Sky Pride

Liren gave Tian a serious amount of side eye. Tian ignored it. She carried on. Tian did too. Liren wasn’t one for being ignored. “Seems a bit much.”

“I did say it was a strange urge.” Tian sighed.

“I’m not saying that I’ve never found you covered in the pulped remains of your enemies. I’m just saying, you don’t usually go out of your way to kill them.”

Tian looked out over the swaying grass. Tall, dense, scratchy, filled with ticks and biting flies. The rare few roads were almost invisible once you were a few yards away from them. The tall grass smoothed everything away. There was a smell to it, rather nice, Tian thought, but under the sweet grass and small flowers was a smell of sunburnt stone.

“I can smell the wastelands. I know it’s in my head, but I can still smell it.”

Liren nodded. “Me too. We didn’t spend long in the steppes did we? Barely a couple of days. But it’s like the Redstone Wastes bleeds into it. All this grass grew out of blood spilled by the nomads and the Kingdom, heretics and orthodox cultivators. It looks peaceful and empty, but it’s growing on bones.”

Tian looked out over the swaying grass. “I just had a funny thought.” Not a hint of a smile crossed his face. “The kingdom is cracking down on the salt trade in a major way, and Starsieve broke the back of Black Iron Gorge. So all those wars the nomads fought, the whole slaves for salt and weapons trade, all that must be in shambles. So do you think the steppes are more or less peaceful?”

Liren sighed and pulled out the flying sword. “Let’s get to Burning Flag City. No idea if Hanshen is there yet, but he’s not moving quietly. We’ll find him soon enough.”

The journey over the steppes was quick. They took turns propelling the blade, as neither wanted to stop and camp for even one night. There was something in the air and in the earth. A lingering hostility, an abiding malice, though whether it was aimed at them was unclear. Something had awoken in the steppes. You could taste it in the rare rivers that crossed the grass desert. Tian scooped up the earth, letting the dirt rest on his tongue before spitting it out.

“It must be connected to what Starsieve did, but I have no idea how, or what it is.” Liren kicked a clump of grass so hard, it exploded in a cloud of fibers. Tian didn’t either. They could only shrug and rush forward. Carefully. They didn’t linger, but they were both pushing their new sensory arts as hard as they could.

They were fifty miles outside of Burning Flag City when they tripped the ambush. They managed to spot a hidden killer before stepping into the trap, but she sensed their awareness of her almost instantly, and rather than try to play innocent, she immediately attacked.

A cloud of hornets flew up from an empty patch of grass, iridescent wings making a roar as they swarmed upward. Liren sent the sword into a steep dive while pulling rocks from her ring. She threw the head sized stones hard enough to make them shatter, the clouds of pebbles ripping into the venomous swarm and tearing holes in it.

Tian wasn’t any slower, poking holes in small sacks of gu powder and flinging them downward, letting the plumes of dust hang in the air. It was intended to manage earthly realm gu, and probably wouldn’t do much to Heavenly Realm insects, but it was better than nothing. When they were close enough to see their ambusher, still a blurry outline against the grass, he leapt from the sword, staff in hand.

“Arrogant fool!” The heretic’s voice was a raspy whisper, carried to his ears by qi. She had reason for her words too. An enormous hornet the size of Tian himself, burst out of the ground and rushed up at him. It shimmered a metallic gold against matte iron black. Tian didn’t get a chance to see much more, as the jagged mandibles reached up for him.

He was falling from a high place, holding a big stick above his head with both hands. He waited until he could see his reflection in the hornet’s multifaceted eyes, then smashed the stick downward. The spell shifted the stick’s weight, making it weigh a ton in an instant. The weight was enough to jerk Tian completely around, so he was being pulled down towards the hornet head first, his feet trailing like ribbon behind him.

He had timed the mover well. A stinger the length of his leg curved up from underneath the hornet, piercing the air where he should have been. The iron tipped staff, heavy as a loaded wagon, smashed into the hornet’s head, and exploded it. The stinking innards flew to either side of the blow, the corpse smashing into the dirt hard enough to bounce. Tian lightened the staff again and completed the flip, landing on his feet.

The heretic wasted no words, hacking at him with a dagger. It was hard to see where the edge was- she was using some sort of spell that kept her blurred against the grassland and the sky. He let his instincts slide him back, The Moon Crossing the Lake flowing over the waving grass. Then he exploded forward once more, his iron-tipped staff lashing towards the heretic’s head.

She countered with her own footwork and a flung talisman. Tian dodged to the side, barely missing the sizzling jet of acid that shot from the floating scrap of hide. Then dodged again, because the talisman was no cheap paper thing, it kept spraying the acid and turning to face him, making the grass behind him sizzle and smoke. The acrid, sulfurous stink of it drilling up his nose and burning the insides, as though even the smell of it was trying to kill him. He didn’t wait to find out if he was right about that. Tian stopped dodging, feinted, then rushed in.

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The heavy iron staff hummed through the air, the ends spinning as they tried to crush the heretic. Tian could hear Liren shouting- there were more heretics to kill, it seemed. Tian focused on the one in front of him.

