Sky Pride

Tian lost track of the bigger fight quickly. He had his own little monsters to take care of. The anti-gu powder was meant to be sprinkled on a small insect that burrowed into a wound. It wouldn’t hold the beetle for long. That left the too-long worm. It also left his rope dart far too close to the Gu Masters for comfort.

The dawn light was casting everything in strange colors and deep shadows. The spinning beetle had a dark blue sheen to it, so dark it looked black unless the sun caught it just right. The long worm was vivid purple, and not as smooth as Tian had imagined. In the thin light, he could see thousands of little hairs extending from the gaps between segments of the worm.

The worm rushed for him, moving fast across the dirt. Tian had a sinking feeling about why a worm might be rolled up inside a fat mortal, and didn’t intend to find out what would happen if that wide, flat body wrapped itself around him. The worm got within ten feet of Tian, then spat some coppery liquid at him. It smelled rotten, acidic. Tian barely slipped past it, and then he was in reach of the worm.

He hadn’t really used Thunderous Palm much since he acquired the Hell Suppressing Sutra. He was unprepared for the results. Three things happened almost simultaneously. His left palm swung out and landed on the worm hard enough to slap its raised head flat backwards onto the ground. Which wasn’t a bad thing, exactly, except he didn’t intend to hit it nearly that hard. It was just that his hand suddenly felt a lot heavier. No less nimble, just heavier.

As soon as his hand made contact with the worm, he felt an unpleasant prickling on his palm. He had never experienced anything like it before- like tiny needles were burrowing into his skin, dragging threads of burning cold behind them. Ironic, really, since that was what Thunderous Palm was doing to the worm.

Thunderous Palm was a soft technique, focused on yin rather than yang, destroying a body from within by using tiny threads of vital energy to infiltrate the enemy’s organs, then vibrate at high speeds. The damage on something like a brain usually resulted in liquefaction. It could explode hearts, rupture lungs, and reduce anything softer than bone into an awful state. It’s just that it had to be used at very close range, required an unreasonably high amount of vital energy to use, and one had to have a significant degree of compatibility with yin to use it effectively.

The top two feet of the worm just melted away. What hit the ground wasn’t a head anymore, it was a foul smelling watery pulp. The worm’s body thrashed, twisting around and knotting itself up. Worms had fearsome regenerative power, Tian had heard. He was quite sure it wasn’t all-the-way-dead.

His hand throbbed- the infiltrating coldness had reached the veins in his wrists. He really wanted to stop and deal with it, but… you have to kill the enemy when he’s sick. He knew that before he even joined the Temple. Didn’t matter if it hurt. He’d deal with it later.

Tian rushed in again, trying to find a good line of attack on the worm that wouldn’t get him wrapped up. There wasn’t one. So he just hit what was convenient. The left palm struck again, and once again, he felt the cold burning pain infiltrate. Once again, the heaviness of his hand was far more than he expected. Delightfully, the damage this time was no worse than before. The worm was in two pieces now. All that soft flesh simply broke apart under the cruel insistence of the Thunderous Palm.

Why palm arts were called “soft” was a complete mystery to Tian. He, for one, would rather eat a heavy leg kick from a hard art than a soft palm to the chest.

Two pieces would have to be good enough for now. There was still the beetle to manage. It had only been a handful of seconds since Tian threw the powder at it, but the beetle was a lot bigger than what the powder was meant to work on.

Tian started switching over to Light Body Heavy Hands, and fell flat on his face. The pain was beyond words. There was something trying to burrow into his meridians. Something insidious. It had gotten so deep without him even noticing. He had been fixated on the pain in his hand and never noticed!

He forced himself to use Advent of Spring. The pain was unrelenting, freezing cold then burning hot, his nerves pulled taught and near to snapping. Just making his vital energy cycle felt near impossible. Like his meridians couldn’t take the pressure.

Advent of Spring is steady. It’s strong. And it was entirely capable of choking out competition. The art cycled. The yin qi was suppressed momentarily, and then the vital energy reached the Hell Suppressing Sutra.

There was a moment where Tian experienced what it would be like to have a dozen super-fine wires made of frozen steel ripping through his body as well as an almost invisible black gas boiling out of his meridians. His fleshy body broke them down. And then they vanished.

Tian was on his feet a half second later, rushing towards the beetle. He felt like he could fight ten bastards, beat them stupid then find their fathers and whip them too. He didn’t know why, but he did. So he would take it out on the beetle, and then see who else needed their organs juiced.

The beetle was still spinning. It felt like it should have all taken a long while. It had been about a minute. Tian didn’t see any reason for it to live even one minute longer. There weren’t any spikes coming out of the body below the upper shell, beyond the hooked horror that was the legs, anyway. He rushed over to the insect, found a moment, and dipped in to slap his hand against its belly. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

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Tian’s knowledge of beetle anatomy was near non-existent. He just ate them when he had to, and didn’t fuss about the details. He knew that they were low to the ground and wide for stability. The wind couldn’t easily blow them around, and predators couldn’t easily flip them over and attack their bellies. It could be said to be his one beetle fact.

