Chapter 154 (Patreon)

Chen Haoran and Bao Si followed Qiong Qi to the third terrace of the pyramid to look over the walls.  Phelps was left to guard the still recovering Xie Jin back at the hut. A hundred archers lined themselves across the third and fourth layers, bundles of arrows sitting by their feet. The rest of the Rattan Armor soldiers reinforced the fortifications. The vine walls expanded and contracted in tune with the steady breathing of the rebels’ chests, waiting with them in guarded anticipation.

First came the noise. Four hundred sounds of stamping feet and arms slamming across chests. Spears and halberds beating the dirt. Swords and clubs hammering shields. Knives shrieking across knives. Four hundred voices chanting in unison. The voice of Pan Gong clear above all the rest and leading them in their chorus. 

"Bloody sky?"

"Bloody day!"

"Bloody day?"

"Bloody battle!"

"Bloody battle?"

"Bloody Empire!"

Across the lake, the Garrison had engaged itself in machine-like construction of a land bridge. A row of soldiers stood at the edge of the water, and green Wood qi bloomed from their hands into thick wooden pillars that they inserted into the lake bed. Behind them, another row of soldiers shifted brown and yellow earth qi into the water and raised up tons of earth around the pillars to form a flat surface. As soon as the extension was completed, the Wood Spirit roots stepped forward and created the supports for the next section. The Garrison crew was methodical in its work, advancing neither fast nor slow, always adding the same amount of length to the bridge. After raising three sections, the crew stopped and swapped with another crew who continued the work. All the while the chanting continued.

Following closely behind the work crews were Pan Gong and the Garrison elites. They watched the island like hawks. Chen Haoran felt more than a few of those gazes land on him. Pan Gong didn’t so much as glance at him, but Captain Liu certainly did, as well as a vicious-looking man that took Chen Haoran a minute to recognize as Lu Aotian. His face was now healed of the terrible melting Xie Jin had inflicted on him, though his eyes were still bloodshot.

“Those Garrison healers do some damn good work,” Chen Haoran muttered.

Qiong Qi glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “They do. Seeing as how you’ve spent time among the Garrison, it would help us if you could target their healers.”

“Seeing as how you’ve got information on what seems like damn near every soldier in this trial, I think I’ll leave it to you.”

“Are you just going to let them build unhindered?” Bao Si asked.

“Give them a minute,” Qiong Qi replied.

They silently watched the Garrison’s construction continue deeper and deeper into the lake. Chen Haoran’s brow furrowed when he saw the flat bridge gradually rising in height with each section.

No. Not a bridge. “They’re building a ramp,” Chen Haoran said.

“Who wouldn’t want the high ground,” Qiong Qi said. He raised a hand in the air. “Drown them.”

Qi pitched his voice down to the rebels closest to the shore. Blue liquid qi flooded from them in a large wave and spilled into the lake. The wave of water qi seized the water of the lake and raised up a wave hundreds of times larger, matching half the size of the pyramid. The Rattan Armor Soldiers loosed a wordless roar together, and Chen Haoran could practically feel the moment they pushed as one and toppled the towering wall of water over atop the Garrison. From his position, Chen Haoran couldn’t see the Garrison’s reaction as the wave curled over in a tsunami of crushing force and churning white water and enveloped them.

He didn’t need to wait long to see it, however, as a needle-like point of yellow light shined through the wave for a brief second before the center exploded. The wave broke into three pieces. The left and right continued forward uselessly on either side of the earth ramp. The center meanwhile surged backward to crash uselessly against the island’s formation barrier. Qiong Qi immediately pulled out his bow and loosed an arrow at the figure in the air responsible for breaking the wave. Pan Gong retracted his fist and fell back down to the ramp while Captain Liu rocketed up to intercept the arrow between two flaming fists.

Qiong Qi clicked his tongue. “Keep up the pressure.”

