Chapter 149 (Patreon)

Man. The flight has thrown my whole schedule into wack. This is the chapter that you guys should have gotten Friday. Of course, now Monday's chapter is delayed. Don't worry though, you guys will get all three chapters this week. It's just gonna be a bit weirder than usual. Thanks for your patience. You guys are amazing. Enjoy the chapter!

-----------

The nature of the ambush was fully revealed to them as they moved out to link up with the other elements of the Garrison. A good half of the Garrison were trapped behind large, pre-prepared kill zones while the rest had been randomly scattered across the Outer Ring. They would concentrate their forces within the barrier to quickly deal with the trapped Garrison while other roaming groups of Rattan Armor Soldiers hunted down the free soldiers across the rest of the Trial. Not exactly a bad plan if they were able to control who was sorted into the barriers and who wasn’t. It soon became quite clear that they didn’t, in fact, control who went where. Strong and talented cultivators found themselves outside the barriers just as often as weak ones found themselves inside. A fact that only made it more difficult for the rebels to hunt them down, especially since their communication medallions weren’t disabled like those inside the barrier.

Another thing that was revealed was that the majority of the rebels’ efforts had been placed on the barriers and presumably whatever defenses they had around the exit of the secret realm. At least once they traveled into the Inner Ring, they ran into no traps of any sort. Presumably, whatever time and resources the rebels had to invest into this ambush weren’t enough for them to actually turn the entire Secret Realm into a Death Trap. At least, this was Chen Haoran’s guess. Who knew what the real reason was?

It was illuminating, really, to realize just how much the rebels relied on luck. That they caught high-ranking Captains like Pan Gong and Captain Liu at all was just pure random chance working out in their favor. That luck was now running out, however. Fast enough that Chen Haoran was glad in his decision to throw his lot in with the Garrison. The tragic casualties the soldiers in their barrier suffered were not mirrored in the barrier Six-Eyes disabled, as the messages from those soldiers revealed. As callous as it sounded, they were just sorted with the weaker ones. Jiang Aiguo hadn’t been exaggerating when he said the Garrison had sent its best.

It left Chen Haoran with a single question. If this was what the best of the Garrison looked like, what was the best of the Empire?

—————————

White Sword shadows flashed and diced through a hastily raised vine wall and cut into the Rattan Armor Soldiers behind it. In the chaos of the unstoppable metal energy, the survivors were given no respite as the Garrison exploited the weaknesses Chen Haoran opened up to quickly kill the soldiers lucky enough to have survived Chen Haoran’s attack.

As they progressed further into the Secret Realm, they attacked and were attacked by Rattan Armor Soldiers as they gathered the scattered Garrison soldiers. They had quickly devised a workable pattern of combat: Chen Haoran would split open the vine defenses of the Rattan Armor while the Garrison moved into the gaps and defeated them. It was shockingly effective, given that Chen Haoran knew next to nothing about the Garrsion r their tactics. The reason was two-fold: The White Tyrant’s Harmonization was just that strong, and the Garrison was concerningly adept at adapting themselves to it. Not only discussing amongst themselves how to place him in their formation for optimal effectiveness but even taking into account his obvious reluctance to use the White Tyrant’s Harmonization more than once per battle without pressing him on it.

The result was clear. None of the rebels stalling actions held up their group for long, and as more Garrison soldiers met up with them, the time only grew shorter. To say the Garrison operated like clockwork would be misleading. They did not operate with mechanical efficiency. Not to say they weren’t precise or they were unorganized, but clockwork was far too stiff a term. No, the Garrison flowed like water, taking on whatever shape the situation demanded of them. Each soldier was an individual droplet, freely combining to form a greater river and separating as needed depending on whatever obstacle was in the way of their flow.

Whatever could be said of the Empire, their military at least was not lacking. Unlike the authoritarian governments Chen Haoran had been familiar with back on Earth, the Garrison’s soldiers were not crippled by corruption or lax standards or whatever issue the superiors who sold them out were afflicted with. Granted, the soldiers around him now weren’t representative of the average Garrison soldiers at all. The majority were officers and talents slated for promotions. In a way, that was worse. With such a well-trained professional officer class, one could imagine how intimidating the army they directed would be.

Eventually, the Garrison’s Metal Spirit Roots showed up and Chen Haoran ended up becoming superfluous. As the Metal Roots smoothly took over, Chen Haoran completely gave up attacking. It was a risk. He had seen what they’d done to someone useless to them. On the flip side, he had seen what they’d done to someone useless to them. He was loathe to waste any more qi on them that he’d be better off preserving. It was admittedly nerve-wracking, though. So long as Pan Gong had the thought, then the hundred-plus soldiers would immediately turn on him. Chen Haoran wouldn’t fool himself into believing Pan Gong would hesitate, either. He was favored. Pan Gong was not his friend nor a good person.

