Sky Pride

Liren didn’t wait, lashing out with the blunt end of her spear to smash Suneater’s skull. An invisible hand flicked it away.

“Not even a trace of qi. Pure vital energy. This is pathetic.” Suneater laughed. “Let’s see-”

Tian didn’t wait either, the rope dart came snaking in from the side, going for Suneater’s spine. It, too, was slapped away. A moment later, so was Tian. An invisible force sent him spinning through the air and smashing into a rock. He felt his ribs crack, and something in his guts was screaming that he had all kinds of new problems.

“A rope dart? Are you a circus performer? No, with those hands, a street performer. At least a spear is a real weapon. Killing you will be a mercy. This life is clearly a failure already.” Suneater’s voice dripped with contempt.

The crane flapped into the air, but the cavern didn’t allow much room for flight or maneuvering. She raced over as best she could and tried to spear the skeleton with her beak. She got within five feet before her head was sharply pulled to the ground, making her flip in the air and slam into the stone floor hard enough to make Tian flinch. Then some invisible hand picked her up and flung her back across the room. It looked casual. A higher being flicking away a fly.

Liren gathered fire vital energy into her spear, the wavy blade shimmering with heat. A lightning fast thrust, closer this time, but still smashed away. A moment later, she crashed into a wall. Suneater never shifted, his bones unmoving from where they had sat for thousands of years.

“It’s not qi, I’d be able to see something if it was. I think. It’s brainpower, only it’s not attacking my mind, but my body.”

Tian forced himself up and into a guard position, hands out in front of him. “On. Ran. Cho. Sha. Vo…” he started chanting, pouring elemental energy into each sound, trying to fill the area around him with chaotic energy before diving in with his rope dart. He had first learned to imbue his voice with elemental vital energy when he was trying to break Daoist Steelshimmer’s brainpower-based illusions, so it was worth a try now.

“Ahahaha! Oh, that’s amazing! You… has that ever worked for you? That’s the dumbest thing I think I have ever seen. Let me show you what a real shen art looks like.” Tian had a dreadful premonition and dove to his left, never letting up with his chanting. He felt something scrape along the side of his head, there was a feeling of burning, then of coldness.

Liren rushed back in a fury, her spear exploding forward, fire qi faintly wreathing the spearhead. This time Tian did see Suneater use his qi- a brilliant gold shield shimmered in the air for just long enough to stop Liren’s spear. Then she went flying back, hitting a stalagmite hard enough that Tian heard the bones breaking from twenty feet away.

“Oh you hideous thing! Do you know how hard it is to gather yang qi when you are a ghost? Tell me, what would hurt you more? Watching me kill him, or…”

Liren forced herself to her feet. Her left arm was broken, and if Tian was any judge, so were some ribs. She didn’t let that stop her. She looked at Tian, her eyes wide. Then they went hard, and a spear appeared in her hand. Ancient, plain, but something about it seemed to weigh heavily on the world.

For the first time, Tian saw the skeleton move. It almost looked like a flinch. “You didn’t get that from a trash heap. No, I don’t think I will let you play around with that.”

“Hey, Senior, where’d your dick go?” Tian yelled, then leaped forward. The second move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing- Dragon Soars Through the Sky. His left hand filled with yang vital energy, deceptively relaxed but with the promise of destroying whatever it touched.

“Bastard thing!” Tian felt another drilling bolt of brainpower coming at him. He was in the air. It was what the brothers had always warned him would happen, he would be in the air and open to a fatal counter. Tian used the fractured second between identification and impact to fling his right hand forward and down.

The brainpower smashed into his chest, drilling through his body. Tian bit back a scream as he tumbled across the stone floor. He wasn’t breathing right. His lung. Something had pierced his lung, and the pain was getting worse. It felt like drowning!

There was a staccato ring, like five sharp nails striking metal. Then an audible crack.

“What… What did you just do? Answer me, boy, what did you just do?!” Suneater roared, fear in his voice.

Liren grinned, her expression every bit the death’s head rictus that Suneater bore. With one hand, she still managed a perfect lunge. Brilliant yang qi flames spiraled around the spear, igniting the air as it passed. Tian thought he saw something trying to flicker into existence in front of it- too late. She put the spear clean through Suneater’s head.

Something in the old ghost caught fire. Suneater screamed.