The Rattan Soldiers immediately gathered another wave. This time, however, the Garrison’s Water Spirit Roots flooded their own liquid qi to move the waters and match wave with wave. The two sides fell into a back-and-forth struggle, and the originally peaceful waters of the lake became murky and dark under the pressure.

“This isn’t a very good look for you guys,” Chen Haoran said. “Don’t you have a Formation under the lake?”

“The Heavy Water Formation is a trap Formation meant to drown, not control,” Qiong Qi said. “The water is poisonous, so it’s more lethal than usual.”

“Doesn’t seem to be useful if you can’t, you know, drown them,” Chen Haoran said.

Qiong Qi gave Chen Haoran an unamused stare. “Are you like this with everyone?”

“Only when I can get away with it,” Chen Haoran breezily answered.

“I can still kill you. We aren’t exactly satisfied with the Southern Dragon King and his intentions either.”

Chen Haoran lazily shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, man. For your sake, I hope you’re better at dealing with me than you are with the Garrison.”

Bao Si brushed her hand against Chen Haoran’s arm in warning. He heard the message clearly, but he wasn’t unduly worried. It wasn’t even that he was confident he could survive whatever Qiong Qi could do to him, though he certainly was. It’s just that for all that Qiong Qi postured, he still treated Bao Si as a princess. Affording her respect and weight towards her words and opinions. Had he really not cared about Xi Wangmu, then he would certainly not care for Bao Si, who was important to Xi Wangmu’s plans, and so long as Qiong Qi still cared about Xi Wangmu, then whatever he said about not liking Chen Qitao was moot.

Qiong Qi shook his head. “Just watch your words. It’s bad for morale.” He looked Chen Haoran up and down. “And perhaps your clothes as well. If you are to lord your status over us, then at least look the part.”

Chen Haoran looked down at his tattered red robes. Going from one thing to another, he hadn’t had the time to even think about changing them. He looked guiltily at Bao Si. “Sorry, I ruined the New Year’s robes you gave me.”

Bao Si raised an eyebrow. “Why are you apologizing to me? I didn’t give you those robes.”

“What? Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.” She pinches the fabric of his sleeve between her fingers. “This is actually much nicer than the one I gave you. Where did you get this?”

Was it? Now that Chen Haoran took a second to study, she was right. It certainly felt nicer. He really hadn’t been thinking about it when he put it on, but he really did give everything in his storage bag to Lin Nine, didn’t he?

“Would you believe me if you said I got it from a gambler?” Chen Haoran said.

“No.”

Pity.

“If you’re both done?” Qiong Qi interrupted.

“What?  Do you need something from me?” Chen Haoran asked.

“Professionalism perhaps?” Qiong Qi drawled.

Chen Haoran motioned toward the slowed-down Garrison’s building efforts. “You guys clearly have a plan. Until it’s my turn to deal with Pan Gong, I don’t see why I have to worry about anything else. Besides figuring out where Six-Eyes is.”

Of all the things that really bothered Chen Haoran right now was the fact the eccentric formation specialist was nowhere to be seen. He still didn’t know what the man’s angle was, whether he was an ally, foe, or just some weirdo doing things at his own pace. Whatever the case, Chen Haoran was left feeling uneasy being ostensibly on the opposite side of him now.

“This Formation will be fine. Right?” Chen Haoran asked in concern. “Six-Eyes was studying it while we were walking around the lake.”

Qiong Qi snorted. “He can study it however long he wants. The barrier isn’t as important as the Executioner’s Blade Array. So long as the Garrison wants to test us, then we’ll make sure they feel its edge.”

Bao Si pulled at Chen Haoran’s sleeve. “That Six-Eyes, is that not him there on the ramp? The one with the goggles.”