“You really are an arrogant fool!” He had been too focused. The hornets descended on him, stinging him, sinking their acid deep into him. He bent over, half kneeling, barely holding himself up with the staff. The heretic stopped her evasion long enough to leer at him. “What a fool, what a fool. Well, all the better for me.”

Tian whipped the head of the staff up and around, smashing the heretic’s head into a grey-red mist that stained the grassland. The hornets went mad, some dying on the spot, others stinging each other, or flying away in every direction. Tian slapped the ones still attacking him to death. He wasn’t harmed, but it hurt.

Liren was fighting two against one, and not making it look easy. She was holding the horn spear in reserve, relying on her boxing and thrown rocks to battle the heretics. Tian could read the heretic’s frustration, as they hacked at her with saber lights and inky black halberd thrusts. This should have been over in seconds. Instead, they were missing, and getting punched in the face for their efforts.

Tian took two tottering steps towards them, before collapsing, his arms flying out. Then he was on his feet again, staggering towards the fight once more.

“Hold her! I’ll finish him off!”

“YOU DARE!” Liren roared, and rushed the halberd user. He hacked and thrust, footwork keeping the barbed ax-head between them. Not giving her a chance to slip past his guard.

“Hehe! So what if I do dare? Can you stop me? Watch me kill him!” The saber user dashed over towards the half kneeling Tian. “Good boy, just keep your neck stretched out for Grandfather.”

The tarnished saber rose up, and fell quickly. The heretic fell with it. A fistfull of vibrating darts ripped through the Heretic’s neck, tearing open the jugular and burrowing through the cervical vertebrae to pierce the spinal cord. The heretic’s eyes started to roll up, but Tian didn’t wait. The staff swung around once more, and another evil mind was scattered over the grass.

The halberd wielding heretic didn't speak any nonsense. Clearly disinterested in fighting two on one, he dropped a fat ball that billowed into a cloud of choking smoke dozens of yards across. It stank, and worse, the smoke carried a chaotic qi that made perception arts almost useless.

Liren dashed through the smoke, charging forward to find her prey. Tian did the opposite, dropping flat and burying himself under the grass. He spread his awareness through the ground using Counter-Jumper. Just because his qi sense was blocked didn’t mean all his senses were useless.

The grasslands were alive. Thrashing in agony, where the grass was damaged by acid or the maddened hornets, moving with the wind where it was as nature intended it. The only footsteps he heard were Liren’s.

Tian didn’t stir. He did his best to still his breath and become one with the grassland. Eventually the smoke cleared. He didn’t move. Waiting until your prey thought they were safe and relaxed, that was a classic strategy. Strike at the moment of relaxation, to guarantee a safe kill.

He waited for the time it would take a stick of incense to burn. Nothing. He stood up. “If he’s hiding perfectly this long, he’s better at stealth than I am at detection.” He swept his eyes across the steppes, seeing no trace of the man. Which shouldn’t be a surprise. He would have flown away, if their positions were reversed.

“Agreed. I took an antidote, but check me out, please. I think there was poison in that smoke.” Liren rose from the grass herself, spear in hand. “That takes me right back.”

“Doesn’t it? And yes, the smoke was poisonous, though not a very strong one. Mildly hallucinatory.” Tian walked over to Liren, and took her pulse. “Yep. Very mild poisoning. I’m not surprised your antidote didn’t work. It’s an Earthly Realm remedy, right?”

“Nope, I took one of the Heavenly ones we got at No Gate City. We don’t have many.” She frowned. Tian shrugged. The Hell Suppressing Body did exactly nothing for improving his qi or shen directly, but it also had no problem ripping apart infiltrating qi and poison and using it to fuel his ongoing bodily refinement. The hornet venom hurt like crazy, and there was some damage from the penetration itself, but on balance, he could only wish there were more of them around.

“Well, the good news is that it mostly worked. Your body would clear out the rest by itself in a couple of days. I’ll get rid of it for you.” Tian started running the Demon Pulling Art, gently gathering the poison qi from inside of her.

“You always touch me so gently.” Liren smiled. “I love the way you touch me.” Then she frowned. “Medically. Strictly medically. Which is obviously what I meant.” 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

“Too late.” Tian grinned, his eyes distant, his attention focused on manipulating his qi and vital energy.

“Too late? What do you mean, ‘Too late?”

“Don’t worry about it. I definitely won’t bring this up in the future.”

“Bring what up? I said nothing inappropriate!” Liren flared.

“I agree. Which is why I definitely won’t bring this up in public, possibly over a meal with friends. Incidentally, I can’t find a medical reason for you blushing.”

“What kind of quack are you? Ayah, hurry up! I’m itching to see what’s in their storage rings.”

“What do you expect? They are heretics. It’s going to be eight jars of pickled organs and a sack of mealworm powder. Maybe a decent camp knife if we are lucky. Possibly a wooden stool. But no, that’s a silly, impossible dream.”

They bickered gently, affectionately. Neither saying what the other knew. They were back in the Redstone Wastes. It was like they never left.