He wasn’t too disappointed to learn he was wrong. Watching the beetle flip over and tumble across the dirt was very satisfying. He rushed over and slapped another palm to its now exposed belly, then two more. Thunderous Palm was flowing extraordinarily easily tonight. The draw on his vital energy was minimal. He’d swear he wasn’t usually this strong though.

A quick change over to Light Body showed he wasn’t running any faster. He tried throwing a few punches as he doubled back for his rope dart. Nothing special. His hands didn’t feel any heavier, nor was there any extra strength in them. The Gu Masters had left the top of the wagons, and rushed out to fight the Senior Brothers and Sisters. Maybe they ignored Tian, or maybe they were just certain the two Gu would finish the job.

The rope dart was right where he had left it- twined around a brutally eviscerated sack of flesh that had once been a fat merchant. Tian couldn’t help but stare for a moment- there was both more and less in there than he thought. Lumps of yellow fat bigger than his feet were scattered around or wrapped around organs. More disturbing were the gaping voids in the skin and muscle that said something enormous had been curled up in there.

Tian flicked the rope clean. No change using Snake Head Vine Body. But then, he would have noticed if there was any change long before. He had been using it a lot. Was it only with Thunderous Palm? Why? Did he eat something weird?

Tian rushed towards the front of the carriages. He glanced inside a carriage that had been smashed open. Cloth. It was filled with bolt after bolt of fine cloths. Gaudy stuff- bright reds and greens, some brocaded. There was a bolt of green brocade, and it made his heart hurt. Why? Why? Was he poisoned?

He must be poisoned. Tian grit his teeth and started looking for a target he could pick off. His options weren’t great. The Gu Masters were sending swarms of small stinging insects towards the orthodox cultivators. The cultivators were countering with powders, talismans, or even weapon arts. They weren’t overwhelmed yet, but this was their second round of fighting, and the heretics were fresh. Worse, his senior brothers and sisters were at risk of dying from the attack, but the enemy was in no risk of dying from the defense.

It couldn’t keep up. He looked for one he thought he could ambush and found… nothing. They were all Level Nine, and wary. The way they carried themselves, their subtle posture, the suspicious number of insects moving around behind them- they were waiting for an ambusher. Eager for one.

Alright, that wasn’t going to work. But he couldn’t do nothing. Hmm. He looked around for some way to change the balance. One side defending, the other trying to play bandit. Tian hesitated as an idea crept into his head. The storage rings couldn’t hold an unlimited amount of things, but… he did have quite a few crappy ones he looted from heretics that he hadn’t bothered to exchange yet. He was putting them on a string and keeping them in his robe, just because he didn’t know what else to do with them.

He quickly counted. Six, plus his own ring. Not a ton, but… Tian ran to the rearmost carriage and kicked open the door. Chests. Of what? Didn’t matter. Into the ring. Smash apart anything still there. No hidden compartments? Shocking. On to the next wagon. More chests. Into the ring- no, full already. The next one then. Smash floorboards, walls… he found something! A few sacks of unidentified powders and a considerably smaller sack of smooth, shiny white balls. Into the ring.

Tian wasn’t being quiet about it. There were sixteen wagons. Tian only made it to wagon number five from the rear before hundreds of thumbnail sized beetles started coming through the walls and screeching with insect hate. He had been waiting for this- he scattered a fistfull of Gu Bane Powder in the air around him. These bugs were the right size for the powder to work on, and they really didn’t like being trapped in an enclosed area with it.

Out of the wagon with a long, diving roll, Counter-Jumper straining to spot the ambush. It was right below him! He pushed off the ground with all four limbs and jumped to the side. Thin needles, almost invisible in the dawn light, launched silently from the ground. He could feel something strange from almost a yard under the surface of the sand, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Trying to fish in muddy waters? Tsk tsk. Boy, it is one hundred years too soon for you to try and play that game in front of me.” A woman in black fluttered down from a wagon and landed in front of him. She must have deployed a light body art. Level Nine. He wasn’t her match. But then, he didn’t have to be. He just had to be better than her Gu. Because if there was one thing he did know about Gu Masters…

“Sorry Senior.”

“Sorry? You think you can just apologize? Boy, if apologies were enough, what need would there be for the magistrate?” She laughed darkly.

“I’m not apologizing. I just think you are pitiable.”

That wiped the smile off her face. Tian thought she would be pretty. Most of the senior sisters were at least somewhat handsome looking. She wasn’t. She looked like a peasant who had labored under the sun her whole life, and never had enough food.

“And why is that, little rich boy?”

“Because your strength is bugs. And I grew up eating them. You should not fight me, Senior.”

She spat. “Pathetic bluff.”

Tian blinked and tilted his head to the side. “Bluff?”

“Transparent bluff.” She sneered. Tian pretended he didn’t see the tiny insects flowing out from her sleeves.

“No, I was asking what the word meant. Sorry if that was unclear, Senior.”

That had her blinking. “You… don’t know what a bluff is?”

“I mean, I might. I just don’t know what the word means. But I might know how to do it.” He tucked the rope dart into his robe, carefully patting it in place.

“Weird kid. Be smarter in your next life.” She waved her hand and a cloud of housefly sized insects suddenly swarmed and plunged towards Tian. Tian sent vital energy into his hands and circulated Thunderous Palm. Then he ran straight into the swarm.