Qiong Qi and Chen Haoran whirled around. Sure enough, standing at the forefront of the ramp now with Pan Gong, Lu Aotian, and the other elites was Six-Eyes. Chen Haoran frowned. While the progress of building the ramp had slowed down, it had risen to a respectable height now, still below them but not as drastically as before. They had reached the halfway point between the lake shore and the island now. If the Garrison were given time to keep building, then Chen Haoran could imagine the ramp towering over them once it finally reached the island. But why were Pan Gong and the others standing in front of the workers now? To intercept further interference from the rebels? Did they really need to stand in the front to react to that though? Unless they’d realized something, Chen Haoran had yet to.

Six-Eyes caught Chen Haoran’s gaze with fiery orange eyes. He waved.

Chen Haoran squinted. “What the fu—”

“Chen Haoran!” Bao Si’s fingers dug into his shoulder and ripped away the upper half of his robes.

Chen Haoran reflexively jumped back.“Bao Si, what—?” He stopped dead when she threw his robes to the ground, and he saw an eye growing out of the fabric on the shoulder of the garment.

It was a thing of flesh and blood, completely at odds with the cloth it was merged with, yet one flowed naturally into the other. Its iris was pitch black, and the pupil was darker, still to be completely visible against it. It blinked at Chen Haoran.

The red lotus on Qiong Qi’s pauldron bloomed and burnt the eye to cinders.

“What was that?” Qiong Qi furiously demanded.

Chen Haoran didn’t answer him. He grabbed his shoulder, the same one Six-Eyes had slapped before, and looked back toward the Garrison with a sinking stomach. He felt cold.

“How’s the observation going? Do you think you’ll be able to get us through?”

“Most assuredly,” Six-Eyes replied. “Although if I could get a look from the inside, that would be ideal.”

Blue flames licked Lu Aotian’s heels, and he suddenly shot from the ramp straight toward the barrier. Pan Gong, Captain Liu, and the other Garrison elites flexed their qi and Movement Techniques and cleared the distance between the ramp and the island. Six-Eyes’s fiery orange eyes glowed, and a burning orange beam shot from them and accelerated past the soaring elites to splash into the barrier. The beam disappeared upon contact and took with it a ten-foot hole in the barrier.

Qiong Qi’s lotuses bloomed as he swore. “Close that hole!”

Someone, somewhere, heeded his command as white energy converged to close the gap. In an instant, half the hole was filled, but that was as far as it got when Lu Aotian grabbed the edges of the gap with hands wreathed in snarling, gnawing red qi. His qi lit up the edges of the hole like fire following an oil trail, and with an animalistic snarl, Lu Aotian placed himself fully in the gap and wrenched it open.

“Kill him!” Qiong Qi loosed an arrow at Lu Aotian, and before he could finish his words, a hundred more arrows were following it like green stars.

Pan Gong and Captain Liu soared through the entrance over Lu Aotian’s head, and the arrows disappeared in floods of liquid fire and yellow qi. When Pan Gong and Captain Liu landed on the island, the other elites followed them, save for one unlucky man who misjudged his jump and crashed against the barrier and fell screaming into the lake.

Chen Haoran gripped his sword and felt immense Metal qi gather. It was not around him or from him; however, it was above. A white sword of pure Metal qi unsheathed itself from the void where Chen Haoran knew it to be and hung over their heads. Chen Haoran felt the violent Metal qi in the air still, the Executioner’s Blade preparing judgment. The blade rippled once, and the still metal qi gathered over the heads of the Garrison. The blade fell with no apparent direction, but all those under it knew whose necks it would inevitably land on.

Pan Gong pulled a red flag emblazoned with a stylized black eye from his storage bag, and Chen Haoran’s cold feeling gave way to a bloodcurdling scream.

“Stop the Formation!”

Pan Gong heaved the flag like a javelin into the Executioner’s Blade, where the sword met the hilt. Instead of being instantly shredded, the flag planted itself into the white energy, and the black eye blinked. Red light arced through the white energy, and the Executioner’s Blade trembled.

And fell.

