'Master, behind you!' Qiu Wen tried to dodge the incoming attack, but due to being badly injured, he barely had time to raise his sword as a shield before the blow sent him flying, crashing into the ground hard enough to crack stone, breath bursting from his lungs in a bloody cough.
Duan Kuo appeared above him like a thunderclap.
He grabbed Qiu Wen by the head and lifted him with one hand. Lightning crackled over his fingers, then sank into Qiu Wen's skull and spine. Qiu Wen's body spasmed, teeth grinding as his vision flashed white.
His sword spirit couldn't stand it.
The blade shrieked and shot toward Duan Kuo's throat, fury blazing. The sword's light spilling into a small girl's outline for a breath.
A spike burst from the ground with a dry crack, driven up like a buried spearhead breaking free. It split mid-rise into thick, earthen clamps and snapped shut around the sword mid-flight, pinning it in place as it shuddered helplessly.
"Oh?" Qiao Lanyue's tilted her head, watching the trapped blade with amused disdain. "So this is the famous sword with a spirit."
The sword's light stuttered.
Qiu Wen forced his eyes open through the pain. Screams and the clash of techniques rolled from all around the sect. "You… who are you people?"
Duan Kuo smiled, enjoying the way Qiu Wen's body jerked as he tore his meridians, crippling him. "Your sect offended the wrong people, now you're paying the price."
"Stop playing around, the signal will rise any moment."
Duan Kuo drove Qiu Wen's head into the ground, cracking the young man's skull before straightening, satisfied with his work.
"Fine, then let me show you my true might!"
He rose into the air, lightning gathering around his limbs in tightening bands. The clouds above him began to coil and sink, drawn into a slow spiral.
Qiao Lanyue didn't look impressed and tapped the ring on her finger.
Dark energy sprang out like a coiling serpent and wrapped around the pinned sword. Inside that blackness, the sword spirit girl saw shapes rise, things made of pure demonic energy with too many limbs and hungry mouths.
She fought, flaring bright, but the darkness swallowed light the way deep water swallowed fire.
Her scream cut off halfway.
Qiu Wen, barely conscious, turned his head and saw his sword's glow guttered, then died. The blade went dull, dead metal trapped in hardened earth.
Before his eyes could even close, a pressure settled over the sect, stripping away what little strength his body had left and knocking him out.
Qiao Lanyue's expression darkened. "He's really going to do it." She decided to also not hold back anymore and moved.
Qi sank into her legs, gathering at her soles with a rough, earthen weight. She drove her foot down.
Power rippled outward, swallowing half the mountainside. The ground tightened beneath the wave, compressed into a single taut plate, drawn back like a bowstring ready to snap. A second pulse followed, tracing invisible lines through that plate, carving it into broad tiles that strained against each other, desperate to split.
Then Qiao Lanyue lifted her hand and made a small, dismissive motion.
The seams she'd drawn gave way. The whole slab buckled and tore.
Stone screamed. Tiles heaved and slammed into one another as the mountainside lurched. The shock ran through courtyards and paths, collapsing walls and swallowing anyone too slow to leap away. The sound that followed wasn't one explosion, but many, cascading as the earth folded in on itself.
* * * *
"I'm sorry," Su Meilan apologized, though her voice held no remorse.
A group of disciples tried to flee through the outer grounds, making her have to blink after them, hand brushing past shoulders and sleeves with an almost gentle touch.
Each one burst into flame.
Their screams rose and broke, swallowed by the roar of fire.
Above, the clouds churned. The earth shook again, harder this time. Cracks raced across courtyards and paths, swallowing the unlucky whole. Lightning descended in jagged strokes, striking wherever Qi gathered thickest. People died without even having time to scream.
Su Meilan shook her head, watching a stray shockwave slam into their own side. Duan Kuo and Qiao Lanyue seem to have stopped caring, and their wide-range techniques were chewing through everything, ally and enemy alike.
