white pain as the Elder effortlessly shattered all four of his limbs. His agonized scream was choked in his throat by Elder Qianbei who tightened his grip as he carried Chen Haoran over to the wall.

“Be grateful that you’ve been allowed to live for a few more minutes,” the Elder casually lifted Chen Haoran while he spoke as if he weighed no more than the air he was held up in. “I hope your wife loves you Chen Haoran. This farce will be over much faster if she does.”

Chen Haoran spasmed in the Elder’s grip. Deep pain pulsated like four drumming hearts in each broken limb. Fire and lightning raced up his spine and his vision alternated between white and color. He had to speak. Beg, threaten, cajole anything. Cultivators respected power didn’t they? He would tell him about the Chen family. About Song Yuelin who cuts through Liquid Meridians like grass. About his father Chen Qitao who even the City Lord fears. He would open his mouth and tell Elder Qianbei to let him go or face their revenge.

He couldn’t. Not because he didn’t want to. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his face flushed a violent before receding to a deathly pale. His lips moved but his tongue sat heavy in his mouth like a lead weight and his throat was strangled by fire and lightning.

Song Yuelin. Chen Qitao. He wanted to say.

Gargle. Gargle. Were all that came out.

The pain was too much. He couldn’t. He tried to call his qi and banish the time away. Instead of its normal water-like flow it came in awkward fits and spurts. Where his qi left his chest and entered his crippled appendages it snarled in the twisted and torn meridians, spilling out uselessly into his broken flesh and bones. Instead of relieving it only hurt him worse, as if his pain had become a cultivator and was absorbing his qi to become a greater pain than before. His world went dark. Foreign qi blasted into his skull and denied him even the relief of unconsciousness.

“She certainly has learned some interesting tricks,” Elder Qianbei mused. “That movement technique and whatever she used to detect my presence at such a distance.” He snorted. “She really looked down on me. I wonder what the look on her face was like when her own trick was turned against her.” The Elder shook Chen Haoran and he groaned. “Not that she can actually save you. I just need her to stand in one place so I can kill her.”

Death. He was going to die. It wasn’t to be a sweet relief either. He was going to die an agonizing death. A horrible, terrible death. He saw it now. It was in his eyes. Screaming and yelling and cursing. That was how he would die. Did die? Has he died before? It wasn’t like this. This was not his death.

“Oh there she is,” Elder Qianbei said in a pleasantly surprised tone. “She really is quite fast. It’s good that she never advanced to the Liquid Meridian realm.” The Elder turned Chen Haoran away from Lan Fen’s direction to face him. A final, casual cruelty.

Liquid Meridian. Liquid Meridian was powerful, far stronger than him. He needed Liquid Meridian to beat Liquid Meridian. He had done that before with a core. He didn’t have a core. He couldn’t use a core. It couldn’t blow up. He had no core. He had no Liquid Merid-

Golden words burned across his eyes: Everlasting Hundred Blessings Charitable Prosperity. Their unnatural stability gave him something to anchor his whirling vision on. With that anchor came absolute clarity through the pain for one brief, shining moment. He didn’t have a Liquid Meridian core.

Phelps fell from the ceiling. Not like a stone or meteor. He fell silently like an owl in flight and dropped atop Elder Qianbei’s head, slashing out at his eyes and neck with his claws.

“Impudent wretch!” It was in vain. Song Yuelin had once told him that even if he hit him directly with the Canyon Carving Sword he would survive. Phelps natural weapons and cultivation were too weak to allow him to do anything more than superficial damage to the Elder’s vital points.

What if were a superior natural weapon though?

Chen Haoran called his last hope to his mind. In the space between him and Elder Qianbei a mammoth’s tusk appeared all 45 feet of it and glowing like polished marble. Angled downward the flat end rose high into the air while the point speared through Elder Qianbei’s chest and into the stone beneath them.

The Elder’s eyes went red with shock and fear. “Impossible,” he choked. Blood gushing from his mouth. He steel grip slackened and Chen Haoran fell. Phelps leapt after him. Elder Qianbei’s eyes shone with light.

Lan Fen arrived riding lightning and caught them just as the world turned green.