Chen Haoran grabbed Bao Si, flooded qi to his legs, and leaped up the pyramid as the Executioner’s Blade fell on the Rattan Vine Armor soldiers and their fortifications. There was no dust kicked up, no explosion of debris, there weren’t even any screams. Of the Five Elements, Metal was sharpness incarnate. When gathered in such massive amounts, however, it stopped being cutting and became pure disintegration.

Chen Haoran landed on the fifth terrace of the pyramid and turned around to find a chunk of the vine walls on the first and second terraces gone, along with the hundreds of soldiers manning them. In their place was the Executioner’s Blade, its tip trying and failing to pierce the bricks of the pyramid. There was a lull in the air as everyone took a moment to adjust.

Then the screaming started.

Screaming orders, screaming curses, screaming battle cries, names, families, fear, and triumph. The Rattan Armor Soldiers lucky enough to have been near the Executioner’s Blade and miss the full of its edge screamed their pain of missing limbs. The rest of the Garrison out on the land bridge screamed their victory as they doubled the pace of their construction. Lu Aotian let out a guttural, feral scream as he shot toward the peak of the pyramid.

Chen Haoran put down Bao Si and pulled out his sword while her tattoos peeled off her skin into two Centipede Gu. His thoughts raced as furiously as the white sword shadows flying off his blade did as they sparked the Metal qi ridden air. If there was ever a doubt Six-Eyes was an enemy before, there were none now, and Chen Haoran was left all the more fearful for it. He had been turned into a trojan and noticed nothing. Not him, Bao Si, Phelps, or the Yellow Dragon had sensed something wrong. When did Six-Eyes even plan it? As soon as he pointed out Bao Si on the rebels’ side? No. Even before that. Had their entire circling of around the lake just been him figuring out how he would get Chen Haoran inside?

He shook off the useless thoughts as Qiong Qi raced past them toward the peak. “Where are you going?” he shouted.

Qiong Qi didn’t look back, but his words were carried through the wind. “The Formation eye is on the peak! If we lose control of it, we’re dead. Stop Pan Gong.”

“Son of a—” Chen Haoran cut his curse short and had the Yellow Dragon connect their vision. The Executioner’s Blade took on new detail. Where the flag was planted was now a pulsating eyeball formed out of black qi. Nerves spread out from the eye like the tentacles of an octopus and wrapped around the white sword like chains as it buckled beneath its grip as two orders continuously tried to override the other. The black energy to hold and the white energy to move.

Chen Haoran cleared his vision. “Six-Eyes doesn’t have complete control over the Executioner’s Blade. We can take it back if we have enough time.”

“Is Phelps enough to protect Xie Jin?” Bao Si suddenly asked.

Chen Haoran was thrown for a loop before he realized what she was asking. He bit his lip. It wasn’t safe, but considering the situation…

“Phelps is smart,” Chen Haoran finally said. “He can protect Xie Jin, especially if I make enough noise.”

Bao Si nodded. “I’m going up. If we lose the offensive array, we’ll have no way to live.”

“I heard Lu Aotian has something that can save him from a Crystal Transformation,” Chen Haoran said. “Be careful. Stay safe.”

Bao Si hesitated.

A column of white flames spiked down below and slammed into the side of the pyramid. Captain Liu covered head to toe—no, transformed into fire, gripped the flame column in incandescent hands, and ripped it open down the middle, forcing aside the Rattan Armor soldiers and opening up a path for Pan Gong to dart up the pyramid. They locked eyes.

“You too,” Bao Si said and darted up the pyramid.

Pan Gong raced toward Chen Haoran. “Song Yuelin,” he called. “Easy way or the hard way?”

“That’s my line,” Chen Haoran replied. His fingers twitched. Did he use the armor?

The Yellow Dragon roared its challenge toward Pan Gong.