A curtain of fire flared above her, swallowing a bolt of lightning before it could reach her head. Su Meilan lowered her hand and breathed out once.
If they weren't holding back, neither would she.
This was her first major mission since joining the organization. Without her father's recommendation, she wouldn't have gotten assigned to such a highly valued and sought after one. If she wanted her place to be secure, she needed to be unforgettable.
Su Meilan snapped her gaze upward and shot into the sky. Qi surged up her spine and flooded her arms, gathering tight behind the center of her chest before spilling into her palms in a single, scorching rush.
Heat hit before the light did.
The air above her twisted, then ignited into a swelling sphere bright enough to bleach the clouds and drown the mountainside in hard-edged shadow. It kept growing, fed by a steady pull through her meridians, until it stopped looking like a technique and started looking like a second sun chained to the sky.
Su Meilan curled her fingers.
The sphere shuddered, then obeyed.
It drove down as one roaring mass, compressing the air into a screaming wake. When it struck the outer sect grounds, the world turned white.
A shockwave punched outward. Stone burst. Trees vanished into cinders. The ground didn't just burn. It glowed, then split under the force, veins of molten light racing through the fractures. Walls folded. Courtyards caved. Outer buildings collapsed into fire and dust as if they'd been made of paper.
When the brightness finally thinned, the outer area had become a crater of glassed earth and rolling flame.
Everything there, and too much around it, turned to ash in mere breaths.
Su Meilan coughed and spat a mouthful of blood into her sleeve. The backlash was small but painful, like a bite along her meridians.
Worth it.
She looked toward Lu Wenye.
He was fighting a woman who carried herself like an elder, but the exchange was lopsided. Said elder retreated step by step while Lu Wenye advanced without hurry, forcing her back. Su Meilan understood why in a glance. The woman's Qi was strong, mid Void at least, but her movements were those of an alchemist dragged into battle.
Lu Wenye, only early Void, fought like someone who did this for pleasure.
A flare exploded from the mountain base.
Su Meilan's breath caught. The signal.
She turned to warn Lu Wenye, and realized he was somehow already beside her, appearing without sound. He brushed a fleck of ash from his cuff, more offended by the stain than the screams.
"Impressive, I was only counting on Qiao Lanyue and Duan Kuo today, but you surprised me."
Su Meilan's pulse hammered. The sect elders were already rushing toward them, and they didn't have much time. "We need to move!"
Lu Wenye didn't look at her.
He snapped his fingers.
The clouds above parted. Three giant flying artifacts shaped like ships descended, their hulls cutting through mist and smoke like dark whales breaching. Formation lights ran along their sides.
Qiao Lanyue and Duan Kuo arrived together.
Lu Wenye's voice carried through the entire battlefield. "Climb aboard. Sixty breaths. After that, we leave."
His gaze swept the area, indifferent to the dying.
"Anyone who lingers will be left behind and slaughtered."
He turned back to the three of them. "Our work here is done. Let's go."
* * * *
The elders reached the sect in seventy breaths.
The sight made their stomachs drop.
Three ships were already rising into the sky, pulling away through smoke and ash. The elders didn't hesitate. They hurled long-range techniques, sword light and talisman fire streaking toward the fleeing hulls.
The ships' shields drank the attacks.
One of the ships, bulkier than the other two, rotated slightly. Cannons along its side flared.
A blast tore through the air.
The elders scattered, forced to evade. The pressure from the strike alone made their bones ring. None of them wanted to be the first to test what a direct hit would do.
By the time the ships vanished into the clouds, the elders' faces were dark with fury, and they turned back toward the sect.
* * * *
Jian Moxiu, Song Cangqiu, and Gu Shouyin returned, their expressions heavier than the smoke. Between them, Hua Ruanxue's body lay limp and pale, her floral fan held by Jian Moxiu, her chest still stained where demonic Qi had passed through.
The sect's state only made their faces harden further.