Not that he was, either.

The Golden Compass felt like a lead weight at his side, even though a storage bag made things weightless. It was still in Patriarch Qi’s bag. He hadn’t dared to take it out while being stared at by Pan Gong and the rest of the Garrison. Chen Haoran didn’t exactly know what it was save that it was used by the Formation Specialist to analyze the barrier and that quite a few in the Garrison were very bummed to have lost it. Presumably, it had other uses related to Formations as well, but that wasn’t something Chen Haoran could figure out right now. It was a miracle Patriarch Qi got it in the first place. Presumably, one of the rebels picked it up, and Patriarch Qi luckily got it when he killed him…. or maybe it wasn’t so much luck as it was deliberate. Patriarch Qi did say it was his greed that got him killed. Did he perhaps know who among the Rattan Armor Soldier’s had the compass?

It was a question that would never have an answer.

———————

They marched unimpeded into the Center Ring. Their numbers swelled to 200 strong, including more than a few unaffiliated cultivators. The Yellow Dragon crooned when they crossed whatever invisible barrier separated the rings. It greedily swallowed up the thick ambient qi, quickly bringing Chen Haoran back up to full reserves.

With more qi came more dangers. The trees were bigger and deadlier, with homing leaves. The durians smellier and more lethal. The pyramids huge compared to those in the Outer and Inner Rings. They paid none of that any mind. The dangers were dealt with and the potential rewards were ignored. They marched through the depths of the Center Ring until scouts came back after discovering where the rebels had gone. Pan Gong brought the group to a stop and had them temporarily rest.

In the distance, two barriers flashed bright white, then fell one after another. More messages flooded the Communication Medallions as head counts and rally points were ordered. Several more Ninth-Layer Liquid Meridians had joined their group now. Despite this, Pan Gong remained firmly in command, not that anyone seemed to have a problem with it. Or if they did, they were good at hiding it. Pan Gong was a generous leader, deferring to the opinions of his peers and delegating many tasks to them, keeping himself to be only the final say on operational decisions and the vanguard tactics.

Of course, a good portion of his time was occupied trying to get in contact with Lu Aotian. For whatever reason, he wasn’t responding to Pan Gong’s demands for his whereabouts and status. The other captains all had different reactions, from disdain to uncomfortable embarrassment and neutrality. There were various theories bandied about regarding Lu Aotian going dark. Some were polite. Others were not so polite. Without having met the man, it was incredibly clear he was a divisive figure. Despite this, not a single person present suggested that Lu Aotian may have been killed or captured, which personally was Chen Haoran’s first thought. He wasn’t dumb enough to say it out loud, however. Pan Gong heard all of this with a frustrated look on his face as he kept trying to reach him before finally putting away his Communication Medallion in disgust. Personally, Chen Haoran would never try to call someone so many times who didn’t pick up but who told Lu Aotian to have a Crystal Transformation Realm Artifact.

Pan Gong pinched the bridge of his nose and turned to Chen Haoran. “Song Yuelin. Come with me. We need your eyes to check out the rebel’s defensive formations.”

Chen Haoran nodded in affirmation and followed Pan Gong and a few other captains to finally lay eyes on their way out of the Secret Realm. The first thing he noticed, without even having to share his vision with the Yellow Dragon, was the barrier surrounding the place. A square box of metal white energy like every other barrier had been, except smaller. Well…. by comparison, at least. It was still huge, particularly since it covered a lake, the island in the late, and the giant pyramid on the island. The pyramid itself was a one-to-one recreation of the pyramid they used to enter the Secret Realm. In fact, it looked more than a recreation, Chen Haoran could have sworn he saw similar plant growth and moss on the outside pyramid.

Then there were the rebels. At the base of the pyramid’s steps, they’d erected walls of earth, stone, and vines. Three long trenches separated the walls from the islands. Along the terraces of the pyramid were archers and Rattan Armor soldiers behind further walls and parapets. The whole pyramid had been turned into a fortress.

“Song Yuelin, what do you see,” Pan Gong urged.

Chen Haoran blinked and connected his vision to the Yellow Dragon’s. The barrier’s swirling energies immediately unfurled in front of him. They coursed from four pillars of white light at the corners of the cube. Unlike with the other barriers, however, he couldn’t tell which one was an Emission Node and which was a Receiving Node. All of them? None of them? Other than that, it looked like a standard barrier. Although there was a suspicious ball of metal qi that was forming in the middle of the barrier by drawing on its energies. That definitely wasn’t visible when he was looking with his regular eyes. Even the lake was trapped. Some were obvious traps. Others were less clear. Particularly the formation that the rebels had somehow strung across the entire lake.