No. Not for Pan Gong. Better to keep it in hand for Lu Aotian or Captain Liu. Chen Haoran flooded qi to his sword and swung out a scythe of white energy that split the air as it flashed down. Pan Gong paused on a dime and collected yellow liquid qi to his fist till it looked like he broke open a damn and grabbed up the rushing flood water. He let out a whoop and smashed his fist into the scythe. The Yellow Dragon connected their vision in the split second that white light flashed in order to guard his eyes. It was how he saw Pan Gong still standing, looking at the blood spilling from the line cut into his fist but otherwise unharmed.

“I was right. It does suck to be on the opposite side of that,” Pan Gong said, remarkably carefree.

“Take pride,” Chen Haoran said as he and the Yellow Dragon were preparing even more qi for the next strike. “You’re the first person I’ve met in the same realm who could take it head-on like that.”

“I’m flattered,” Pan Gong said, reaching into his storage bag. “But I don’t necessarily want to take too many of those.”

Chen Haoran swung a white scythe that covered the width of the pyramid stairs and Pan Gong simultaneously threw out a slip of paper that crumbled into a burning bull and charged headfirst into the White Tyrant’s Harmonization. Chen Haoran felt the hairs stand up on his neck as the bull and metal scythe annihilated each other, and he lost vision of Pan Gong for a moment. A blur suddenly flew far to the left, and Chen Haoran instantly sliced a sword shadow at it at the same time, Pan Gong suddenly charged toward him through the decaying energy. The thing he thought was a second talisman that glowed with golden lightning, far brighter than the bull talisman before it. Before Chen Haoran could react, he felt a powerful force wrap around his blade and rip it from his hands. He watched in disbelief as the talisman flew into the distance, dragging his sword with it.

Yellow liquid qi flooded from Chen Haoran bolstered by a furious dragon roar that forced Pan Gong to coat himself in his own liquid qi and allow a chunk of it to be bitten off while he leaped out of the way.

“Why do you have that?” Chen Haoran demanded. Why that golden lightning of all things?

“Seventh rule of Palace School,” Pan Gong recited. “Your weaknesses can and will be used against you. Compensate for them.” He made some distance from Chen Haoran and slowly paced to flank him. “The greediest Crystal Transformation Realm made me pay out the nose for the Golden Magnetic Pole Talisman, but since my body isn’t tough enough to block Earth-Rank weapons just yet, it’s pretty handy.”

Chen Haoran pulled his liquid qi back and closed the distance between them. His palms glowed green. Pan Gong accelerated the instant Chen Haoran tried using his Technique and entered his guard with deadly intent. Just as quickly as he arrived, however, he flooded his liquid qi wildly and threw himself backward as Chen Haoran’s own liquid qi surged out once more and almost enveloped him, barely missing by a graze. Pan Gong was quick enough to escape his qi on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as lucky.

The Yellow Dragon roared in triumph as Pan Gong’s Earth Rank Yellow River qi was wiped of Pan Gong’s ownership and swallowed by it in one gulp as Chen Haoran’s liquid qi receded back into his body.

“Thanks for the meal,” Chen Haoran said.

Pan Gong sighed. “I knew it would be like this. It’s always like this for a River Blessed.”

Chen Haoran’s palms glowed green, and he shot forward. The Yellow Dragon lurked under his skin like a shark underwater, waiting for the next opportunity to ambush.

“Seventh Rule of Palace School,” Pan Gong said. He breathed in and raised his fists in a boxing stance. “Your weaknesses can and will be used against you. Compensate for them.”

Blossom-Picking Palm

Chen Haoran’s palms lashed out like the wind. The Yellow Dragon controlled liquid qi to flood out.

Pan Gong breathed out.

The Yellow Dragon roared, and suddenly, the rushing liquid qi doubled back and wrapped around Chen Haoran protectively.

Pan Gong punched.

The Blossom-Picking Palm scattered. The liquid qi cover broke.

With a bone-breaking crunch, Pan Gong punched Chen Haoran in the face.