“ANTS! ANTS! MERE ANTS DARE BITE THE IMMORTAL?! DIE FOR ME!” A burst of qi came boiling out of the skeleton- the might of a heavenly person revealed at last. Golden sabers swum into the air around him, then fell, chopping down on Liren. She parried two of them. The third bit into her hip hard enough to make her scream- but not enough to kill her. She planted the butt of the spear in the ground with her foot, and using the leverage, ripped the skull, and the life, clean out of the skeleton. The bones scattered on the cave floor, little sun bright flames gleaming over the white bones, then extinguished.

Liren didn’t bother investigating. She stumbled over to Tian and collapsed to her knees next to him. “Here, swallow-”

“Treat yourself first!” Tian barked, his voice choked. “When you are stable, I will walk you through what to do. Stop the bleeding, splint the bones, then help the others. Remember what we practiced.”

Tian followed his own instructions, and dusted his wound with blood clotting powder. It would help keep infection out while he came up with a plan for treating the punctured lung. His hands feebly patted the hole on his chest. About the width of his thumb. He didn’t have large hands, but a hole that size, in the right place, was more than enough to be fatal.

He could feel the brainpower doing something inside of him. Whatever it was, it hurt. He slammed Advent of Spring into motion, pouring the yang vital energy into the Hell Suppressing art. It wasn’t enough. The Brainpower was something different than curse qi or poison qi. His body wasn’t tearing it apart like he hoped.

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“A bone. Toss me one of that bastard’s bones.”

Liren, bless her, didn’t ask any question and just tossed over a femur. Tian rubbed the white powder off of it, then grunted. The bone underneath was smooth to the point of being slightly sticky, and harder than the stone he was lying on. Jade bones. Not as fancy as what the Saintess had, but really, he was in no position to judge.

The bones were steeped in yin qi. Fuel for his body cultivation, and damned if he was going to leave Suneater an intact corpse. The Hell Suppressing Sutra started pulling on the yin qi of the bone as Advent of Spring began the healing process. Attacking his wounds from two directions.

He could disrupt brainpower with his chants, even if it wasn’t a ‘real’ brainpower technique. There was nothing to support the brainpower in Suneater’s attack anymore. That should make it much weaker. He didn’t have any better ideas. He closed his eyes and began again. “Xho, Kah, Bo, Ni, Fas…”

He could feel the fuzzy chaos of the elemental qi vibrating in his chest, but the spell, or whatever you called an attack made with brainpower, resisted it. It had a cohesion to it that he had never encountered before. Daoist Steelshimmer was pressing her brainpower directly against his mind. By losing himself in the elemental sounds and letting the chaotic elemental qi wash through him, he could disrupt her illusions. He had managed something similar against other cultivators, but against enemies in his realm, it was less the disruption of brainpower that mattered and more the disruption of qi.

He tried to remember what he knew about brainpower. It was practically nothing- everyone said it was bad to know too much about the realms ahead of yours because it made breakthroughs harder. It was a type of qi, because everything was a type of qi. Grandpa had said it was a type of qi he didn’t have access to yet.

He was starting to get lightheaded. The wound clotting powder had probably sealed the external hole, but he was now sure he was bleeding internally. Advent of Spring and the Hell Suppressing Sutra would eventually take care of it, if it weren't for the brainpower constantly burrowing inside of him and making things worse. He was just lucky it was in one lung for now. A little to the right, and it would be in his heart.

That wasn’t what Grandpa had said. Not quite. It’s not that he didn’t have access to ‘brainpower,’ it’s that he couldn’t use it at his level. Tian had vital energy, qi, and apparently brainpower. He just couldn’t use two out of three intentionally. So presumably there was a way to manage this thing.

He struggled to breathe. Each breath came hard, but he didn’t let up on the chanting.

“The chanting is me using my vital energy to disturb the elements around me, affecting the qi around and within me, which also includes brainpower, because no matter how ‘advanced’ an energy it is, it is part of the world and so made of the five elements. Somehow. So what if I…

“Liren, blue jar white stripe one pill, white jar red letters, three grains in water. For you. Me is green bottle, quarter ounce. Chanting on the inside.”

Tian picked a point on the ceiling and focused his eyes on it. Brainpower was just another type of qi, something he already had but couldn’t directly control. But the mind, the intention, moved the qi before it moved a muscle. Vital energy was the qi that strengthened and nourished the body. There was vital energy in his brain. So assuming brainpower actually comes from the brain, he should be able to get his brainpower thrumming with his elemental chant, which would then shake the vital energy in his body, including around the wound, which would then break up the remnant power of Suneater’s attack.