“There’s a Formation in the water and some explosive traps,” Chen Haoran said. “There’s also something weird going on with the barrier.”

“That’s because it’s a combination of defense and attack formation.”

Chen Haoran whirled around to look at the speaker of a voice who was not there before and had to resist every reflexive instinct he had to commit unspeakable violence when a pair of googly-eyes was standing far too close to his face.

He was an eccentric site to look at. He wore the same red Garrison uniform as Pan Gong and the rest, but his was decorated with hundreds upon hundreds of eyes. Some sewn in, some patched, others embroidered, still more painted and all of them in a multitude of different colors and wakefulness positions. The owner of the robe looked the opposite of sleepy. He bounced on the balls of his feet, all 4.5 feet of him. His face was lined with wrinkles, his hands covered in liver spots, his white hair and mustache frayed in every direction as if it’d be shocked with static and never recovered. The ‘googly-eyes’ staring deeply into Chen Haoran’s own were actually oversized goggles, more binoculars really, that made the fake eyes look like they were about to pop out at any second. Altogether he reminded Chen Haoran of Albert Einstein if he took meth.

The eyes blinked.

Chen Haoran jumped backward.

“You have some interesting eyes,” Methstein said. The goggle eyes blinked again, and Chen Haoran abruptly felt naked in front of them. The Yellow Dragon evidently felt the same way because he growled and snapped in Methstein’s direction. “Ah. So they’re not really yours. Not yet, at least. Still interesting. Tell me. Have you been possessed yet?”

What the fuck?

Pan Gong immediately stepped between them. “Six-Eyes, enough.”

“Hello, Pan Gong,” Six-Eyes greeted in a jolly tone. “I see your eyes are still in your head.”

“Hello to you too,” Pan Gong replied with a note of long-endured suffering. “It’s good you’re here. I need you to appraise what we’re up against.”

“It’s just a Metal Element barrier synced with a manually controlled attack formation. It’s not too complicated, particularly given that it relies on drawing in ambient qi to power both. The lake is a bit interesting, though. They’ve covered the whole thing in a Weak Water Formation. Anyone who slips into the water won’t be able to swim back out.”

“Their numbers?” Pan Gong asked.

“More than ours.”

Pan Gong frowned. “A serious answer, please.”

Six-Eyed chuckled. “Please don’t mind this old man’s jokes. I’ve had a bit of a day. The Ice and Fire Lotus deserves its reputation.” He clicked something on his goggles, and the device became a blur of motion as it segmented, and two tiny arms reached out to detach the eye lens and replace it with a new eagle-eye lens. “700.”

“And we’ve 400,” Pan Gong said to himself.

“438,” Six-Eyes kindly corrected.

Captain Liu spat.  “Current estimates for enemy dead is 300. What a terrible ratio.”

Chen Haoran wasn’t sure he’d say the same considering the Garrison had been outnumbered, out planned, and caught unaware and still managed to kill more than they lost. Then again, they were still outnumbered. Any loss on the Garrison’s end would automatically be worse than the rebel’s end.

“The situation isn’t that severe yet,” Pan Gong said.

“They dug in now,” Captain Liu agreed with a nod. “Shows they’re not confident facing us in open battle.” He scoffed. “So much for the South’s legendary soldiers.”

“They must aim to stall until our antidote pills run out and let the air poison us to death,” Pan Gong said.

“Do we press the assault now?” Captain Liu asked.

Pan Gong shook his head. “No, we still have time—no need to rush and potentially be caught in the back by any roaming forces they might have. Let Six-Eyes study the Formation more while we scout out the area. We still have to find Lu Aotian as well.”

“Should we build counter fortifications to trap the rebels here then?” Captain Liu asked.

Pan Gong seriously considered the suggestion before shaking his head again. “The Rattan Vine Armor allows the wearer to walk on water. We’d have to encircle the entire lake. It’s just a waste of energy. We’ll post some observers here to keep an eye on their movements.”

While Chen Haoran listened in to Pan Gong and Captain Liu go further into preparations and countermeasures, Phelps quietly hissed a warning in his ear. Six-Eyes had crept away from Pan Gong and approached Chen Haoran.

“Excuse me,” Six-Eyes whispered. “Assuming something deeply unfortunate were to happen to you while we are locked within this Secret Realm, may I have permission to harvest your eyes?”

He…. didn’t know how to respond to that. Just who asks that sort of thing?

“You…. do know I’m a Liquid Meridian, right?” Chen Haoran said. “Like, if I die, I’m going to just explode.”

“Oh, I’m aware. Do not fear. I would harvest your eyes while you’re dying in order to preserve their quality. I’m quite experienced in that regard. I just don’t want you to think I’m attacking you.”

Chen Haoran stared.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”