There were probably gaps in that logic, but it was getting hard to breathe on just one lung. Before he spoke a sound, he heard it in his mind. So. Maybe-

“On. Ran. Cho. Vah. Ki. Lu…” Tian reached for different sounds, mixed with the familiar, trying to find the resonance.

It was about his understanding, not some universally true link between sound and nature. To him, Vah was the sound of wind running through high grass, making the frond heads bow. Ran was rain on a tile roof as he sat on the porch reading. Xi was the hissing noise a fire made when it was burning clean, none of the snap and pop of impurities being destroyed.

He couldn’t imagine the elements in the abstract. They were always things he had experienced, and the sounds guided him to the memories. And memories lived in the brain. He tried to visualize the energy flowing through his head, the upper dantian throbbing and shaking as he struggled to make his body do what he wanted it to.

“There are probably all kinds of reasons why this doesn’t work the way I think it does. Suneater thought my chanting was stupid. But it’s what I’ve got, and I don’t think I can wait for this attack to resolve on its own.”

Liren opened his mouth and poured a bare sip of medicine down his throat. He could taste it in the exhale, bitter and herbal, but filled with a gentle medicinal qi that was supporting his body’s attempts to repair itself.

Whatever he was trying to do, it wasn’t working. He was told he didn’t have the ability to use brainpower at his stage, and it seemed the elders didn’t lie. He wasn’t even reaching it. Or if he was, it wasn’t making enough of a difference.

Liren put her hands on his chest, gently pressing a plaster over the wound. Just like he had taught her. He felt a jolt from the statue in his lower dantian. Something about Liren was making the Hell Suppressing Sutra take notice. It felt… excited.

“Put both hands on me. Try to cultivate. Energy should move. This might feel weird.”

“Cultivate? Now? Are you insane?”

“Please.” Tian closed his eyes, and started focusing on the Sutra. He knew that it, too, chanted, a sound he usually couldn’t hear and didn’t understand when he did hear it. Maybe it could resonate with his ‘brainpower’ or start consuming whatever Suneater left in his body. In any case, he was out of ideas.

Liren struggled to focus, but he could hear her breath steadying. Brilliant yang vital energy burned like a sun against his chest. Yang qi, and something else. Something he didn’t have words for, but that the Sutra seemed very familiar with. A connection was made.

Tian’s mind went blank. He could hear some ancient recitation, some droning chant in a voice that was neither male or female, or both. Young and old. Fast and slow. Two voices moving differently, yet harmonizing into one coherent sound. Time passed. An eternity passed. Something broke down inside of him, and a remnant part of his brain nudged him awake.

“Enough. Thank you.”

The brain power had broken down. Tian was covered in sweat. Liren was shivering. Odd.

“How long was I unconscious?”

“You were unconscious?” Liren asked.

“Yes? It felt like a long time.”

“Five heartbeats.” Her lips quirked. “Exactly five heartbeats. I think I’ve lost a months’ cultivation. Bastard.”

Tian’s eyes shot wide open. “I am-”

“But my vital energy was condensed and purified, so I can’t call it a real loss.”

Tian relaxed, exhaling slowly. His wounds were much better. His broken bones were still broken, but at least they were in alignment and just starting to bond. The hole in his lung seemed to be patching itself as well. Advent of Spring was originally made for cultivators in the Heavenly Realm. It could fix most things with time. So long as nothing was interfering.

“That bastard was in the Heavenly Realm, once. Looks like he lost almost all his qi. I guess the heavens don’t send a tribulation if the heavenly person is already dead.” Liren sniggered, and from what Tian had seen, she was right.

“This cave was our reward for winning the tournament. Do you feel rewarded?” Tian asked.

“Oh yes. So rewarded.” Liren’s voice went dry. “But since I’m stealing that bastard’s bones and refining them into useful tools or, alternatively, a portable latrine seat and chamberpot-”

“Also useful tools,” Tian agreed wholeheartedly.

“We can’t say we are leaving without treasures. Besides, that is an awfully fancy looking storage ring he has on, and there was a reason he sealed himself up in this cave. Once we heal up, I’m going to be very eager to find it.”

Tian nodded, a thin smile crossing his face. Then he gasped, eyes shooting wide open as his broken body convulsed. “The tea! Did the tea survive?”